Along the Lenten Road: Thirsting for God

March 14, 1993

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Scripture: Exodus 17:1-7

Gripe, gripe, gripe! That’s all you hear out of people in Exodus as they wander through the Wilderness. Talk about non-stop belly-aching. Frankly, I don’t know how Moses took it.

Continual griping, for 40 years, without a break, without a let-up, at least it seems that way when you read through the narrative.

From Egypt to the Promised Land, from the Red Sea to the Jordan River, from the time they left ol’ Pharaoh stuck in the mud, to the time they finally set foot on dry land in Canaan, with a whole new generation, about the only thing you hear out of the people is an incessant barrage of bickering. The wonderfully graphic King James word, which some of the modern translations unfortunately dilute to the point of insipidness, is “murmuring”. Isn’t that a great word? MURMURING.

Doesn’t it conjure up a vivid picture in your mind? Can’t you just see those sweaty, dusty pilgrims, out in the desert, skulking around among the sand dunes, leaning over to each other, whispering behind cupped hands, and confiding in conspiratorial tones, “murmur, murmur, murmur”. It’s an unforgettable image. ALL THE MORE SO BECAUSE IT’S SO HUMAN. How easily it translates across the centuries.

It doesn’t take much to bring out the complaint in people. You’ve probably heard the old story about the apprentice monk. Even if you have, I plan to tell it. A young man felt a call to the monastic life, and while he wasn’t sure it was right for him, he signed up to take the training. He was warned that apprenticeship would be long and arduous, but he said he was ready, so they took him in and assigned him to the regimen involved.

A part of the discipline of that order had to do with speech. He would be allowed to speak only two words after ten years of training. When the ten years were up, he was brought before the Abbot and allowed to exercise his two words. He said, “Hard beds.”

Ten more years elapsed. He came back before the Abbot, who said, “What would you like to say now?” The apprentice monk replied, “Bad food.”

Another decade passed by. The Abbot was growing older. He called the now middle-aged apprentice into his office, invited him to sit down and asked him what two words he would like to say this time.

The novice monk frowned, and said, “I quit.” The Abbot said, “Well, thank goodness. What a relief. All you’ve done since you’ve been here is gripe.”

To complain IS human. AND WIDESPREAD....MAYBE almost universal. Ask anybody who

works with the public.

ELECTED OFFICIALS certainly know it. Every day they face the onslaught of citizen complaint. “Why did you fix the potholes on their street and not on ours? When are you going to get around to painting OUR crosswalk?

JOURNALISTS know complaint—“Why can’t newspapers be objective?” people say. The only thing they write about is violence and crime....If it weren’t for the left-leaning press, or the right-leaning press, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in today.

Somebody recently told me about a destitute newspaper editor who died after a long illness. The members of the staff took up a collection for his funeral. They approached one man on the street, and the solicitor said, “Could you give me $5.00 to bury an editor?” The man pulled out a $20.00 bill and said, “Here, bury four of ‘em.”

In the Church we know about complaints---It’s not uncommon in the same week to hear one person say, “I nearly froze to death in Church last Sunday”, and then to hear another person say, “I thought I was going to swelter.”

Choir and preacher get their share, too.

“Why do they let so-and-so sing? I’d rather listen to squeaking chalk being pulled over a blackboard....”

“Do you know how long he preached last week? I looked to see if my watch was broken.”

After a while, you learn to roll with it, and comfort yourself with the knowledge that

you’re not alone.

Rabbi Robert Alper has written about a new voicemail system they’re considering installing in the synagogue where he serves. The message will say, “Welcome to Temple Beth-Shalom. If you are calling from a touch-tone phone and would like membership information, press 1; for the worship schedule, press 2; to complain to the rabbi, press 3; to complain ABOUT the rabbi, press 4, 5, or 6.”

None of it would have surprised Moses. Well, maybe the technology would have surprised him, but not the querulousness. For 40 years he put up with it. Is there anything new under the sun?.

Now, admittedly, their complaint is not over a trivial matter. What’s at stake at Rephidim, in the cruel heart of the desert, is something more serious than sanctuary temperature, or choir tone, or sermon length, or some of the other issues of common congregational complaint.

What’s at stake, as they see it, is SURVIVAL itself. They’re thirsty out there....Their lips are getting parched. The insides of their mouths are beginning to taste like cotton. And they don’t see any way out. THEY’RE CAUGHT IN THIS HOLE. Rephidim is not to be confused with Palm Springs. We’re talking about the end of the line here, the absolute jumping off place. People went from Rephidim to HELL for vacation.

IT GETS TO THEM. They’re not used to this.

And they look around at the sere, bone-dry terrain that surrounds them, realizing that they’re miles from their old base of operations back there...and even further from a destination that for all they know may have no more reality than the shimmering mirages they see on the horizon.

THE ONLY REAL THING THEY KNOW AT THE MOMENT IS THAT DEEP-THROATED THIRST.

