Year B, Pentecost 11 Exodus 16: 2-4, 9-15
I am always
fascinated by people who say thing like, “well there’s no point in
complaining.” I always want to ask, are
you sure? I understand that sometimes it
goes too far. When all we do is complain
and refuse to act, then we are just sabotaging ourselves and making others
miserable in the process. I think that a little complaining can be healthy,
especially if the person who is listening is sympathetic and might help you
deal with the problem at hand. The other time when complaining can be helpful
is when we are talking to God. I will
admit that there were times in the Bible when complaining kind of ticked off
God. There were also times, like our story in Exodus, when it worked out well
for everyone involved.
Some like to make a big deal of the
complaining of the Hebrew people in the exodus story. I remember in one church I served, there was a
lay reader who generally read in a monotone, except when it came to the Exodus
story. Then she moved into this rather nasally
whine that woke everybody up and elicited a raised eyebrow from the
rector. People love to imitate the whine
of the Hebrew people. They get a bad
rap and I wonder if they really deserve it. They were after all in the desert
with very little food or water. It’s not
like they were just on a long stretch of highway between Starbucks. So why are we so quick to judge them?
To some, they seem ungrateful. God just
saved them from slavery and parted a body of water so that they could escape
and now they are complaining again! I
admit their comment that it would have been better that they had died in Egypt
where they had plenty to eat was a little obnoxious. But they were hungry and scared. People say desperate things when they are in
desperate situations. Plus, the God that
they had experienced, the all-powerful God who rained down plagues and killed
thousands of people was not necessarily the same tender hearted God that we
picture. In their minds, they had a God
who was a warrior and a deliverer, but maybe not a provider of food and love.
While Moses was a little annoyed with the
people and their complaints, God showed no such judgment. As soon as they complained to Moses, God said
to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you…” Problem solved. Yet God provided an interesting caveat. “…each day people shall go out and gather
enough for that day. In that way I will
test them, whether they will follow my instructions or not.” The instructions were clear. The people were to gather only enough…only
enough as they needed for that one day.
But these were hungry people who had just been through a period of slavery
and uncertainty. Sure, God had freed
them from slavery but that was after a long period of suffering. Some Biblical scholars surmise that they were
enslaved for 400 years. The people who
were freed had seen many of their loved ones die in slavery. They had seen infants killed. That was a high price to pay and not one that
would be easily forgotten. The people
needed more than one miraculous act to believe in God. They needed a relationship with God.
God addressed that need in a couple of
ways. He started with
communication. He communicated directly
with the leaders (Moses and Moses’ brother Aaron). Then he did something rather surprising. Aaron
told the people to “Draw near to the Lord, for he has heard your
complaining.” With those words, the
glory of the Lord appeared to them. All
the people saw it. Imagine if after
every time I recommended that you grow closer to God, God appeared. That would be effective, would it not? What I find particularly interesting is that
God never told Moses or Aaron that he would appear to the people. He said that he would provide food, but he
never mentioned that cloud of glory. It was an affirmation for not only the
people, but the leadership as well. They
needed it too.
The next way that God encouraged a
closer relationship with him was by providing a test. Most of us probably do not have warm and
fuzzy feelings about tests. I have not
taken a test in about twenty years and I still have nightmares about them. Recently I read about a new method they are
attempting in education. The teacher
starts the year with a test. It would be similar to the test that the student
would take at the end of the year, but there would be no grade. The idea is that the student would see what was
expected of them for the year. The
teacher would also know what areas needed more time than others.
This is similar to the kind of test that
God was providing. There was no grade,
but there were results. It was not a
test as much as it was another teaching opportunity. The people were only supposed to gather as
much as they needed. But they were
hungry. They were used to having to grab everything they could get because they
did not know where the next meal was coming from. Need is a relative term. They probably felt they needed as much as
they could gather. Of course they could
not eat all that they gathered, so they stored it for the next day….just in
case God did not deliver the bread from heaven. When they woke up, the food that they had
stored was infested with worms AND the manna from heaven rained down
again. They didn’t pass the test, but
they still got the bread and they learned something. This God was not a warrior, and not merely a
deliverer. This God was God who cared
about their day to day needs but also a God who expected obedience.
Perhaps we are quick to judge the
Hebrew people for their complaints because we are also quick to judge ourselves
for our own lack of faith, our lack of confidence in God. That is what complaints about or to God seem
to indicate to so many…a lack of faith.
Yet the complaints of the Hebrew people resulted in a closer
relationship with God. Now I am not
encouraging you all to start complaining…especially not to me (unless it is
non-church related in which case, fire away)!
However there is something to say about complaining to God. Sometimes when we are questioning our faith
or when we are frustrated with our own life, it is tempting to shut God out,
but that is the time when we really need to talk to God, even if it sounds like
whining.
In the Episcopal Church we have loads of
beautiful prayers, but there have been times in my life when those prayers
didn’t cut it. Instead I needed to weep,
or rage or just whine. And you know what--those
prayers were just as appreciated as those lovely ones we have in our prayer
book, maybe even more so. God wants all of us, not just the polished or polite
part of us. When it comes to communicating with God, it’s not about the
presentation, it’s simply a matter of follow through. God wants to hear us. We probably won’t get the immediate response
that the Hebrew people received in Exodus, but what if that communication creates
an openness in our hearts, an openness to the glory of God, the love of God,
the presence of God. If there is even a chance of that, then that’s a
conversation worth having.
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