​     When I needed evergreen boughs for an altar, I liked to cut branches from the juniper bush down by the road or the white pine out by the hay field and the compost pile. When I wasn’t careful... which, to be fair, was several Sunday... I got white pine sap all over my hands. I also learned that the alcohol in the hand sanitizer (of which we had quite a lot) is great for getting rid of pine sap. That was a new piece of learning for me during Covid times.

     Marie Hatfield always brought me pussywillow branches for the altar on Palm Sunday. In northern European countries, where palms were once in short supply, the fuzzy willows became the traditional substitute. When I made an altar at home, in my dining room, for digital worship, I found the branches for the altar in the messy flower garden to the north of our house. It’s like one of the families that lived here before we did just knew that there would be a preacher living here during a plague and trying to figure out how to lead worship from home. The pussywillow, when I realized that I could cut branches from it for worship, felt like a gift.

     For months, my worship preparation on Sunday morning began like this: I get up, put on my clerical shirt, a cardigan, and some jeans. I scrounge around in the kitchen for scissors. And, then, I walk outside and across the land where we live to look for flowers and sticks and sometimes rocks for the altar, which was really the bar in our dining room. In my pre-worship walks, I learned that the crabapple in front often has red fruit that hangs on through the winter and early spring, good for a bit of color on a cold morning. The bare red twig dogwood branches out by the old goat barn are nice and red, too. As I walked and looked, I realized that there are at least three varieties of daffodils in so many places in the yard, evidence of the borders of flower beds, long gone, once planted by families who lived here 50, 30, 15 years ago. The poet narcissus that I found growing along the bank near the road are so lovely. They also make me sneeze so much, a fact I didn’t learn until I cut roughly 20 of them for a squat little vase I have and placed them 2 feet behind my head, on the altar, one Sunday. I think I made it to the Call to Worship before I had to move them. I had the same issue with the lilacs.

     Grape Hyacinths, tall phlox, hawkweed, scilla... beautiful flowers that grow every year on the land on which we live that I hadn’t bothered to learn the name of until I began to walk and gather them for our altar. The tall phlox grows alongside the peonies next to the driveway. The hyacinths spring up with the scilla and jonquils along the wall outside of our living room window. The hardy rugosa roses grow along the road. The multiflora roses are slowly devouring one of the flower beds on the north side of the house. Lupines, chervil, black-eyed susans, bleeding hearts are all in that same garden. I walked and I looked and saw that asters, dandelions, goldenrod, and red clover are... everywhere. On fall mornings, when jacket weather returned, I gathered white oak leaves and red maple leaves for the altar, both brilliant red, after most of the flowers were gone.

     Dr. Dennis Bratcher, in the Harper Collins Bible Dictionary, defines a pilgrimage as “a journey to a shrine, holy place, or sanctuary for a religious reason.” In the Bible, Jacob once built an altar in a place called Bethel because he had seen God there in a dream. He made a pilgrimage back to that altar later in his life. King David and his son Solomon, through their kingdom-building centered in Jerusalem, helped to create the traditions of pilgrimages to Jerusalem. You see, the Ark of the Covenant was in the Temple. And, the Temple was in Jerusalem. Even after the Ark was taken and the temple destroyed, Jerusalem, Zion, was still a focal point of the people’s faith. In his article about pilgrimages, Bratcher notes that when the temple was rebuilt in Jerusalem, even without the ark, faithful Jewish people would often make the pilgrimage to the city, the center of their devotion, three times a year: for Passover, for Pentecost, and for Sukkoth.

     Today’s reading is a psalm about the joy of the pilgrimage to Jerusalem. “How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of Hosts! My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God!” The pilgrim longs to be in God’s presence... to be near God in the temple. The scholar J. Dwayne Howell notes that it is not simply people who find solace near God in the temple. The animals of creation have found a home there as well: “Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise.” Remember when the birds nested in the forsythia wreaths on the church doors five or six years ago? These verses remind me of that.

