This week a rather sobering news report came out which must have given pause
to the parents of young children in Japan. Officials said tap water showed
elevated levels: 210 becquerels of iodine-131 per liter of water — more than
twice the recommended limit of 100 becquerels per liter for infants.
Another measurement taken later at a different site showed the level was 190
becquerels per liter. The recommended limit for adults is 300 becquerels.
Infants are particularly vulnerable to radioactive iodine, which can cause
thyroid cancer, experts say. The limits refer to sustained consumption rates,
and officials urged calm, saying parents should stop giving the tap water to
babies, but that it was no worry if the infants already had consumed small
amounts.
They said the levels posed no immediate health risk for older children or
adults. "Even if you drink this water for one year, it will not affect people's
health," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said.
Now that may sound like a comfort, but this kind of story causes people to say
to themselves, “Well, if the water is radio active, and water is necessary to
sustain all life, plants, animals, etc., how can we possibly avoid radiation
poisoning?”
This event underscores just how important water is to the survival of all life.
Without it, you can’t have life, and if there is a severe lack of it, the life
of the entire community revolves around maintaining the supply and distributing
it to the community.
Right now it’s kind of difficult to imagine what it would be like to worry about
water because we’ve known nothing but snow and rain this winter. Most of us
would be happy to part with it for a while at this point.
At the same time, we are also a community with abnormally high radiation levels
in our water. Our deep aquifers have so much Radium in them that the EPA has
demanded we remedy the situation.
Our problem isn’t anywhere near the scale of that in Japan, but it does rightly
concern us, and it’s one of the most important issues for debate in our local
elections. Our entire sense of community revolves around having an adequate
supply of potable water.
Oddly enough, when we look at the passage that we read for today, people
traditionally blame the Israelites for having that same concern. This story
takes place after Moses has led them out of their life of slavery to the
Egyptians and into the desert on their way to the Promised Land.
The land in between Egypt and Israel is a barren desert with almost nothing to
sustain a large community of passers by. There were no truck stops or hotels.
There was very little water, and a lot of what was there was undrinkable.
There was also very little food. In the previous chapter the people complain to
Moses about the fact that they have no provisions – no food. God sees this as a
legitimate complaint and miraculously provides them with a kind of bread called
manna. The believed that God dropped this bread from heaven every morning.
They also needed protein in their diet, so God caused a flock of quails to land
in their camp. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. They had plenty to eat.
But they were on their way to the Promised Land, so they didn’t stay there. They
moved on farther along the way to a place called Rephidim. That word in Hebrew
may mean “refreshes” or “supports”, but they didn’t see much of either when they
got there.
They had nothing to drink, and they were in the middle of the desert. And like
the people of Japan today, they were left to imagine the worst. People can
actually go without food for quite some time. They cannot go without water for
very long. And the hotter it is, the quicker they die of dehydration.
So I can imagine why they would come to Moses and ask for water. The fact that
they even ask implies that they believe he has the power to provide them with
water, or that he has access to God’s power, which can provide water.
But Moses doesn’t take their request as an affirmation of his power. He takes it
as a threat to his authority. He thinks they are questioning God’s authority.
And in that culture, anyone who questioned religious or divine authority was
thought to be taking their lives in their hands.
God was not thought of as one who took well to being questioned. People expected
God to react violently to murmuring and complaints. Moses was as concerned for
them as he was for himself.
But the people weren’t cowed by him. They accused Moses of leading them out of
Egypt with the promise of liberation only to bring them to a place where they
would die of dehydration. It was tantamount to accusing him of murder or
manslaughter.
Moses withdraws from the people and speaks with God about the situation. He
tells God that he’s worried the people will become angry enough to kill him.
I want you to notice that God doesn’t get angry about the situation. God doesn’t
threaten the people. God doesn’t demean Moses or call him a baby for not
standing up to them. God thinks they have a legitimate beef here. And God
provides them with exactly what they need.
God tells Moses to walk ahead of the community, taking some of their leaders
with him. Moses also has this staff which seems to carry divine power. It was
the one he used to turn the Nile River into blood, the one that turned into a
snake when he threw onto the ground in front of Pharaoh. Yeah, that staff.
