Readings: Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15; Psalm 78:23-29; Ephesians 4:1-16; John 6:24-35
Collect: Let your continual mercy, O Lord, cleanse and defend your Church; and, because it cannot continue in safety without your help, protect and govern it always by your goodness; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Today’s Old Testament reading comes from the book of Exodus, the story of how God provided food for the Israelites as they made their way through the desert en route from Egyptian servitude to the land God promised to their ancestors. The story is part of a cycle of stories all gathered around the common theme of God’s provision for their needs during their sojourn to their new home. And these stories provided fertile soil in which later Jewish and Christian interpretations grew and thrived. This manna was not what the people expected. But if you’ll stay with me I’ll try to show you that God gives them what they really need, and that’s more than just a full belly.
The story of the Exodus from Egypt runs like this.[1]
· The Israelites had moved to Egypt when their brother Joseph became powerful in the Egyptian government (end of Genesis)
· Eventually the Israelites lost their standing in Egyptian society and were pressed into hard service (Exodus 1-2)
· God took notice of their distress and called a man, Moses, to champion their cause and lead them into the desert to worship God (Exodus 3-6)
· The Egyptian king resisted letting them go, and God brought a succession of ten plagues on the Egyptians, each worse than the last, to motivate them to “let the people go.” (Exodus 7-12)
· After the last plague, the defeated Egyptian king let the Israelites depart for their worship retreat in the desert. God gives the festival of Passover for them to celebrate the victory. (Exodus 13)
· But then the king changed his mind and pursued them with his army. With the army at their heels and the way forward blocked by the Red Sea, the Israelites cried out to God and, not for the last time, accused Moses of purposely trying to kill them in the desert. Then God parted the sea and they walked across it on dry ground, with the water closing back up when they had passed and drowning the Egyptian army. The Israelites, led my Moses’ sister Miriam, sang the Song of the Sea in celebration. (Exodus 14-15)
· Walking by foot through a desert can be dehydrating, to say the least, so naturally enough they looked for an oasis. But when they found one the water was bitter so again they murmured against Moses. God provided a miracle that made the water drinkable. (Exodus 15:22-27)
· After a while they ran short on food, so again they grumbled against Moses and he presented their complaint to God, who then miraculously provided quails in the evening and manna in the morning, and everyone was able to eat their fill. This is what we read about this morning. (Exodus 16)
· In the next chapter we have another story about people getting thirsty and grumbling against Moses and accusing him of purposely trying to kill them. Moses struck a rock with his staff and water flowed from it. (Exodus 17:1-7)
· Then we get two stories in which Moses’ leadership was tested, first because Israel was attacked by an enemy and second because Moses had to learn to delegate his authority. Exodus 17:8-18:27)
· Finally they arrived at Sinai, experienced God’s terrifying presence, and received God’s law. (Exodus 19-23)
Of particular interest this morning are three stories about Israel grumbling when their basic needs for food and water weren’t being met: the story about brackish water at the end of chapter 15 and the story about water coming out of the rock at the beginning of chapter 17, with our story about manna sandwiched in between. In all three stories, the people grumble against Moses about how their needs aren’t being met, and God provides a miracle. I mean, to me it’s understandable that they’re grumbling. If you’ve ever gone on a road trip with kids, you’re probably familiar with how, when they get hungry or tired, they start grumbling. Actually, my family can probably tell you that it’s not just kids who complain under those circumstances. Not always is my complaining justified, but sometimes it is, so I empathize with these Israelites, parched and hungry and footsore, when they complain in over-the-top language about how Moses is trying to kill them.
What really strikes me about this is its honesty. It’s people with real needs who won’t be silent in the face of those needs. The grumbling of the people against Moses and Aaron is tantamount to a complaint against God, as Moses recognizes here and elsewhere; but in this story God does not seem to take offense — God does take offense in a similar story found in Numbers chapter 11, which we’ll come back to in a moment. But in this story, instead of being annoyed at their grumbling, God satisfies their hunger by providing abundant of food. And then, seeing their true need, God gives two additional things for which they hunger and thirst without even realizing it.
First, God provides the Sabbath. Here in Exodus 16, in connection with the gifts of manna and quail, this is the first time in Scripture the word Sabbath is used. The idea of Sabbath is mentioned briefly in Genesis chapter 2, where God rests on the seventh day and declares it holy, but the commandment that human beings should rest on the seventh day too, is first given here. You might have spotted the fact that our reading skipped over verses 5-8; I think that’s unfortunate. The lectionary editors retained verse 4, which says there’s to be a test, and then skipped the next three verses which say what the test is: First, God tells them that if they try to stockpile manna (as we put money in savings accounts), it will become wormy and inedible the next day. Would the people act accordingly? They didn’t pass this test, but tried to stockpile the manna (v. 20); of course they found it wormy and inedible the next day. Second, God tells them that they must not gather it on the seventh day, which was to be a sabbath from then on. Instead, God would make their gathering on Friday doubly efficient, and would prevent the food from spoiling on Saturday, so that they could refrain from work and just enjoy the Sabbath. They didn’t pass this test, either. Some went out on Saturday morning to try to gather manna and found that there wasn’t any.
