Written by:  Gordon McPhee

Exodus 17: 1-2 Directed by God, the whole company of Israel moved on by stages from the Wilderness of Sin. They set camp at Rephidim. And there wasn’t a drop of water for the people to drink. The people took Moses to task: “Give us water to drink.” But Moses said, “Why pester me? Why are you testing God?”

3 But the people were thirsty for water there. They complained to Moses, “Why did you take us from Egypt and drag us out here with our children and animals to die of thirst?”

4 Moses cried out in prayer to God, “What can I do with these people? Any minute now they’ll kill me!”

5-6 God said to Moses, “Go on out ahead of the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel. Take the staff you used to strike the Nile. And go. I’m going to be present before you there on the rock at Horeb. You are to strike the rock. Water will gush out of it and the people will drink.”

6-7 Moses did what he said, with the elders of Israel right there watching. He named the place Massah (Testing-Place) and Meribah (Quarreling) because of the quarreling of the Israelites and because of their testing of God when they said, “Is God here with us, or not?”

INTRODUCTION:

“DYING OF THIRST!”

Welcome to St. Simeon’s. This is our third Sunday in the season of Lent, which means we are halfway to Easter. Well, Ok, not quite. Easter is about four Sundays away, 28 days, making us only a third of the way into Lent. So whatever you choose to give up, to ‘fast’ from during Lent, you have to buck up and keep resisting temptation for a while longer. Which makes it worse, doesn't it? Resigning yourself to not having something ever again is somehow much easier than abstaining from it for a set, shorter period. Like the ad jingle for Heinz ketchup using the Carly Simon song, “Anticipation is making me wait.”

Obviously, the advertising community wouldn’t pay big bucks to use Carly Simon’s song if anticipation, the unrequited longing for something, wasn’t an effective lure encouraging us to want immediately what we don’t think we have. And unfortunately, that translates into every area of life, from waiting at a red light, tapping a toe in the waiting room or at the bus stop, and it makes us testy and impatient. Suddenly, what you’re waiting for grows to critical proportions, and that simple appointment or delay becomes a life and death crisis, at least in the eyes of anyone witnessing your reactions.

In our Old Testament reading this morning from Exodus 17, we discover a lot of hyperbole and unrequited anticipation in both Moses and the newly freed-from-slavery-in-Egypt children of Israel. They’re on their way, full of promised hope and anticipation, but, like us and our daily lives, there are delays and uncertainties which quickly escalate into a crisis of immediate need. And much like us, a concern about enough water to drink quickly becomes a matter of “Dying of Thirst!”

SERMON:

I think what attracted me to this passage in Exodus, which is almost an insignificant adendom to the Israelite travelog compared with the grand events of the Exodus, the ten plagues in Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, and the coming awesome manifestation of God on mount Sinai, is that it stands out in sharp relief from the three other positive and uplifting scriptures we read today. The Psalm began,

“Come, let’s shout praises to God,
    raise the roof for the Rock who saved us,”

and the letter to the Romans continues with the hope-filled exclamation, “We throw open our doors to God and discover at the same moment that he has already thrown open his door to us.” Also, the wonderful story in the Gospel of John of the Samaritan woman at the well and Jesus’ words to his disciples, “The Harvester isn’t waiting. He’s taking his pay, gathering in this grain that’s ripe for eternal life.”

The Exodus story, in contrast, is about grumbling and complaining, stress, fear, blame, whining, and just about every other unbecoming trait common to humanity. From which I assume you’re making a note to chat with me later about there being enough troubles in the world and people’s lives without hashing these things out from the church pulpit. Better to encourage and uplift rather than harangue about shortcomings. At which I would point out that I’m not in the pulpit, and so on and so forth.

But more seriously, I would point out that this story, especially because it readily appears to be a credible mirror of us and our lives today, reflects for us a true image of who God is and how, long before the Christian image of an understanding and loving Jesus, we already knew a caring, loving parent in God the Father.

Now, if you’re paying attention when you read the Bible, you probably recognize that the authors group stories together either to reinforce a point or to take you through logical or emotional steps to make a point, which is why context is always so important. So sandwiched between the epic adventures of the Red Sea and Sinai are a series of short episodes I would call training videos, and the text characterizes them using the word ‘testing’.

After the drowning of Pharaoh’s army in the Red Sea, Moses led the people to the Wilderness of Shur, and for three days in the wilderness, they had no water. When they finally reached water, it was undrinkable. The people complained to Moses, “So what are we supposed to drink?” and Moses cried out in prayer to God. God pointed him to a stick of wood. Moses threw it into the water, and the water turned sweet.

Next, they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees, and they stayed there for a while. We don’t know how long, but God didn’t move them on into the Wilderness of Sin until it was two and a half months after gaining their freedom from Egypt. Their food supplies were depleting, and there was little in the wilderness, so they complained to Moses that they would starve to death. This time, God didn’t even wait for Moses to pray. Taking the initiative, God instructed Moses and Aaron and introduced the Israelites to what they eventually called manna and, temporarily, to suicide quail for meat.

