Knox Presbyterian Church

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Before we read our scripture story from Exodus 16 that details God feeding the Israelites in the wilderness, raining down them bread and meat from heaven, some details about that bread (manna) and meat (quail).

Religious scholars are very interested in the detailed description of the bread (manna), in Exodus and in Numbers 11, because it corresponds quite closely to natural phenomenon in the Sinai Peninsula. A type of plant lice punctures the fruit of the tamarisk tree and excretes a substance from this juice, a yellowish-white flake of ball. During the warmth of day it disintegrates, but it congeals when it is cold. It has a sweet taste. Rich in carbohydrates and sugar, it is still gathered by natives, who bake it into a kind of bread (they call it manna). The food decays quickly and attracts ants. As for the quails, migratory birds flying in from Africa, or blown in from the Mediterranean are often exhausted enough – once they reach the Sinai Desert – to be caught by hand.

I tell you this before we read our scripture story because traditionally the church has heard this story in one of two ways, either as God present in the miraculous, or as God present to us in the ordinary. I’d like you – us – to hear both the ordinary and the miraculous in this story. If we can hear (and imagine) God feeding the people with good, but ordinary gifts already present in creation, perhaps we can hear (and see) in new ways God present to us in both the ordinary and miraculous this fall on our journey of becoming a generous people.

*SCRIPTURE READING: Exodus 16:2-4, 12-20, 31
The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. 3The Israelites said to them, “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.” 4Then the Lord said to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day.

12“I have heard the complaining of the Israelites; say to them, ‘at twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’“ 13In the evening quails came up and covered the camp; and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. 14When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. 15When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.

16This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Gather as much of it as each of you needs, an omer to a person according to the number of persons, all providing for those in their own tents.’“ 17The Israelites did so, some gathering more, some less. 18But when they measured it with an omer, those who gathered much had nothing leftover, and those who gathered little had no shortage; they gathered as much as each of them needed. 19And Moses said to them, “Let no one leave any of it over until morning.” 20But they did not listen to Moses; some left part of it until morning, and it bred worms and became foul.

31The house of Israel called it manna; it was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey.
BECOMING A GENEROUS PEOPLE:
A man was taking it easy, lying on the grass and looking up at the clouds. He was identifying shapes when he decided to talk to God. "God", he said, "how long is a million years?"

God answered, "In my frame of reference, it's about a minute."
The man asked, "God, how much is a million dollars?"
God answered, "To Me, it's a penny."
The man smiled and asked, "God, can I have a penny?"
God smiled and said, "In a minute."

I thought you might like to hear that after the week that was on Wall Street this week.

A man had a habit of grumbling at the food placed before him at family meals. Then he would ask the blessing. One day after his usual combination complaint-prayer, his little girl asked, "Daddy, does God hear us when we pray?"

"Why, of course," he replied. "He hears us every time we pray."
She pauses on this a moment, and asked, "Does he hear everything we say the rest of the time?" "Yes, dear, every word," he replied, encouraged that he had inspired his daughter to be curious about spiritual matters.

However, his pride quickly turned to humility, when his little girl asked - "Then which does God respond to?"
Think about that for a moment – God responding to our grumbling.
This is the essence of what our scripture story is about, it is a miraculous account of God responding to the Israelites grumbling.
God hears their grumbling: their muttering in discontent
The first thing to notice about grumbling is what it does to us.
It causes us to have an inaccurate, or distorted view, of both the past and the present
We get in new circumstances that are necessary to move us beyond our wilderness and we react in fear.
- If only we had died
- At least our bellies were full,
- We’re going to die if we keep moving forward
- The only way to live is by going back to what we knew

The second thing to notice is what God does with our grumbling. God responds with an immediate invitation (in this account the Israelites get their meat and bread on the very day of their complaining).
- Don’t be a slave to the past
- Try (taste) something new
- Enter into a relationship of daily trust, that has a rhythm of rest (more on that in a moment)
- Don’t be afraid, there will be enough

