Pentecost 10B

10th Sunday of Pentecost, Year B

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Brothers and sisters in Christ: grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

We have three very good passages in our lessons today, but I want to focus on the Exodus lesson. I don’t know about you, but this text has always bothered me. Most likely it’s because of my very American upbringing and our passion for freedom and liberty.

This passage begins with the people of Israel complaining to their leader Moses that they would prefer to still be in slavery than to die of starvation as free people. That’s like exactly the opposite of Patrick Henry’s “Give me liberty or give me death!” [Philip Graham Ryken and R. Kent Hughes, Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005), 425.] They actually wanted to go back to Egypt, because they missed the things that they saw as “comfortable” - even if it was given to them while in the chains of slavery.

Now this is not the first time the Israelites had complained to Moses. They did so at the Red Sea, and again at Marah (where the water was bitter). And throughout their 40 years of wandering in the desert, they complained through most of it. So when we read about them “grumbling” in the early part of today’s lesson, they had been complaining well before the food problem started. We are just as human as those Israelites were, so we have the same problem: “Our complaints really are never caused by our outward circumstances. Instead they reveal the inward condition of our hearts.” [Ibid., 424.]

Even worse, the word “grumbling” really doesn’t say strongly enough what the Israelites are doing. “[That] Hebrew word was ‘not designed to express a disgruntled complaint. Quite the contrary, it describe[d] an open rebellion.’” [Ibid., 424–425.] And just as Moses reminded them - they were not rebelling against either Moses or Aaron; they were rebelling against God. Look again at what they say in verse 3. They actually wished that they were dead. Basically, they’re telling Moses (and God) “that they wished they had never been saved.” [Ibid., 425.] Can you imagine rejecting God’s salvation?

Listen to this description from a scholar I read about this passage: “This is an important insight about the sin of complaining. All our dissatisfaction and discontent ultimately is directed against God. Usually we take out our frustrations on someone else, especially people who are close to us. A psychologist would call this displacement. In the case of the Israelites, although they were taking things out on Moses, they were really angry with God. This is why God always takes our complaints personally. He knows that when we grumble about our personal circumstances, our spiritual leaders, or anything else, what we are really doing is finding fault with him. We are complaining about what he has provided (or not provided, as the case may be). A complaining spirit always indicates a problem in our relationship with God.” [Ibid., 425.]

That one hit me kinda hard when I read it. How often I complain about a variety of different things. How do I look at things that are happening around me and I immediately start sounding like the grumbling Israelites in this chapter of Exodus? That same scholar gives us some advice: “Israel’s attitude is a warning against the great sin of complaining. It is always wrong to make the worst of things or to make baseless accusations against good people.” [Ibid., 424.]

I don’t know that I’ve ever considered complaining as a sin before, but I certainly understand that now. And it’s such an easy trap to fall into. There’s SO much to complain about in this society, at this very time. Everyone is complaining about something. And they’ve even got us complaining about each other. Left vs. right, liberals vs. conservatives, blacks vs. whites… they’ve divided us up into groups and have us complaining about each other almost non-stop. Have you turned off the news yet because you’re tired of seeing this all the time? It’s constant, and it’s tiresome.

Before they were saved, the Israelites were asked a big question: “Whom would they serve—God or Pharaoh? God wanted his people to serve him alone, but now the Israelites were saying, ‘We would rather serve Pharaoh.’” [Ibid., 425.] Seems like a fairly easy question, doesn’t it? They were miserable under Pharaoh, and they cried out to God to save them. So of course they would promise to serve God. And yet, they just weren’t willing to trust Him.

The Good News is that God still took care of them. Despite all their grumbling, God heard their cries and gave them what they needed. He did not let them starve, and He did not let them thirst. He provided for them…and He did so every night for 40 years. They were never without food.

Now when God gave them this miracle bread, He also gave them some rules to go with it: don’t keep more than you need for the day, on the 6th day gather twice as much because the 7th day is a day of rest - no gathering. Fairly simple rules. And God did this to actually test them…to see if they would “walk in [His] law or not.” (vs 4)

So God provided for the people who grumbled… “rebelled” against Him… even when they didn’t deserve it. So then why did He do it? For one simple reason: to show them that He is their Lord. “His miraculous provision added to his reputation as the God who hears and the God who cares. Every time God provides for his people, it is for the praise of his glory.” [Ibid., 428.]

And yes, God tested His people in this act. This bread was also used to teach the people to depend on Him for all of their needs. Later Moses would explain that although manna was a miracle of a physical nature, its greater purpose was to teach the spiritual lesson that God is the source of all our life. [Ibid., 429.]

This is exactly the same lesson that Jesus teaches the people in our Gospel reading today. The people crowded to him because they had eaten free bread. But that was merely perishable bread, and it only satisfied their bellies for a short time. He’s trying to teach them about the Bread of Life - or, as Jesus calls it, “the true bread from Heaven”. (vs 32)

Just like the Israelites in Exodus, this crowd doesn’t really understand, either. They were hungry earlier, and this carpenter from Nazareth gave them food. Sure, he did some kind of miracle, making 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish somehow fill the bellies of 5,000 men and their families… so they all went back for more free food. That’s what they were looking for.

But they didn’t hear the message he was offering them. That bread you had…even that miracle bread that God gave the Israelites on the ground every morning… that will only feed you for a day. What you really need - what ALL of God’s children really need - is the Bread of God…that “true bread from Heaven” that the Father gives. Just like the manna in the wilderness, God sends what His children need. And more than anything - even more than daily bread - people need this Bread of God. And THAT bread is His Son, Jesus Christ.

“Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.’” (ESV, John 6:35.) Jesus knew then, as he knows for us now, that “our deepest needs are not physical but spiritual. What we really need is God, and when we have him, we have everything we need.” [Ryken, 429] And very shortly, we will come to His Holy Supper - just as he instructed us to - and we will partake of His Body and His Precious Blood. We actually get to eat this Bread of Life. And this is why we believe it is so much more than mere bread and wine.

It is the very spiritual “thing” that Jesus knows we need - it’s HIM. And just like the manna, it is given to us just when we need it. It is given to us to refresh our spirits, to renew our faith, and to reveal to us The One Who made it all happen. It is the Good News of Jesus Christ, the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and we are privileged to take him into our mouths and digest him. It may be the smallest meal we eat this week in terms of portion size, but it is the greatest meal we can ever consume, in terms of spiritual nourishment.

If we want to do better than the grumbling Israelites, we can aim to do the very opposite of complaining, and that’s being thankful. It’s hard to complain when you’re being thankful. In fact, one of the words we use for the Lord’s Supper - Eucharist - comes from the Greek word for thanksgiving. When we partake in the Eucharist, we give thanks to God for all that He has done for us…for the precious gift of His Son, who gave up His own life for us. It’s absolutely appropriate that we give thanks to God for that…and being thankful to God will help to keep us from complaining.

As we come to the table this morning, let’s all remember exactly what we are given in that tiny little wafer and that miniscule wine cup. And let’s not measure it by what we see with our eyes. Let’s instead measure it by the measure God instructs for us: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you.” [ESV, John 6:27]

In the name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.