     But, it is not simply the Temple that is close to God. The pilgrimage itself is blessed and hope-filled. Happiness is having the highways to Zion start in your heart and move into your feet. You heard the reference to the Valley of Baca. It turns out that that was an actual oasis in the midst of the pilgrimage, a blessed place of refuge on the way to the greatest sanctuary. From longing in one’s heart through the oases into the temple... the Psalmist calls this “going from strength to strength,” being inspired by God, moving with God, and drawing near to God in Zion.

     So many of our recent readings have centered visions of God as one invested in humanity’s well-being, as close to us as the bread we eat and the table we sit around, a God that is invitational and welcoming, invested in relationships that are loving, intimate, and tend to humanity’s basic needs. We can remember the house Wisdom built in Proverbs... big building, broad table, piles of food ready for any who would walk in the door. The Psalmist is so deeply moved by the potential for an intimate relationship with God that they would take the job of a servant in God’s house just be close to God. “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than live in the tents of wickedness.” Psalm 84 calls the ones who trust God happy. And, God will provide for the people on the pilgrimage both a sun for warmth and light and a shield for protection. No wonder the Psalmist yearns to be near God. As the scholar Mary Alice Mulligan puts it in a commentary she wrote on this text, “In God’s house people live in safety, holiness, and justice.”

     After returning to lead worship following a couple Sundays off, I realized that I had come to appreciate the walks around the land where we live. I knew the land and the plants better for having walked through them.  I thought more intentionally about what it meant to make good use of what someone else had planted for the worship services of this moment. The walks to find flowers for the altar at home became a kind of pilgrimage, leading me to a different sanctuary in a time when gathering in the sanctuary of our church building was not safe. As I pulled together the flowers and branches I cut along with paraments from church and art from our house, and sometimes even bread and wine from our kitchen, the bar in the dining room became, if not Temple, an oasis along the way to the sanctuary where I was accustomed to drawing near to God. Isn’t it good to be reminded by Psalm 84 that God is in the midst of the pilgrimage as well as the goal of the pilgrimage. God is found on the highways and trails in the wilderness and creation will find a home in God.

     Where have you met the God of your longing lately? Have you found your Valley of Baca, a place of holy respite on the journey? May we find all find God’s home of safety, holiness, and justice. And, may we serve in that sanctuary as doorkeepers, ready to open the door to the next one’s who come seeking God.
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Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
 

