When
you go on a trip, especially a long one, are you the type of person who packs
snacks? Do you always have a little bag of goodies in the car or a stash of
granola bars in your purse or pocket? I, for one, am terrible at remembering to
pack snacks, so I’d like to travel with you.
I
think it’s all because my parents never let us eat in the car when we were growing
up. They didn’t like messes. If we got hungry on a long car trip, we felt our
needs were essentially ignored. In fact, I have many vivid memories of being
thirsty and begging my parents to stop for something to drink. “We have plenty
of drinks at home,” they’d say, without even looking in the back seat. “We’ll
be there in just four hours.”
Perhaps
it was a good policy, in many ways. Saved lots of money…kept us healthier…strengthened
our endurance. And, of course, it really caused us to focus on that
destination.
Fortunately
for me, I married someone whose family were master snack packers. When the
Martin-mobile sets out nowadays we’re usually stocked to the gills: fruit,
crackers and cheese, chips, cookies. One peep of complaint from the back seat
or—as is more likely—the driver’s
seat, and Melinda just tosses over something to nibble on.
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| "Jews gathering the manna in the desert" Poussin (1594-1665) |
They
are several weeks on their road-trip into the wilderness of Sinai and the
people of God are starting to give out more than a peep of complaint. And the
trip leaders, Moses and Aaron, look around and realize they haven’t packed any
snacks. The destination is still several years—maybe decades—in the future. For
a trip that began with such excitement and hope, things have started to get
pretty bad pretty quickly.
Therefore,
stuck out in the wilderness with no clear direction and nothing good to eat, unsure
of what their destination is, they start doing what many folks do when the
going gets tough: they start fantasizing about the past. It doesn’t matter that
they were slaves back in Egypt. All they can remember is the food. It doesn’t
matter that they ultimately had no future back in those days. All they can
really focus on is the things that made them happy. They are paralyzed with
preoccupations. What they end up saying with their complaining and idealizing
of the past is that it would have been better to die with no future than to
live with hope as God’s people.
Individuals
and congregations, of course, never do anything like this, especially ones with
long-range planning teams that have us focused on the future. We never get into
a predicament on our journey of life or faith and begin to pine away for what
we once had, the church we grew up in, or the way things used to be back in
those years when the pews were full every Sunday. Pastors, too, caught up in
the stress of parish life, never pine away for the fun times of earlier days,
like seminary, for example, or internship, or those lovely days of being an
associate pastor. Those things only happened with ancient Israel.
 |
| 13th century |
Regardless,
this hungry moment in the road to the Promised Land turns out to be a critical
moment for the people of God. It’s a critical moment because they end up
receiving manna, this strange, flaky, bread-like substance that falls on the
ground each morning and provides just what they need to get through. Apparently
it’s nothing to write home about, and it’s not even clear what it really is, which
is how it gets its name: Manna means “What is this?” in Hebrew. In other places
we learn that it tastes a little like coriander seed.
It
may not be the fleshpots of Egypt, but it suffices, and with the manna comes
the instruction to collect only enough for one day. This focuses their
attention on the present and how God is with them in that moment. It draws them
into a new kind of relationship that is daily, portioned out.
The
gift of manna also shines the spotlight on the journey itself, so they are not
left idolizing the past, nor may they become too preoccupied with the dreamlike
destination of the future, that point four hours down the road when they’ll
finally get water.
Furthermore,
the gathering of manna is a communal event. Typically, when humans get hungry
or desperate, our sinful tendencies of rugged individualism set in. It’s each
man or woman for him or herself. But the manna is to be collected as a whole. No
one can take any more than they need for that day, and they each distribute it
in their tents as people have need.
This
also turns out to be a critical moment for God who is responsive to the needs
of his people. God, in a way, changes tack from showing up for Israel as a
powerful, dramatic mover of Red Sea water and deliverer of deadly plagues—a
grand deity who moves in big, broad, violent strokes—to a carefully present and
attentive God, one who is now even drawn down to the basic, mundane rituals of
daily provisions. Israel’s hunger moment becomes a chance for God to rain down
something as delicate and as ephemeral as a daily gift of bread. It becomes a
chance for God to show that the signs of God’s presence are not always the big,
bold, miracles of power. They can even be the ones we practically disregard as
we look them over and think to ourselves, “What is this?”
This
critical moment from Israel’s past and God’s past is what Jesus uses to
interpret his presence among the people after he feeds the crowd of 5000 and
crosses to the other side of the sea. In a way, his sign with the five loaves
and two fish is a throwback to the old days where God worked in flashes of
grandeur. At least, that’s how the people see it. They are amazed at the work
he has displayed and want more. When will the next miracle happen? When will
the next bread come down from the sky, and with such force?
Their
actions remind me of those lines from that Foo Fighters’ song:
“I’m looking for the sky to
save me/
looking for a sign of life./
I’m looking for something to help me burn out bright.”
looking for a sign of life./
I’m looking for something to help me burn out bright.”
They,
like God’s people then and now, want the sky to open up save them again,
dramatically, if possible, and so they are drawn to the bold, dazzling, events
of yesterday, the ones we point to from our past when we were so sure of God’s
presence.
But,
somewhat disappointingly, Jesus does not see himself as just a miracle-provider.
Jesus does not see himself as a representative of a God who works chiefly by
swooping down from the sky to save us and whisk us back to the fleshpots of
Egypt. Jesus sees himself, rather, as the true bread from heaven, a gift from
that second side of God, a morsel of daily sustenance that, when gathered and
taken up in faith, provides enough for this day.
Indeed,
Jesus is the kind of gift that, when received and consumed, really becomes enough.
For you see, his forgiveness never runs out, never gets wormy, never goes
stale, never loses its power. His compassionate love never tires, never takes a
break, never directs itself inward. And these are what is offered each time we
gather around the manna of his words and assemble at the table of his mercy.
And
when we do—when we gather around Jesus and his meal—we start to see that, in
our sinfulness, we often desire a god who will just move us from miracle to
miracle, because we have an insatiable appetite for miracles. When we take his
bread and cup, we realize we usually pining for a god who will hear our cry for
hunger and immediately pull the car over and give us a feast…or at least point
us back in the direction of Egypt.
But
when we are graciously brought together to Jesus, and we taste his forgiveness,
we are nurtured with his compassion, we begin to understand that the kind of god
we often want will not stoop to be with us in our suffering. That kind of god would
not eventually go to the cross. That kind of god would not choose the night his
friends betray him, when he himself is feeling more than a little abandoned, to
offer up his own body because that is not a god of the journey. That is not the
God of Israel, the one who has remembered our hunger and who has thought to
pack something that will keep us going. That god of our dream-sky is not the
God whose blessed presence can be found in each day’s gifts, as insignificant
and measly as they may seem,...even when we pick them up and sneer, “What is this?”
And
yet even when we want that false god of our desires, that god who will only
dazzle and amaze, we still come forward, open our hands, and we get the loving,
thoughtful one who says, “I am the bread of life.” And bit by bit, mile by mile, daily bread by
daily bread, we learn to put the past in proper perspective, regain hope for
the future, and begin to see that this living bread, this gift from heaven—this
Savior—is ultimately what gives life to the world.
Thanks
be to God!
The Reverend Phillip W.
Martin, Jr.
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