Who’s responsible for our being out here in these scorching sands, they murmur, fixing their gaze dead on Moses. THERE’S THE ONE WHO HAS DONE THIS TO US....

There’s the culprit...murmur, murmur. Maybe it wasn’t ideal in Egypt; maybe it was cruel and harsh; maybe we were slaves there, but at least we had a sip of water when we needed it; at least we could moisten our lips once in a while.

How much longer can we go on this way? You brought us here, Mr. Big Shot Moses. It’s your fault. Did you drag us out from Egypt so you could kill us, and our children, and our cattle with thirst?

Frankly, I don’t know how Moses took it. HE ALMOST DIDN’T.

I think, in fact, he himself came close to cashing it in at that point. RIGHT THEN may have been the absolute nadir, the lowest point of the entire 40 year span. Moses very nearly lost it.

Doesn’t the tone of his plea to God with the grumblers yelping at his heels suggest he was right on the verge of breaking, right on the brink?

Even reading it, you can almost hear his voice crack. The record says he cried out to God---CRIED out--- “What shall I do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me.”

Was it his own personal safety he was worried about?---the man who had faced down Pharaoh just a few weeks earlier, the man who stood up eyeball to eyeball with the most powerful earthly figure of that era?

It would have taken more than a few hundred grumbling Hebrews to intimidate that man.

HERE WAS SOMETHING MORE OMINOUS THAN A PERSONAL THREAT. The people’s bickering sent a shiver like a knife wound through his heart.... FOR HE SAW IT FOR EXACTLY WHAT IT WAS.... TREASON...and not just to him as God’s agent, but treason to God Himself.

No wonder he cried out in anguish; no wonder he exploded. What hit him so hard was the problem behind the problem, the deeper dimension of the situation.

He understood. The shortage of water wasn’t the real problem. Sure, that was serious, but more serious still, and even more deadly, was the people’s refusal to trust God. There’s where the real pain came. The grumbling, the bickering, the murmuring over water was a symptom of faithlessness. It represented a sabotaging of loyalty. Treason is the precisely correct word, turning against your benefactor.

Moses knew God wasn’t about to abandon them now. God was going to take care of the water problem, just as God’s taken care of the Red Sea problem, and the pursuing Egyptian army problem, and the hunger problem with the provision of manna.

Didn’t they remember? Had the grumblers forgotten all that so quickly? Had they forgotten the blessings of deliverance, of freedom, of liberty, of life itself? Didn’t they remember? Had they forgotten who they were, and WHOSE they were?

Hadn’t they been with God long enough by now to know that God hadn’t brought them all this way just to let them end up as a pile of sun-bleached bones? THEY WERE ON THEIR WAY TO THE PROMISED LAND, didn’t they realize that? THEY WERE MARCHING TO ZION.

Moses wasn’t afraid for his own skin. I don’t believe that for a minute. His frustration was over the people’s refusal to trust God’s capacity and willingness to lead them out of an apparently hopeless situation.

Now, I want to be fair. I don’t want to be too hard on the people, and I sure don’t want us to be smug about it.

We can’t afford to be. Maybe we have no right to pass judgment on their performance, we who ourselves have established no great record of faithfulness in the face of extremity....I wonder how many times I’ve given away the only coat I owned to someone in need, trusting that God would somehow see that I was provided for when the next cold snap came along?

I wonder how often I’ve gone to the mat for some worthy, but unpopular cause, without calculating the consequences of what it might do to my image?

I wonder how many times I’ve completely turned a situation over to God, without looking for a back door escape route...willing, without reservation, to accept whatever God’s decision should be?

I’m afraid it wouldn’t take too long to count those times.

Or turn it around. I wonder how many times I’ve stopped short of making an honest commitment of my life to God because there was still something I didn’t quite trust God to take complete charge of? Anything like that ever happen to you?

See anything familiar out there in the desert?

Before we excoriate the grumblers too harshly, maybe we should do some closer checking on our own faithlessness. It’s a lot easier to be good-natured, and God-natured with full canteens and a shady oasis in plain view.

Still, Moses was basically right. Give him a D minus for patience, if you want to, and maybe an F for composure, but you gotta give him an A plus for FAITH. THE MAN TRUSTED GOD....really trusted God. He didn’t know HOW the problem would be solved, but he knew God well enough to know it would be.

AND HE WAS RIGHT.

I don’t know how you want to deal with the details of the “solution”. I don’t know how you interpret the striking of the rock with the rod Moses had brought with him from Egypt. It was the same rod he had used back there when he had turned the waters of the Nile blood red.

That time he had polluted the water, this time he produced fresh, clean water, good drinking water, just by striking it against a stone in the pathway.

Was it an out and out miracle, a breaking of natural law? Was it something like what water diviners in our day do all the time? There are people who make a living locating the proper spot to dig a well. I met a man one time who started out as a gold prospector, and ended up as a water prospector. He made a lot of money. Said it was a gold mine.

Maybe Moses even knew about a hidden spring nearby. I don’t know what literally happened, and that’s not the point of the story.

