A lot happens between last week’s story of Moses and
the burning bush and today’s reading: Plagues descend on Egypt; Moses and Aaron
stand before Pharaoh again and again, saying “Let my people go;” eventually,
the plagues crescendo into the death of the firstborn and Pharaoh gives in,
albeit momentarily; Israel escapes from Egypt, the Red Sea parts and Pharaoh’s
army, following after them, are overwhelmed by the crashing waters; and finally
the Israelites begin to wander in the wilderness.
So it is that the complainers start to arise… again and
again and again. You have to remember: Moses just saved this people from slavery; it was through Moses that God
sent plagues on the land, and it is through God that their own children were
spared while the Egyptian children were not. It was by the hand of God, working
through Moses, that the people walked through the Red Sea on dry land. If ever
there were a people in the history of the world who should be grateful it
should be Israel; it would have to be
Israel.
Yet, according to Exodus 16, on the fifteenth day of the
second month Israel cried out: "If only we had died by the hand of the
Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of
bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole
assembly with hunger."
We all know that hunger does irrational things to people;
it makes them angry; and they do have a point in a way. Death is death—whether
at the hands of Pharaoh, or free but starving in the desert, death is death. On
the one hand it has only been forty-three days since God parted the Red Sea;
you would think this would make them a people who would trust completely; you
would think that since God got them this far they would trust even further
still. On the other hand, maybe they did trust. Maybe they trusted that food
would come on the third day and the fifth day; maybe they held out hope until
the tenth and the fifteenth and the twentieth. Come to think of it, it’s kind
of remarkable it is the middle of the second month—40-odd days since escaping
the slavery of Pharaoh—before the people rose up in complaint. They are human
after all.
You see, if you’re thinking the message here is about
Israel’s faithlessness, think again. Raising one’s voice in complaint, begging
even, is not the opposite of being faithful, or at least if it is God gives no
indication that this is the case. God only commends them; suggests, even that
this complaining is a mark of faith, and not a blemish.
Everyone need the basics taken care of first.
Missionaries know this; disaster relief workers know it. You don’t go into a
place where people are starving, where they don’t have clean water or adequate
housing, and tell them about Jesus. We don’t go to Puerto Rico or Mexico and
tell people about Jesus. First you feed them and clothe them and do what you
can to be Jesus for them, so that when they ask you why it is you are doing
these things you can point to Jesus and you hardly have to say a word. Your
actions speak for themselves.
The
Israelites in the wilderness are not lacking faith; they are dying of hunger.
Israel is pushed the edge of oblivion and they decide, “No, we need to live.”
There’s
a story in the Gospels that we might read alongside this story. It’s the story
of the rich man who comes to Jesus and asks what he must do to have eternal
life: Is having faith enough? Well, yes. But when it comes down to it, is your
faith ever really tested until you have nothing else? Jesus points out that the
man’s faith is dependent on the nice things he has. So he is told to go, give
away everything—put yourselves on death’s door—and then see if you have faith.
See if you have faith when you’re starving; see if you have faith when your
children are starving. Say, “Lord, save me, because to whom else can I go?”
That’s the test. But it’s more than that, because Jesus tells the rich man in
that story not just to give away so much that it hurts; not even to take
himself to death’s door. No, the man is to give it all away. Everything. Even
your life. Die, for the sake of your faith.
Faith is faith unto death, which is a paradox. Israel
can’t all just die in the wilderness, which is why we would do well to read this
story alongside a third story—one we read not long ago—because this is a
continuation of that story: The story of Abraham.
A
few weeks back we read about the near-sacrifice of Isaac. God commands Abraham
to take his son, Isaac, up on to Mount Moriah and sacrifice him. Remarkably,
Abraham obeys… or at least it seems like he was going through with it until, in
that last instant, as Abraham raises the knife with his son already bound, God
intervenes. It is a terrible, awful thing to consider—killing your child
because God says so—and it also seems contrary to God’s will for us. If Abraham
succeeds, where would that leave the chosen people? Where would it leave us if
Isaac were dead, or if Israel died in the wilderness? Where would God’s
faithfulness be in that? We might even be tempted to say that a loving God
would never allow that to happen. But
that misses something crucial in this story: There are two kinds of
faithfulness being tested here—both in the stories of Abraham and Isaac and in
the story of Israel wandering in the wilderness. There is the faithfulness of
God and the faithfulness of Israel. And the faithfulness of God has already
been demonstrated when his chosen people are faithful—that was the story of
Abraham and Isaac. God did stop Abraham short. Abraham was absurdly faithful so
God was faithful to him. But that’s not the only question. After Abraham we
might wonder: What will happen if God’s chosen people say “no”? What happens if
they do not accept death? What happens if they complain?
Where Abraham zigs Israel zags, which makes complete sense
if you think about it. Israel is a nation after the heart of Jacob; a nation
whose identity is intricately connected with struggling with God, whose name
“Israel” means “to wrestle with God.” All of this is connected to the stories
we’ve been reading the last several weeks—it’s all connected from Abraham to
Israel, who was Jacob, and to Moses and Israel. This is the next vision of what
faithfulness looks like. It’s a progression that doesn’t stop here. On the one
hand, it might be easier if the only faithfulness was Abraham’s—total, complete
obedience and servitude. But on the other hand not all of us seem called to submission.
Sure, God commends Abraham, but would Israel have gone through with it as Abraham
did? It seems unlikely. So, it appears there is more than one way to be
faithful—to wrestle with God or submit. Both are signs of faithfulness.
What was faithful for one person—for Abraham—was not the
same answer for Israel, and God responds in turn. God hears the complaints of
the people and sends them quails and manna. God doesn’t chastise them; in fact,
it’s almost like God is waiting for Israel to finally speak up. It begs the
question: Are their complaints about a lack of faith, or is faith asking for
what you might actually need?
The Bible seems to say “yes and no” to all these
questions, which is infuriating and also pretty incredibly honest. As much as
we might want to say that to be faithful is to do this one thing in all
circumstances, whether that thing is submission or self-defense, whether it’s
sitting in trust of God’s plan or following our hearts into action, it seems
clear that there is no one answer for all people. Some of us are Abraham; some
are Israel. Most of us are both, depending on the day.
This was brought home to me as I was writing this sermon,
actually, in a coffee shop in Grand Forks, when a couple of people sat down
behind me. It was two young women talking about submission to God’s will, about
how they have been trying to let God do what God will with them; not their will
but God’s through them. There’s something commendable in that attitude, but I found
myself thinking, as I was eavesdropping on this conversation (which—to be
fair—I think the whole coffee shop heard) their experience rings true to me but
I have a hard time believing this is for everyone. Sometimes faithfulness is
submitting to God’s will and sometimes it isn’t; sometimes it’s wrestling with
God, too. Sometimes it’s being honest about your complaints. You can’t wrestle
with something that you don’t believe to be real. It’s just as much an act of
faith to struggle as it is to submit; it’s just different. Where some people
need to submit, others need to fight. And I think, honestly, truly, that’s OK.
If the story of the chosen people is any indication God
works through both kinds, and I find that to be a tremendous comfort, because
we are not one size fits all. We are not all Abraham. We are not all Jacob
turned Israel. God calls some to submit and some to resist, some to speak and
some to listen, some to wait and some to act. We need to personally strive for
what God is calling us to be particularly in all of our uniqueness; in all of
our good and our bad. At the end of the day, whether we wrestle and complain,
or submit and follow, God meets us, provides, and saves us. In the end, that’s
all that matters.
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