Guess who’s invited to dinner? You are. You are, too. And, you. And, all y’all on-line. We are all invited to dinner and Wisdom is cooking up a storm. Imagine the kitchen before Thanksgiving. Now, add the kitchen before Christmas. Now, add Easter supper and special birthday dinners and just a sprinkle of a wedding reception. We are talking about a big celebration or maybe just a Sunday Supper that always seems like a party. And, Wisdom is running the show and the reason we are there.
In a commentary she wrote on the text, Dr. Wil Gafney notes Wisdom is a woman at work. Wisdom is God’s Wisdom, represented as what Dr. Gafney calls an “independent and autonomous entity.” Dr. Gafney notes that, after working with God in building creation in chapter 8, Wisdom sets about hosting a great banquet. But, as Dr. Gafney notes, she doesn’t simply order other people to prepare for the celebration, as many wealthy and powerful people would. No. Wisdom joins right in with the work herself. 
 Look at all she does in just six verses. She builds an entire house. Do you know how long it takes to build a house? Of course you do. You all are a handy bunch. That means you also know how many skills it takes to build a house: Carpentry, masonry, plumbing, painting, engineering, design. It takes so much work to build a house. It’s sounds like it’s not a very small house either.  It’s more like a banquet hall. You see, Wisdom is throwing a big party and needs a big space to host them all. So, she builds a house, directing her staff and working alongside of them, in a flannel shirt and work pants, with steel-toed boots, no doubt. Wisdom will make sure she has room for everybody who walks in her door. In fact, she’ll build the chairs herself.
Her home is both practical and beautiful. She has created seven pillars. While scholars disagree on why the scripture is so specific about the number and presence of the pillars, it seems clear that these pillars aren’t just posts to hold up a wall. Dr. Sarah Koenig notes that this kind of architecture is intended to be awe-inspiring, honoring God and marking this home as a site of something holy and good. And into this good and holy place, Wisdom will invite her guest.
I imagine her holding court in her kitchen. No doubt, you have seen someone at work like Wisdom was at work in this scripture. Imagine her in your mind now. Maybe it’s even you, having inherited the task of builder, host, and chef from your mother or grandmother or aunt. Directions and invitations ring out through the house: “Here, go cut these onions. Wash that big skillet and put it on the stove. Oh, it's almost time to put on the potatoes. Can someone find the good table cloths?” Wisdom brings out the good wine and the fancy grape juice. Wisdom sets her table, pulling out every mismatched plate in the house because she knows that people will keep showing up, and having a place for each and every one of them is more important that having matching dinnerware. 
Wisdom builds a house and builds a table and cooks dinner... all in two verses. In the third, she sends out the invitations. She sends the girls from her household out to bring the neighbors. She also goes out to the highest places in town and shouts out to anyone who can hear, “Come on over! The table is full! We’ve got plenty to share.”  She invites people she’s never met before, called here “the simple” and “those without sense.” It’s kind of funny word play, right? Because, if you’ve met Wisdom before, you wouldn’t be without sense, would you? It matters to her that she shares what she has with those who don’t already have it. She wanted them to come so badly that she went out herself, hostess of the party, and rounded up the guests who needed to be there most!
The final verse in our reading shows Wisdom inviting people to “walk in the way of insight.” What does this scripture mean when it talks about “insight”? I have appreciated the ways that Dr. Gafney unpacks the ideas around biblical wisdom helpful. She says that wisdom is not simply intellect. It is also a skill... expertise honed by experience and practice. Dr. Gafney notes that in the Bible, a person who is wise does not come to wisdom immediately. Wisdom is cultivated in the same way that an apprentice learns a skill from a master. Wisdom is your grandmother showing you how to add enough flour to dough to keep it from sticking as you roll it out. Wisdom is the mom who makes sure you point the knife away from your thumb when you carve, not towards it, so you don’t slip and cut yourself. Dr. Gafney calls this “heart-and-head knowledge.” In scripture, Wisdom is teaching, practicing, listening, learning, and knowing all wrapped up together.
In her commentary on this text, Dr. Gafney made a list of some of the people who are called wise in the Hebrew Bible: the people who build a tabernacle, that is a resting place and home base, for God in the book of Exodus; the people of Israel who keep God’s commandments in Deuteronomy; the shrewd woman who leads her people and saves them from death in 2 Samuel 20:22; and King Solomon, in 1 Kings 4, who was able to build a country because he uses his wisdom to build up his people. Dr. Gafney says that their examples show us that “[W]isdom is craft: statecraft, Torah-craft, craftwomanship, craftsmanship and craftiness.” Wisdom is using all your wit, all your training, all your intuition that you have honed through experience, to honor God and to save your people. Here in Proverbs, a book dedicated to convincing younger people to dedicate themselves to God, we are shown a metaphor of Wisdom setting out a feast for strangers who haven’t met her yet. God hopes that you will crave insight as much as you crave a really good piece of pie. 
This is a compelling vision of God’s Wisdom, isn’t it? A woman, competent and welcoming, ready to empower you and make sure you have what you need to thrive. We’ve been spending so much time lately talking about the ways that God is best understood in metaphors of abundance: in Elisha feeding folks in a famine, in Jesus feeding the 5,000, in God offering quail and manna. And, here, we have God’s Wisdom, building a big house, setting a big table, and drawing in the people who need her most to eat and be full and be changed by eating together. Our God is not a God who forces people to fight for scraps. Our God builds bigger and bigger tables. Wisdom keeps inviting us over for dinner.
This part of Proverbs is one of my favorite parts of the Bible. I am heartened by the way that it reminds us that from the earliest days of the faith that we have grown to call our own, well before there was anything called Winthrop Congregational Church United Church of Christ, well before there was even anything called Christianity, there was God and there was Wisdom and there was an invitation. There was hospitality and practice and work together to make something beautiful and useful. Some of us have been eating at Wisdom’s table for years. Some of us just showed up today, having heard her call from the hills and high places, “Come! Eat of my bread and the wine I have mixed.” Hers is a table we can return to again and again.
And, not only do we return as guests to this table, but we also learn how to set the table alongside her. We can become the girls she sends out to invite others. Wisdom shows us how to build this table and cook this meal at her side, so we can go out into the street and invite others to the feast. We take what we have learned, add in the leaf, pull up more chairs, and making the table bigger. We cook bigger piles of food. This story reminds us that ours is a faith rooted in this vision of abundance, of a table full of food that is always there if you but step in the door looking for it. We can even learn to prepare this kind of meal, to build this hospitable home, by the side of the One who makes it best. Guess who’s invited to dinner? All of us. And, the ones whom we don’t even know yet. We better get ready to scooch over and make some space.
Resources consulted while writing the sermon:
Wil Gafney: http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1360
Sara Koenig: http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=370
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Even Karoline Lewis, who wrote what is probably my favorite commentary on the book of John recognized how difficult this metaphor is to parse out. You see, whomever put together our reading series decided to have us consider Jesus as the bread of heaven for five Sundays in a row. Lewis said, and I agree, “How much can you preach on Jesus as the Bread of Life?” I decided that I probably couldn’t swing five sermons. But, I bet I could work on one, because, it is a fascinating metaphor isn’t it? What does it mean for Jesus to understand himself to be like bread? And, what does it mean for the people who follow him? 

