September 24: "Enough"

SCRIPTURE READING

A Dramatic Reading from Exodus 16

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MESSAGE

I want to thank Natasha, Alan, and John for helping me present the reading from the book of Exodus. Alan, I think you did a great job as Moses. Almost as good as Charlton Heston!

Charlton Heston, of course, played the part of Moses in the epic movie, “The Ten Commandments.” I love that movie. I’ve seen it so many time that I practically know it by heart. The movie tells the story of the exodus – the escape of the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. It’s such an exciting movie, but it’s missing an important part of the story. The movie follows the life of Moses, including his birth and childhood, his rise to power in Egypt, and finally, his call by God to be the one who would lead the slaves out of Egypt. The movie vividly portrays the Moses’ encounter with God on Mount Sinai, the 10 plagues, the parting of the Red Sea, and, of course, God’s giving the Ten Commandments to the people. But the movie leaves out the part of the story that we just heard in today’s scripture reading: the part about how God fed the people while they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years.

But I guess showing the people gathering and eating this “stuff” – this manna – that they found on the ground isn’t nearly as exciting as, say the chariots and riders drowning in the Red Sea, or God engraving the Ten Commandments on the stone tablets with fire and lightning.

But the manna is such an important part of the story, because it tells us so much about God, about the grace of God, and about God’s relationship with the people.

By the time we get to the part of the whole Moses story in this morning’s scripture reading, it is some two months after the Hebrews left Egypt. They’ve run out of food, or at least they’re pretty close to running out of food. That makes sense, because they probably had brought enough provisions with them when they left Egypt to last a few weeks.

But now, they’re stuck in the wilderness, with no place to call home, and they’re hungry. So they go to Moses and complain. But God tells Moses that the people should watch for bread that was going to “rain from the sky.”

The next morning, the people saw that the ground was covered with a “fine, flaky, white something.” They had no idea what it was, so they asked each other, “Man-hu?” which is a Hebrew phrase that means, “what is this stuff?”

Moses told them it was the bread that God had promised. Moses told them to gather just enough for each person for that day, and not to try to save any for the next day. It would be like this every day: enough fresh manna each morning for everyone’s daily need. On the sixth day, however, there would be enough man-hu on the ground so everyone could gather twice as much as necessary, so they could all rest on the Sabbath Day. That was the only time they should gather more than they needed for one day.

The story of the manna in the wilderness is more than a story about how God miraculously provided food for hungry people. This is a story about the grace of God – about what God’s grace is like, and what grace means for us. We can learn a lot about the grace of God by looking at the story of the manna.

We can learn something important about grace when we remember although the manna was God’s gracious response to the people’s need, God did not place this food right into the people’s stomachs or mouths. Instead, God left it on the ground, and it was up to the people to go out and gather it each day.

And that’s the way it is with God’s grace – it always requires a response from us. We need to do more than simply receive grace; we need to participate in God’s act of offering grace to us.

Now this is very different from saying that we need to do something in order to receive grace. God’s grace doesn’t function like our economic system, where we have to earn something, where we do something first, then we get paid for it. No, God’s grace is already given to us. Just like the manna was already on the ground each morning. All the Hebrews had to do – and all we have to do – is respond to and receive what God has already given us.

There’s another lesson about grace that we can learn from the story about manna. Like the manna, grace is given to us to use for specific purposes.

Now, imagine: seeing that manna must really have been exciting. Each morning, the people would wake up and see the ground covered with this fine, flaky stuff – stuff that could only have come from God.

But God didn’t send the manna so the people could look at it and see a miracle and go, “Oooo, ahhh . . .” The manna was given a specific purpose. It was there for the people to eat, so they wouldn’t starve during their long journey in the wilderness.

God’s grace is the same way. God doesn’t give us grace so we can “Oooo” and “ahhh” over it, or even so we can sit back and reflect on it or have profound discussions about it. God gives grace so we can use it and so we will benefit from it.

Finally, the story of the manna teaches us that the grace God provides is always enough. But, we need to remember that the Hebrews learned that the manna was always enough for each day. Except, of course, for the day before the Sabbath. On that day, God provided enough manna for two days, so the people could take a day of rest.

This idea of “enough for each day” seems contrary to the way some Christians understand grace! I’ve known people who go to church on Sundays so they can be “filled up” with enough grace to last the week, or until they can go to church again! Then they go out into their lives, not having to worry about gathering any more grace until the next time they’re in church. But that’s not how grace works. We can’t store it up for future use. We can’t stash it away for a rainy day. We need to receive the grace God provides every single day.

I want to take a moment to talk about “Grace.” It’s one of those words that we throw around a lot in the church, but we don’t always do a good job of explaining what it is. So here’s my probably oversimplified definition of grace: grace is power.

It is the power that God gives us freely so we can do what we are called to do. It’s the power to persevere in faith through difficult times, the power to find the strength to love, forgive, and care for others as Jesus did. Grace is divine power that God makes available to us.

For the Hebrew people, the manna represented much more than just “daily bread.” It also represented God’s power to help the people become the people of God, people shaped by God’s values and by God’s love for all people.

The Hebrews had been slaves in Egypt for some 400 years, so the only way of life they knew was an Egyptian way of life. While in Egypt, the slaves had to construct giant storehouses for food for the Egyptians. They had labored for generations as slaves in an empire where hoarding and competition was the norm, and where human lives were abused and broken in order to fuel the hunger of the rich and powerful.

In the story of the manna, we see God's desire to shape the Hebrews as a different kind of people, as a different kind of community. In the practice of daily gathering of food that falls from the sky, they would learn, as they work side-by-side, to come to trust their God and to learn to share their resources. They will come to know a food distribution practice completely different from the one in Egypt.  They will learn to respect and practice God’s values rather than the values of their former oppressors.

So the manna was power. Power to be freed from old ways of thinking and living, and transformed as new people who claim God’s ways of thinking, living, and being.

In the same way, the grace God offers us is power. It is power to be freed from the world’s ways and to be shaped as people who faithfully follow God’s ways. It is power to see God’s presence in even the most mundane of things.

It is power to become the people God wants us to be. And it is power to become a faith community that reaches out in mission and ministry and love to a hurting world.

This power, this grace, is already given to us. It is all around us, waiting for us to claim it, gather it up, and put it to use every day.

I haven’t been here in Cobleskill very long, but I have already seen evidence that this congregation is bubbling over with grace-filled and powerful moments and events. Can you see them, too? Do you see the grace and power in putting together flood buckets? Do you see grace and power in our Thrift Shop, our Food Pantry, even in our garage sale?

Are God’s grace and power at work in our Sunday School, our church committees and teams, and in all the volunteer work that keeps our congregation and our building functional, safe, and welcoming?

Can you see the grace and power in each wonderful, loving thing you do in the course of the each day for other people?

God has given us grace – incredible grace, powerful grace, life-changing grace . . . grace enough for each new day. Thanks be to God. Amen.