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What is it that God is Trying to Offer You?

The Reverend Canon Elizabeth Knowlton
September 21, 2008
Proper 20A
Exodus 16:2-16

I remember as a small child having an absolute belief that one of the primary benefits of being an adult was certainty and freedom.  I would know what was right and what was wrong.  I would be able to do whatever I wanted.  The whole task of childhood was to survive this period of oppression and outside control and prepare for the delights of adulthood. 

No more chores for me on Saturday morning, I’d be grown up.  I’d hire a cleaning person and from that small act of liberation would begin my new life of freedom.  Since I would know what I wanted and be empowered to act on that, anxiety would no longer be a factor in my daily life.  Certainty and freedom were one in the same.  Clearly my parents never worried or had any doubts.  Or on the rare occasion I might think they did, well they must just be failing to become self-actualized.  What was it with them?  Why weren’t they leaping out of bed carefree, each and every day? 

Of course, I would have to develop the skills, so I would avoid the trap of anxiety. I would remember all the good things that had happened to me, the confidence I should derive from that, and move on to a life free of concern.  This deluded state can only make me believe I never been confronted with the story of the Exodus. 

So, what is it with those Israelites?  You might think that having been spared the life of oppression they knew under Pharaoh that they might have a little more staying power.  After having a leader like Moses arrive on the scene, a man who speaks directly to God, wouldn’t they have a deeper sense of confidence amidst their plight? 

Now, I realize that tromping around the desert would not have been easy.  But if you had personally seen the Red Sea part, wouldn’t that be a sustaining image—at least a month after you had seen it? So what is it with those Israelites?

So, what is it with Moses?  He looks pretty good in our passage today.  But in the Book of Numbers he asks God, “Why have your treated your servant so badly? Why have I not found favor in your sight, that you lay the burden of all this people on me? Did I conceive all this people? Did I give birth to them?”  What is it with Moses?  Didn’t that moment at the burning bush call forth in him a greater sense of patience?

So, what is it with us as people of faith?  Why do we find ourselves mired in the concerns of daily life?  Shouldn’t our faith be some sort of divine inoculation to stress and anxiety? An invitation to certainty and freedom?

“Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure through Jesus Christ…”

The opening to our collect today could not be more timely.  If you have spent any time with the news of the last several weeks, there are many good reasons to be anxious.  Financial uncertainty, political transitions, and natural disasters all serve as constant reminders that we are not ultimately in control of the world around us.  When we add to that our it our own private litany of concern, be it illness, broken relationships, loneliness, or fatigue, we can start to feel so burdened in earthly concern as to be unable to life our heads skyward.

So what is it with the Israelites, with Moses, and with us?  Why are we not more certain?  More free?  As people of faith we do have a counter story.  It is a story that reminds us that God is present and active with us even in the struggle.  That even in the most hopeless of situations there is a hope available to us that is not grounded in the rules of this world.

But this counter story does not automatically transform us to beings of certainty and freedom.  There is a temptation in that counter story.  It is a subtle invitation to hubris.  Rather than seeing that story as a story of God’s unbelievable commitment to us, we can think that the story is there to remind us that we can stop being human.  We can see ourselves as “other” from those whiners in the desert.  We can question their faith and accuse them of ingratitude.  We can see their lack of certainty as an impediment to freedom, rather than a step on the way.

Once we conflate certainty and freedom, we may decide that they key to the counter story is brute repetition.  If we merely repeat the story, decide that the Israelites had it wrong and that we can be different, we can through sheer will be freed from any encounter with earthly anxiety.  We will be stronger, better, more faithful than the mumblers in the deserts or even Moses himself. 

The counter story has now become a counter example.  We need to be different than all those people in the bible from the times of Moses, through the prophets, down to those rather weak denying disciples.  We don’t need to be worried about the cares of the world.  We need to realize we are working for something beyond this world.  The test of our faithfulness is whether we worry or not.  If we are really devoted, nothing should be able to shake us from living only for the eternal, come what may. 

But do we really believe that all of those people of faith are meant to be merely a negative example?  We are called beyond this world as they were.  But there is a difference between being freed from anxiety and being disconnected from the world.  Certainty is not the freedom we find in faith.  In fact, uncertainty may be the path to our transformation.

I think that is why God chooses to send the manna day by day.  We do not become people of faith and no longer need daily nourishment.  We need a constant reminder that God is feeding us and accompanying us through each step we take on the journey.  If our fear gets the better of us and we wish we were back in Egypt, God says, “draw near, I have heard your complaints and you will eat meat and you will eat bread.”  When you lose it our there in the desert, on the highway, or when you cross the threshold of your home, you have not lost your faith.  Perhaps you’ve lost just a little of your certainty.  God invites you to start again the next day.  The manna will come again with the morning. 

If you find yourself overwhelmed by the state of the world, invite God in.  Ask for the manna.  Plead for the eyes to see it.  It probably doesn’t look like you think it should.  It may be flaky and dusty and unlike any sustenance you’ve ever had to rely on.  But it is there. 

That may be the gift of the Israelites.  They couldn’t see it either. They first come out in the morning and have to ask Moses, “What is it?” 

What is it with this food that God give us? Why are we being fed with a substance that will rot if we try to hoard it?  Why do we have to gather it each day?  How can it lead us to real freedom? 

Freedom in God is not the same as the certainty of complete predictability and control.  We are not promised that as people of faith.  The more we hold on to that idol, the less likely we are to discover the freedom that God is trying to offer.  That is when we find ourselves bowed before golden calves instead of bowed over to gather the abundance that is already before us.

What is it for you?  What is the manna that God gifts you with each day?  How can you arrange your life in such a way that you will be reminded? If you find yourself anxious or complaining, know that God hears your voice.  Look around you, there is bread for us all.

Amen

Comments? Contact Beth Knowlton at: BKnowlton@stphilipscathedral.org

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