What is the significance of introducing the Sabbath observance in this way? First, it shows God’s glory by miraculously providing enough food on Friday to last through the Sabbath without their having to work then. As if the gift of food were not enough, God also gives the gift of rest. Second, the Sabbath teaches them about the importance of work, without which Sabbath would be meaningless. God provides the manna, but the people have to work to get it, and the purpose of that work is to live and, perhaps even more importantly, to enjoy rest.
More important than giving Israel food, and even more important than giving Israel the Sabbath, God gives the gift of Godself, as it says, “At twilight you shall eat meat and in the morning you still have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God” (Exod 16:12). This theme — that God gives Godself when God gives food — is picked up and augmented in the similar account found in Numbers chapter 11, where Moses sarcastically accuses God of neglecting to provide for His people:
Did I conceive all this people? Did I give birth to them, that you should say to me, “Carry them in your bosom, as a nurse carries a sucking child, to the land that you promised on oath to their ancestors? Where am I to get meat to give to all this people? For they come weeping to me and say, “Give us meat to eat!” I am not able to carry all this people alone, for they are too heavy for me. (Num 11:12-14)
This astonishing passage accuses God of failing to provide as a mother provides. It’s one of the clearest depictions of God as mother that we have in Scripture. The implication of Moses’ sarcastic questions is that God both got pregnant with and then gave birth to Israel and, therefore, is supposed to feed them just as a mother would do. Implicit in this metaphor is the wonderful, intimate connection between mother and child that is more than simply feeding. In giving food, God gives Godself. This is why a jar of manna was to be placed in the sacred space that would later be occupied by the Ark of the Covenant (Exod 16:33) or even inside of it (Heb 9:4). It’s also why the stories about God providing food and water become such fertile soil for later theological reflection. I’ll give you just a couple of examples. Deuteronomy says that God gave manna so that people would learn that we don’t live by bread alone but by fellowship with God (Deut 8:3). St. Paul reads the story about water coming from the rock in Exodus 17, notes that everyone drank from it, and says that the rock was the real presence of Christ giving drink to His people (1 Cor 10:4). In John’s gospel, Jesus discerns that the manna story is not just about bread but about God’s life-giving presence, which is why He says, “The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world….I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever relies on me will never be thirsty” (6:33-35).
So there are at least three ways in which manna story is about God’s self-giving: God gives the manna and the water as necessities of physical life; God gives the Torah, and particularly the Sabbath law as necessities of spiritual life; and God shares with Israel God’s very self, a real Person who can be swayed by appeals to His compassion even when those appeals take the form of whiney, self-centered grumbling.
The manna story is rich in insights, too, about how God’s people are to have a different set of values than those that seem almost universally present in human cultures. If you read on in Exodus 16, you find that not only does the manna appear miraculously, but its distribution among the people is miraculously equal. Each person is told to go out and gather as much as they need, a basket of manna for each person (in Hebrew, an omer, about a quart or so). Some gathered more and some less, but then when they got back home and measured it all out they each had an omer: “those who gathered much had nothing left over, and those who gathered little had no shortage; they gathered as much as each of them needed” (vv. 17-18). I don’t know how that miracle occurred, but I suspect it might have been the ordinary miracle of people sharing with one another. The manna couldn’t be stockpiled, so no one had more than they needed while others went without, there wasn’t an income gap between the rich and the poor; all of them had nothing … but everyone had plenty. God gave them enough to satisfy their hunger, but not so much and not in a way as to permit them to think they provided for themselves. The only self-reliant people in this story are disobedient people whose selfish efforts end up being fruitless anyway. They have no choice but to rest in the knowledge that they are helpless to provide for themselves, but they can rely on God to provide for their needs.
There are so many takeaways from this story. But if I can leave you with just one thought that seems really important to me today, it is that one. We do not earn our food, our wealth, our minds, our bodies, our health. We think to ourselves that we worked hard for our goods, that we deserve them; but even our ability to work is something we receive as a gift. We’re proud of our educational achievements, but we receive our teachers’ investments in us as a gift; we’re able to devote time and effort to education because someone else gave us the opportunity to study; even having a quick mind has more to do with what we’re born with than with our effort. Athletes work hard to build the strength and skills needed to excel in their sports, but it is God who made their legs and arms and hands. Both our work and our rest are gifts from God. Everything we eat is caused to grow not by us but by the mysterious forces that God set at work in creation. And the more this truth fills and guides our minds and hearts, the more we find ourselves living in an enchanted world, a world in which blessings seem to drop from the sky, nourishing us like milk from the breast of God, our mother.
[1] This thumbnail sketch of the Exodus story was not part of the sermon as preached.
