Exodus 17.1-7, Matthew 21.23-32
The Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity, 1 October 2023
Eldroth, Clapham (Harvest)
The people of Israel were in an uncomfortable place.
They were on the move - freed from a country which had abused and enslaved them, on the way to a land they did not yet know.
God had promised them a new beginning in that new land. But in this moment that land seemed a far way off; they were feeling like God’s promise was an empty promise which had faded away. Lacking direction in the desert, thirsty in a camp with no water, the people of Israel were in an uncomfortable place.
And that place had a name. Exodus calls it ‘The wilderness of Sin’. That’s a very suggestive name, isn’t it? The wilderness of Sin: sounds like a place we’ve all been, at times, a place where we’re struggling, where we’re suffering, where we’re vulnerable and we feel like God has abandoned us.
The wilderness of Sin: it’s where the Israelites quarrelled and asked themselves that most frightening of questions, ‘Is the Lord among us or not?’
In a wilderness with no sight of the land they’d been promised: you’d appreciate the Israelites being anxious. In a camp on arid ground with no water to be found: you’d understand their desperation. No wonder they got to quarrelling amongst themselves and with God.
Now, here’s a question: when you are anxious and desperate for very justifiable reasons, is it a ‘sin’ to express doubts about God?
When the One who is meant to be your rock and protector appears to have abandoned you, is it a ‘sin’ to ask where he’s gone?
When the One who is meant to provide for your needs, stops feeding and watering you, is it a ‘sin’ to protest that you’re hungry and parched?
What person crushed by depression or deep mourning or pressing need hasn’t asked, ‘Where is God?’ Such a person doesn’t want to hear empty religious rhetoric. The Israelites were ‘exceedingly practical’ in their expectations: ‘Don’t talk about water,’ they said, ‘Show us.’ Anyone in such great need today would say the same thing. [1]
When did the fledgling nation of Israel become an adult? [2] Was it in the wilderness of Sin when the people learned to argue with God?
When the Israelites grumbled and questioned God’s provision, were they doing this hoping to 'persuade Yahweh to be Yahweh’s best, true self’? Because they know who God is, are their complaints actually expressing a 'deep confidence' that their God is the kind who will help when the going gets rough? Why else would they cry out to God? Why else would any desperate person pray? If they had absolutely no faith at all then there’d be no point. But even complaining to God in frustration and fear expresses some kind of faith, a kind of hope grounded in what one trusts to be true about God. [3]
Thus, in a place of desperation, trust is put to the test. When he hears the people voicing their deepest fears and pain, the God who seemed distant to them responds. Water appears. The people’s wavering trust turns out to be justified. And through this frank exchange, God draws closer to these people on their journey together. Their relationship deepens and grows.
They find that ‘growth does not reside in a place called comfortable’. Growth resides in the wilderness of Sin. [4]
How often have you found yourself emerging from a place of struggle, strengthened by the experience? From a serious argument with your spouse or parents or closest friends, with a greater mutual love between you? From a frank exchange of very different opinions with a neighbour or colleague, with a deeper shared understanding and respect?
Have you ever found yourself asking, ‘Is God here or not?’ and coming through that experience with your faith strengthened in the end?
‘Growth does not reside in a place called comfortable’. It resides in the wilderness of Sin, in the messy cut and thrust of life when we face our challenges head on.
Thus we should not fear asking the difficult questions - of ourselves, of others, or of God - in trust that working through them together will strengthen us all.
This is contrary to the way our culture encourages us to behave when faced with difficult questions: to put off addressing them and vainly ‘hope for the best’; or when we encounter disagreement: to close our ears to those with different opinions than our own; or when in distress it feels like God is absent, to blithely accept he really doesn’t exist.
But - consider this question: when did you become an adult? For some of us an important moment on our journey towards maturity - a journey which in my case I know I’m still on - was the day we learned to ask questions of God; for some the day we learned to cry out, maybe even rage, to God.
In the Exodus story, the people of Israel believed God’s promises of fidelity to them, and understood that when God was not present and engaged on their behalf, things would go awry. So they raised their voices to him in his absence to call him to their attention. And, having done so, they found that he would hear, and answer their cries. [5]
In a world where any water, good water, life-giving water is decreasing in supply; in a world where so many people are thirsting for justice and righteousness… the Exodus story teaches those who are in any sense thirsty, parched and dry, to never hold back from calling out to God.
Whether we’re thirsting for love, or safety, or hope, or whether we have a real physical need for pure water where supply is lacking or polluted: each person, each community, Exodus encourages us to raise our voices to heaven in petition, and protest, and in prayer.
For this God who hears the people’s cries in the desert, and ‘brings streams out of the rock and makes water gush out like rivers’… this God who does not reside in a place called comfortable… this is the God who we can and should always call on, in whatever we’re experiencing as ‘the wilderness of Sin’.
Notes
[1] Kate Matthews Huey, God’s Sustaining Presence. United Church of Christ, Sermon Seeds, Twenty-sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Huey is drawing on Walter Brueggemann, Inscribing the Text: Sermons and Prayers of Walter Brueggemann.
[2] ‘When did you become an adult?’ A developmental question often asked by Pip Wilson, youth worker / trainer / life coach: see eg, I have recently asked a question on Facebook - I find it to be a great one to get humans sharing. pipwilson.com, 27 July 2019.
[3] Kate Matthews Huey, God’s Sustaining Presence. Edited.
[4] Pip Wilson, ‘Growth does not reside in a place called comfortable’, in Pip Wilson, Ian Long, Pip Wilson's Becoming Quotes. Wikipedia: Wilderness of Sin, 'Sin does not refer to the moral concept of "sin", but comes from the Hebrew word Sîn, the Hebrew name for this region'.
[5] Walter Brueggemann, Theology of the Old Testament: Testimony, Dispute, Advocacy. p.321.
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