Sixteenth Sunday
after Pentecost
I hate to be a kicker,
I always long for peace,
But the wheel that
squeaks the loudest,
Is the one that gets the
grease.[1]
At this stage on their journey out of slavery, the Israelites were
definitely squeaking—man, were they squeaking. They were murmuring,
complaining, grumbling, whining incessantly to Moses and Aaron. Not some, not even half, but, we’re told,
“The whole congregation of Israelites complained again Moses and Aaron in the
wilderness” (Ex. 6:2), which means they were also murmuring, complaining,
grumbling, and whining at God—which is what triggers God’s response. God doesn’t rain down fiery judgment from
heaven; instead, God rains down bread from heaven. But this bread, this “manna,” is really
judgment, a judgment by bread. It’s a
test, as we’ll see. And because God’s
ways are always righteous and just (Deut. 32:4), this test, too, is an expression of
God’s righteousness, an expression of God’s covenantal faithfulness to Israel,
of God’s deep compassion for God’s people.
We find the
Israelites in the severe wilderness of Sinai.
They are people on the way: on the way from Egypt to a land of promise,
on the way from slavery to freedom, on the way from scarcity to abundance in a
land of milk and honey, on the way from an oppressive past toward a hopeful future. And the exodus road—exodus, a Greek word meaning, “the way out”—the way out of slavery,
the way toward freedom, and this holy way cuts right through the wilderness.
The exodus from
Egypt was the defining event in the history of Israel. Yes, the dramatic
departure of God’s people through the Red Sea, but also the long forty-year
trek around Sinai. The wilderness wandering should be understood as central to
the exodus experience. It’s not just a fruitless,
empty in-between time between leaving Egypt and eventually crossing the River
Jordan. The wilderness experience was
essential for the Israelites; it was formative and foundational. In some respects, the wilderness is not unlike
Holy Saturday, situated between Good Friday and Easter Sunday; a lot is going
in that space in-between, that liminal space, that threshold space between what
was and what shall be.
In time, the wilderness becomes the birthplace of Israel as a
people: their theological identity is tested and formed there. In the wilderness, they come to know Yahweh—the God of Abraham and Sarah—who
was before then really a stranger. They
come to know God’s way, and will, and style.
They come to know God personally, not just beliefs or ideas about
God. They come to know God
experientially, they encounter the holiness of God, they face the presence of
the living God, they are confronted by the numinous, the Holy. The wilderness is necessary for a knowledge
of God. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
are religious traditions that emerge from desert, wilderness experiences.[2] Moses learns Yahweh’s name, not as a boy
growing up in the empire of Egypt, but as an adult in the wilds of Sinai. One could say that the wild God of Israel is
most profoundly known and experienced in wild, dangerous places—whenever we
find ourselves in what feels like a wilderness, when we find ourselves in the
holy, scary threshold space between what was and what shall be, between the
past and the future, between death and resurrection.
This is where
we find Israel in Exodus 16. And, to no one’s surprise, their anxiety level is
running very high. Wilderness wanderings, wherever or whatever the wilderness might be,
often generate considerable anxiety in us. This was a perilous, life and death
situation for them. They were running low
on food, starving. In the middle of
nowhere. They could not imagine a way
out, an exodus, out of their crisis.
They began to panic. They had difficulty
envisioning a future that included enough food to live on. A promising future was eclipsed by absence in their present, the absence of food. They envisioned only death. And they didn’t have a lot of trust in Yahweh, either.
They were beginning to think that God was against them, that it was all a cruel
joke, that God brought them there to kill them—because that’s what all the
evidence was pointing to.
“If only we had
died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt,” they cried. Why didn’t God kill us in Egypt, “when we sat
by the fleshpots,” with kettles full of stewed meat, “and ate our fill of
bread” (Ex. 16:3)? Back in Egypt, sure
we were in slavery, life was difficult and cruel, but at least our stomachs
were full. Life was so much better back in
those days, back there in slavery, compared to this suffering at the hands of
Moses and Aaron and their God. “For you
have brought us out into this wilderness,” they shouted, “to kill this whole
assembly hunger” (Ex. 16:3)!
They are fearful.
They are anxious. Two different
emotional responses, similar but not the same.
