We continue our journey through the Narrative Lectionary. You may remember last week in our passage from Exodus, God hears the cries of God’s people, and God calls on Moses to go to Pharaoh and to free the people. And Moses says, “Great! I’ve been waiting for this, and I’m fully ready. Let’s go.”

No—not at all.
Good, that was a test. You were listening.

Yeah, no, Moses has multiple objections: “Not me. I’m not the right person. I don’t know enough about you. I’m not the best public speaker.” And God says, “I know, I know. I’ll be with you. You’re not alone. Aaron can go with you. Here’s a staff to remind you of my presence.”

And now, we are after the fact. The people have been liberated. We are skipping past the Red Sea story. And so we would imagine everybody’s happy, right? Everybody’s content? They’re all congratulating Moses on such a good job of getting them out of Egypt?

Wrong.

Our passage from Exodus 16. Let’s hear how the people respond:

Exodus 16:1-18

The whole congregation of the Israelites set out from Elim and came to the wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and ate our fill of bread, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” 

Then the Lord said to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day. In that way I will test them, whether they will follow my instruction or not. On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather on other days.” So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, “In the evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your complaining against the Lord. For what are we, that you complain against us?” And Moses said, “When the Lord gives you meat to eat in the evening and your fill of bread in the morning, because the Lord has heard the complaining that you utter against him—what are we? Your complaining is not against us but against the Lord.” 

Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole congregation of the Israelites: ‘Draw near to the Lord, for he has heard your complaining.’ ” And as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the Israelites, they looked toward the wilderness, and the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. The Lord spoke to Moses, “I have heard the complaining of the Israelites; say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’” 

In the evening quails came up and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. This is what the Lord has commanded: Gather as much of it as each of you needs, an omer per person according to the number of persons, all providing for those in their own tents.” The Israelites did so, some gathering more, some less. But when they measured it with an omer, those who gathered much had nothing over, and those who gathered little had no shortage; they gathered as much as each of them needed. 

For the Word of God in Scripture,
For the Word of God among us,
For the Word of God within us,
Thanks be to God.

***

Well, here we are in our church basement — our very own wilderness of sorts.

The wilderness is a special place in the Bible. It’s where spiritual things happen: temptation, prayer, fasting, silence, and more. Wilderness is the space of spiritual transformation, where the past is honored, and the future is reimagined.

But the wilderness is not something that we choose. It is usually something that happens to us. Even Jesus didn’t go into the wilderness willingly. The Gospel writer tells us that the Spirit of God threw him into the wilderness. Even Jesus didn’t go willingly.

Barbara Brown Taylor writes:

“Most of us, in fact, spend a lot of our time and money trying to stay out of the wilderness. But I don’t know anyone who succeeds at that entirely — or forever.

Sooner or later, every one of us will get taken out into the wilderness.

Maybe it looks like a hospital waiting room to you.
Or sheets on a cheap motel bed after you got kicked out of your house.
Or maybe it looked like the parking lot where you couldn’t find your car on the day that you lost your job.
It may even have been a kind of desert in the middle of your own chest, where you begged for a word from God and heard nothing but the wheezing bellows of your own breath.

Wilderness comes in so many shapes and sizes that the only way you can really tell you’re in one is to look around at what you normally count on to save your life — but you come up empty. No food. No earthly power. No special protection.”

Needless to say, this is not a situation that many of us seek.

In our passage today, the Israelites find themselves on a wilderness journey after fleeing oppression and slavery in Egypt. Things were bad there — forced labor, no breaks, poor living conditions. They had no say over anything.

And so they cry out to God, who hears their pleas and sends Moses and his sidekick Aaron to the rescue. And they escape Pharaoh’s crushing grasp.

But alas, they have nowhere to go just yet. And so they’re caught wandering in the wilderness.

Where we pick up in our passage today, the Israelites are on about day forty-five of their forty-year wilderness.

Thank goodness they don’t know it’s going to be a forty-year wilderness journey, because they’re already tired of it on day forty-five. They’ve already forgotten just how bad things were under Pharaoh. And with no end in sight and running out of food, they wonder if they might be better off had they still been back in Egypt.

Now, it would be easy for us to look down on the Israelites and criticize them at this point. How weak of them. How impatient. How ungrateful are they?

But before we do, we would do well to put ourselves in their shoes.

Now, I don’t know about you, but the gloves come off when I go without food for too long.

You remember those candy bar commercials from a few years ago? They may still be running versions of it. I don’t watch much TV. They portray someone acting strangely — usually someone who’s angry because they’re hungry — and then the tagline:

“You are not you when you’re hungry.”

And then someone gives them a candy bar, they take a bite, and everything immediately gets better.

The word for this is hangry.

Now, this is kind of an interesting aside — I thought this was a relatively new word. But I was curious, right? What would you think? I was thinking maybe the past 10 years, maybe 20?

Anybody believe the first written appearance of the word in the English language — go ahead, look it up — 1918!

People have been hangry for a very long time. It is a universal human emotion.

Hangry — and it’s a good description of what happens to the Israelites in the wilderness, and what happens to us in the wilderness.

We lose patience. Little things start to annoy us, and they feel much bigger than they really are. And we long for the way things once were.

