2023-10-03
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
10/1/23 Homily
Will I Really Always Have Enough? Rev. Betsy Wooster
Scripture Reading
Exodus 17:1-7 A reading from Exodus, chapter 17:1-7
From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. 2The people quarreled with Moses, and said, ‘Give us water to drink.’ Moses said to them, ‘Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?’ 3But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?’ 4So Moses cried out to the Lord, ‘What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.’
5The Lord said to Moses, ‘Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.’ Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, ‘Is the Lord among us or not?’
Let us pray:
God of love and mercy, may you show us your ways, so that we may know you and find favor in your sight. Amen.
Sometimes good news looks like bad news. This is a common theme in the story of God’s people. Sometimes good news looks like bad news…at first. Sometimes, the good news is that God is working to set people free, to give them new life, to bring them to a new home. But the old life was familiar. Even if it was less free, at least it was predictable, and there is comfort in knowing what to expect. It may have been miserable, but at least you could count on it. How often do we resist the changes that would bring about a richer and more fulfilled life because we don’t know what that would look like, and it is comfortable for life to stay the same? And how often does our society resist the changes that would bring about a greater realization of the peaceable kingdom that God intends, simply because we fear how that might affect the life that we already know.
And so, when God is at work to free us from bonds, and give us new life, sometimes that good news seems like bad news because we don’t know what lies ahead, but we know what used to be. In this we share something deep and true with the Israelites traveling the deserts of the Sinai Peninsula. The place they are camping in at the outset of this passage, Rephidim, was a vast, barren desert where lack of water is a serious and life-threatening problem, even in modern times. Vegetation of any sort is difficult to find in this wasteland. Yellow, tan, and brown hues dominate the landscape.[1] No water in sight. There’s a lot of discussion about water in the book of Exodus. Much earlier, before they crossed the Red Sea, when Pharaoh’s army, horses and chariots were gaining on the Israelites as they reached the sea, the people cried to Moses, and I paraphrase, ‘We told you that this plan would fail!’ Leave us alone and let us go back to the Egyptians.’
In fear for their lives, they decided it would be better to go back than to die in the sea or the desert. Staying in bondage was safer, no matter how awful. But as the people cried out, Moses raised his staff and parted the sea. The Israelites made it through, and the Egyptian army drowned as the waters closed over them. Now stuck in the middle of the Sinai desert, the Israelites are in peril again. They are desperate. They know without water they will die, their children will die, their grandchildren will die, their elders will die. They are again in a life-or-death situation. And again, they cry to Moses: ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us with thirst?’ We all have times of peril in our lives, one way or another.
Imagine feeling so afraid that you don’t know how food and water will be provided for your family, that you’d rather go back to Egypt to be enslaved, because at least there you had daily meals. Picture the faces of your family members, young, old, and in between. How would you cope? Of course we would try even the worst case scenario if the only alternative was death. The Israelites find water when they are dying of thirst by turning to Moses and begging for help. Then Moses turns to God and begs for help. And what happened? God immediately gives them water. God is near and their lives and actions matter to God. It is okay to ask, or even to beg, for help when we’re parched, or when we sense danger. When I was growing up, I watched the Unicef and Save the Children advertisements on TV that showed photos and footage of children dying from starvation all over the world.
I was so worried for them, and the pictures shocked my system. I lived in a home where delicious home cooked meals were the norm, and homemade desserts were a given. And yet, there were those commercials that sometimes brought me to tears. Why were there people that didn’t have enough food to survive in the same world as me? Was God with them, or not? Our family supported children in need through our church, but what about these kids on the TV screen? I felt helpless. But the people at Unicef essentially begged for help on behalf of these children.
As I got older, and was stocking my own kitchen, I always wanted back-up food. I still do it today. I don’t like to run out of food or supplies. I want to always have enough, especially when I am feeding my family. At some point it dawned on me that those Unicef images had scared me. Maybe they made me worry at some level, that I might not always be okay, that I might not always have enough. I’m not usually consciously aware that this fear exists in me, but I think that, along the way, I picked up a sense of worry about running out of food. We all have stories about fears that we might not be okay, that we might not have enough. Fear of not having enough food, or enough money, or enough safety from danger. Fear of not having enough courage or sustenance to carry on with our lives. Fear of not being loved. And maybe we all have stories of trying to overcome these fears by making sure that we have enough, no matter how we get it, even if it means that we are like the Israelites, wanting to give up their liberation and return to the comfort of something that is predictable and familiar. Wanting to have enough, we try to make it right all by ourselves, because we’ve somehow learned that asking for help is a form of weakness.
What are you thirsty for? What do you lack that you feel you might physically or spiritually die without? What situations in your life have left you unsure that you’ll continue to have what you need? At least “back in Egypt” you knew where the food and drink were coming from. At least in your former job you knew you could rely on a steady paycheck. You could rely on feeding your family. Sometimes, the new job that feeds our soul is less predictable, and we wish we would have stayed where we were. Or maybe you’ve decided to be more generous with your resources, but now you’re anxious about having enough. Think of the times when you have been weary and left feeling hopeless or drained, or when your body was spent, or your mind distraught, or your emotions on edge. So often in these situations we do not ask for help. We try to soldier on alone, thinking that no one or nothing can help us.
God mourns beside us when we try to go it alone. God seeks to help us, but we give up on the prospect of help.
We think that unless the world is about to fall apart, we can get through it alone. But when we are weary, hopeless, drained, and distraught, something is falling apart. Our life force is draining as it would if we were dying of thirst. We need the help of God and others to find our way through the new places and situations we find ourselves in. There are plenty of things to be afraid of in this world. Sometimes we have existential fears and sometimes we fear the twists and turns in our own journey that we can’t control. When have you journeyed through certain stages in your life that were hard? And did any of those journeys lead you to desperation because you couldn’t change it? Journeys can take many forms. When we live through a difficult period in our lives it’s a relief to be finished with it compared to being in the middle of it, especially if in the middle, we weren’t sure we were going to make it through alive. What helped you to survive? Did you seek help?
When we are desperate and afraid, we can ask for help. We can ask God for help. And how does God help? How does God love us? If today’s story tells us anything, it is that God loves us by leading us into new places so that we can leave the old place, and all its harm, behind. Sometimes the new place is more of a gift than we think it is at the time. Sometimes life doesn’t go how we want, and we are forced to move into new things: Maybe new jobs, maybe moving to a new city, state or country, maybe it’s shifting our lives to care for our parents or loved ones who are ill or dying, maybe it’s moving from your house to assisted living, maybe it’s feeling helpless when a family member struggles with addiction, maybe it’s mourning a loved one or friend who has died, maybe it is family trauma you have lived with for too long.
It’s an adjustment to move into the next new thing when we’ve outgrown the situation we were in, or when that situation was causing us more harm than good. Even then, it’s easy to start fighting against what is new because we no longer know where our help is coming from in this new place. Before, we knew where sustenance came from, but where does it come from now? What does God have for us in this new place? What gifts will God give? When the Israelites asked Moses for help, Moses, on God’s command, lifted his staff, once again, this time over a rock. What do we learn from this? Water can gush from a rock when we ask for it. God surprises us with amazing grace. God hears us and blesses us with having enough. It might look different than what we expect, but it will be what we need. We will have enough. Thanks be to God. Amen.
[1] Workingpreacher.org, 10-2-1023, Matthew Schlimm, professor of HB, Univ. of Dubuque Theological Seminary.
https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-26/commentary-on-exodus-171-7-12