This is where we pick up today’s reading, in which they moved on to a valley called Rephidim, where there was no water. We’ll focus on that in a moment, but to finish our context, it was at Rephidim that the Amalekites attacked them, and Joshua led the Israelites to a victory given to them by God as Moses raised his arms over his head. This is also where we have the story of Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, teaching Moses how to better administer governing the people by appointing assistants of good standing to help him.

Like today’s story, these are all about learning to trust. To trust each other and to depend unquestioningly on an unfailing, faithful God, which was a necessary first step for the Israelites, when you consider their history. A history you may miss if you’re not paying close attention. Our biblical storyline of the Israelites makes little jumps of a decade or two from Abraham to Isaac, to Jacob, and finally Joseph, but then, beginning in Exodus, we jump about two or three hundred years into the future to the birth of Moses.

Now, imagine that the last person who truly knew your family's lineage and stories died in 1726. Benjamin Franklin had returned to Philadelphia, and Jonathan Swift’s ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ was just being published. How much of your family story do you think would have survived? And how credible and significant would those stories be for you? Abraham’s descendants had lived in Egypt for almost 380 years, a good portion of that time free and prosperous. The land of Goshen, as Joseph had called it, was home sweet home.

True, they had recently been enslaved by a fearful Pharaoh and Egyptian population, and times were hard, but not hard enough to go cheerfully off into the unknown and unfriendly wilderness chasing after a God who didn’t even have a name beyond ‘I am.” Even Moses wasn’t onside from day one, and he at one point told God he’d rather die than be left to lead the people himself. God assuredly had His work cut out for Him.

Even the Ten Plagues and the Red Sea incident would have an incidental effect against the long-term tedium and challenges of navigating a few hundred thousand people through the wilderness to a place they’d never seen and more than likely few had even heard of. What’s a God to do? Well, it seems that what you do is set up a scenario that will try the every weakness of the people, the elders, and the leader, Moses.

First, God sets the stage. He takes them to a place with no water. They don’t know anything about this God person, but they do know Moses. So they pester him about being thirsty, and Moses, who also seems to have his doubts, accepts the responsibility by defending God, saying, “Why are you testing God?”

Nonetheless, they continue to complain, and Moses, obviously exasperated because he feels responsible but has no solution, asks God an obviously rhetorical question about what he, Moses, can do with these people. It never occurs to him to put the problem into God’s hands, to trust God or think that God is both faithful and able to resolve the situation. And He certainly doesn’t consider that God engineered the situation to teach them to trust.

God, in his response, seems frustratingly oblivious to the complaining of the people and Moses’ burden and distress. It’s like He’s just not listening. “Go on out ahead of the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel. … strike the rock. Water will gush out of it, and the people will drink.” As if He’s telling Moses, What’s your problem? Why all the fuss? Don’t you know I’m God? This is a no-brainer for me. Why didn’t you just ask instead of thinking this was up to you? You and the people should have trusted Me, and I hope next time, you will”

To his credit, Moses, at least, seems to have gotten the point. He did what God had instructed him to do, with the elders of Israel right there watching, and named the places Massah (Testing-Place) and Meribah (Quarrelling) to remind them of their failing.

We can easily lose sight of this story as simply about grumbling Israelites, a frustrated Moses, and a compassionate, forgiving God. Especially since it’s the way we often see our own lives, or, more often, judgmentally, the lives of others. We forget the deliberate nature of the situation. The key words in verse 1, “Directed by God.” God didn’t misjudge the character of the people nor mistake how Moses would respond to their complaints. He is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnipresent, or He isn’t God. He knows our every thought (Psalm 139:1-4). God led them to a place with no water to test, or a better interpretation would be, teach them.

They needed to learn that there is nothing God cannot do. So that rather than desparaging one another, and complaining to and burdening each other, worrying about what they have no control over, they might begin to learn to trust the God who is both able and willing to provide. They needed to answer the question, “Is God here with us, or not?” And what I find truly exciting about this story is that God not only embraced them asking this question, but He fostered the events that precipitated it.

This story isn’t about Moses and the Children of Israel failing miserably and displeasing God. It’s the amazing, affirming story of a generous and loving God who not only invites but seeks His children, and us,  challenging, “Is God here with us, or not?” He knows it’s the only way for us to learn that we can depend entirely upon His faithfulness. We, like Moses, so often forget that even if God asks us to “Go on out ahead of the people,” we are not in charge, responsible for the plan and the outcome. That’s God’s job and God’s work, and He hasn’t relinquished any of that into our hands, except to obey Him. And frankly, even with all the revelations in Scripture, we still don’t have a clue and would only muck things up.

God directs us every day into challenges and uncertainties, to our Rephidim, where there isn’t a drop of water. And we want to know why we’ve been taken from our Egypt and dragged out here with our children and animals to die of thirst? We feel responsible for getting ourselves into this situation, that any minute now the shoe will drop and the end will come. Well, hold on. God doesn’t lead you into a crisis to see you fail or check if you’re going to make the right choices. Whatever the trial you’re facing, it is directed by God so that you can learn to put your trust and faith completely in Him. So that when you’re dying of thirst, you’ll ask the key question, “Is God here with us, or not?” And he’ll show you the answer.

Amen