Sermon Preached at Frazer Mennonite Church

God Provides

Exodus 16:1-18

 

I have a confession to make.  I chose this text in our sermon series “God of the Hebrew BIble” because I knew that after several weeks of hard hitting texts from the Hebrew scripture–like Hagar, like Sodom and Gomorrah, and like Moses meeting the God who’s name we cannot pronounce–I thought this one would be easy.  A preaching reprieve for me–I get to say simple, beautiful things about God and we all get to leave feeling good about ourselves. 

And imagine my surprise and disappointment when I read the text for the week, and realized that this is a difficult word and a word from God and about God that we need to hear.  

So if you are coming for some easy comfort this morning, let me tell you from the get go that this text may surprise you.  It certainly has taken me by surprise this week.  

In this text, we meet the chosen people of God in the wilderness, having recently been freed from enslavement by the Egyptian people, they walked through the Red Sea that God parted, while their enemies and enslavers followed behind and were consumed by the Sea.  

This was an incredible way to be saved from enslavement–with the seas parting just for the Israelites.  What an act of power on God’s part.  

And there the Israelites were–just a stone’s throw away from their former home.  They had been radically freed by a radically free God, the God who–if you recall last week’s sermon–is too big to be named and contained by our human imagination and capacity.  

The Israelites were free.  And in their freedom they are also homeless.  And hungry. And in a desert.  

The problem of enslavement had been solved, but in their freedom they had some other pressing problems to solve.  And the people begin to freak out.

If you’ve ever watched the original reality television show, Survivor, you have a pretty good understanding of what happens to people when resources are scarce and folks are trying to survive on very little.  FIghting and accusations ensue. 

God’s chosen people had just been saved in a big, spectacular way, but very quickly they began to complain to Aaron and Moses, “If only we had died by God’s hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat next to pots of meat and ate our bread till we were filled! But now you have brought the whole community out into the wilderness to die of hunger!”

Before Aaron and Moses could even bring this to God, God told Moses, “Oh for goodness sakes.  Do these people not trust me? I will take care of my people. Every night I will send quail into the encampment for you to eat and every morning I will send Manna (which literally translated means, “What is it”) to you.  But here’s the catch. Take only what you need.”

And everyone took as much as they needed. Some took a little, some took a lot according to their need, but when it was measured, it was all the same amount. 

On the 7th day, it was their sabbath, and they were not to work, but to gather twice as much on the 6th day, to hold them over.  But this was the only time they were to do this. Any other day that they took more than they needed the food would become rancid and full of maggots.  

God had already showed the people that God would provide.  God had already showed the people that God would look out for them.  But the people continued to worry that they were freed from slavery only to starve and die in the desert. So God had to show them again.  With Manna and Quail. This is only one of many ways that God showed up for the Israelites, protecting them, providing for them, and caring for them.  

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I’m aware of just how difficult it is to trust that God will provide.  

Because we are really used to taking care of things ourselves.  Many of us have the resources to take care of those financial crises that may hit.  Many of us have the relationships we need to get support when we need it.  

But have you ever felt a time when you had used up all your resources–financial, relational, and emotional–and realized that you were not going to be able to make it work?

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When Charlie was in graduate school, we were both living on my meager social work salary.  It was the end of the semester, and the little bit of money we had, I had just used to pay for our rent.  And we had no food in the house.  

And I was really scared.  

We were really careful with our money.  We never went out to eat, we shopped at the cheapest grocery store in town.  I tried to only shop at thrift stores. I was militant about electricity usage.  

And even with all the scrimping and trimming, we had no money.  

I remember sitting in our living room in West Philly, on our ugly, scratchy second hand sofa, crying.  In desperation, I called out to God and asked for a miracle.  

And then I heard the mail carrier arrive.  I fixed my face, went out to the mailbox, and found our tax return, which was equivalent to a week of my salary at the time.  We had just enough to buy groceries, and pay the back bills that were hovering over us.  

Before I had even asked for God’s help, God was already providing for us at just the right time.  

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My friend, Hamed, runs a little non-profit in Palestine where he provides emergency assistance for Palestinians that live in especially precarious situations, that are the result of living in occupation.  My small part of the work is to wire him money from his US fundraising account.  

When the money gets low, Hamed frets and he and I both lose sleep about how we will pay for the work. Inevitably, the money shows up.  And we breathe a collective sigh of relief. He’ll say Hamdillallah, and I’ll say “Thanks be to God.” And we mean it. Those moments of relief happen more than we’d like, but every time, God provides. 

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I bet you have had some moments like that in your life.  Maybe it was with a financial need, or maybe it was a friend showing up just in time.  In our lives, God provides, God sends us Manna. 

But this is not the only meaning of this Manna story.  And unfortunately, this is not where the sermon ends.  

In this story from Exodus, God was testing the people.  “Collect only as much as you need,” said God. “I will be watching you,” said God. God provided and God wanted the people to remember who was doing the providing.  It was not the people’s work that made this happen–it was God’s work, God’s power. 

And there are a couple of ways that God made sure that people remembered who was doing the providing.  

First, the manna went bad if the people tried to squirrel a little bit away for another day.  God is clever with this consequence. But the message was clear. Worry about today. Tomorrow will take care of itself.  

And second, God made the people take a day of rest. They were not to gather food on the Sabbath.  Because rest from our labors is important. Because we are more than our work. 

This is only the beginning of the economic guidelines God put into place for the people.  God told the people to leave a little grain on the edges of the field for those in need. God told the people to observe Jubilee, and forgive debts and return land every 70 years.  God told the people to give a tithe–10 percent of all they created and earned–back to God.  

These aren’t arbitrary God rules.  These are intentional rules to help the people remember that God was the provider.  Not them. God.  

But how often do we follow these financial guidelines?  I admit that I don’t. I don’t give as much as God has asked me to.  And I certainly don’t practice sabbath as I should. So, this text hits close to home for me.  

Because I don’t practice jubilee or sabbath, I know my sense of who provides for me becomes distorted.  It becomes twisted to the point that I believe I am in control, that I am providing for my needs, that I am responsible when I am successful.  

This text invites us into the practice of jubilee.  God invites us, just as God invited the people of Israel to take only what we need.  God invites us to practice sabbath, taking a break from accomplishing and maintaining that false sense of power over our lives.  

Our culture is one that drives us to always be working, always accomplishing, always doing.  And God calls us back to these counter-intuitive acts of resting and only taking what we need. 

I want to go back to this.  I want to get back to these spiritual practices.  Today I will take that small step back to the spiritual practice of sabbath keeping.  I need the rest. I need to rest in the promise that God will provide for my needs. It’s not me. It’s not what I can do.  It’s only through God. 

As you go out from this place today, pray about what spiritual practices you can implement to increase your awareness of God’s provision. Maybe it’s a TV and social media fast one day a week.  Maybe it’s a day a week where you don’t buy anything. Maybe you commit to increasing your giving by 1% a year. Perhaps you take a year long fast from buying new things.  

Regardless of whether you do this or not, God is always providing.  But when we practice Sabbath, when we practice only taking what we need, when we rest we find that we can really see what God can do.  This is the difficult challenge of this text.  Can we trust in God’s provisions? Or are we trusting in our own means? 

Let us trust in the God of the Hebrew Bible, the God who sent us Jesus. Let us trust in God who created us and called us very good, who is with us in difficult times, who calls us to hospitality, who wrestles with us, and who is too big to be named and contained.  Let us trust today in God’s provisions. AMEN.