Is the LORD Among Us or Not?
Exodus 17:1–7
“Is the Lord among us or not?” (Exodus 17:7) Is there a more profound question, in any place, at any time, for any people? That may be why this passage is also assigned for Lent 3 (March 12, 2023) just over six months ago.
It might even be the question, for all people, and in particular for us here tonight. Is the Lord among us or not? This question erupts most often in the wilderness, when we are neither here nor there. It erupts when the familiar slavery of the past and the fearful freedom of a future stop us in our tracks. Last week we were short on food, but we made it. This week we’re short on water, and this might be the week we’re done for.
I do not know why we forget God’s goodness and deliverance and grace so quickly, and cling tenaciously to disappointment, slight, and loss. But we do. And it may not be possible to truly speak of faith until one has fully dealt with doubt.
It’s likely that you have never been lost in the wilderness and about to die of thirst, but each us have asked the question the Israelites were asking: “Is the Lord among us or not?” What proof or signs could persuade a thirsty, frightened, anxious people that God is with them in the wilderness?
Many of us here tonight have heard stories or been the ones with one foot out of the church’s doors, just begging for a reason to stay. So tonight for all who are barely holding on to their faith, for all who are wandering in the desert, thirsty, and exhausted I declare this Good News: God promises his presence to his anxious people.
Few words are more likely to foreshadow death than “in the wilderness…there was no water for the people to drink.” (17:1). Survival depends on water. According to The Mayo Clinic our bodies—our very selves—are about 60% water by weight. Every part of our bodies requires water to live. As the Mayo Clinic puts it, “Every cell, tissue and organ in your body needs water to work properly.” Water carries toxins away, maintains temperature, prevents joints from scraping, and protects vital tissues.
One long day’s march on an unusually, but not impossibly, hot, June day was all it would take to finish God’s people, because “there was no water for the people to drink.” Of course the people were anxious. Of course the people wanted to stone Moses, of course they were “quarreling.” Because, according to verse one, the Lord had commanded the whole congregation from the wilderness of Sin to camp at Rephidim, “but there was no water for the people to drink.”
It is when they think “this will be our destruction” that they demand water from Moses.
It’s in this place of “will this be our destruction” that cartographers have guessed where Sin, Rephidim, and the paired Massah/Meribah might be, but we really do not know where they were. The ancient Israelites certainly had no clue where they were!
When you know what you’ve left, but you don’t know precisely where you’re going, that is where the anxiety sets in. We often call this “liminal space.” The space in-between where I was and where I’m going. This in-between space makes you doubt, it make you thirst, it makes you question, and it is often where you are meet with the provision that you really need… the promise of God’s presence.
The question erupts most often in the wilderness, when we are neither here nor there; it erupts when the familiar slavery of the past and the fearful freedom of a promised future stop us in our tracks. Short on food or water, missing a mortgage payment or a job, wondering when our body will give out or our resolve will give in, we complain to the heavens saying, “Why has life come to this?” “Who is in charge here?”
Yet hidden in our complaint, our anxiety, our terror, is the abiding question: Is the Lord among us or not?
There is no sufficient answer to reconcile thirsting deaths with tonight’s section from Exodus 17. The politics of water frequently makes headlines. Our Latine hermanos y hermanas die of thirst over border crossings far too often. And areas hit by earthquakes, hurricanes, and droughts expose the economics of clean water from Flint, MI, to Burkina Faso in West Africa, to Fiji in Asia-Pacific.
Being thirsty is normal. It’s the brain’s way of warning you that you’re dehydrated and not getting enough fluid. Thirst, hunger, fear are all natural. And the people aren’t scolded for being thirsty or for being afraid, but for their lack of trust in God who delivered them from the hands of Pharaoh. God who turned bitter water sweet, and rains down bread and quail from heaven each day.
The people turn and “quarrel” with Moses who bears the brunt of the people’s contentiousness, anxiety, and fear. Moses interprets these complaints as more than a family feud or simple grumbling.
The Hebrew word for “quarelled” (רִיב rîyb, reeb — reev) refers to lodging a complaint, such as one might do in a lawsuit. Moses “cried out” to God, and the verb used there (tsa‘aq) is exceptionally strong, often used in response to life-threatening circumstances (such as Exodus 14:10). Indeed, Moses worries that the people will stone him (17:4).
What Rephidim lacked in water, it made up for with rocks and stones. He not only feels threatened (accused), “they’re about to stone me,” but he also identifies their quarreling as “testing God.” The people were demanding massah [proof] from the Lord. So, Moses asks: Why are you testing the Lord? Why are you not believing that God will provide? Why are you not believing that God will be present with you?
What is your first response in moments of need or moments in crisis?
The congregation was obedient to follow the pillar of cloud, “as the Lord commanded,” from Sin to Rephidim, but in their moment of crisis they turn to Moses for deliverance, “Moses, give us water to drink. Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” The people are saying, “Life under Pharaoh was awful, but survival as a slave to the Egyptians seems better than dying of thirst in the wilderness.”
As one of your pastors I have to admit I feel this deep in my bones. I have often shared my feeling of lack and deficiency with the fragility, complexity, and depths of pain, trauma, and doubt brought by those who call Advocate home.
I know you don’t expect me to fix your problems, or to heal your wounds, or to resolve your doubts, but the simple fact that you have trusted us with those hurts, pains, and doubts is a heavy weight to bear. I want your faith and confidence in Jesus and his church to grow. And I don’t want to be the one that causes you to lose what little faith you may still have.
Where do you turn in moments of need or crisis? God promises his presence to his anxious people.
Moses shows the people what to do in such circumstances: Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.”
The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go.”
Moses is supposed to walk “in front of the people” who want to stone him. Moses is to take “take some of the elders of Israel” probably as witnesses. Moses is supposed to take with him the “staff with which you struck the Nile.” This is an instrument of judgment, turning water into blood, but now will be used as an instrument of grace providing water for the people.
What God says next I think is the climax of our passage, “I will be standing there in front of you on the rock… strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.”
The provision of water from the rock follows from the assurance that God is indeed present with this people.
God promises his presence to his anxious people.
Beloved, just as Pastor Emily said last week, “There are times in the Christian life when your healing doesn’t feel like healing; when your liberation doesn’t feel like liberation; when your salvation doesn’t feel like salvation… God is saving you even when it doesn’t feel like it.”
Even when you’re parched, exhausted, and maybe confused as to which direction to go God is standing before so that you may drink.
Remember what Jesus said in John 4 in conversation with the Samaritan woman: The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?” Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there at the Temple, he cried out, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, ‘Out of the believer’s heart shall flow rivers of living water.’”
And Paul, in 1 Corinthians 10 has this to say, “I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.
As God ordered, Moses struck the rock, and life-giving water gushed forth.
For us, like the Israelites, the spectacular quickly fades into the ordinary. In fact, the church season we’re in right now, the season after Pentecost, is called Ordinary Time. It represents the everyday life of the Christian. In other church seasons we are looking forward or backward to some event – for Advent it’s the birth of Jesus, in Lent it’s preparing for the Passion, in Easter we celebrate the resurrection – but during Ordinary Time there’s nothing we’re really looking forward to, or back at. We’re just… living life. And when “just living” becomes filled with fear, anxiety and doubt, you can be assured that God is standing before you calling you to come and drink from Christ, the living water.
Remember the words of Jesus in the Book of Revelation: “It is I, Jesus, who sent my angel to you with this testimony for the churches. I am the root and the descendant of David, the bright morning star.
The Spirit and the bride say, “Come.”
And let everyone who hears say, “Come.”
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! (Rev. 22:16,17,20)