     The last time I was invited to preach on this text was three years ago, on a morning when we had three baptisms, that of Penny Pray, Gaby Lazure, and Alice Lazure. It was also a morning where the rain nearly up-ended our plans. You see, we were supposed to be at our church camp. If it rained, there was no way we could all huddle inside that little building. Thank goodness Penny said we could come to her place. We got the phone and email tree going and stuck Doug Whittier, if I remember correctly, on the camp road to redirect anyone who didn’t get the message.

     In that service, hummingbirds and loons dropped by to remind us of the Holy Spirit showing up like a dove at Jesus’ baptism. Water skiers zoomed by, waving and sharing a bit of joy with us. Mel Burrowes played music for us. And, Kate Goodspeed was our reader. We had two reading for that Sunday. Kate read the first one, which was today’s text from John and a second from Ephesians, 4:25-5.2. I would go on to preach the Ephesians text. When I mentioned my choice, to my delight, Kate said “thank goodness” or something like that. She had noticed that the John text is an awfully weird one. It definitely talks about eating Jesus’ flesh like bread and, well, given that we are don’t believe that we are actually eating Jesus when we take communion, sorting out this kind of squishy metaphor is... complicated.

     Even Karoline Lewis, who wrote what is probably my favorite commentary on the book of John recognized how difficult this metaphor is to parse out. You see, whomever put together our reading series decided to have us consider Jesus as the bread of heaven for five Sundays in a row. Lewis said, and I agree, “How much can you preach on Jesus as the Bread of Life?” I decided that I probably couldn’t swing five sermons. But, I bet I could work on one, because, it is a fascinating metaphor isn’t it? What does it mean for Jesus to understand himself to be like bread? And, what does it mean for the people who follow him? 

     Here are a couple stories we need to keep in mind when we hear Jesus call himself bread of heaven: the story of God feeding the Israelites in the desert and Jesus feeding the people by the Sea of Galilee. I have preached on those two stories. See, I needed a little lead in to get to today. If you remember from my sermon last week, when the people were six weeks into the wilderness and had grown afraid... when they misremembered the predictability of slavery as stability... God reminded them that slavery wasn’t great and the way forward into liberation was through God’s abundance. Even though the journey would be hard, God would provide for them. The manna and quail were meant to renew the faith and replenish the bodies of the people journeying to the Promised Land.

