<p>Sermon August 5 2012 Exodus 16:1-15</p><p>In the late 1400s, an Italian author collected a series of fables – short stories that taught little morality lessons. One of these fables concerned a bunch of fish thrown into a hot pan of oil.</p><p>One of the fish cries out to the others, “Brothers, let us flee from this place, or we will perish!” </p><p>They leap over the side of the pan, only to land on the hot coals. They cursed the plan they had chosen, and their fate was even worse than before. Or, as you might know it, “Out of the Frying </p><p>Pan and Into the Fire.” </p><p>It’s a pretty clear metaphor – escaping something bad only to land in something worse – but I find it particularly useful in thinking about the Exodus. Consider the Hebrews in slavery. </p><p>Like fish caught from a stream, the Hebrew people found themselves suddenly and inexplicably in a very bad situation. They had come to Egypt as friends of the Pharaoh, but as they grew from a family into a population, and new Pharaohs came along, these Hebrews found themselves no longer residents, but slaves. After a couple of centuries, things had gotten no better. </p><p>Now, for the fish in the frying pan, the solution is clear – if the place gets real hot real fast, then you get out. Simple. For the Hebrews, it was a little harder – oppression like that can be subtle. That’s part of its danger. People don’t always realize that they’re being beaten down and enslaved until it’s too late. They knew they were miserable. They cried out for relief. But to want to escape, you need to think there’s something better. For the fish, that’s easy. For the </p><p>Hebrews, slaves of the great and powerful Egyptian empire, that’s a little harder. But one day a man called Moses hears an impossible voice that tells him, “I am coming to lead you to a good land, flowing with milk and honey. To take you out of Egypt.” Out of Egypt? Can you imagine Moses’s shock? His joy? And once he’s convinced the </p><p>Hebrews themselves, their shock? Their joy? This God, the god of our ancestors, is with us again, and is coming to rescue us from slavery! To take us to a good and peaceful place. To take us out of this frying pan!</p><p>But of course, the frying pan is where the food is. Egypt, where Hebrews were forced into labor, degraded, beaten, property, at least provided them with food and shelter. Some measure of security. But what Moses neglected to mention in all his talk was that there’s a lot of desert outside of Egypt. Not much in the way of food or water naturally occurring. So when the </p><p>Hebrews, in our story today, “grumble” or “complain” – against Moses or against God – we can’t blame them. They had gone quite dramatically from the frying pan – it hurts, but there’s food there – into the fire – the desert, where there’s pretty much nothing but hot.</p><p>The story of the Exodus itself – the escape scene – is pretty clear that they left in a hurry, and didn’t pack a whole lot. Not long after they left, they had landed at a desert oasis, but the waters were poisonous. They grumbled, because they were thirsty. A very valid concern – people need water, and a lot of it, to live. Moses cries out to God about it and in response, God makes the water sweet – safe to drink.</p><p>They camped there for some time. By the time they leave, they’ve been out of Egypt for about a month and a half, and it seems that their food stores are running low. Yes, they got to stay at a lovely oasis, but now there’s more walking to do, and we only have so much food left. </p><p>When you can see the floor of the food tent and there’s a small city’s worth of hungry people outside, people start to panic. They grumble again – “Why didn’t we just let God kill us in </p><p>Egypt? We used to sit by the frying pan all evening and eat our fill of bread. Now, Moses and this God have brought us out to the desert so that we’ll starve to death.” This time, though, God doesn’t even wait for Moses to make the request. The Lord appears to Moses, and says to him, “Behold, I am about to rain down bread from heaven. Every day, have the people go out and collect what they need, and no more.” Later, the great cloud of </p><p>God’s presence appeared before the people, and God said, “In the evening you will eat meat and in the morning you will have bread.” On the sixth day, the people are supposed to gather twice as much as they need, because the seventh day is a day of rest, although they don’t know that yet. </p><p>And it is so. In the evening, quails flood the camp, and the people have their meat. In the morning, a soft liquidy substance is left on the trees, and as the day goes on it hardens into something you can eat. We think it was probably honeydew – a sweet substance that some insects secrete as they get the nutrients out of trees – but what the stuff was isn’t the point of the story.</p><p>This story could just as easily have been called, “Some people are getting hungry in the desert but then they run across a steady supply of quails and honeydew.” The point of the story isn’t the narrative of wanderers getting fed, or what weird foods fed them. Indeed, the Hebrews don’t even give it a real name, but call it “manna”, which basically means “What is this?” The point of the story is to teach you something about the One doing the feeding. </p><p>These were people who felt like they had been sold a false promise by Moses – and, as the story points out, a false promise by this God. They only agreed to come along on this escape because they thought there was going to be an improvement in their lives, and that didn’t seem to be happening. </p><p>I feel sometimes as though the church understands this problem. We all hear the stories – outsiders visit a church, only to find that inside those seemingly-perfect walls there is judgment and hostility and bickering. Churches struggle and strive, members give and work and the church still shrinks, still refuses to thrive. It’s disheartening. It can make you want to turn back. To hop back into the pan, to the danger and pain that you know versus the fear and uncertainty that you don’t.</p><p>But I think a lesson can be drawn from the rules about the manna. Gather what you need for the day and no more. If you try to hoard it, it will rot. Before the day of rest, gather a double portion, because you need to take a day of not working. All of this speaks to one thing – trust in </p><p>God. Gather only what you need for today. Your needs of the day are provided. If you have survived until tomorrow, then well done and praise God. Trust that God will feed you again tomorrow. If you are tempted to ride the high of prosperity, gathering constantly so you’ll never be hungry again, remember to take the day of rest – trust that God will feed you again, even if you stop working for a day.</p><p>In the Gospel of John referenced this story, claiming that he was as the manna – bread given from heaven. A prompt for our trust in God. When the mission of Christ seems hopeless…</p><p>When the path of peace and righteousness seems too long and treacherous to bear… When the </p><p>Kingdom of Justice, the Kingdom of God, seems impossibly far away… Remember the One who feeds us. Remember what fills us and sustains us and gives us life. Remember the living bread, </p><p>Jesus Christ. Remember the bread in the desert, life to a hungry, desperate people. Enough for the pains of today, here again for the pains of tomorrow. Amen. </p>