Today is World Communion Sunday. Christians all over the world are making a special effort to partake in Holy Communion today. We meet our brothers and sisters in Christ, from every country and every continent, at Christ’s table and partake in Christ’s holy meal today.
All people love to eat. And, all people love to gather together for special celebrations. When Jesus instituted the Christian Church, he chose for us to share a meal together as one of our most important rituals. But, even before Jesus came to institute our holy meal, God shared God’s love and care for God’s people by sending food to them as manna and quail.
Last week, we recalled the event of Moses meeting God in the burning bush. God told Moses that he would be the person to lead the people of Israel out from captivity in Egypt to the Holy Land. Moses listened to God. He went to Egypt, negotiated with the Pharoah, secured the release of the people of Israel, and led them across the Red Sea into the wilderness.
At this point in the story, the people had been in the wilderness about 45 days and they were beginning to run out of the food they brought for the journey. Whenever food is scarce, people begin to panic. And, the people were indeed beginning to panic.
Listen now to the story as we read from Exodus chapter 16, verses one through twenty-one.
Scripture Exodus 16:1-18
16 The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt.
2 In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron.
3 The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”
4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions.
5 On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.”
6 So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, “In the evening you will know that it was the Lord who brought you out of Egypt,
7 and in the morning you will see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we, that you should grumble against us?”
8 Moses also said, “You will know that it was the Lord when he gives you meat to eat in the evening and all the bread you want in the morning, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we? You are not grumbling against us, but against the Lord.”
9 Then Moses told Aaron, “Say to the entire Israelite community, ‘Come before the Lord, for he has heard your grumbling.’”
10 While Aaron was speaking to the whole Israelite community, they looked toward the desert, and there was the glory of the Lord appearing in the cloud.
11 The Lord said to Moses,
12 “I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them, ‘At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God.’”
13 That evening quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp.
14 When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor.
15 When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was.
Moses said to them, “It is the bread the Lord has given you to eat.
16 This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Everyone is to gather as much as they need. Take an omer for each person you have in your tent.’”
17 The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little.
18 And when they measured it by the omer, the one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little. Everyone had gathered just as much as they needed.
19 Then Moses said to them, “No one is to keep any of it until morning.”
20 However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them.
21 Each morning everyone gathered as much as they needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away.
Here ends this reading of the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Let us pray…
Message Manna and Quail
“What is it?” ….the word Manna translates into the phrase “what is it?” in English.
This week, on the local Nextdoor page, a grandparent complained about the food in a nearby school looking unappetizing. They posted a photo of a hamburger and basically asked – What is it?
But, like the manna, the important thing was that it was food, and fuel for the bodies of the people who had to eat it. And, sometimes the most delicious foods come in surprising packages.
When the Hebrew people left Egypt, they were rushing. They gathered what they could carry and rushed to follow Moses. Thire plan was that they would all leave Egypt and walk to the Holy Land – if you walked following the established trade routes, their journey should have taken a month at most. The walk is roughly 400 kilometers, or two-hundred and fifty miles. A healthy person can typically walk around 8 kilometers or five miles in a day. If you were walking all day long, even farther.
But, we know the Hebrew people didn’t take a direct route to the Holy Land. And, they had a lot of people with them…and a lot of issues they needed to work out before they arrived at their final destination. After 45 days, or so, they realized their food was going to run out and they were not there yet.
The people were hungry. They complained to Moses and Aaron. They despaired…they said things like: “It would have been better to just die in Egypt than it is to starve out here in the wilderness.” They didn’t bring their worries and complaints to God, but God overheard them….And, God responded.
The people craved meat – and probably needed protein. So, God sent them quail. The quail appeared weekly. And, six days a week, manna appeared on the ground in the morning. I always imagine it like crusty honey. They gathered the food each day… and gathered extra on Fridays so they could eat on the Sabbath day when they weren’t allowed to gather or do work.
The food was unlike anything they had eaten before. But, it filled their bellies and gave them energy for the journey. The manna and quail sustained the Hebrew people for the 40 years they spent out in the wilderness, moving camp every once in a while and preparing for their eventual move to the Promised Land.
When people live in captivity, they crave freedom. When teenagers dream about college life, they are excited to live free of the rules of their parents. They want to wake up when they want, go to bed when they want, eat what and when they want, and decide for themselves whether or not to do their homework. And, some kids are able to make that transition well and are responsible and mature about their new freedoms, and other kids can’t handle it, and move home, or leave school and start working. Some kids are ready for freedom, and others are not.
The Hebrew people were not ready for the freedom afforded them in the Holy Land. They had a lot of “growing edges” – things they needed to learn or accept before they entered God’s Promised land. During their years of dreaming of freedom, when they were slaves in Egypt, they dreamed of waltzing into the Holy Land – the land of Milk and Honey. They did not dream of camp life, in the desert, with crying toddlers and tired grandmas, and bugs, and empty bellies.
So, they were unhappy. I always find their complaining shocking….they had survived 400 years of captivity, endured the 10 plagues that befell Egypt, followed Moses across the parted Red Sea, were following God leading them through the wilderness in a pilar of smoke by day and a pilar of fire at night, yet they were upset. They were afriad. They were fearful. And, they complained. Despite all of the ways God had come-through, God had rescued them, they were afriad God would let them down now. And, they would starve and die in the wilderness.
God didn’t poof them into the Holy Land when God heard their complaints. It wasn’t a Star Trek transporter moment when they were instantly taken from the desert to the Holy Land. God sent them food….God sent them plenty of food for their daily needs…but God didn’t send them a delicous, variety of every-changing culinary options. God provided for the people, but God didn’t remove the hardship of desert life, of camp life, of nomadic life.
And, God only provided enough food for daily needs to be met….they got no extras….they had no emergency stores of food. They had just enough for their daily needs.
The people had to participate in God’s saving work on their behalf….God didn’t send the food directly into their bowls and pots. Every day, the people had to spend time gathering their own food….picking enough manna in the morning for them to eat the rest of the day. And, when God sent the quail each week, it didn’t fall into their pots slaughtered, cleaned, plucked, and already cooked. They had to do the work to kill and prepare their weekly ration of meat.
We often fall into the trap of being disappointed and complaining when what we expected to happen doesn’t live up to what we get. When we were living through the pandemic, we thought things would be so much better when it was all over…..the moment we got a vaccine, we could toss off our masks and start going places again and everything would return to normal…people would go back to work and kids would go back to school and the church will fill up with people and everything would be as it was, or even better than it was.
But, it took the former slaves 40 years to make it to the Holy Land….and it will take us a few more years before things get back to “normal.” And, the normal that we clamored for during the pandemic will not be the “normal” we get. Things are different….things will be different.
The Hebrew people needed to adjust. And, so do we. We must work to accept our current reality. And, make the best of every day. The former-slaves didn’t get leeks and fish and delicious culinary delights….so they needed to be creative when they made their manna into cakes. We will not get our former, pre-pandemic schools, and jobs, and churches back, so we need to be creative and figure out ways to make our current jobs, and schools, and church more and more like God’s realm here on earth – we must work to be loving towards each other…we must worke to be open-minded….we must work to be accepting of each other…we must work to be supportive of each other. We can’t be who we were in the past, but we must be the best refelctions of Jesus we can be in the here-and-now.
Let us work to become a more and more faithful representation of the body of Chirst. Amen.
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