     Two weeks ago, I preached on John’s version of the feeding of the 5,000. Remember, it’s the only miracle story that is in all four Gospels. In that story, Jesus demonstrated the ways that God’s compassion and abundance moves through him by feeding an enormous crowd using a little bit of food donated from a child. He later walks on water, too, telling his disciples not to be afraid. It is the day after feeding all the people and walking on water that Jesus starts talking about food metaphors. Notice he feeds the hungry people first, like God for the Israelites. But, the food becomes a way that they can learn more about God, and, specifically, how Jesus is the Incarnation, God’s Word become Flesh.

     Usually when I hear people say “you are what you eat,” they are trying to shame other people about their food choices and bodies. That is not how Jesus talks about food in John 6, though he does worry that people will get distracted by the food he shared with them and forget the message behind in. A few verses before our reading today, Jesus says to the people whom he had fed the day before that he thinks they are just showing up because he fed them. He says “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” And, then Jesus unpacks how he understands his own mission as being a gift from God to renew and replenish God’s people.

     In her commentary on this chapter, Karoline Lewis notes that bread is a significant foodstuff for the people that Jesus is preaching to. It is a part of every meal and often the only meal people had. To have bread is to have food. To have food is to have life. Bread is connected to the ability to live and survive in this world. Jesus seems to choose bread as his metaphor because it is so loaded with connections to survival, both in everyday foods, in general, and in the specific story of God providing manna in the wilderness. Lewis notes that, like the story of the woman at the well in chapter 4, whom Jesus offers Living Water, this metaphor of the bread of life demonstrates that what Jesus provides is “basic, indispensable for life.” God provided the manna, which made life possible. God provided Jesus, who gives new life to those who follow him. The bread and the fish, which Jesus gave them to support their living, helped them see him as this life-giver from God.

     When Jesus says, “I am the bread of life,” he is reasserting his claim to his divine mission, that he has been sent from God, like the manna, to renew and replenish the people. That is where we started today’s reading, with Jesus saying, remember, God sent the bread and God is sending me. My mission is love and abundance and life. Our reading skips some stuff where he explains that this means believing in him will be as satisfying as eating and drinking when hungry and thirsty. He says that belief will provide what one of my friends calls “soul sustenance” straight from God. And, these people, who know his family and know his past, can’t quite wrap their heads around him ever being more that Joseph and Mary’s son. We’ve heard this before, haven’t we? They understand their relationship with Jesus in one way, as neighbor, child at the synagogue, teenager arguing with his parents. And, Jesus is inviting them to understand their relationship with him in a new way, as a source of New Life, sent to them by God, as God once sent them manna from heaven. They are hesitant to see him in any other way than how they have known him.

     Lewis argues, and I’m inclined to follow her argument, that at the core of the book of John is a message that abiding with Jesus, that is being relationship with Jesus, brings New Life. This bread metaphor, with connections to the physical acts of eating nourishment sharing food, as well as historical connections to the shared Jewish story of being tended to in the wilderness by an ever-present, food-producing God, is being used to help the people connect being in relationship with Jesus to being in relationship with the ever-present God. To believe in Jesus is to draw near to him, to be in relationship... to abide with him. In the past, the people ate what God had sent, that was, manna and quail. But, Jesus says, those people eventually died. Relationship with Jesus, though, will be different. He asserts that there is an eternity that relationship with him has to offer.

