A Funny Thing Happened On Our Way Through the Wilderness

DATE: September 21, 2014
SCRIPTURE: Exodus 16: 2–15 Full text follows the sermon.
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton

They didn’t know what it was. How could they? Like everything around them, it was entirely alien, this stuff that appeared on the ground when the morning dew lifted. The Israelites were still adapting to this utterly foreign environment; their eyes were still adjusting to the glare of desert sun, their feet to the rough desert terrain and their bodies to sleeping on the desert floor. Alien sounds filled the air – the buzz of insects, the scritch-scratch of lizard feet, the distant yelp of jackals. In the face of so much strangeness, the Israelites developed a sort of selective amnesia. Maybe it was the heat that distorted their memory, or the loss of everything familiar, like when a rug is yanked out from under your feet. Suddenly, being slaves in Egypt didn’t seem so bad. At least there they’d had meat to eat and bread in abundance… At least there they’d known what to expect.

Not anymore. Now they were a wandering people. Wilderness nomads discombobulated and overcome by hunger and thirst. In their distress, they forgot how it had all gone down. How God had heard their cries of suffering in Egypt and gone head to head with Pharaoh to set them free. How Moses had wielded a staff and parted the waters of the Red Sea, so that the fleeing Israelites could escape Pharaoh’s army. How they themselves had sung God’s praises on the far shore; how Miriam (Moses’ sister) had taken up a tambourine and joyfully danced on the sand. How God had led them to this very place at the foot of Mt. Sinai. But hunger had confused those memories, left them feeling exposed, maybe even abandoned. “What do we do now?” They moaned. “We will surely die. This is all your fault, Moses!” So a crisis of food turned into a crisis of faith.

But God had not abandoned them. On the contrary: God continued to hear their cries and attend to their needs. Just not the way they expected. So at first, they couldn’t even see it. The trouble wasn’t that God had failed them, so much as the Israelites had failed to recognize what the wilderness had to offer; what God had to offer in the wilderness. “There’s nothing to eat!” they cried, calling to mind the image of a reluctant tourist who searches up and down a busy street permeated by exotic smells, past street vendors and small eateries with untranslatable signs out front. “There’s nothing to eat,” He moans, by which he really means: “There’s nothing here I recognize. Everything is strange.” This is the tourist who overlooks to local cuisine and goes looking for the local McDonald’s.

But there was no Egyptian-style McDonald’s in the wilderness. No cooking pots filled with Egyptian stew.

The Israelites had to adapt. Which is, of course, what wilderness wandering is all about. In between times are invariably unsettling. But they have a purpose. They upend old routines and open up new ways of doing and being. The Exodus – all those years of wandering in the wilderness – gave the Israelites the time they needed to learn how to be, not Pharaoh’s slaves, but God’s people. This was no small thing. According to the rabbis, “It took 40 days to get the Israelites out of Egypt; it took 40 years to get Egypt out of the Israelites.”

In Egypt, you survived by hiding and hoarding…grabbing what you could when you could, because there was never enough of anything except maybe fear.

So this was Wilderness Lesson #1: With God, there will be enough. Just that. Just that one, breath-taking, worldview-shifting, soul-mending gift: You don’t need to grasp anymore. There will be a portion for each; for the earliest riser and the one who sleeps in; for the wisest grandmother and the smallest child; no matter how swift or how slow you are to gather it up, each of you will receive what you need. Just that, and no more.

It was the first unexpected gift, this manna, the food that was named for the people’s confusion: Literally, the Hebrew “Man hu?” means “What is it?” Moses’ response sounds like an ancient rendition of the old Abbot and Costello baseball routine, Who’s on first: People: “What is it?” Moses: “that’s right.” People: “But what is it?” Moses: “Yes.” And though the Israelites had never seen anything like it before, they learned to harvest this holy-mysterious manna, this bread from heaven, and indeed it was enough to sustain them, every day, for 40 years.

