Sermon for Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, "Out of Egypt: Water from the Rock," Exodus 17:1-7
Sermon 9/28/14
Exodus 17:1-7
Out of Egypt: Water from the Rock
We’re continuing on journeying with the Israelites this
week as they make their way out of Egypt and into the wilderness. The text for
today tells us this happens “by stages.” This is both true in the sense that a
large group of people can’t really move all at once, but only by stages, and true in a deeper sense. This journey
is not just literal but spiritual, and the Israelites certainly are only moving
by stages spiritually too. In today’s passage, they’re arguing with Moses.
“Give us water to drink.” The language is imperative: do it, and do it now.
Moses responds, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” But the
Hebrew here is more explicit – it’s legal
language. Moses is saying more specifically something like, “why are you
bringing me and God to court over this?” We don’t know if Moses’ word choice is
because he’d reached his breaking point, tired of the complaining, or because
that large group of people he was leading was lodging a more organized, serious
complaint. A mob of discontent people could be pretty intimidating. After all,
they’re accusing Moses now of bringing the people out into the desert to kill
them with thirst, and Moses senses they are so upset they are going to stone
him to death. He cries to God for help. So God instructs Moses to go ahead a
ways, along with a group of elders, and at the rock of Horeb, where God will
be, to strike the rock with his staff. And then water will come from it, and
the people will be able to drink. Moses does just this, and everyone has water to
drink. But he names the place Massah and Meribah, meaning quarrel and test,
because the people posed the question: “Is the Lord among us or not?”
If
you’re keeping track, that’s three times now that the Israelites complain to
Moses, asking if he and God freed them just so they could die in the
wilderness. First, at the crossing of the Red Sea, then, as you heard about
last week with Pastor Penny, when the people were hungry, and now, when the
people are thirsty. Each time they accuse Moses of leading them from Egypt only
to let them die. Each time they seem to ask the question that is explicit in
today’s text: “Is the Lord among us or not?” And each time, they have their needs met by God through Moses’s
leadership. Each time, then, their fears are eased, their needs met, and God
presence with them is affirmed in a way that seems undeniable. And yet, this
pattern keeps repeating. “Is the Lord among us or not?” It’s like they can’t be
convinced. And I don’t know about you, but I’m amazed at God’s patience. This
is God, the creator of us and everything, and when the people whine and
complain, God simply meets their needs
with nary a chastising word. I’m not sure I could be so patient. Why exactly
are the Israelites so unwilling to believe in God’s presence, when they’ve
witnessed God at work, saving them in
every way, over and over again? What will it take to convince them?
How many of you
have ever seen the Drew Barrymore/Adam Sandler movie called 50 First Dates?
It’s a cute romantic comedy, and the premise is this: Barrymore was in a car
accident and the accident affects her short term memory. She can remember
everything in her life up until the accident. But after the accident, she
forgets everything once she goes to sleep. In other words, to her, each day is
like the day before the accident. Of course, real amnesia doesn’t work quite
that way, but we suspend our disbelief for the movie. Her family works hard to
create a safe world for her. Rather than spending every day of her life
re-teaching her about the accident, they create a world where the accident
never happened, knowing they have to do it all over again the next day. Then
Sandler’s character comes along and falls in love with Barrymore. She likes him
too – each day she meets him. Because every day is like the first time meeting
him. She never does get her memory back, but by the end of the movie she and
Sandler create a life together where every single day he has to tell her the
entire story of her life together. Every day, she has to meet him over again as
if for the first time, and eventually meet her children, again, as if for the
first time.
This is what I think the Israelites are acting like. Like
they have to start everyday at the very beginning again, and have everything
explained to them all over. I’m God. I love you. I’m going to save you. I will
be with you. Moses is going to lead you. We aren’t bringing you out here to
die. Over and over and over again. It doesn’t seem like there’s a lot of
learning retention happening here. I think about school teachers – one of the
hardest things for teachers is working on retention. When kids have summer
vacation, teachers have to wonder how much of what they’ve learned they’re
going to lose over the break. Teachers hope kids will retain everything, but each
September, a little bit of the starting work is review of the work from the
year before. A reminder of what’s been learned already. However, teachers trust
that they’re building on a foundation and years of learning that have come from
the years already completed. You don’t have to start English in 12th
grade with learning the alphabet and learning to read before you can get to
studying Shakespeare. You’re expected to remember what you’ve learned already. And
you remember what you’ve learned because you’ve been putting it to use –
reading and writing every day. Otherwise, you get something like my efforts to
learn how to knit. My half-hearted efforts mean that I’ve taught myself to knit
and purl. But I get distracted and busy with other things and I never get good
enough to knit well. And then a year passes, and I decide to try knitting
again, and I have absolutely no foundation to work with. Even though I’ve
learned it before, I have to start all over, right at the very beginning. And
so I’ll never really learn to knit.
Not the way I’ve been going about it.
I think God is so patient with the Israelites because
their recent experiences mean it’s more like they’re trying to remember after
recovering from an accident, like in 50 First Dates, than they are like trying
to learn how to knit, but too busy to be bothered remembering, like I’ve been.
God is patient, and willing to show them again and again, “Yes, yes, the Lord
IS with you, always, always, always,” because they’ve been slaves! They’ve been
oppressed! They’ve had their children slaughtered by Egyptians! They’ve been
beaten and forced into hard labor! They’ve been living in crisis mode. And so
for a while, they have to go back to square one every single time. Every time,
they have to start in the same place: God, are you with us? And God will
respond, every time, in word and deed, Yes!
Eventually, though, God will start to expect the
Israelites to retain some of what they’re learning. Next week, in fact, when we
look at the ten commandments, we’ll see that they include language about not
putting God to the test. Because a deep relationship can’t be built on a
foundation where one person in the relationship is constantly requiring the
other person to prove themselves. Eventually, they Israelites will heal as a
people, and God will expect them to learn a new way of being a people and being
in relationship with God.
The question, then, for us is this: Do we treat God like
we’re in crisis mode? Or like we’re in a relationship, and like we’ve
remembered some of what we’ve learned about God already? Sometimes we do face
crises of such magnitude that we need a little bit of going back to basics.
Sometimes our world is turned upside down. We’ve faced unspeakable tragedy.
We’re shaken to the core. We’ve suffered deeply. And we need some reminders of
how much God loves us and how much God is with us. And we’ll get them. God is
there, and will remind us of just that. God is with us.
But sometimes, we’re simply like schoolchildren refusing
to do our summer reading. Or we treat our faith like a hobby we’re thinking
about taking up, like knitting, but we’re never really willing to put enough in
to remember what we learned the last time around. And so we don’t retain
anything that we’ve learned from being in relationship with God. We don’t
retain enough to let it really change us. We don’t let walking with God become
something we can’t unlearn, like how
to ride a bike. We want to start at square one again because it’s just easier,
and doesn’t require any discipleship, any commitment, and changing our lives so
that we’re walking with God. And then when we wonder “Is God with us?” Well,
God’s still up to the test, yes. God is with
us. But what kind of foundation for a real relationship is that? We don’t
expect to start at square one in our human relationships. And God expects more
from us too. Is God with us? Yes, we know that. Our whole lives are full of
signs of God’s presence with us, God’s love for us. If you think you’re in
danger of forgetting, I encourage you to find intentional ways of remembering. Every
day, I hope you remind yourself of a way in which God has blessed you beyond
measure. And this knowledge, this learning about God and growing in
relationship with God, will be the manna in the wilderness and the water from
the rock that sustains your spirit when hunger and thirst threaten.
Is God with us or not? Of course, God is with us.
Remember? Remember. Amen.
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