Scholars know that the
first five books of the Bible – the Pentateuch, are an amalgamation of a number
of other source documents.
When I was a student at Mac one of our courses looked at
the footprints of the various documents … what I remember of the course was
that there is the Priestly document, the Yahwehist document, the Elohist
document, and depending on the scholar three or five others.
What distinguishes the threads is the name used to refer to
God – the name Yahweh is used in some,
Elohim in others, and other variations on the name of God appear …
For the most part the blending together of the various
texts is seamless and the average reader fails to notice when the texts combine
– but every once in a while a passage leaves us as the reader scratching our
heads a little bit and wondering why the text seems so awkward.
Today’s passage from Exodus is such a reading … repeatedly
we hear the same account … the people whined and grumbled at God, but Moses and
Aaron were simply the messengers … three times in ten verses, the same account
is offered in slightly different language …
Three separate accounts of the same story were merged
together by the redactor of Exodus, leaving us with a HEAVY emphasis on the
grumbling and complaining of the people …
The people are in the wilderness, freed from the bondage
and slavery of Egypt – they are free … but they still complain.
We’re hungry … we’re tired … we’re thirsty … are we there
yet?
He’s touching me … she’s looking at me … he’s touching my
stuff … I have to go to the bathroom …
If the Israelites start to sound A LOT like a bunch of kids
on a road trip, it is because that is exactly what they became …
Moses, Aaron and Miriam, lead the people up out of Egypt –
they defeated the Egyptian armies (with the help of God and foul weather along
the Red Sea) and now they were free … but there was no appreciation of that
freedom …
We’re going to die in this wilderness … we’re going to
starve … we have nothing … then they waxed nostalgically of the past … they
could remember the food, the water but they conveniently forgot everything
else. It is an echoing of the “Make American Great” sentiment we are witnessing
playing out south of the border – yeah, it was great back in the 1950’s if you
were white, employed and male … if you were a black southerner it wasn’t so
great … if you were a female immigrant or first nations woman, it wasn’t so
great … if you were non-white it wasn’t so great … yet, the nostalgic myth
persists.
We see it in the Church today … this past week I have
conversation after conversation with non-church and non-united church people
about the shift from traditional Sunday morning worship that we have come to
embody in this community. From the coffee shop, to mens’ coffee to the ladies’
groups I hear it over and over how new ways of being church, new ways of
forming spiritual and spirited communities, are exciting and open the door to
the future …
Yet, we still hear the ‘good old days’ voices … the people
pining for the flesh pots by the nile … we will over look the slavery and
suffering, and remember only the good things … good things that really weren’t
so good afterall …
I recall a discussion once with some colleagues about this
reading and one of them said ‘we should preach on what the ‘good’ in Egypt was
really like … was it really good? Or was it comfortably familiar?’
