Food and Water for the Journey

When I was younger I liked walking in the bush.  Each year I would go with a bunch of other young people to the Stirling Ranges down near Albany.  We would set up a base camp and then undertake various walks over two and three days.  We discovered how hard it is when you have to carry all the things you need in a back-pack.

One walk I will never forget.  It began at the eastern most part of the range.  The plan was to climb Ellen’s Peak.  Then we were to basically climb the ridges and peaks between there and Bluff Knoll – a distance of 15.5kms over a period of three days.

What I didn’t realise was that none in the party had ever done this walk before.  They were relying on stories and maps.

We climbed Ellen’s peak which took us to a late lunch.  Then we set out westward for a couple of hours till we came to a precipice.  Clearly, we had taken the wrong path, so we went back.

People were trying to remember the stories they had been told about how to find the track.  After several false tracks we came back to Ellen’s Peak with the weather treating us very badly.  It had clouded over and we were in miserable rain.  So we had little option but to camp there.

No one slept well.  We had not been able to erect our tents properly.  Many of us were wet through.  I was downright miserable.  So were a few others.  We might have even complained a bit – out loud.  With the cloud and rain still challenging us, I couldn’t face going on. 

I spoke to the leader and said I couldn’t go on and just want to go back to the fire break.  A couple of others felt the same way.  So we were allowed to go back down.  The others would try to find the track.  Before we were half way down we were out of the cloud.  The sun was shining on us even though there was a cloud over the mountain.

Then when we got back to the firebreak, our radio communication would not work.  We couldn’t call them up to pick us up.  So we had to walk – about 20km – but it was sunny and flat and we had plenty of water, so maybe we didn’t complain too much.

Maybe this memory helps me understand how the Israelites felt.

In this story, they are at it again.  They seem to have no gratitude and no memory.  Just after they have been provided with fresh food morning and evening every day; just after they had seen Moses freshen up a stagnant well so they could drink fresh water; just after God had amazingly rescued them from the pursuing Egyptian army; all they could do was accuse God of not caring about them.  They remembered how at least they had water back in Egypt.  They forgot the bricks and the hard labour.  And they complained.

And what does God do?  Like a forbearing parent, God gives them what they want.  The story-teller makes it clear that God was not happy about this.  That is why the place was called Massah and Meribah, because the people COMPLAINED and PUT GOD TO THE TEST.  And there are a couple of Psalms that remind the Israelites of this event when they were sung in the Temple.

One of the sites traditionally regarded as the spring Moses created at Massah

In some ways I make of this story what I made of last week’s story.  Despite the forgetful and self-centred Israelites, God continues to be faithful and trustworthy in looking after them.  You would think they would get it after all these stories.  But for some reason they fail again and again to get it.

One of my commentators says that this mercy of God is a grace that even the hardest of human hearts cannot frustrate.

The thing that strikes me about this story, as a companion to last week’s story, is that it creates a perfect segue into thinking about the Lord’s Supper.

We speak of the bread of Communion as symbolic of the body of Christ, and we use bread language about it – the Living Bread or Bread of Life.  And the Manna that was provided each morning for the Israelites was in its own way Bread of Life for them.

In today’s story, the water there is linked to the idea of BLOOD.  The story tells us of Moses using the stick with which he struck the Nile River, turning the water into blood.  In Communion we refer to the wine as Jesus’ blood and this seems natural.  But I think John picks up a link to this story about water.  When Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at the well, he tells her that he can give her Living Water.  And he says that those who have this water will never thirst again.

Every week, when we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, there is a purpose.  It reminds us every time that God is faithful and trustworthy.  It reminds us that we can always rely on God.  And it reminds us that we are called on to be just as faithful and trustworthy.

Let us never forget to praise God for his goodness.

The Faithfulness of God

Any student of Australia’s history cannot help but be amazed at the epic journeys made by some of our European settlers.  Burke & Wills walked from Melbourne right up to the gulf country of Queensland.  Edward John Eyre walked across the Nullabor from Adelaide to Albany.  Paddy Durack walked thousands of cattle across the arid north of Queensland to the Kimberly region in Western Australia.