Fear usually has an object, whether it’s the fear of flying or spiders
or starving. Sometimes a fear is
rational, when there are good reasons for being afraid. Sometimes a fear is irrational. Anxiety, though, is something different. Anxiety, often, does not have an object. We can feel anxious and not know why we are
anxious; it sits deeper than fear in the psyche and can, therefore, have a
fierce hold over us. Of the two, anxiety
is probably more destructive. Anxiety,
when it’s activated, especially by trauma, and becomes operative, constricts. The word, itself, has its root in the
Sanskrit ang. In Greek, ánkhō
means “to choke.” From ang we get angst and anger and angina, the constriction of blood vessels around the heart.
Anxiety is often a secondary response to something else, whether
what is perceived is true or not is beside the point. Take, for example, the question of scarcity. Is
there enough to go around? Whether it’s oil or money or time or love, or, for the Israelites, food, whether we perceive scarcity and abundance is a direct correlation with how we
perceive the rest of reality. An
attitude of scarcity often generates considerable anxiety in us.
How does this relate to Exodus?
Walter Brueggemann, the brilliant Old Testament scholar, reminds us that
Egypt was an empire, an extremely powerful economic and military force, the
mightiest empire of its time in this part of the world. Empires are often built to secure the
resources necessary for its own survival.
This is why empires need slaves; this is why Pharaoh needed to keep the
Israelites in Egypt. The narrative that
fueled Pharaoh’s empire was the myth of scarcity—the fear of not having enough, the need to
have more just in case because they assume there's not enough.
The Pharaoh narrative, the narrative of empire, Brueggemann says, the
story that empires tell themselves and want to make others believe, goes like
this: resources are scarce, scarcity yields anxiety, the anxiety of not having
enough leads to accumulation, pathological accumulation leads to monopoly, and
the need to maintain monopolies inevitably lead to violence.[3]
This is the narrative that Israelites are used to. This way of being had been embedded into
their psyches for generations. Read through
the book of Exodus and you see that Israel is always whining and grumbling and
complaining and worried…it’s tiresome.
Even with all that God had done for them, they had difficulty remembering, they assumed the worst, they couldn’t trust, they couldn’t live with confidence and hope. Anxiety—anxiety and fear, but mostly anxiety—is
informing everything.
When we’re anxious our perceptions of reality become distorted, our lives constrict, it’s tough to make wise decisions, it’s easy for us to (over)react to what’s going on around us, we choose scarcity over abundance, we become defensive. Anxiety hinders the Israelites's ability to move forward. Overwhelmed by anxiety, they want to go “home,” even if “home” was slavery. When anxiety becomes intense there is often a tug to go back to the past, to "the good ol' days," to the way things were, to the familiar and the known. You can see why there’s often a connection between anxiety and nostalgia, which literally means “a painful longing for home.”
When we’re anxious our perceptions of reality become distorted, our lives constrict, it’s tough to make wise decisions, it’s easy for us to (over)react to what’s going on around us, we choose scarcity over abundance, we become defensive. Anxiety hinders the Israelites's ability to move forward. Overwhelmed by anxiety, they want to go “home,” even if “home” was slavery. When anxiety becomes intense there is often a tug to go back to the past, to "the good ol' days," to the way things were, to the familiar and the known. You can see why there’s often a connection between anxiety and nostalgia, which literally means “a painful longing for home.”
And, so, the daily bread from heaven is given as a test: will
they learn to trust in the daily provision of God? They were forbidden to,
collect, or accumulate for a later date, behaviors often fueled by anxiety and
an inability to trust in the benevolence of God. They were not allowed to take matters into
their own hands, they were not free to manage or plan for their future, they
were not free to control the desired outcomes.
They had to learn to trust in God to provide for them. Not once, but day after day after day. This test might appear harsh, but it was
designed to change their lives, so that they would stop being fueled by anxiety. Stop grasping. Stop trying to control the future. Stop accumulating in fear or anxiety, as if
God is not God. It took more than two
generations to change their attitudes, and even then, it was difficult for
Israel to really trust in God. They had
trust issues—that’s what being sold off into slavery will do to a people.
As any psychologist can tell you, every human being has trust
issues. It starts early, as an infant
slowly determines whether one’s parents, one’s family, and the world are
safe. And if our trust has been
betrayed, once or countless times, it takes a long time for trust to be
recovered. If you’re watching the Ken
Burns and Lynn Novick’s documentary The Vietnam War, you see how the American government betrayed the trust of its
people, a trust that has yet to be full recovered, a trust that continues to be
betrayed.