That’s just the kind of thing that happens in the wilderness, once we learn to look: once we know enough to mind the morning dew as it lifts, to take note of what it leaves behind. Unexpected gifts, hidden in plain sight, just waiting for our eyes to adjust to the light; food for body and spirit, where once we perceived only barren land. Glimpses of the Divine where once we felt completely alone.

Maybe you’ve encountered such gifts in your own life. Maybe you know what it’s like to trip over treasure in your path, as you trudge through the wilderness of worry or despair. You get laid-off, only to pursue a passion that leads to a life-enriching change in career; or you fall ill, but while you are sick, a caregiver teaches you a new prayer practice that becomes a source of blessing. A super storm floods your home and sends you to a shelter, where you forge a friendship with someone you never would have met if you had not been thrown together in time of crisis…

You never know what to expect on a wilderness journey.

Here’s my question, for those of us who have been part of this community of faith for some or all of the past three years since the fire: What have we come to know – of God, of ourselves – that we might have missed without the experiences of the last three years? What unexpected gifts have been placed in our path? How have we been fed? And which of those gifts do we want to carry with us when we walk back through the doors of the church at 245 Post Road East? What practices and insights? If you are a guest this morning, I invite you to listen in; you are our witnesses this morning, as we reflect on the gifts we’ve received…

Who knew? Who knew just what gifts were waiting for us, tucked into corners, or hidden in plain sight; who knew what riches would transform our lives in the wake of a tragedy that left us feeling as though a rug had been yanked out from under our feet. Who knew? Of course, God knew. We might forget it, on occasion; some days our vision might be obscured by worry. But here is the Good News to which we can return again and again; There is one who can be trusted at every turn, and that one is God: God of Abraham and Sarah, Jacob and Rebekah; God of Moses, Miriam and Aaron; God of the prophets and of Christ Jesus our Host. Trust God to give us not just what we ask for, or what we’ve had in the past…what we THINK we need. Our own imaginations fall short. But not God’s. God, who calls us out, God who goes with us on this journey, God who wants us to live abundant lives in faithfulness to God and to one another: God is waiting for us around every bend; God meets us at every turn with something more in store, something routine-upending, worldview-shifting, heart-mending, life-transforming. In the words of one Saugatuck member this week: Why limit ourselves by asking for more of what we already know? God’s got more: God’s got manna! Thanks be to God. Amen.

Scripture Texts

Exodus 16: 2–15 (Common English Bible Translation)

2 The whole Israelite community complained against Moses and Aaron in the desert. 3 The Israelites said to them, “Oh, how we wish that the LORD had just put us to death while we were still in the land of Egypt. There we could sit by the pots cooking meat and eat our fill of bread. Instead, you’ve brought us out into this desert to starve this whole assembly to death.” 4 Then the LORD said to Moses, “I’m going to make bread rain down from the sky for you. The people will go out each day and gather just enough for that day. In this way, I’ll test them to see whether or not they follow my Instruction. 5 On the sixth day, when they measure out what they have collected, it will be twice as much as they collected on other days.” 6 So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, “This evening you will know that it was the LORD who brought you out of the land of Egypt. 7 And in the morning you will see the LORD’s glorious presence, because your complaints against the LORD have been heard. Who are we? Why blame us?” 8 Moses continued, “The LORD will give you meat to eat in the evening and your fill of bread in the morning because the LORD heard the complaints you made against him. Who are we? Your complaints aren’t against us but against the LORD.” 9 Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole Israelite community, ‘Come near to the LORD, because he’s heard your complaints.’” 10 As Aaron spoke to the whole Israelite community, they turned to look toward the desert, and just then the glorious presence of the LORD appeared in the cloud. 11 The LORD spoke to Moses, 12 “I’ve heard the complaints of the Israelites. Tell them, ‘At twilight you will eat meat. And in the morning you will have your fill of bread. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God.’” 13 In the evening a flock of quail flew down and covered the camp. And in the morning there was a layer of dew all around the camp. 14 When the layer of dew lifted, there on the desert surface were thin flakes, as thin as frost on the ground. 15 When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, “What is it?” They didn’t know what it was. Moses said to them, “This is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat.”