Foundry UMC DC: Sunday Sermons
Religion & Spirituality:Christianity
Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve. Tuesday is the beginning of a new year 2013. A New Year for some of us is a time for resolutions, a time for change, a time to begin new journeys.
We are going to be thinking about journeys all year long this year. It is our theme for the year. Every sermon series we do in 2013 is going to be about being on a journey.
We want to start during the month of January by thinking about beginning a new journey in our lives, making changes in our lives.
Many of us have changes we’d like to make in our lives. Some of us might want to exercise more and lose weight and live healthier lives. Some of us might want to drink less or stop drinking all together.
Some of us might want to get a new job. Or we might want to quit our job and go back to school and get another degree. We might want to change careers.
Some of us might want to find somebody and fall in love and get married. Some of us might want to deal with a troubled relationship or marriage. We might want to have children and become parents.
Some of us might want to buy a house. We might want to relocate to another part of the country. We might want to travel less for work. We might want to travel more and see more of the world. We might want to make more money. We might want to need less money.
Some of us might want to have more power and recognition in our lives. We might want to have less stress in our lives. We might want more meaning in our lives. We might want more wholeness in our lives. We might want to come out with our parents.
We might want to grow emotionally and spiritually. We might want to do therapy. We might want a deeper relationship with God.
I’d venture to say a good many of us might want some change in our life, some new journey in life.
This is what we know about change. Two things: It is possible. Change is possible.
I know people who have made every change I have just used as examples. People who have lost weight and gotten healthier and have been successful at it for years; People who have quit their jobs and gone back to school; People who have, after years of not finding someone, fallen in love and gotten married; People who have done whatever they needed to do to become a parent.
Change is possible. It is possible for us to take a new path, to begin a new journey. That is the first thing we know.
The second thing we know is that change is hard. Next week the gym I go to will be crowded. It will be hard for me to get on the equipment I prefer to use. But I know that by mid-February everything will be back to normal. Change is hard.
It is scary. Quitting a job to go back to school after you’ve been used to a regular pay check is scary. Letting yourself fall in love is scary. Facing problems in your relationship is scary.
Change is hard.
So during at the beginning of a new year and during the month of January we want to look at the experience of the Israelites in the Book of Exodus after they left Egypt and began their journey toward the Promised Land. What was change like for them? What can we learn from them about how to begin new journeys in our lives?
Here are a couple of learnings about change based on the experience of the Israelites:
Change is inspired and motivated by a vision of new possibilities but it always means letting go of something and giving something up.
The Israelites had been slaves in Egypt for generations. They longed for freedom … to have power over their own lives … not to have to do what others compelled them to do but to have control over their own lives.
They prayed to God for freedom. They complained to God about their slavery. They moaned and groaned to God.
…Until God heard their complaints and send them Moses to lead them out of slavery to the Promised Land of freedom.
After long negotiations with Pharaoh, the oppressor, and lots of plagues, Pharaoh finally lets the Israelites leave Egypt. Then he changes his mind and sends his army to bring them back, but the Israelites escaped through the Red Sea and Pharaoh’s army is drowned.
If you haven’t read the book perhaps you’ve seen the movie.
Change has come for the Israelites. They are free. They are beginning a new journey.
As soon as they have made it through the Red Sea there is a big celebration. The women sing and dance. Everybody praises God and slaps Moses on the back.
Then we come to our Scripture lesson of the morning. It is the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. They are 45 days into their journey toward freedom in the Promised Land. It is February 15 of a new year. It is mid-February of a new year.
Exodus 16: 2-3
The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them, "If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger."
They had prayed for generations for God to save them from slavery… to grant them freedom. Forty-five days into their journey toward freedom, they want to go back and be slaves in Egypt again because, even if they had to work at work all day that they did not want to do, even though they had no control over their own destiny, even though the Egyptians could abuse them with impunity and violate their wives and daughters, the food back in Egypt was good.
There was barbeque back in Egypt and cornbread, all you could eat.
When this same story is told in the book of Numbers, it says:
The rabble among them had a strong craving; and the Israelites also wept again, and said, "If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic… (Num 11:4-5)
They missed garlic. Forty-five days into their new journey, the Israelites were ready to go back to being slaves so long as they could taste garlic again. Some of us understand this.
Moses shows them that they will not starve on their journey. God has provided them with bread for the journey. On their journey in the morning after the dew had dried, they found a fine flaky substance like nothing they’d ever seen before. When they Israelites first saw it they looked at it and rubbed it between their fingers and said to one another: “What is it?”
So they called it manna, which is Hebrew for “What is it?”
Every morning there was enough manna to eat for the day. Just enough for the day. If they tried to keep it for more than one day, it became wormy … full of worms. There was just enough for one day every morning, except Fridays when there was enough for two days so that they could rest on the Sabbath.
So every day on their journey they had “What is it” to eat. And it was enough to sustain them.
They still missed and longed for the barbeque and fried fish and garlic they ate back in Egypt –in fact they experienced something like withdrawal-- but the manna sustained them.
Change, beginning a new journey, always means giving something up and we probably will not be aware before we begin the journey of what all it will mean sacrificing. We may well go through withdrawal and grief when we begin a new journey toward something we have really wanted in our lives.
We want to go back to school but then we can’t do the happy hours anymore the way we used to. We want to fall in love but then we end up in bed night after night with someone who hogs the covers and snores. We want a deeper relationship with God but then prayer is 80 percent boring and only 20 percent profound for the next year. After 45 days we are ready to give up.
I don’t mean to trivialize this. The cost of beginning a new journey can be very, very high. Change is hard.
But here is the promise. Here is the good news. If we are journeying toward a vision for our lives that God has blessed, there will be manna in the morning. There will be enough to sustain us on our journey.
There may not be more than we need to get through the day. This is why the mantra of someone who is recovering is “One day at a time.” There will be enough to make it through the day. And on Friday there may be the grace of enough to make it through the Sabbath as well.
On a journey toward a new place in our lives, we may need to live one day at a time. In fact, it is the only way we can live, because tomorrow isn’t guaranteed for any of us. But on a journey to a new place we may have to give up our illusion of security and safety.
There may only be enough to sustain us for the day and we may not know what it is, we may call it manna, “what is it,” but it will keep us for the day.
This is the good news. This is the promise. If God blesses our journey, if it is a journey toward a good place, there will be manna in the morning.
The first Christians, when they began their new journey of following Jesus toward their promised land of justice and inclusion, said that Jesus was their manna from heaven. Jesus was what saw them through the day.
This strange person who died on a cross and in dying showed us the path toward life, “What is it?” Jesus was their manna from heaven.
Jesus can be our manna from heaven who sustains on one day at a time as we begin our journeys toward our promised lands.
Whatever it is in your life that is calling you … freedom, justice, meaning, inclusion, affirmation, recognition, sobriety, wholeness, joy … Jesus can be your manna from heaven who will sustain you through your journey one day at a time.
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