CELEBRATING:
SERMONS
"Food for Thought"
Sept 22nd, 2002
Prayer:
Let your Word speak to our minds and hearts to transform
our actions.
Then we may become anew your people in Christ. AMEN
Wasn't last Sunday a wonderful celebration
of music led by our Chancel Choir and the Phoenix Choir?
In song and spoken word, we blessed God for the wonderful
triumph of Israel's liberation from bondage in Egypt.
We rejoiced with Miriam and the Israelites, celebrating
their escape from Pharaoh's army through the Reed Sea.
That great rescue gave rise to spontaneous dance and
song - deep felt joy - symbolized by this banner of
Miriam dancing.
But every party comes to an end
and in the morning a tougher reality often sets in.
On the lea-side of that celebration scene, lay the wilderness
of Sinai.
A big letdown loomed in the form of very unfriendly
and hostile terrain.
With little water, there was no vegetation to harvest.
Life felt very precarious indeed.
You can imagine it wasn't long before
the grumbling started.
How in heaven's name did we come here?
Whose idea was this, anyway? What were we thinking?!
At least in Egypt our slavery didn't involve starving
to death.
We had meat in our pots and bread.
But here, in this God-forsaken terrain, we have sand
and stone and a great hole in our stomachs.
Necessity doesn't lead to invention
here, just complaining.
Unless you're an eternal optimist, change and hardship
will push most of us into looking for the complaint
forms to fill in.
Besides, there is something vaguely satisfying about
venting our spleen and projecting our frustration on
the leaders:
Moses and Aaron, you are at the
head of this parade and you're to blame for our predicament.
What are you doing to get us out of this mess?
We want a stable supply of food.
We don't want to fret about whether we'll have enough
to eat tomorrow!
An understandable desire. But it
reflects the awesome superficiality of this people.
They are a fickle lot.
Last week they rejoiced with heart and soul, praising
God for their deliverance. This week, their faith in
God and their joy is forgotten.
They are clamouring to return to their captivity.
The sin here is NOT that the people
are concerned for their well-being.
We know that God shares our concern to have enough -
enough food and water and clothing and protection -
basic needs are God's commitment.
God nurtures life. That's why Jesus teaches us to pray:
"Give us this day our daily bread."
God knows our need for daily sustenance and willingly
responds.
No, the sin here is not people's
concern for their own well-being,
but their grumbling against God.
The target of their complaints is not really their appointed
leaders Moses and Aaron. Their complaints target God.
Is God among us, or not?, they shout!
People of faith respond to changing
circumstances not with tantrums and scape-goating.
Rather they continue to trust in God.
They work with God for the well-being of all.
But people of "mature faith" - that's not
how your would describe this band of refugees in the
wilderness.
So Moses has the lonely burden of
approaching God on his own.
God, here's the situation:
If the grumbling gets out of hand, we're going to have
a melt-down in this motley crew you set free from Pharaoh's
clutches.
I need some tools to work with, God.
God is more patient than we are.
Even in our wilderness, God can transform gloom and
doom, into joy and hope. Another miracle of generosity
is needed here.
Moses, tell the people the menu
is: Manna in the morning. Quail in the evening. That
will be Israel's food for the journey.
Is it a miracle? Absolutely!
In the sense that God provides for us even in the most
difficult of circumstances.
But not a miracle in the sense of a supernatural event.
Manna and quail, after all, are familiar to the area.
The Israelites had just not recognized what nutrition
God provided in the wilderness.
Hear what one Old Testament scholar
says about the food of this place:
"Manna probably refers to a sweet, sticky substance
produced by a number of insects that suck the tender
twigs of tamarisk bushes in the desert region of Sinai.
This 'honeydew excretion' falls to the ground where,
in the hot desert air, the drops quickly evaporate,
leaving a solid residue. During the day, the sweet grains
are carried off by ants, but overnight they accumulate,
and so early-risers can gather the substance for food.
In the Arab world today, you can still purchase "man
es-simma" or manna from heaven at market places.
[As for] The quail, flocks of them migrate over this
region in the spring, and, when exhausted [by the heat],
are easily caught."
[Understanding the Old Testament" Bernhard W.
Anderson. Prentic-Hall, Inc. p. 55-56]
Just luck or good fortune or happenstance?
