September 18, 2011 – Exodus 16.2-15
Exodus 16:2-15
Manna or “What the heck is this?!”
14th Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 25) – September 18, 2011
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Old Testament scholar Amy Erickson notes that suddenly this week,
the Exodus story has kind of turned into an episode of reality TV show Survivor.
Survivor shows you what happens to groups of people who have to survive in
very difficult conditions together.
When they get hungry and thirsty they can turn on one another very quickly.
And I understand there is a lot of complaining.
(http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?lect_date=9/18/2011)
The Israelites have been freed from Egypt.
Since last week, they have spent some time at an oasis, resting and gathering their strength.
But now they’ve set off into the wilderness on the journey to the Promised Land.
And they discover that it’s no picnic! No BBQ’d hotdogs for them after worship today!
They’re hungry! At least, they complain to Moses, at least back in Egypt there was food.
At least there when we toiled and struggled they gave us something to eat.
Here we toil and struggle and get nothing.
And they almost look back longingly on their time in Egypt as a kind of Club Med,
forgetting that in Egypt they were slaves working and toiling for
a hierarchical and oppressive empire.
Obviously, coming through the waters into a life of freedom with God
doesn’t mean a life of ease and comfort.
This new life will entail its own kinds of struggle and toil.
I had a very interesting conversation with a father of two very lively children at
Food Bank this past Wednesday.
“My dad was a Christian,” he said, “and he still got his head pounded down.
He still ended up in the same place as all the rest of us will, down in the ground.”
So we spoke a little about how baptism is no guarantee of an easy life,
But is rather a life that calls one to sacrifice and work and toil,
but sacrifice and work and toil for a purpose that is much greater than oneself.
The Israelites at this point, though, only know one purpose for work:
work in order to hoard, work in order to get rich, work in order to become powerful.
That was the purpose they worked for back in Egypt, even if it was in order to make
Pharaoh rich and powerful, who surely topped the World’s Richest and
Most Powerful Man lists in 1423 BC.
That’s the only purpose for work they know: they don’t know anything else. How could they?
But today God, graciously setting aside their complaining,
is going to school them in a new purpose, a noble purpose, a godly purpose.
What God starts teaching them today is going to take them an entire generation to learn.
Longer, in fact: 40 years! So if you’re a slow learner, take heart!
Today the lesson starts with manna.
When the people first lay their eyes on the manna God provides for them, they look at it and say,
in Hebrew, man hu’. Manna. Literally, “What is it?”
Or In S.D. Giere’s colourful translation, “What the heck is this?!”
(in New Proclamation: Year A 2011, Easter through Christ the King [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010], 160)
Their work, now – the new work God gives them – is gathering and sharing the manna equitably.
No hoarding, or the manna will spoil and rot and smell bad.
For as we learn in confirmation, “Hoarding stinks!”
God begins here the long, slow process of forming a different kind of community,
a new kind of human community, one based not on competition but on caring,
one based not on hoarding but on sharing.
On sharing the good gifts of a generous, wondrous creator.
The good news in this story is that the God generously and liberally gives us manna,
Gives us everything: the good news is that everything is gift, God never tires of giving.
Every moment, every morning, every neighbour, every breath, every flower, every thing is gift.
What a wondrous way to live: to see everything as gift and to know – to know – that God will
Always give us what we need and we don’t need to worry about hoarding.
And if that is the good news in this story, the work God calls us to – which is also a gift –
is simply this: to ensure that the gifts of creation, including the gifts we carry within our own bodies, are shared for the benefit of our neighbours. That’s our new work.
This is how, through us, God’s people, God’s mission to love, bless, heal, and set free
this whole world and every person in it is accomplished.
For what is true of the Israelites is true also for us: in Jesus we have as a gift been made
part of God’s people, and this is now no less our task than the Israelites’.
Truly we are wondrously and awesomely made, and the more good news this morning is that
God graciously gives us a purpose that is worthy of our human wondrousness.
And there’s even more good news this morning in that God graciously gives us a day off!
God gives us a Sabbath day which many of us Christians take on Sunday.
A day to renew our relationship with God.
A day to enjoy and delight in our family members and friends. A day to rest our tired bodies.
A day free from work so that we can be refreshed for our six days’ work of manna sharing,
Of getting the gifts of God – including the many gifts we carry within our own bodies –
shared equitably.
This work will entail its own kind of toil. And this work will entail its own kind of struggle.
And this work will entail its own kind of sacrifice.
But it will be for a purpose that is worthy of our human, bodily wondrousness:
the work of compassion, of justice, of love of neighbour which is the highest of causes
according to Jesus and all the prophets.
Moses risked his life to lead the people in this mission.
Jesus risked and lost his life in seeking to lead and renew the people in this mission.
And yet in their day and in ours people are willing to risk their lives for
relatively insignificant causes.
I read recently that on TV there was an attempt by a group of almost 250 skydivers to
Set a new world’s record for the largest mid-air formation.
And on their third attempt, this group succeeded in hanging on to each other for 15 seconds,
setting a new record. But this came at a terrible cost.
On their second try, one of the skydivers – a mother of two children – accidentally
knocked her head against another skydiver.
Rendered unconscious, and therefore unable to open her parachute, she fell to her death.
The human body truly is capable of wondrous and amazing feats of discipline and sport.
People devote themselves to incredible goals with great expense of time away from family and
with great expense of money.
Perhaps for a sense of accomplishment, perhaps for the thrill of adventure,
perhaps for the sake of competition.
But was the skydiving record really worth a human life?
Jesus points us to something that is worth a human life: a life lived like manna for his neighbour.
There’s yet more gift: Jesus is our bread from heaven: his life was lived sharing
the manna of food, of healing, of forgiveness, of mercy, of love, of life, of himself.
It cost him his life, but the resurrection was God’s way of saying “Yes” to that life.
And that life lives on in Christian communities devoted to manna-sharing.
Jesus continues to live in communities just like this one at First Lutheran Church.
You can see Jesus living at our Food Bank, where manna is literally shared.
Last Wednesday we wouldn’t have had enough food to go around if it weren’t for the fact that
in the last couple of weeks you offered up plenty of food offerings along with
your monetary offerings.
What you could have hoarded you shared, and so some people living in a wilderness of
hunger were fed.
You could see Jesus living at Kids Klub where this summer two of our youth and
several volunteers ran a free drop-in for 6 to 12 year olds.
And you can see it right here in worship.
You come from your own wildernesses, let’s face it.
You come to be fed with the bread from heaven, and it’s here.
It’s here in the bread we share together. It’s here in the peace we extend to each other.
It’s here in the prayers we offer up for one another.
It’s here in the faces of one another: Jesus is here. Given to us to share.
A new kind of community is emerging here, with Jesus and his love at the centre.
A manna-sharing community. With a noble purpose:
To share the manna of our gifts. To share the manna of our lives.
To share the manna of the one given to us, his love, his compassion, his grace.
We are a community with a gracious, God-given purpose. So let the assembly say “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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