These great explorers had to learn a few tricks from the locals – the Aboriginal people – in order to survive.  Of course Aboriginal people have been travelling across our hostile Outback for thousands of years.  What they discovered was that there were many resources in the desert places that would help them survive.  It was not a completely barren place.

Some years ago, comedian Michael Palin made a television series in which he walked across the Sahara desert.  It is hard for a Westerner to imagine doing this, but, of course, people have been doing this for centuries.

Michael learned very quickly the three key things that make this feat of human endurance possible. 

Firstly, the clothing people wore.  The wrapping cloak that keeps wind and sand away from the body but allows air to circulate keeping them cool was vital. 

Secondly, they walked at the pace of camels.  When a man sets out on a journey, he usually walks in a purposeful manner and with some considerable pace.  Camels, however, walk much more casually or slowly.  We might say they saunter along.  They set up a gentle rhythm and they can keep this up for hours.  Fortunately this is just as effortless for the people to keep up for those hours, too.

Finally, they travel in quite large groups of people.  This means that they can keep an eye on each other.  They can defend themselves from bandits as well.

This TV story helped me to understand what it must have been like for the Israelites as they trudged off towards the Promised Land.

If the geography is right, the journey to the Red Sea was one of a little over 100 kilometres.  Then they journeyed down the eastern shore of the Gulf of Suez, as we now call it – maybe another 150 kilometres.

As I said last week, whether or not you go looking for naturalistic explanations for the things that happened in this story, it remains a wonderful story about the relationship between the Israelites and their God.

God has led them out of their captivity and slavery in Egypt.

God has led them on their journey along the way with the pillar of smoke and fire.

God rescued them from the pursuing Egyptians when they came to the Red Sea.

God showed them where the waterholes were and how to purify the bitter water.

And today we read of God providing them with a good feed of poultry for dinner, and super-cornflakes for breakfast.

Yet, already, we have reports of the people complaining.

They complained when they realised the Egyptian army was pursuing them and they were facing a vast expanse of water with nowhere to escape.

They complained after walking for three days without finding water, and then when they did find water, it was bitter – undrinkable.

And today we read of them complaining again.  They had been on the go for 45 days or there abouts.  They obviously thought their rations were unsuitable.

Again, they proposed to Moses that it would have been better for them if they had stayed in Egypt as slaves than put up with this.

Now the thing that surprised me a little as I read this story afresh was Moses’ assertion repeatedly that God had heard their complaints and so was making this special provision for them.

As we read through the remaining stories in Exodus we will discover the people complaining again and again.  Anyone would think they were Scottish, actually.

Ultimately it becomes clear that while the people could have arrived in the Promised land within a quite short period, God condemns them to wander around this Outback place for 40 years – not so much as punishment, although that idea comes through in the Psalms from time to time, but rather to teach them to truly trust God.  The 40 years was to give time for the doubters to die out before they occupied the land.

This gives a hint of what I want us to take away from the story today.  So does the parable Jesus tells in the Gospel reading we had today.

Two words come to mind – faithful and trustworthy.

In Latin these would be Fidelitas and Fiducia.  This helps us see that while we might think of the words as synonyms, they have some important differences.

These two words make up some of the content of the idea of FAITH that we as Christians talk about.  In fact these two things go both ways between us and God in a relationship of FAITH.

God is faithful to us and trustworthy, and he calls out from us that same faithfulness and trustworthiness.

Here in this outback story we see God faithfully providing for the needs of his people.  As the Psalm we read says, God was faithfully keeping the promise he made to Abraham.

And God was indeed trustworthy, protecting them again and again from calamity.

And all the time God is showing them these wonderful attributes of his, he is calling them to live in the same way towards him.

This is what I want to leave with you today – a call to you, as God called the Israelites, to a life of faithfulness and trustworthiness.  You can count on God being Faithful towards you (even when you fail and complain) and you can rely on God to be Trustworthy.  God will keep the promises made even when we fail or complain, too. 

This is how I want to express my life of faith to you and to my God.

God is Good - All the Time!!!

Well, you have had a bit of a break from our Old Testament stories.