As the writers tell it, in beautifully pictorial language, religious language, God was already there before them when Moses led the people ahead---they picture Him as standing on the rock, the Lord God Almighty...and sustenance in the form of living water comes gushing forth for their consumption.

Think of it! What a turnaround! From murmuring to merriment; from bickering to bathing; from grumbling to gargling; from disaster to deliverance, one more time.

THE LORD HAD DONE IT AGAIN. It surprised everybody in the camp but Moses. He knew, had known all along, that as far as spiritual experience is concerned, God is at God’s best when conditions are at their worst.

Out of the apparent dead-endedness of a hopeless situation, God bestowed the gift of renewal.

Let me tell you about Dottie. When I got to this point in my preparation this week, and began focusing on the theme of newness, and renewal springing from hopelessness, I couldn’t help but think about Dottie.

I don’t know how many of you know her. She’s been a member of this congregation for over 30 years. She and Everett, her husband, moved here and joined the Church in 1960. Dottie has held a number of positions in the Church, taught Sunday School, most recently, I guess, just a couple of years ago, she was the president of the Berean Class. She and Everett usually sit right over there, about eight rows back.

Dottie developed cancer last year. Her son is a doctor. Some of you remember Bruce, I’m sure. He arranged for her to go to Virginia, where he practices, and go through the radiation treatments there. It was tough, real tough, harsh and grueling, but Dottie is a trooper. She never once murmured. She told me once, “I’m going to die. I know that. But I’m not going to die every day. I’m going to live as fully as I can for as long as I can.”

When she came back from Virginia, they moved into the Mayflower, and almost as soon as they got there, she had a spell and was taken to the hospital. There she stopped breathing and they had to initiate what they call “Code Blue”, an all out, violent procedure to get those lungs going again.

In the process, out of that extremity most of her ribs were broken, those fragile bones weakened by the radiation. They didn’t think she would live through the night.

Every day for the next three weeks looked like it would be her last...no functioning rib cage, artificial breathing, a tracheotomy...tubes, life support system...every new morning was a miracle.

At one critical point the doctor said to her, “Dottie, I know you’re suffering. We can ease your pain and you can just go to sleep. It’s your choice. Do you want to keep fighting one more day?”

Her eyes flashed. She couldn’t speak, but with a signal of her head, she nodded, YES...KEEP GOING.

One day at a time, inch by inch, maybe millimeter by millimeter, Dottie has fought back. She’s done it by determination, by hard work, by guts, and by faith. She’s even kept her sense of humor. One day I went in, and she wrote on her little note pad---that’s how she communicated---she wrote, “I talk too much.”

Last week for the first time in, I guess, 2 months, she spoke again. She had to hold her finger over an apparatus on her vocal chord, but she spoke with her own voice. I walked into the room and she called me by name. I thought at first it was a ghost. It was like a person come back from the dead.

I don’t know what the long range prognosis is. Well, yes I do, too. I think I do. I just don’t know what the short term prognosis is for Dottie. Courage, grit, and faith are not restricted to the battlefield.

Moses would have liked Dottie. If she’d been out there in the desert and a few more like her, he wouldn’t have had to name those springs “contention” and “proof”.

You see, with God the word HOPELESS simply has no meaning. The threshold of authentic religion is at the point where the thirsty soul stands before the barren rock and refuses to believe that what is “impossible” has to be.

When it looks like nothing can be done, watch out for God to make God’s move.

Now, one more thing. The Lenten tie-in. We’re supposed to be talking about the Road to Calvary this season.

How do you relate an Old Testament story of grumbling pilgrims, exhausted, thirsty, discouraged, broken down, at the tag end of their resources and with no prospects whatsoever of being delivered from their dilemma...how do you relate that to the great Passion narrative which stands at the center of the Christian story?

Ah, don’t you see.... In a way, Rephidim is Calvary. Both are where the rails run out, where there is no place left to run. BOTH ARE WHERE NOBLE DREAMS SEEM TO BE AS GOOD AS DEAD...where everything you hoped for and planned for appears to be headed for oblivion.

What the ragtag murmuring Hebrews thought about their prospects for triumph at desolate Rephidim was exactly comparable to what the disciples of Jesus thought about theirs when they watched the Roman soldiers shove their Master up the hill with a Cross on His back.

IT WAS THE END OF THE WORLD...they thought. It sure looked that way. How much would you have bet on God about 3:00 that Friday afternoon?

BUT THEY WERE WRONG. Just as the desperation of the Wilderness wanderers was turned to relief and joy by the gushing forth of water from a rock, so the cold, pallid darkness of Good Friday was turned into the most glorious Sunrise this old world has ever seen.

God is not going to be stopped. That’s the Christian Gospel. That’s the Faith on which we stand.

There are Rephidim moments in life, and grumbling may be awfully easy to do. BUT THE GOD WHO CALLED AND LEADS GOD’S PEOPLE IS FAITHFUL.

Beyond Rephidim there is water...and there is LIFE.