God wants the Israelites to learn to trust. But is God
trustworthy? The viability and vitality
of faith depends upon the image of God we hold deep in our heart of hearts. Your image of God is critical. If you see God
essentially as a judge, then don’t be surprised if you become excessively
judgmental. If you’re not sure that God
is trustworthy, faithful and good, then don’t be surprised if you’re obsessed
with gaining control over your life, taking matters into your own hands,
fending for yourself, living defensively, living with the myth of scarcity…what
if God won’t provide, what if the manna won’t show up, what if there’s not
enough? I need to do something about this. What am I going to do? I. I. I.
To counter these egocentric faithless pieties, God comes to us
as the generous one. Here, and later in
Jesus’ ministry, we come to see that God is known for God’s liberality, God’s
excessiveness, God’s prodigality. This
is the image of God that should fill our hearts and minds. John Calvin (1509-1564), writing on Exodus 16, said it beautifully, “God so far extended [God’s] liberality as
abundantly to satisfy them, …not less was given than was amply sufficient for
them.”[4] This image was at the center of Calvin’s
piety because he knew God to be liberal and prodigal with love for him. And, Calvin knew, this manna is really something
else; it’s not like the food we obtain through planting and harvesting, it
doesn’t come through the fruit of our labor.
It doesn’t come from us. This daily
bread, the kind that really sustains us is pure grace. It’s unearned. It’s freely given from a
generous God. It all flows from God’s
bounty.
We know we are living in anxious times. And fear abounds. It feels as if we’re in a
wilderness. Earthquakes: three in
Mexico, New Zealand, Australia, and Japan.
Devastation from hurricanes in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Puerto Rico,
most of the Caribbean. Weekly talks
about nuclear annihilation. Pathological narcissists with fragile egos playing
with the lives of millions of God’s children.
On Wednesday evening here at CPC, Robert Jones, author of The End of White Christian America, shared disturbing data about trends in American society pertaining to religion, values,
and unacknowledged racism tearing at the fabric of society.[5]
We are living through a time of fast, unprecedented change. These changes, too,
are yielding considerable anxiety.
So, what can we do?
So, what can we do?
We can either resist anxiety, deny it, self-medicate, run from
it, try to run “home,” go back to an imagined past, somewhere called “again.” Or, knowing that God is faithful, we can stay with the anxiety, really feel
it, enter it without succumbing to it.
This is not the usual response to anxiety, I know. But it might be the more faithful one. Isn’t this what the Israelites came to know in the
wilderness? In fact, our anxiety, our unease, Walter Brueggemann goes so far to say, is a
holy thing or can be holy.[6] Why? Because we can discover in our
anxiety a new experience of the Living God.
We can discover something of the beneficence, the liberality, the
abundance of God.
Moses and Aaron summoned the people in the wilderness, in their anxiety, saying, “Draw near to the LORD, for he has heard
your complaining.” And as Aaron spoke, we’re told the whole congregation looked
toward the wilderness—they looked out over the hot sands of the Sinai, they saw
the barrenness all around them, they became conscious of their situation, caught
between the past and the future. And what did they see there?
The cloud!
The glory, the presence of the Yahweh appeared in the cloud. Then, Yahweh spoke to Moses and said, “I have heard the complaining of the Israelites; say to them, “At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the LORD your God” (Ex. 16:16:12).
Then, indeed…that morning and this morning and tomorrow morning and the next morning and the next, on and on and on, forever and ever. Amen.
The cloud!
The glory, the presence of the Yahweh appeared in the cloud. Then, Yahweh spoke to Moses and said, “I have heard the complaining of the Israelites; say to them, “At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the LORD your God” (Ex. 16:16:12).
Then, indeed…that morning and this morning and tomorrow morning and the next morning and the next, on and on and on, forever and ever. Amen.
Image: Anton Koberger (1440-1513), "Gathering Manna," German Bible, Nuremberg, 1483.
[1]
Attributed to the American humorist Henry
Wheeler Shaw (1818-1885), around 1870.
[2]
See Belden C. Lane, The Solace of Fierce
Landscapes: Exploring Desert and Mountain Spirituality (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2007).
[4]
John Calvin, Commentary on Exodus.
[5]
Robert P. Jones, The End of White
Christian America (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2016).
[6]
From Walter Brueggemann’s interview with Krista Tippet at OnBeing, “The Prophetic Imagination,” aired 19th December 2013.