When he got to a certain rock, God was waiting there. Moses took his staff and
struck the rock. When he did, water gushed out of the rock - clean, potable
water. Enough for everyone to drink and get refreshed.
It’s hard for us to understand what it’s like to be that thirsty. In the recent
movie “True Grit” the main character Rooster Cogburn and his partner LeBouef
talk about being in the wilds of the frontier without adequate water to drink.
LeBouef says that he remembered times when he was so thirsty that the only water
he could drink was some water puddled on the ground in a muddy boot print. And
he said he was happy to have that much water because he was so dehydrated.
I can’t even imagine what that must feel like. So it’s also hard for me to
picture the joy and excitement of these thirsty people when Moses strikes the
rock and water comes gushing out in the middle of the desert.
What took place wasn’t just about physical refreshment. They didn’t just have
their thirst quenched. They were struggling not only with dehydration, but also
with a sense that somehow God had abandoned them in the desert.
They named the place “Test and Quarrel” because they remembered how they had
quarreled with God and tested God’s patience there.
The result of their experience at Massah and Meribah was that they were
reassured of God’s presence in their community. The water coming out of that
rock meant that God was truly with them, even in a place that seemed so
lifeless.
Keep in mind that this story is being written and edited by people hundreds of
years later who themselves were going through a struggle just to survive. And
they realized that the real question in this story is not whether God was going
to provide water for people to drink, but whether they could say with confidence
that God was even there.
When things are going poorly, when we’re tested and when we’re stressed, it’s
easy to start asking questions about where God fits into the picture. When
things are going well, we tend to think that God is doing whatever it is that
God does. That’s why things are going well. They go so well that we don’t even
have to ask the question, “Is God among us or not?” Who cares?
But when we are pushed to the brink, and believe me there are many people who
live their lives on the brink every day, we tend to wonder where God went. That
has always been the case, and it probably always will be.
So today I want to look at this passage and see if it gives us some insight
about how we understand God’s presence and how we can deal with those times when
it feels like God’s on an extended vacation.
There are really two issues I want to highlight in this passage. First, this
passage says something about the way in which people associate their leadership
with God’s presence. Notice how Moses responds when the people ask him for
water: he says, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?”
Do you see how they associated the two? Part of the reason is because people
look to their leaders, especially in the church, to be barometers of God’s
presence.
If the leader can confidently reassure them that God is indeed among them, that
God is doing something in their community, then people are more likely to feel
God’s presence.
When a church lacks leadership, when no one seems interested in leading, or when
the church’s leadership has lost its integrity, the people begin to gain an
overall sense that maybe God isn’t so real even to the leaders anymore. People
start talking about whether or not God has moved on to greener pastures. And if
God has, maybe they should too.
To put this in practical terms, it matters greatly whether or not we have
leaders in this congregation, myself included, who are passionate, excited, and
confident that God is working through our community. No one wants to attend a
Sunday School where teachers only reluctantly accept the opportunity to teach.
No one wants to serve on a board or committee where the chairperson only leads
because no one else wanted to lead. I’ve been to those meetings. They’re no fun.
And people don’t generally experience God’s presence through the things that
committee does.
I know that we struggle to find people who will serve on committees and lead
ministries. I know people are busy, and I know they’re tired. We’d all like to
see other folks come in and take leadership positions. Lighten the load a
little. I get that.
But this passage reminds us of the connection people make between their leaders
and God’s own presence. Let’s be honest, Moses did try to get out of the job of
leading Israel. He made every excuse he could think of.
But in the end he realized that people were counting on him, that their sense of
God’s own presence in some ways depended on his willingness to be there in the
trenches with them.
You might say that was an unfair expectation to place on him. You might say that
people don’t want to bear that kind of responsibility today. I would respond by
saying that there’s no way around it, even if we don’t like it.
Some people think that the toughest part of being a minister is coming up with a
new fresh sermon every week or being with a family who has just lost a loved
one.
Those are always challenges, but I think the hardest thing about being a
minister for a long period of time is having to be the kind of person whose life
always reflects the presence of God in a way that makes God accessible and real
in the eyes of people around you.