     All of that seems well and good. But, what about this eating flesh business. That’s the most disconcerting part of this metaphor. As I wrote this sermon, and remembered that day on the lake three years ago, I remembered how our faith is lived out in our bodies, bodies that shivered in cold lake water, that stood strong on skis, and felt the rhythm of the songs we played and sang together. Our faith is lived in bodies nourished by the food we shared on Penny’s deck as much as the fellowship we shared by the lakeshore.
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     John tells us that Jesus was the Word made Flesh. Flesh like our flesh, that lived and moved and was nourished by God. Flesh that was born and tended to like ours. Flesh, life, that flourished in relationship with, and for, humanity. To assert that he was bread and that he was flesh was to remind people that, though he understood himself to be from heaven, his calling was to be here, providing life and renewal, physical and spiritual, to God’s people. Our relationship with Jesus is not up in the clouds, but right here, as close as the bodies in which we live. To know Jesus is to feel him as closely as the bread we eat and the flesh it becomes. The metaphor is still complicated. But, relationships are complicated. At least in this one, we know we’ll be fed. And, maybe that’s the kind of renewal he offers. Not quite quail, but new life all the same. 
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Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
Karoline Lewis, John: Fortress Biblical Preaching Commentaries (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014)

Exodus 16:2-4,9-15 
2The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. 3The 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 fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.’ 
4 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. 
9 Then Moses said to Aaron, ‘Say to the whole congregation of the Israelites, “Draw near to the Lord, for he has heard your complaining.” ’ 10And as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the Israelites, they looked towards the wilderness, and the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. 11The Lord spoke to Moses and said, 12‘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.” ’ 
13 In the evening quails came up and covered the camp; and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. 14When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. 15When 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. ​

     I have heard that it is a curse to be told “may you live in interesting times.” And, while I’m not sure I’d call our current times cursed, they are certainly interesting. And, by interesting, I mean exhausting, frustrating, and difficult to plan in. They are certainly plague-ish, minus the frogs. Just about the time I feel like I’ve got a good idea about how to move about in the world as safely as possible, something new, and often bad, happens. While I’m not exactly yearning for normal, I could really use a dose of predictable for a while. As I read today’s scripture, I felt some resonance with the Israelites. Their lives have been interesting. And they are very tired of interesting.

     These days, whenever I read this story of freed people missing the place of their enslavement, I remember that Margaret Atwood quote from A Handmaid's Tale: "Girls, I know this must feel very strange. But ordinary is just what you're used to. This may not seem ordinary to you right now, but after a time, it will. This will become ordinary." This Israelites were longing for the ordinary, even in the midst of the extraordinary. This Bible story confirms what the newer novel tells us. People are capable of adapting to many difficult situations. So many hard things can become ordinary. When that happens, a new situation, even a better situation, can become terrifying. In the face of frightening uncertainty and predictable ordinariness, some would choose the ordinary, even when it is slavery, rather than reach for the extraordinary, even when the extraordinary promises liberation and grace and new life.

     When we encounter the Israelites in the desert in our reading in Exodus, we learn that many of them would choose a terrible ordinariness over extraordinary uncertainty. The story tells us that these people have experienced the great power of God. They have seen the plagues that rained down upon Egypt at God's behest. They had run across the floor of a sea, with the waters churning safely at their sides, and then watched as Pharaoh and his army was unable to do the same. They had followed a miraculous pillar of fire and cloud towards freedom. And, yet, they had grown deeply afraid. In their fear, they began to complain. They will complain about a lot of stuff in the next 40 years in the desert. The very first thing they complain about is the food... or the fear that they won't have enough of it. What is the use, they say, of escaping Egypt if we are just going to die of starvation here in the desert? Yes, we are now “free,” we guess. Are we going to be able to eat?

     This is the temptation of the ordinary. As slaves, at least they knew what to expect in their days. Back-breaking work, abuse by overseers, food enough to allow them to work, and a little sleep. Wake up and do it all again. Day in and day out, they understood what was expected of them. And yet, even though life was hard and they cried out to God to save them from it, the Israelites had grown accustomed to it. Oppression had become ordinary. In fearful times on the road, when nothing seemed ordinary or even like anything that had ever happened to them before, the fear would overcome them.  Their bellies rumbled and they looked at the desert, and in moments of terror, they, as Dr. Stephen B. Reid describes it in his commentary on this text, misremember slavery as a time of stability.