Not for God's people. For faith-filled Israelites, the
manna and quail are awesome gifts from heaven. They
are signs - signs of God's daily providence. And the
people gather up this food of blessing.
Among the children and the grandchildren, the story
begins to be told about how God provided for the people
in their need.
Eventually the story is committed to writing - and now
we share the legacy in the Old or First Testament of
the Bible.
In the modern market-based economy
this story has a rather quaint and old-fashioned ring
to it.
In our time, we would, of course, quickly set up a company,
hire gatherers and packagers, create a distribution
network, mark up the prices to ensure the shareholders
got their return on investment, and
then market the product at walk-through fast-food outlets.
But these Israelites just haven't
got to that level of marketing sophistication.
In fact, God still hasn't got there either.
God's system is to have every Israelite go out daily
to gather enough manna and quail for the day.
And every day God keeps providing for the human family
all the good gifts necessary to sustain life.
People, there is enough for all
and enough for each day. God provides us with enough
bread for each day. We can trust God to provide all
the resources to meet our basic human needs.
When we use the resources on the basis of our need,
there is always enough. God's economy works.
But when we try to gather on the basis of our greed,
there is never enough.
That's true also in that Gospel
story about the workers in the vineyard!
Whether they worked long or short hours, God freely
provides enough for all the workers to live. God graciously
responded to their need and not according to the hours
worked or their envious feelings.
Problems always come when some try
to take more than their share - more than they need.
Some of the people don't listen to Moses - to God -
after all, what does Moses know about human nature and
about the economy!
So they decided to hoard the manna. But with the heat
of the day it turns wormy, smelled foul or just melted.
't Was ever thus. Moses had his
greedy bunch. In our time, we've heard more than enough
stories about colossal greed in corporate offices and
how rotten that can become. But we don't need to single
out the obvious ones.
We who are among the richest 20% of the world's population
-
has the hoarding of money brought our society contentment
and fulfillment?
Has it improved our relationship with God or deepened
our trust in God?
I find it difficult to be free to
feel blessed when so many
in our world - in our city - don't have bread enough
for today or meat for their well-being.
What are we to make of a world where the health of so
many is allowed to be compromised - as in AIDS victims
in Africa? It's hard to live with the fact that we won't
provide the medicine for them to continue the journey
of life?
(That's one reason I welcome Allison MacLean's initiative
among us to gather vitamins for an Afghan village clinic.
It's a small step to fairer distribution of God's good
health resources.)
I and we are tremendously blessed.
Just as the people of Israel were blessed by the gift
of manna and the quail, I know that God provides more
than enough for my needs and for the needs of all God's
children in this world.
It is God's grace that ensures there is enough for me
and my family.
There is every reason for me to be deeply grateful.
And I am.
But gratitude is only half the response.
Beside being grateful to God for all these blessings,
faith in the living God requires me to work toward a
fairer distribution of all this goodness.
How? To be sure, in our time I can't
share manna and quail. But I can give away a portion
of my money - to the Mission & Service Fund, the
Caring & Sharing Fund, and to other agencies that
distribute food or foster greater, more effective sharing
of the earth's bounty.
For me sharing also involves resisting
the fashion of the last decade to lower my taxes at
the expense of the poorest and most vulnerable of our
society.
I'm sure that when the Israelites were out gathering
manna and quail, some had to gather enough for the people
who could no longer gather for themselves - the littlest
children, the elderly, the sick, the disabled.
In our cash-based society, fair
taxes are the organized way I can share God's manna
and quail
with those who are hungry and those who are unable to
gather for themselves.
That's simply my faith conviction in gratitude to God
for providing what I need. Fair taxes work far more
equitably than charity and are far less socially destructive
than having desperate people robbing to survive.
Oliver Wendell Holmes put it this way "taxes are
the price of a civilized society." I would say:
fair taxes are a sign of a faithful society.
Manna and quail. Food for thought.
There is a lot in that little wilderness story of our
foreparents in the faith.
When we Christians celebrate communion here, we remember
that God provides food enough for all - just as God
provided manna and quail enough for all the Israelites.
This is a story of the providence and boundless generosity
of God for all.
What does it say to our gratitude and our quest for
God's just economy?
Thanks be to God! AMEN
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Shaughnessy Heights United Church
congregation is a Christian faith community — people
at various stages in the faith journey.
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West 33rd Avenue,
Vancouver, BC V6M 1A7
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