March 27, 2011
Is God Among Us or Not? - Exodus 17:1-7
Pastor: Luke Maybry
DownloadI do not work on Fridays. I take Fridays off, which means that I stay home with my children. I typically enjoy that time with my children. I will have to say, though, that sometimes it’s hard. At the risk of bragging, it’s pretty gutsy on my part that I keep three children ages four and under all day. Don’t you think that’s admirable on my part? I know that doesn’t earn me any extra salary or anything, but I should get some kudos for that. On this particular morning, my oldest child was out of school, which meant that I had all three all day, which is hard. It was too cold to go outside, which is even harder. And my youngest child had a respiratory infection and was on a nebulizer, which is even harder. My middle child was, as she unfortunately often becomes, forgotten. So I got the nebulizer ready for Jack and I pinned him down my lap and stuck the mask on his face. It was torture for the poor child, bet even more so for the poor father. The one bright side of the morning was a cup of coffee, which was right beside my chair. Seeing my difficulty, my oldest child came to help me help Jack with the nebulizer. She stood right beside me, and spilled my coffee all over the floor and the $100 nebulizer. Meanwhile, forgotten Caroline had seamlessly transitioned from coloring on a coloring book to coloring on the floor. And daddy had a meltdown.
I say this with all sincerity, knowing that it may sound ridiculous, but it seems like God would have cut me some slack that morning. I was honestly trying to be the best father that I could be. Surely God is pleased with that. So it seems to me, on that particular day for example, that God could have done something to help me. Maybe God could have directed my oldest daughter to the other side of where I was sitting so she wouldn’t have spilled my coffee all over the place. Or maybe God could have, just for once, made it so where my youngest child didn’t scream like I was beating him with a chain when I gave him that nebulizer, or maybe God could have, just that one time, made Caroline happy to color by herself.
I say all of that to ask the very same question that the people of Israel asked, “Is God among us or not?” If God is among us, then how do we know it? It seemed to me on that particular Friday, as I was “enjoying” my “day off,” that God was either not among me at all, or that God was among me but was having a really good chuckle out of the whole deal. Maybe God needed some entertainment. For me, the issue was frustration. For the Israelites in the wilderness in Exodus 17, the situation was thirst. They needed water, and they needed water now. Through Moses, God had led them out of Egyptian slavery, which was almost impossible. You may remember those nine plagues that God brought against Pharaoh to bring that to pass. Then the world’s strongest fighting force at the time, the Egyptian Army, had them cornered against the Red Sea, and God, again through Moses, parted the Red Sea for them to escape. But then the people got thirsty, and God, again through Moses, made the unclean waters of Marah drinkable. Then the people got hungry. So God provided them manna from heaven to eat. And now, by Chapter 17, they are thirsty again.
You have to understand that this wilderness stuff is for the birds. Egyptian slavery was bad, it was awful, but at least it was stable. At least they had life’s necessities like water and food and shelter, none of which they had in the wilderness. Or actually, God provided all of that, but it was questionable at times. It was not guaranteed in the wilderness. There were times when the future was very much in question. And that’s the hard part.
Is God among us and, if so, how do we know that? There’s this theory about that question that I call the “tit for tat theory,” and goes something like this. God is chief. God is it. And God is good. So when we follow God, then God is good to us. The way that you know then that God is among us is, if you’re good, if you follow God, then God will sort of hook you up. Does that make sense? As my little pity-party story indicated, we need some divine intervention on occasion. We actually need divine intervention often. So when we make God happy, when we obey God, when we follow God’s commandments and laws, then God intervenes on our behalf. God hooks us up with whatever it is that we want. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? Is it?
So the way that you know that God is among us is, if you’re good, then you’ll be happy. You’ll get what you want. That theory is incredibly pervasive. And it’s attractive. It makes sense. I could name plenty of very popular preachers who preach that message to thousands and thousands of people week in and week out. It’s sort of like Karma, whatever that is, this concept that good deeds get rewarded with good things and bad deeds get rewarded with bad things. “I had ten dollars to my name,” we hear all the time, “and I tithed ten percent to the Church, I gave a dollar to Church, and now I’m a multi-millionaire.” Or “My life was in shambles, I was broke, sick, disgusted, and sad, and then I gave my life to Jesus and now everything is golden.” Follow God, obey God, and all will be well.