As I looked at these passages, with new eyes, it seemed to me that there was an uncanny likeness to in the story to our Gospels.  That first Sunday Peter was with you, the reading was about the awful conditions for God’s people in Egypt, as well as the story of the birth of Moses.

Then there was the story of God’s call to Moses to lead the people of Israel to freedom.  As a sign or seal of this call amazing things happened as the Pharaoh would first agree to let the people go, and then change his mind – nine dramatic plagues leading up to the Passover  - that dramatic sign of God’s covenant with Israel through which they gained their freedom.

So this covenant is established and the people are now free – but, of course, that is just the beginning of the journey.

They were hardly out of the clutches of the Pharaoh when they were confronted with an insurmountable barrier – a vast expanse of water.  This was a test of their faith, wasn’t it?  Indeed, the people are to confront a number of such “tests” for want of a word, and sadly they weren’t quite up to it.

I am sure that as we read this story just now – of the people crossing the sea as if on dry land – your mind was filled with some of the various Film and TV images that people have tried to create to give us a sense of what this event might have been like.  I don’t know about you, but I find this a mind-boggling thing to try and imagine.

Some people have tried to create a naturalistic explanation for this event – which may or may not make sense to you, I am not going to go into that.  What I want to do is step back from this story a little bit and see what God might be wanting to say to us today.

As I reminded our little group on Thursday morning, this story, in its present form, was created only about 500 years before Jesus was born.  It was talking about events that had happened over 2500 years before Jesus was born, and the essence of the story probably goes back close to that time.  The important question to ask is why did they tell the story in this way – what was it saying to the people who first heard it in this form?

Let’s think about who those first listeners might have been.  These are the people who had most recently lived through a long period of exile or captivity in a land far away from their homeland.  A hundred years or so before they had been taken into Captivity in Babylon.  Babylon had then been incorporated by force into the Persian empire – the Iraq-Iran conflict goes back a long way.  Cyrus of the Persians was the one who gave permission for Nehemiah and the people to go home to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.

So their experience was an almost exact echo of the experience of the Israelites in this story.  They had been living far away from their homeland and were being kept there by force.  Now they were coming home.

If we were to think about this story as if it were a parable I think it can give us some idea of what it might have meant to the people of Israel, and maybe for us today.

When we ordain someone a priest we say they are ordained to a ministry of the word and sacrament.  When we come here on a Sunday to celebrate holy communion we participate in a service of word and sacrament.  This idea of word and action is at the heart of our relationship with God.

This story in the life of Israel, both right back when they were leaving Egypt, as well as when they were leaving Babylon, is a story of word and action.

The WORD of God is expressed in the covenant established in the Passover.  This covenant is a bit like a codicil to a will because it really just adds to the covenant God entered into with Abraham, and which was reiterated for Isaac and Jacob, namely that God would bless them with many descendants and that through them the whole world would be able to receive God’s blessing.

The ACTION comes in the wonderful – amazing – ways God looks after the people, despite their wilfulness and rebellion.

When I think about that Red Sea image of the walls of water towering up on either side as a metaphor it conveys so clearly the idea of all those forces that seem to be against us being held at bay by God.  Here is a dramatic portrayal of God’s determined action to bring us to safety, to the land of promise.

This may well be exactly what the writers of this story really wanted the readers to understand.  There they were gradually coming back to the land they had been promised, rebuilding the walls of their holy city, and they were being encouraged to look back at the marvellous ways God had held back all those forces that were against them to enable them to arrive in that place.

This is a good thought for us, too.  Whatever your journey of faith might have been, you will certainly be able to identify forces that were at work in keeping you away from the joy of your relationship with God.  But somehow, by the grace of God, you arrived in this place of being in relationship with God and each other.  This story is about putting a spring in your step, some joy in your soul, by reminding you that God is Good – no matter what forces may have been stacked up against you.

I think it might speak to our Nuba people too – a parable of their journey away from hostility and danger to a place of safety and joy.  This embodies a story that they have taken to themselves and that has led them to want to say to each other whenever they are together

God is good – all the time;

All the time – God is good.