The third thing to notice is how we react to God’s invitation, to move beyond our grumbling.
- With curiosity. “What is it?” the Israelites exclaim! “It really was something new, they hadn’t seen or experienced it before, so they didn’t know what it was.
- With greed. This is evident in verse 20. When some of the Israelites tried to horde more manna than they needed it became rotten, spoiled.
- This greed (and a lack of trust in God’s provision and fear there won’t be enough) is also evident in verse 27, where some of the Israelites attempted to gather manna on the Sabbath (there was none). God had specifically instructed the Israelites to take only as much manna as they needed, and to take twice that amount on the day before the Sabbath (this time what was left over didn’t become rotten or spoiled).

Now this is where we could run into the danger of missing the extraordinary miracle in this story, if we focus only on God being present to us in our ordinary experiences, using what is already present to sustain us.

Consider:
- Neither the manna nor the quail were present before the crisis.
- The specific instructions to take according to what you needed, not more than and not less than what you need.
- This suggests something extraordinarily miraculous about God being present to us in ways that enable us to see and partake in something new that will sustain us, on a daily basis.
- In my mind what is present in the wilderness experience itself becomes part of God’s miracle, part of what moves us beyond the limitations of our grumbling, our fear, our lack of trust, our holding onto, our glorifying the past.
- In this crisis of grumbling God invites us to trust daily for our provision, to know based on experience that there is enough for us, that there will be enough for us. As Mahatma Gandhi once said, “the world holds enough to satisfy everyone’s need, but not everyone’s greed.”
- Interestingly part of God’s response to our grumbling, is to also teach us about our greed, our selfish and excessive desire for more of something than is needed, at the expense of the needs of others.

As Anna Grant-Henderson of the Uniting Church in Australia writes:
"If these consequences of their greed were a consequence in my life it might help to curtail my times of excess in all sorts of areas." (let me say that again)

Or said a different way, in the form of a question, what if we could see immediately the moral consequences of our greed? What if, like the Israelites, we could see clearly what was rotting and spoiling around us immediately, when we took in too much in all sorts of areas in our lives at the expense of others?

What if we really saw – and experienced – God’s presence to us in the ordinary and in the miraculous, as it relates to our being provided for on a daily basis?

Would this make us a more generous people? Would we be able to recognize (see) more clearly how a generous and gracious God is with present with us in each moment, providing for us in the ordinary, in the miraculous?

I’ll let you fill in the blanks here… before I speak for a moment about the unfolding crisis on Wall Street.

The word that kept creeping into the discussion from those trying to interpret the dizzying events of this week was – greed. They were all wrestling with this old, outdated question at least in some people’s minds (remember the famous “greed is good” line from the movie on Wall Street in 1987?
Our culture – those who have the money and power -- have been bowing down to that false idol for more than 20 years now), what is the moral consequence of greed?

It’s a question even venerable, establishment economists like Robert Samuelson are attempting to answer, “Greed and fear which routinely govern financial markets, have seeded this global financial crisis… short-term rewards have blinded them and us to the long term dangers.”

Those are the words of an economist! What do theologians say? Listen to Terrence Fretheim of Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN who has spent his lifetime listening the God of the Old Testament, the God whom Jesus worshipped.

“The increasing gap between rich and poor in modern societies in modern societies is certainly in part due to hoarding of manna. It is a witness to our failure to recognize that all that we have is God’s goodness, not our ability to gather manna better than anyone else.”

Yet this is not meant to be a downer – it is meant to be hopeful. We can hope again. We can trust again. We don’t have to be imprisoned by our fear, our greed, our past.

Everything is God’s. There is enough for us, for everyone.
Let us move beyond fear, beyond greed, beyond our past, into the life that God has for us, as we become a generous people.

Let me lave you with a couple of questions. How do you think God has been – and is -- present to us in the ordinary and in the miraculous – here in this church on the corner of Knox and Post?

Are we ready to see (recognize) our generous, gracious, safe, trustworthy God, and then respond?