We forget all the bad parts of what it was like to be in Egypt, and we just remember that we didn’t have to worry about our daily food.

And our behavior starts to change, right?

Where we were once feeling good and optimistic, we now feel tired and cynical.
Where we once delighted in treating others with kindness, we now feel overwhelmed by their needs.
Where we once looked forward to sharing our blessings with our neighbors, we now worry that we might not have enough — and so we start storing up more than we need.

Friends, God does not want us to be hangry.
God doesn’t want a bunch of hangry followers.

God knows that we are not ourselves when we are hungry.
And so God promises us our daily bread.

Our daily bread.

But the problem is, we prefer our weekly bread.
Monthly would be nice, sure.
Yearly would be great later in life, so we don’t have to work so hard and worry so much.

Actually, just give me a minute. Let me check on my retirement accounts here…

But God promises us our daily bread.

Why not more than daily?

I have no idea.

But maybe because God knows that no matter how much we have — daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, whatever — we will always want just a little bit more.

We always put our security, our comfort, just out of our reach, rather than being satisfied with what we already have.

But God promises us our daily bread.
God promises us enough for today.

Not enough to store more than we need or hoard resources just for ourselves, but enough when we share, and enough when we trust — enough when we take what we need and share what we can.

God gives us enough.

But it’d be great, right, if we could just get a little bit more?

No — God says, “Enough is enough.”

So here we are in our own little wilderness.

How long are we going to be here? That’s what we all want to know, right?

I don’t know. Maybe 45 days. Maybe 40 years.

Maybe… It’s probably closer to 45 days, don’t worry.

And here we are, around table, on this World Communion Sunday, where Christians all over the world gather — some of them in their sanctuaries, some of the sanctuaries beautiful and elaborate, some in sanctuaries that are tired and dilapidated, others in church basements like we are, or rooms in a house, or out in a field.

People all over the world today gather and sit around all different kinds of tables, with all different kinds of bread and different kinds of wine or juice in their cup.

And all relying on God to provide them their daily bread.

You know, my favorite part of our passage today is that after the Israelites have their little hangry hissy fit, Moses tells them again and again — right? There’s a lot of repetition in this passage — Moses tells them again and again that God will give them their daily bread.

And then in the morning, when there’s manna all over the ground, they pick it up and they say:

“What is this?”

I just love that detail in this passage, because it’s so us, isn’t it?

We are so fickle and forgetful.

When we find ourselves in the wilderness, when we’re hungry, God may be giving us the very thing that we have needed and asked for. It may be right there in our face — but we still don’t recognize it.

And we look at it and we say, “What is it?”

So Moses says to them:

“It is the bread the Lord has given you to eat.”

He reminds them of what it is — bread — but he also reminds them of what it represents: God’s loving care for them.

That exchange reminds me of the exchange that happens whenever you all come forward for communion and the server tells you what it is, and what it means.

Here in this place, we usually say: “The bread of life and the cup of salvation.”

And everyone who’s ever served communion will tell you what a privilege it is to be there for that moment, again and again and again, as people come forward.

It’s a holy thing to give these things — this bread and this cup that nourish our bodies.

It’s a holy thing to give them to each other and be reminded of what they represent: nourishment for our souls. God’s love and grace.

So today, we’re going to take advantage of being in our own wilderness.

You’ve got manna — all over your tables.
There’s not an overabundance of it, but there’s enough.
It is all gluten-free.
There’s a variety of kinds.
There are toothpicks.
There is grape juice.

When the time comes, I would like to invite each of you to serve each other around the table.

So if you’re not sitting at a table — for those in the choir, you might want to find a table, or we might make a little circle here. There are elements here too, so…

There’s no set pattern. It’s going to be a little bit of a free-for-all, but I trust you.

So some brave soul will start off at your table or your gathering. You’ll get the basket. Beware — the basket does have a cup of juice in it. So when you grab it, don’t grab it too quickly.

And I invite you to serve the person next to you.

Who’s being served — receiving the element — might want to say:

“What is this?”

Then you, as the server, are invited to tell them.

You might say something like Moses:

“This is the bread the Lord has given you to eat.”

Or you can use the other traditional language that we use:

“The bread of life, the cup of salvation.”

You could just be matter-of-fact about it if you want:

“It’s some bread and juice — would you like some?”

That’s okay too.

Or you could say:

“This is bread and juice that represents God’s love.”

Whatever the words are, there are no right words.
Well — make them kind words. But generally speaking, there are no right or wrong words.

The words that are on your heart — have that holy exchange by just sharing bread and juice with one another around the table.

Because the truth of the matter is that we all know the wilderness.

We may have found ourselves there in the past, and we will most likely find ourselves there again at some point in the future.

Now, let me be clear — I know we don’t want to go there.
But it’s not always up to us, is it?

And when we are there — wherever the wilderness is for you — we need reminding that the thing we most need may be staring us right in the face, and we don’t know it.

Be it bread.
Or a cup.
Or a friend and companion to lean on.
Or simply the quiet grace of God that is saving us by not showing us the whole picture all at once. Saving us by withholding what we do not need. Saving us by giving us this day what we need for just today.

Because when it comes to God’s love, God’s caring providence, God’s amazing grace, enough is always enough — and more than enough.

Thanks be to God.
Amen.

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