     Now, to be fair, it was probably reasonable for the Israelites to be worrying. They were in the wilderness after all, and the wilderness, as we have discussed before, is a hard place to live. Scholar Wil Gafney points out that, at this point in the story, they've been in the wilderness for a while, probably six weeks. It has been six weeks since the miracles of the parting of the Sea of Reeds and the plagues in Egypt. It has also been six weeks since they left the oasis with fresh water and abundant food. They are six weeks into a journey that they don't yet know will turn into 40 years, and they are definitely getting worried. Let’s remember what it was like for us last summer, six weeks into Covid precautions. I’ve looked back at emails I wrote and conversations I had wondering when we could “get back to normal.” I had no idea what the next year would look like. And, I’ve had food, cable, and a job the whole time. I haven’t been living on the run in the desert.

     I appreciate Dr. Gafney’s reminder that the Israelites had actually had a great faith... that's what had gotten them six weeks into a new life of liberation in the first place. But, in the midst of the sand and the dwindling provisions, they needed a little renewal. They needed something to remind them that if God had gotten them that far, God would make sure they got the rest of the way. Who here hasn't needed their own bit of manna and quail in order to have the courage to take the next few steps towards liberation? The gift here is that God heard their needs, and, instead of dismissing them as whining, God provided them with a way to keep going and a lesson on how to take enough without taking too much.

     One of the things I learned in my chaplaincy training is that, at some parts of our lives, we develop coping skills to survive adverse situations. Spiritual maturity comes when we learn that the skills that were able to help us in one situation aren't always the best skills to use in other situations. When I read about how God responds to the people's complaints, it reminded me of that lesson. God doesn't lash out at the Israelites and call them big whiners. God doesn’t say, hey, if you don't like freedom, you can turn around and go back to where you came from. Instead, God constructs for them a new way to order their lives, a new rhythm based not on the Pharaoh's whims or on their greatest fears, but instead on creation and God's recreation of life within their people.

     God promises to feed the people and asks them to harvest their food on a particular schedule, so that they do not begin a cycle of hoarding that can be tempting when people believe resources are scarce. God assures them that there will always be enough. In the verses that follow today’s reading, you can see the change in their lives. Slowly, their habits shift from away from the terrible ordinariness of slavery back into stride with God's creation. All of their work becomes their own work once again, oriented to their communal well-being and needs, not pharaoh's whims and power. Each family will be able to gather all they need. If they fell back into scarcity thinking and tried to hoard food, the extra they collected would rot. So, they learned to take just enough, because they didn’t need to hoard. God would always send more food. As their lives shifted from oppression into provision, their sense of the ordinary became readjusted, this time for the better.

     Something I have heard persistently in response to the pandemic is people wondering what comes next.  Some of the wondering about what comes next is planning. Some of it a deep need to spend time thinking about something other than the unpredictable, un-ordinary, overly interesting time we are in. Most of us, at least some of the time, really need things to feel normal again, whatever “normal” means. At the same time, we’ll probably realized that some things about “normal” were insufficient. Or, at the very least, will not be the things that sustains us on our next steps through the desert.  Did you see the article about how emergency Covid aid lifted so many people out of poverty? That is certainly a kind of sustenance that wasn’t available before but is helping people now. If the normal is returning them to poverty, I don’t really want to do that. I hope we can learn something from Exodus, not just about God, who will provide in abnormal, extraordinary ways in abnormal, extraordinary times, but also about ourselves, as we might hear echoes of our own fears and insecurities in this ancient story. What is God providing us right now that sustains us in our desert? And, how can we let these gifts from God realign us out of oppression and into the stride of liberation. We can’t live like we used to. Too much has changed. But, we can learn to live differently. And, the new ways we will learn to gather what God has sent to us will probably be the ways of living that carry us through to the promised land.
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Resources consulted while writing this sermon:
Exodus, Wil Gafney: https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2536
Stephen B. Reid: https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-18-2/commentary-on-exodus-162-4-9-15-5
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 1986)
Good news about an unintended side effect of the financially-based Covid relief measures: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/28/us/politics/covid-poverty-aid-programs.html