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.
When last we saw the
Israelites they had miraculously been led through the parted waters of the sea
and seen the defeat of their taskmasters--to say nothing of the once-for-all
total defeat of their old life of slavery. Now they were truly liberated, and while the lectionary did not include the
passage, they do the most natural thing in the world; in chapter 15 they break
out in song.
As the narrative
unfolds, they have a wonderful oasis respite followed by the resumption of
their journey into the wilderness of "Sin." At first glance to
English readers, it seems as though the author has engaged in the use of
metaphor--the wilderness of Sin being
where Israel “sins” against God. Not so fast. While this may be true, 'Sin' is
just a phonetic spelling of an area already known by that name. It means thorn or clay. The Israelites are now in the desert; not so much in the
'sand everywhere' sense, but in the 'deserted' sense. It all looks like the
badlands of the Dakotas as far as the eye can see; no food, no water, only
death... again. And so the people do the only natural thing, they complain: In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron (vs
2). The word translated grumbled in
the TNIV is that great old KJV word MURMURED. Hebrew is a very artistic
language with layers of nuance and meaning. At its core level the original word
means to lodge or to stay-over; to remain. In its amplified context it becomes
grumble/complain/murmur, but the sense of remaining
isn't lost; in other words, they didn't just complain once and then sit back to see what would happen; they're
complaining was non-stop. They remained in that state of complaint.
Wilderness/desert
topography is heavily weighted in the Bible. It is a place where people confront
their own mortality, which leads to one of two things: despair, or total
dependence on God. In terms of the latter, the bar was set very high by Jesus
in the wilderness (Matthew 4), whereas despair is what we see in this week's
passage. The situation they confront is so completely hopeless that they pine
for the good old days of slavery: 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 (v3).
It's difficult to stop and reflect when you're in the
middle of a crisis, but one of the learning
moments of any wilderness experience is to come to grips with the fact that
life is a wilderness, and the control we think we have--our health, our
wealth, our intellect, etc.--is transitory at best. We are all, constantly, a
single breath away from eternity...but sometimes it takes a wilderness
experience to help us realize this.
Of course,
that's what the wilderness looks like from our frail, imperfect, human
perspective. A few years ago when I did a sermon series on Jeremiah I was
interested to see that the God's-eye-view perspective is quite different. In
Jeremiah 2:2 we read: "This is what the LORD says: " 'I remember the
devotion of your youth, how as a bride you loved me and followed me through the
wilderness, through a land not sown. In
other words, the desert/wilderness is God's idea of a honeymoon experience.
This is where he took his "bride" so they could be alone together.
It's as though God relishes the idea of being totally depended upon, and the
opportunity to show his beloved that he can
be depended upon.
As
we approach this Sunday and the various themes that can be used for our
reflection, I am very drawn to the last verse of the reading: 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 (v15). The word translated as manna, in Hebrew, means what
is it? The Bible in various other places calls it the bread of heaven and the bread
of angels. I'm especially drawn to the final phrase it is the bread the Lord has given you to eat. In keeping with good Lutheran tradition, I see
both Law and Gospel in that one brief statement. It is the bread the Lord has given you to eat is wonderful
Gospel. Good news! You will not starve. Good news! The Creator God of the
universe has stooped low enough to see and hear your need and has miraculously
provided for it. Good news! You did nothing, indeed, you can do nothing to earn it....it's purely a result of
God's grace. Good news! Precisely what you need has come from God’s hand to
your mouth….Bread of heaven, feed me till
I want no more…as the old hymn says. However, wrapped up in that tiny
phrase we find not only Gospel good news; we also find Law. Because the tiny
word *IT… in It is the bread the Lord
has given you to eat is VERY EXCLUSIVE. This, and only this is it. This, and only
this will do. God has given manna. God has not given rye bread, whole wheat
bread, wonder bread, corn bread… or any other sort of bread; God has given THIS
BREAD. Take it or leave it. Take it and live… GOSPEL! Leave it, and die… LAW!
You can’t wonder what’s behind door #3 with God because there is no door #3.
And so when we get to
John chapter 6 where Jesus repeatedly refers to this passage and draws
parallels to himself—where he even goes so far as to declare himself as the true bread that has come down from heaven, the same Law/Gospel
dynamic applies. TAKE HIM AND LIVE!
Cheers,
T.M.
No comments:
Post a Comment