We live in culture plagued by a vicious cycles of
instant and incessant gratification.
We want to quench our thirst, satisfy our hunger – and we want it our
way! Our culture has become a
society defined as consumer and consumeristic. In the midst of our hungers and thirsts (which are natural)
somehow we get lost. The fear that
there isn’t enough to go around, leads us to symbiotic anxiety and
mistrust. We need to get ours or
get git. In such presumed scarcity
our needs are morphed into wants, desires and fantasies. We want it all, otherwise we might not
get any. We want it how and when
we want it, otherwise it might not be around. And yet the God of the Bible points towards a
different way of life together, a community of koinonia or fellowship based upon the shared life-transforming
experience of God’s love known in Jesus of Nazareth who gave his life rather
than give into the anxiety of scarcity.
His sacrifice changes everything, giving us a new lens through which to
see the world as it truly is. How
do we live this paradoxical truth by faith in a society based upon the myth of
scarcity? How do we love our
neighbor when we are told that our neighbor is out to get what we have? How do we testify to a life-sustaining
God in a culture in which we are told to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps
and to save ourselves, because no one else will?
Theological
Themes:
Today’s passage (and the larger body of this
text/story in Exodus 15:22-17:16) wrestles with several theological themes,
telling basically the “same” story about God providing for the people in the
desert three times: Bitter Water - Exodus 15:22-27; Manna & Quail – Exodus
16:1-36 and Water from the Rock – Exodus 17:1-16.
The
Identity of God: EL SHADDAI [“God Almighty”] & YAHWEH [“I Am, or I Am who I
will Be] : In Genesis El Shaddai is the name most used for God, an indication
that they saw God as the provider, the creator, sustaining them in terms of
food, crops, livestock and blessings.
In Exodus, the name YAHWEH is increasingly used. It has a connotation of God as a Holy
Warrior, God known through deliverance, freedom and exodus, who makes himself
known through the salvation of the people. This passage uses both names, insisting upon both – God who
has freed the people from slavery, and who sustains them in the food desert. Does God exist just to
sustain us? Or does God exist to
redeem and liberate us? Why do the
Israelites continue to murmur, or complain about God, when God repeatedly saves
them?
TIME & ECONOMY:
The
people as slaves of Pharaoh must scatter day by day to look for straw with
which to make their daily quote of bricks. Here the people of God scatter day by day to look for the
daily quota of food that God promises to provide. The name Manna sounds like the Hebrew words for “What is
it?” God provides for the people
in the emptiness of the desert and in the desertion of their faith. Scientists tell us that manna was most
likely the secretion of insects living on the tamarisk tree, and is said to be
prized by Bedouins (desert dwellers) for its sweetness. Quails annually
migrated to Europe in the Spring and returned in the fall when they can be
captured. T
The
emphasis in the text is less on God providing for the people than it is upon
time, and the fact that the people are invited to collect food 6 days a week,
trusting God to provide for the Sabbath or 7th day.
We
no longer have blue laws, which obligated our observation of the Sabbath. Today
our economy is 24/7. There is no
economic distinction between Jew, Christian and Atheist. Both in time – and in the way we live. How does our economic practice point to
and reveal our spiritual priorities and practices? A question that this passage asks us as Christians is
whether we have ceased to serve God as the Lord of time and have begun to serve
Pharaoh [who dictated incessant work and toil] instead.
Textual Curiosities:
The
story of Manna and Quail serves as the rhetorical foundation for many of Jesus’
sayings, as the theological background of the communion meal. Jesus is spoken of as the Bread come
down from Heaven (like Manna) John 6:22-59. Jesus claims to be a sort of spiritual manna – intended to
deliver the people from their hunger.
God is faithful. We
experience divine faithfulness in Jesus.
Murmuring
is a common metaphor for the mistrustful attitude of the people of God in the
desert. It appears throughout the
Second Testament as well: Matthew 20:11, Luke 5:30, John 6:41, 43, 61 &
7:12, 32; Acts 6:1; Philippians 2:14; 1 Peter 4:9; Jude 16; and twice in 1
Corinthians 10:10.
Natural
calamities like drought and famine are beyond our power to modify. Yet if we learn to pray the prayer in
Proverbs 30:7-9 – not too little and not too much - and to conform our economic
activities to the spirit of that prayer, how might we be more open to the
rhythms of work and rest seen in this passage of Exodus 16?
Questions for wondering and
exploring:
1. What troubles you and/or encourages you
in this text? Why?
2. How do we live the story of the Exodus as
individuals – or as a church community?
How have we? How do we
celebrate and remember God’s faithfulness in our individual lives and in our
community life together? How could
that be different? Why?
4.
Theologian Walter Brueggemann develops the themes of this chapter, and
the teachings of Jesus into what he terms belief in the myth of scarcity, that
there is not enough to go around for all of us – whether it be food, resources,
or love. How do you see that myth
as the ethos of our culture?; our relationships?; our church culture? How is Jesus inviting, feeding and
exhorting us to reject this myth?
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