He went on to muse – the flesh pots were rotten vegetables,
scraps of meat from the tables of wealthy Egyptians … the broth had more than a
few bugs and wiggly things floating in it … the bread was wormy … the water
warm and filled with little swimmers … it really wasn’t all that good … but it
was FAMILIAR … familiarity is comfortable … comfort means not stretching and
being challenged …
When I was on the study tour in Egypt in the 80’s we had
lunch sitting in a plaza facing the sphinx and the pyramids. Our lunch
consisted of a small fresh baked loaf of bread, a hunk of cheese, some fruit
and a few other things along with a bottle of water … I was enjoying sitting in
the sun and marveling at having lunch staring at the sphinx when I noticed
little white crawly things in my lunch bag … looking closer, I realized they
were in my bread … my prof, sitting beside me looked as his bread and found the
same critter then with a big smile said – “extra protein … as he continued to
eat …”
The bread had been freshly baked the night before and in
the Egyptian heat had already become home to larva … it happens THAT fast in
Egypt … I’m sure the food the Israelites pined for so fondly was even more ripe
with critters …
So, Wandering through a desert completely cut off from all
that is familiar, far from anything recognizable or known … the wormy bread and
rotten vegetables of Egypt would be inviting and enticing … so as the people
experienced fear, anxiety, uncertainty and more, the prospect of what was
suddenly seems bright and amazing …
The suffering and slavery of the past seems better than the
prospect of an uncertain future …
And so, into that moment of fear and anxiety, God speaks …
We are to focus on what is important …
In North America today two of the fastest growing
industries are Food Banks and the storage industry … food banks to feed people
who do not have enough, and the storage industry to store the stuff of people
who don’t have enough room for their stuff …
And what kind of stuff do they put in those expensive
secure lockers? Extra clothes, extra furniture, extra appliances, extra toys
and stuff they don’t use but that is too good to throw away … (now I will not
throw any stones here because my basement is FULL of stuff I really don’t need,
but that I haven’t had time to sift and sort and deal with – so I get the
acquiring stuff …) But what I took note of this week is that on one hand we
have more and more people just struggling to put food on their table, while on
the other hand we have people in the SAME communities filling storage facilities
with more and more stuff they don’t really need …
The Israelites wander into the desert and complain that
they would rather die … if only we had died … AND God hears their complaining
and answers WITH ABUNDANCE.
Scriptures tell us that in the evening quail descend upon
the Israelite encampment and they have more than enough meat … then in the
morning they are given the wondrous and mysterious Manna – “what is it? –
Man’ah??”
In the face of their complaining and belly aching, God
offers ABUNDANCE and a reminder of what is important.
In the face of anxiety and uncertainty, instead of relying
on stuff, instead of accepting simplistic answers like “make America great” –
cause let’s be honest, he has failed epically in fulfilling THAT promise,
instead of giving into the anxiety and fear it brings, we instead place our
trust in God and open ourselves to God’s unexpected abundance.
It’s not the stuff … it’s not the fleshpots they left
behind … it’s not the past that is important – it is THIS moment, the gift of
here and now. And within this holy moment, God gives us what we need …
Food … companionship … community … awareness … relative
healthiness … enough.
We live in a culture who have made a virtue out of acquiring
and getting more and more and more …
This past week I was invited to share in the funeral
service for one of my dad’s best friends – a few very short weeks ago, I sat at
his son’s wedding dinner and was regaled in stories of my dad as a teen and
young man … and on Friday I stood with his family, and a LOT of my extended
family and said our good byes.
At the cemetery later, I shared a beverage with Bruce, who
was one of my brother’s best buddies growing up … we stood looking amongst the
tombstones of our family and reminisced about our earlier years and his family
and mine … as we talked about the connections between our families and how,
despite the passage of years and years we are still like one family, it made me
realize that what is important is not the stuff – not the jobs and titles and
positions we can obtain – not the gadgets and gizmos – but what is important is
the gift of life, and within it the relationships we form and maintain between
family and friends … the most important thing we have is the love and care for
each other …
In the dry dusty desert of Sinai, the Israelites forgot to
trust God and give thanks for the abundance and the freedom they had … as Jesus
and his disciples wandered the hills of Galilea and Judea, they had forgotten
to trust God and give thanks for the abundance and freedom they had …
The people grumbled and complained and pined for a past
that never really was … and God delivered abundance …
Man’ah? What is it? … bread in abundance …
Community in abundance
Life in abundance
Love in abundance
The challenge is not to focus on the niggly little negative
details, but to have the faith and courage to trust in God enough as we
celebrate the bounty and goodness of life.
In the reading from Exodus today, the grumbling and
complaining were answered by God’s overwhelming abundance … an abundance that
is around us all the time, but that we fail to see and experience.
May we, in this season of harvest and plenty, remember that
God’s abundance is not about the stuff – it is about the unexpected manna
moments when we ask “what is it?” and we are left with only one answer – it is
God present and working in our lives …
May WE make it to be so, thanks be to God … Let us pray …