If you’re having a life crisis, if you’re struggling with your own personal
issues, if you’re wrestling with your own faith, people still look to you to see
how real God is.
And if that sense of grounding in faith ever waivers, people really begin to
question you, and by association they begin to question everything they’ve come
to believe about God.
Now I want to be clear that I’m not saying this to solicit pity from anyone.
Most people in ministry know that this is part of the deal. And it’s honestly
not just limited to people who are pastors.
The same is true for anyone in the congregation who, for whatever reason,
becomes the kind of person that people look up to. And it’s very difficult for
fallible human beings who live in the real world to be that kind of person month
after month, year after year.
But we have to keep in mind that people need leaders whose lives, whose
demeanor, whose hopes communicate the very real sense that God is still God. If
the church’s leaders are excited about God’ presence in their community, most
others will be also.
The other point I wanted to make had to do with that staff Moses carried. Now I
know it seems like a small thing, but it really does play an important role in
what happened here.
This staff was not just some stick that Moses used to help himself over the
rough terrain in the desert. It was a symbol of God’s own power. It was a
reminder to the people of what God had done for them in the past.
They all knew that Moses used that very staff to part the Red Sea, to turn the
Nile into blood, and to demonstrate God’s power to Pharaoh, the Egyptian king.
Moses still had that staff. He carried it around and used it to make water come
out of the rock.
I’m sure that God could have caused water to come out of the rock even without
Moses’ staff. But it served as a reminder that God’s presence and power were
still with them, even when things seemed pretty grim.
My point is that we always have and still do associate certain symbols with
God’s presence and power in our community. Those symbols remind us of times when
we felt God’s power. They remind us of stories about experiences when we really
felt God with us.
And when we’re in a time of difficulty and doubt, those symbols can sometimes be
God’s way of reminding us that God hasn’t gone anywhere, that God is still
moving among us, just as God has in the past.
In our church one of those symbols is the quilt in the Merrill Room with the
names of families or phrases that remind us of the way God has historically
moved among this congregation. Take a look at that quilt again this morning when
you go downstairs.
That quilt is really a monument to God’s faithfulness and presence. It documents
the faith experience of our congregation. If God inspired and worked among us in
a way that inspired that quilt, then we have to believe that God will still work
among us today.
Another symbol for us is that wooden cross, which was fashioned in 1970 out of
wood from our original church building in the 1840’s. Take a look at the grain
of that wood. It has a rugged look that reminds you of how difficult life must
have been for the people who started this church over 170 years ago.
If you think it’s tough getting to church in the winter these days, just imagine
what it must have been like to ride to church in January on a horse or a
carriage. I know Marty has had to contend with the boilers this winter, and it’s
been a real pain. But can you imagine trying to heat this building without them,
using fireplaces?
Can you imagine having to light lots of candles every Sunday morning so that you
can see the words in the hymnal? I imagine it was pretty miserable sometimes.
I imagine people wrestled with whether or not it was worth it. And there were
probably some long winters back then where people wondered whether God was
vacationing down in Florida. I can imagine seasons when crops wouldn’t grow or
livestock got sick and died.
I can imagine our forbears wondering whether or not God was going to step in and
help out, whether God was even among them at all. That cross reminds us of our
connection to those folks.
The God who lived and worked among the people of our church even as some of them
lived through the civil war is the same God who lives among us today. If God was
faithful then, and they would tell us that God was, then we can trust God to be
faithful today.
Is the Lord among us or not? The grace of this passage is that it’s ok to ask
that question. We live in a world where a lot of people have decided that God is
most certainly not among us, that there is no order other than the one we impose
upon ourselves.
But our experience is different. We have seen the water flow out of the
proverbial rock over and over. We have tested God and quarreled with each other.
And like the people or Israel, we have always come through stronger, more secure
in our faith.
There are still lots of people out there looking for a drink. There are people
wondering if what we’re all about is just a myth. Like Moses, we need to go
ahead of them, reassuring them that God will be standing at the rock, waiting
for us to tap the water that not only quenches thirst, but wells up into eternal
life.