June 20, 2010
The People - Exodus 4:27-31, 14:10-14, 16:1-3
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadI very vaguely remember when I was 13 years old that the Exxon Valdese ran aground in Prince William Sound in Alaska and created what then was a massive oil spill. I also vaguely remember that the reason that it ran aground was because its captain was intoxicated. That’s all I remember about it. I know a lot more about it now, only because this most recent mess, but I haven’t thought much about oil spills until this most recent one. We will all remember this one, though, won’t we? Since it started gushing oil into the Gulf Coast, President Obama has made four trips down there and has come under increased scrutiny for not doing more: for not doing more to prevent it, for not doing more to stop it or contain it, and for not getting angry. In the Exxon Valdese spill, the first President Bush never made one single appearance in Alaska. Never once was he in any way blamed or pressured for the Alaska spill. In fact, in some ways, he was pressured to stay away from it. This spill, on the other hand, is a political massacre for Obama.
Now granted, things are different this time around: it’s a much bigger spill that continues to leak. But the biggest difference, I believe, is us. We The People are different this time around. The Exxon Valdese desecrated the Prince William Sound on the Alaska coast. I have no earthy idea where the Prince William Sound is and frankly no real reason to care. But my family and I spent our vacation last week on the Carolina coast, and the thought sickened me that the Carolina coast could be just weeks away from being desecrated by oil itself. Prince William Sound was out of our sight. Myrtle Beach is not. Therefore, we’re a bit more testy this time around. And yet, even if it does soil the beautiful Carolina Coast, we certainly don’t expect anything much from ourselves, from We The People. Blame BP and Uncle Sam, The People say, but whatever you do, do not blame us, and do not ask anything from us.
The People, you see, are fickle. The People change their minds all the time. The political climate changes almost daily. We the People are fickle and we are dangerous. We The People may have created this wonderful
American experiment, but we The People might destroy it, too. The People are huge in American society. In fact, ours is the first government ever to be held accountable to The People. The People are huge in the Bible, too, especially in Exodus. There’s a constant back and forth, on-again, off-again relationship between God and The People in Exodus. The People there were the Israelites. The People had been slaves for four hundred years. Finally, this fellow named Moses came to them and told them that God would free them from slavery, which sounded like a great idea. So The People, in Chapter 4, “believed and bowed down and worshipped.” It sounds good, doesn’t it? And sure enough, after a lot of haggling between Moses and Pharaoh, and after those nine plagues and all, Pharaoh finally let The People go.
But then Pharaoh chased them down and cornered them against the Red Sea, and The People changed their tune really fast. Regardless of what God had promised and that God had already fulfilled many of those promises, regardless that God did the impossible by even getting The People free from Pharaoh to begin with, regardless that God pulled four hundred years of free labor away from the strongest economy in the world, The People had had it with God. Their praise had turned to scorn. “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you took us to die in the wilderness,” they asked sarcastically? “Is this not the very thing we told you in Egypt, to ‘leave us alone and let us serve the Egyptians?Ҕ Well, actually, they never said that at all. They were thrilled about leaving Egypt. Only afterwards their heartburn begin. But sure enough, God heard their complaining and miraculously got them through the Red Sea away from the Egyptian Army.
So they went further in the wilderness. And they got hungry. And they had had it again. They griped again. “If only we had died in Egypt,” they said. Never mind that God brought them out of Egypt at their bequest, and that God delivered them from the strongest army in the world. Never mind any of that. The People griped, and whined, and moaned and groaned, and belly-ached again. The People in Exodus were always griping.
On one hand, it’s easy to look at The People and see nothing but griping. In fact, it’s easy to look at The People and see ourselves, and not be very flattered. Yet, it’s also fair to say that The People had a point. I am sure that when Moses first mentioned freedom to them, they had something other than the wilderness in mind. The wilderness was terrifying. The People were essentially homeless there. You go be homeless for a while and see if you don’t whine and turn into an alcoholic. People got killed out there. Slavery may have been bad, but at least it was secure, and at least it had food and water. At least their children were healthy, even if they were sold on the market like we’d sell a cow. And of course The People got a little concerned when strongest army in the world had them in its cross-hairs? If God really is God and really is in charge, then what does it mean if your children starve to death? It doesn’t take long for a physical crisis to become a spiritual crisis. We understand that. That’s happened to all of us at one point or another.
So maybe it’s wrong to say that The People griped. Maybe they sincerely prayed, and God heard their prayer. God did become angry with The People, but not this time. The People said they needed deliverance, God heard them and gave them deliverance. The People said that they needed food, and God heard them and gave them food. God may not have given them prime rib, but God provided. Neither did God get them out of the wilderness, at least not initially. But God did go in the wilderness himself and walk with them.
Of course, it’s kind of nice not to have to mess with the wilderness. Whereas these People leaned solely on God’s grace for their needs (there was no other choice), it’s easy for us to forget about God’s grace, which they eventually did, too. One of my favorite times of the day is at supper when we pray. We actually don’t pray at all, but our girls pray. Our oldest girl leads the prayer and our youngest girl chimes in as she sees fit. And I love it. I can’t say how much I love watching them pray. Of course, it never occurs to me that the meal that we’re all about to eat really is a gift, and if my family and I will ever eat another one, it will be a gift, too. Or that we really might die before we wake, and if we do wake, that is a gift, too, and not by any means a right or something that I have earned. Jesus told the devil when he was tempted that “man doesn’t live on bread alone, but on every Word that comes from God.” We’ve altered that a little bit. We don’t live on bread alone, but on our own merits and accomplishments. So frankly, who needs God? Or maybe to put it another way, if you fail to see God in the mundane things of life like eating, waking up, and breathing, how are you going to see anything more than that?
So what would be honest prayers of lament turn into griping. For example, it’s a little upsetting for us to think that 40,000 children will die today of hunger. So what do we do? Well, we get upset and we pray/complain about it to God. But think about the obesity epidemic in this country or how much food we all throw away every day. It’s a little disingenuous, then, for us to pray that God feeds the 40,000 children in world who starve to death today when we could feed them ourselves, but don’t. Or it’s a little disingenuous for us pray that God would clean up the oil spill when we consume so much of it. We forget that it is God who supplies our needs in the first place. But we want more, and, dad-gum it, we can provide more, and so we go for it, even if others end up with not enough.
The People are a strange bunch in the Bible. Sometimes they have a great point, such as in what we read from Exodus this morning. In both those cases, God heard their cry and answered their prayers. God’s wrath did not burn hot against them then. God was not consumed in anger at them. God did not forget. God remembers The People. We The Peoples’ problem is that we forget God. We often act as if we are provident when God is provident. We often act as if we are the center of the universe, when in fact God is the center of the universe. We The People are fickle. God has a very good record of hearing The People when they pray. But The People in the Bible, and We The People, don’t pray very much. Why pray when can care for ourselves? That’s when The People get in trouble.
So let us all pray, and let us, The People, remember who and whose we are. We may be in the wilderness. We may be in the valley of the shadow of death. And we may have some very legitimate complaints against God. We may have some very real laments, and that’s okay. The Psalms are full of such laments. But sometimes we The People gripe, and whine, and moan, and belly-ache. Sometimes we pray for things that God has actually already given us. And most of the time, we completely forget about God. So let us not forget whose world this really is. Let us not forget God. And let us be thankful that God surely has not forgotten us.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
