Manna Sermon

Here at FCC, we celebrate Holy Communion the first Sunday of every month. Many traditions, of course, from Roman Catholics to Episcopalians to the Disciples of Christ, many celebrate the Lord's Supper every week, some even daily. A few Christians have Communion just once a year. Quakers observe only as spiritual communion with God, forgoing the bread and the juice.

However often different groups celebrate it, today is in fact "World Communion Sunday" - a Sunday when Christian believers all - at least we in the mainline churches - are sure to celebrate Communion. Before we do, I wanted us to recall the roots of this sacrament that extend back not only to Jesus, but much farther back, into the Hebrew Scriptures, way back to the book of Exodus. For Jesus that night when he was to be betrayed and ate a meal with his disciples was not inventing a new ritual. He was celebrating the Jewish festival of Unleavened Bread - he was observing the Passover Meal.

Passover marked the day when God had delivered the children of Israel out of the bondage of Egypt. Moses, after pleading with Pharaoh to "let my people go" resorted - with God's help, says the story - to that awful series of ten plagues to better get his point across. Flies and locusts, boils and frogs, darkness, hail, the Nile flowing with blood - still Pharaoh would not relent. And then came the last plague - the death of the firstborn of every household.

Moses had told his people to put blood on the doorposts of their homes - the blood of a lamb - so that the angel of death would pass over their homes and the oldest child would not die. The story says that's what they did, and they were saved, and the next day the Egyptians were glad indeed to see the Hebrew people get out of their country. Leaving so quickly that they did not have time for the yeast to rise in their bread, they took with them flatbread - unleavened bread. Off they went, embarking on a journey that has become the archetypal journey from bondage to freedom.

Jesus remembered that story of freedom that night with his disciples. He was doing what Moses had commanded them: to remember always what God had done, by observing the festival of the Passover. Barbara will read to us part of the story of the first Passover, from the book of Exodus.

Exodus 12

Headed out that night the children of Israel brought with them the unleavened bread for the journey, and grabbed no small amount of Egyptian silver and gold too, as they went off to . . . where? Well, they weren't quite sure. The suddenness of the departure gave no time to plan the trip; they probably thought it would be a short one, though - and probably assumed that their esteemed leader Moses had a plan . . . which apparently he did not.

But no matter. The people were just happy to get out, to be freed from slavery. But things did not go well on that journey. About 6 weeks into the wilderness they had run out of that unleavened bread. The silver and gold they brought was worth nothing out there, nowhere. The leaders didn't seem to know which way to go. And everyone is getting hungry! They are not happy. They in fact, want to go back. This is not the journey they had signed up for, we learn from the second reading.

In this reading you need to know a Hebrew phrase, "Man - hu" - We think that it means, "What is it?" The phrase has come into the English language as "manna."

Exodus 16

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"What IS it?!" What is this stuff laying about the ground, that Moses seems to think we can eat? We need food; meat, vegetables, grains, fruits, bread. You know: food that looks like food. And what do we get - what is it? - we'll call it ?manna' - we'll call it "what IS it?"

What-is-it - manna - is in fact the provision of God. It is the miraculous provision of God in this ancient tale of how the Hebrew people survived - against all odds - their journey through the desert.

This journey from slavery to freedom, from bondage to liberation, from being aliens in a foreign land to finding their Promised Land - this journey in which we can see our own journey was not an easy one. Begun abruptly, without warning or preparation, chased into the desert by the chariots of Egypt, this journey was no weekend get-away. If Moses had thought much about what would happen if Pharaoh let the people go, he might have imagined it to be a quick trip, an easy jump to freedom, a short journey - what with the help of God and all.

But of course we know that the journey proved to be, shall we say, a challenge. For forty years, says the story, they wandered about. For forty years they depended on that mysterious manna. For forty years they tried many Different Paths, all on the Same Journey. Different Paths, alright. Many detours. Multiple set-backs. Not a few sorry mistakes. Too many paths. Same Journey. Same, long journey!

Things did not work out the way they thought it should, what with God on their side, and all, going along with them through it all. If God were there - in pillars of fire and glowing clouds - surely it would have been a shorter journey, a more direct path . . . Wouldn't it? And easier? One with purpose and direction and protection, rejoicing every step of the way. Isn't that what journeying with God must be? It didn't turn out that way.

But God was with them. And the enduring symbol of God's provision on this long and winding journey through the desert is that daily provision of manna. And I am intrigued by the idea that God's provision in the story was in the form of something they had never seen before, something they could never have imagined. Something for which they didn't even have words. Remember their first reaction when seeing manna on the ground - What IS it?

I am intrigued with that symbol because I have come to believe that yes, God will provide what we need for our journey, but that provision is most often not anything we would expect. I believe that God cares for us, teaches us, even guides us - but in ways that will surprise us, using means we would not have imagined, using things that sometimes we don't even have words for, and people we have no time for.

Some people say that the leading of God is clear, the protection of God is sure, ways of God are known. Some people leave no room for surprises, for mystery, for unanswered questions about God.

But I have found that life and faith are seldom like that. I have found that God is with us on the journey, but in disguise, discovered in the twists, the turns, the disappointments, the stumbling stones - revealed in things that I can only ask, "What is it?"

In July Carol and I attended a workshop at Louisville Seminary. The keynote speaker was a woman who can affirm that God works in the most unexpected ways, a woman named Sara Miles. Some of you are reading her book, Take This Bread. In that book she tells about her "unexpected and terribly inconvenient conversion" - the conversion of the most unlikely person you might imagine. She was raised as an atheist, by parents who didn't merely ignore religion but actively ridiculed it. "My mother," she writes, "nursed a grudge against Christianity for more than fifty years." [Take This Bread, page 3, Ballantine Books] "Sara lived an enthusiastically secular life as a restaurant cook and writer. Then [one day], for no earthly reason, she wandered into a church. ?I was certainly not interested in becoming a Christian,' she writes. ?Or, as I thought of it rather less politely, a religious nut.'

But, she writes, "One early, cloudy morning when I was forty-six, I walked into a church, ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine. . . my first communion. It changed everything. Eating Jesus, as I did that day to my great astonishment, led me against all expectations to a faith I'd scorned and work I'd never imagined." [Take This Bread, xi]

Sara Miles today is an unconventional Christian, but nevertheless a follower of Christ. On the staff of St. Gregory's Episcopal Church in San Francisco she has started over a dozen food pantries, the first being right there at St. Gregory's, around the altar, where each week 800 families are served.

She is on a journey, full of astonishing surprises, full of unimaginable challenges, indefinable experiences with the Divine. And so too are we on this journey, a journey that includes frequent detours and set-backs, false starts and re-starts, missed turns aplenty. It is never a straight path. It is never easy, not for long, anyway. There are challenges galore on this journey, no matter the path you take. Pitfalls and diversions, unexpected tragedies and unimagined joys. The journey is a wandering one, but an adventurous one too. For along the way if we are willing to look we may find the manna that will feed not just body, but soul as well.