The problem with that theory is that, number one, it’s not all consistent with our experience. As small as it sounds, I shouldn’t have had that meltdown on that Friday. If the tit for tat theory is true, then the reason that you’re sick is because somewhere down the line, you must have sinned somewhere. It has to be. It’s karma, man. I do fully believe that our actions have consequences. It makes sense that when somebody follows God and stops drinking and starts working hard and paying his bills and spending time with his family, for example, then life gets much better. But sometimes we do follow God, and we do the very best that we can to be faithful to God, and we still get cancer, or we still lose our jobs, or we still go through the divorce, or we still somehow or other end up down in the dumps. The tit for tat theory is not true to life.
And it’s not true to the Bible, either. If it was, then Israel never would have been thirsty. If the tit for tat theory was true, then we can go all the way down the list of the things that Israel should never have been. They should never have been in the wilderness, they should never have been thirsty, or hungry, or thirsty, or cornered by the Egyptian Army against the Red Sea, or in Egyptian slavery for four hundred years. The tit for tat theory fails miserably in the Bible. Go read Ecclesiastes sometime, or Job. In fact, one of the primary ways that the people of Israel were unfaithful to God is when they turned to the gods of Baal, which essentially have this tit for tat theory.
None of that is true with God. How do we know that the Lord is among us? It’s an issue of faith. It’s not sight. Faith, according to the writer of Hebrews, “is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen… By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared (and sustained and saved) by the Word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not seen.” Faith is not sight. The last verse in this story from Exodus 17 centers this story around the people testing God. They try to call God’s bluff, to force his hand. They turn faith into sight. When Thomas asked to see and touch the scares in Jesus’ hands and side, the Risen Jesus told Thomas, “You have believed because you have seen. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet still believe.” That’s faith.
So how do we know that God is among us? In the good times, that’s fairly easy to ascertain, at least when we’re honest. We’re healthy, we’re vibrant and growing, we’re happy, all is well, God is good, life is good. What else is there to say? But what about those times when we’re not healthy, and we’ve lost our vitality, and we’re not growing anymore, we’re not happy, all is not well, and life is not so good? Is God still good? Or, is God still God? Is God among us or not?
The Presbyterian Church is older than this country itself. For most of that time, we have flourished. In fact for much of that time, we were central to American life. The US system of governance looks almost identical to the Presbyterian system of governance. That’s especially true in North Carolina. The highest governing body in the Presbyterian Church is the General Assembly. The highest governing body in North Carolina is… the General Assembly. They got that from us. We were it for a very long time. By the 1950s, we were really flourishing. We were building new Churches, building new additions, creating new presbyteries, and growing like weeds. Life was good, and faith in some ways was easy. For whatever reason, the growth stopped, and by now has reversed. In fact, it’s reversing rapidly. If you go to any Presbytery meeting, the response to that decline, and the reason given for it, is us. We’ve sinned somewhere along the way, big time. It’s our own fault. I am certainly not going to tell you that we are without sin. What I will boldly say though is that blaming us for our decline is like blaming a cancer patient for cancer. If that’s not true, then I challenge anybody to tell me what we did then that was so much more faithful than what we’re doing now.
For lots of reasons, most of which are outside of our control, the Church is in the wilderness now. The question that we naturally ask in the wilderness is, is God among us or not? What do you think? I believe that God is among us, and I also believe that God is calling us in the wilderness to do something. Maybe you’re in the wilderness personally. Maybe life is not going as well as it should. The wilderness was very harsh for Israel. People died out there. They got cold. They ran out of food and water. They got attacked. The wilderness was hard, but it was not God-forsaken. God was and is sovereign and God was and is good. God got them through the wilderness to the promised-land. God will bring us through the wilderness to the promised-land, too. We just have to keep being faithful to what God is doing here. It’s not about sight. It is about faith. So may we keep the faith and rest assured that God is keeping us.
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen.
