Exodus
17:1-7
The future is uncertain. Anxiety abounds.
It is an extraordinary time, indeed. But I’m not talking about the world of
today. I’m speaking of a time roughly 3.000 years ago. A time when the people
of God, recently freed from slavery in Egypt, find themselves wandering in the
wilderness. A wilderness where water, or more precisely the lack thereof,
becomes the most pressing of issues. The Israelites are thirsty. So thirsty
that their tempers run hot directing their outrage towards Moses, their leader.
But surely what is fueling their angry outbursts and threats of violence is a
rising fear. Fear that a basic need would not be met. Fear of losing control.
Fear of an unknown future. And ultimately, fear that after all they had been
through with their God that now God had abandoned them. “Is the Lord among us
or not?" they cried.
Now because hindsight is 20/20, the
answer to that question is obvious to us. We can see that the Lord was indeed
among them and that the Israelites had no need to fear. And that God was not
only present, but also responsive to their need. For when Moses brings the
people’s concerns to God, God takes charge instructing Moses to go to the rock
at Horeb and to use his staff to strike the rock so that water would come out
and the people could drink freely and quench their thirst.
Many consider this a miraculous event.
Imagining that God created the water out of nothing. And that may be so. God is
perfectly capable of doing that. However, we do know that it is natural for
water to flow in and through rock formations. And given that, perhaps this is
not an account of a miracle in the sense of God bringing forth something out of
nothing. But rather a record of divine intervention where God reveals to the
people the life that was already in their midst. Moses’ act of striking the
rock enabled what had previously been hidden to surface so that the Israelites
could see and know and experience it for themselves. Which makes me wonder that
maybe the wilderness may not be as desperate a place as one might initially
think. Just like the presence of water coursing through rock formations, God
provides gifts of life even in the most desolate of places.
Still life lived in the wilderness is
never easy - it wasn’t for the Israelites nor is it for us. For the wilderness
is not limited to a particular time or place in history. Whenever things are
uncertain, precarious or feel potentially threatening that is wilderness life.
And that is the life we are moving into right now during these extraordinary
times of the Covid-19 pandemic. These are times where we likely will experience
great thirst. Not necessarily for water, but thirst for safety, thirst for
certainty, thirst for control - and as we practice social distancing, thirst
for community. And just as it was with the Israelites, when thirst is not
immediately quenched fear can bubble up causing us to question, “Is the Lord
with us or not?”
One big challenge of wilderness living is
keeping the faith especially in the face of fear. To radically trust what we already
know, but now have the opportunity to know more fully and more deeply. That God
is faithful and good. God will not abandon us. And God is present in all places
and in all circumstances - even now, especially now.
Someday we will have the luxury of
hindsight to see exactly how this was the case. How God revealed gifts of life
and love in the midst of this wilderness time. And really I am already seeing
glimpses of this as many in our community have contacted the church with ideas
of how we might support one another in the coming weeks. But this journey is
into uncharted territory where we are called to walk by faith not by sight -
believing, trusting, knowing that just as God provided and cared for us in the
past God will continue to provide and care for us now. Our task is to stay
grounded in that assurance of faith. And to remain open and ready to receive
the gifts of life in these challenging times. One way we do this is to be aware
of our thirst. For when we thirst - in the many and various ways that we may
experience that - it gives God the opportunity to quench us with the gift of
living water. The living water that Jesus speaks of in the gospel of John where
he says, “those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be
thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water
gushing up to eternal life" (4:14).
For God is continually pouring out the
Holy Spirit into our lives - the abundance of Christ’s life, Christ’s love,
Christ’s presence gushes in us and through us meeting our deepest needs and
uniting us with God and each other. For even though we are not presently able
to gather in body we are one in the Spirit. And God’s Spirit will always find
ways to make life and love flow - even in the wilderness. So drink up and
thirst no more.
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