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Sunday February 27, 2005 - Lent 3, Year A

"Moses called the place Massah and Meribah,
because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying
‘Is the Lord among us or not?'"

The story of the journey of the people of Israel
out of the land of Egypt
is a long and convoluted one. It all began
back in the book of Genesis, when Abraham's great grandson, Joseph,
got on the bad side of his older brothers. He was spoiled, they thought,
considered himself above them,
kept having dreams that he interpreted
to mean he was going to rule over them —
him, the baby of the family, not even much use at the family business —
and they were getting reeeeaally
sick of it.
So they decided to get rid of him. Kill him, pretend wild animals had got him,
and be done with all his fussing.
But at the last minute, some traders came by, and so they sold him
as a slave.
The traders took him to Egypt,
where unexpectedly
he was a success
and rose to a high position in the government.
Meanwhile, back at home in Israel,
his family weren't doing so well. There was a famine, and they were starving. And the only place
food was to be had
was Egypt.
They visited, and cutting a long story short, were reunited with their brother Joseph, who invited them to come and live there.
And they did, and were treated as honored guests in the land.

Jump forward a couple of hundred years.
Joseph's family are still in Egypt. They've grown strong and powerful,
and seem like a threat to the native born Egyptians. And so the Egyptians
put them to work,
and slowly they lose their land and independence, until they're no more
than Egyptian slaves. But even then, they continue to grow in number, and seem to be even more of a threat,
and so the Egyptians decide to cut population growth
by killing their newborn babies.
That's where
the book of Exodus begins.
Moses
is one of those babies.
Destined to die
even before he was born.
But his mother hid him, and then, when he was too big to hide any more, miraculously he was taken in by Pharaoh's daughter
and grew up in the royal court.

But things were still bad
for the descendants of Joseph, the people who had come from Israel. They were still slaves.
And so God spoke to Moses
and commissioned him
to lead his people to freedom, back to the promised land.
You might remember the story, 10 plagues in Egypt:
the Nile river, turned to blood;
frogs spawning and swarming across the land;
gnats crawling over everything like dust;
clouds of flies hanging heavy in the air;
animals dropping dead of an unknown disease;
festering boils, too painful to stand;
thunder and hail tearing the new shoots of crops;
locusts stripping everything green;
three days of dankness, blotting out hope;
and finally
because it seemed that Pharaoh would never listen,
the death
of every firstborn male,
animal
and human.

"Let my people go,"
said God,
"Let my people go,"
said Moses,
and Pharoah
let the people go.

And so they went, men, women and children, flocks of goats and sheep,
led by God
with a pillar of cloud
in the daytime
and a pillar of fire
in the night.

But it wasn't over. As they hurried into freedom,
Pharaoh changed his mind.
He changed his mind
and sent troops after them,
and they found themselves trapped, soldiers on one side
and water on the other.
But still God was with them,
and created a dry path through the water,
and the people of Israel
were safe
and the soldiers of Pharaoh
drowned.

And they continued on into the wilderness
on their way home
to the promised land,
and time after time
God came through
with fresh spring water
when all they could find was stagnant,
with daily provisions of food
when their stores had run out.

But every time
the people of Israel complained,
and questioned
is God really with us?

And so we come
to today's reading. Still out in the wilderness,
still being led
by the pillar of cloud by day
and the pillar of fire
by night,
and the people
are thirsty. It's an understandable concern —
we all need water to survive. But what begins
as a practical need
quickly changes character. First thing they're thirsty;
next thing they're accusing Moses
of leading them out of Egypt
to die,
and finally, they're accusing God
of having abandoned them.
Never mind
that every other time they've been in need
Moses has been able
to lead them to safety,
never mind
that every other time,
God has provided what they need to live.
They are tired, bad tempered,
and angry.

And Moses, as usual,
turns to God,
and God tells him to hit a rock with his stick.
A pretty useless piece of advice, you would think.
But he does what he is told, and suddenly water flows out
and everyone has
enough to drink.
And Moses renames the place
Massah and Meribah,
because there the Israelites quarreled
and asked the question,
"Is the Lord among us or not?"

And that question
is a turning point. It's the end of one thing
and the beginning of something new.

Because when the people break camp, and head off from Rephidim, now known as Massah and Meribah,
the next place they stop is the wilderness of Sinai.
And that's the place
where Moses
goes up the mountain
for a message from God. A message
that the people of Israel
are God's treasured possession.
God is indeed
among them.
And God has been among them
all the time.

Is God among us
or not?
The question that was asked by the people of God
so many centuries ago
is still a question for us
today.

We ask it for ourselves as individuals.
When bad things happen to us, and we can't understand why. When we get sick, or lose our job, or see a relationships break down, we ask,
"Is God with me, or not?"

We ask it for our communities. When church buildings fall down, and we don't grow as fast as we had hoped, and we're struggling financially, we ask,
"Is God here, or not?"

We ask it for our world. When a tsunami sweeps across the ocean and kills hundreds of thousands of people, when children starve because of famine, we ask
"Is God involved, or not?"

And of course, what we really mean, is why is all this happening to us? Can't God
just make it better?

That is, of course, kind of what happens in the Old Testament reading. The people complain, God provides water. But notice what God doesn't do: God doesn't
magically remove them from the wilderness. In fact, God lets them wander round there
for another 40 years.

You see, the way we see it most often in scripture, is that God doesn't make everything better; what God does instead
is to provide what is needed
to live through the situation.

What the Israelites wanted, I suspect, was a short cut back home to the promised land. What they got
was enough water to see them through the next day.
And it's the same in the New Testament, as often as not. Paul, the apostle,
speaks of having a thorn in his side,
most likely some sort of chronic physical ailment. But he doesn't get healed. Instead, what he gets, he says in his second letter to the Corinthians, is grace to live with it.
Stephen, in the book of Acts, gets accused of blasphemy because he wants to speak about what God has done in Christ. And what he gets
is not protection against the stones that eventually kill him
but a vision of God that sustains him as he dies.

God could just make things better. And sometimes, sometimes
God does. Those are the miracles, the sudden, unexpected
blessings of God.
But most of the time, when we're struggling, God doesn't act
to magically make things better. But that doesn't mean
that God is not with us, that God is not among us.
Because God is with us. It's because God is with us
that we survive those times. It's because God is with us
that we have strength to continue; it's because God is with us
that things that are terrible
sometimes result in incredible good.

God doesn't stop us being hurt and broken.
But God does
come alongside us
and heal the hurt,
and God does come alongside
and give us strength,
God does come alongside
and give us courage.
Most often
we're not even aware of it.
All we're aware
when we look back on our loves, is that somehow
we made it through it all.
And that somehow
is God.

Is God among us, or not?
Yes, God is among us, God is with us, God walks alongside us
every part of our lives,
giving us strength and encouragement, and peace,
because above all else,
we are
God's precious possessions
and God loves us.

 

Sermon ©Raewynne J. Whiteley 2005