Sermon: “Moving Up From Massah and Meribah” If you are around my age, or if you happen to watch a lot of old sit-coms on cable TV, then you may remember the TV series The Jeffersons. It’s about a very successful African American couple, George and Louise Jefferson – whose dry cleaning business did so well that the couple could move out of their working class neighborhood in Queens, in New York City – to the East Side of Upper Manhattan. Staring Sherman Hemsley as George, and and Isabel Sanford as Louise, The Jeffersons ran from January 1975 to June 1985 – 11 seasons - 253 episodes in all - and this series remains as one of the longest running TV sitcoms of all time – and the longest of any TV genre featuring a predominately African American cast. Maybe you remember the theme song from the show. I’m not going to try to sing it. Jan’et DuBois was the woman who wrote and sings the song – adding that wonderful scat singing at the end – and this uptight honky white boy could never sing it like that. But I do know the words – and maybe you remember it too. With The Jeffersons – with me now: Well were movin' on up, To the east side. To a deluxe apartment in the sky. Movin on up, To the east side. We finally got a piece of the pie. This morning we see this theme of movin’ on up in our scripture texts today – particularly the lesson from the book of Exodus, as the children of Israel “moved” and “journeyed” in the wilderness. They were movin’ on up, in stages, up and out of the land of slavery and exploitation, and into the land of freedom and opportunity – to get a piece of the pie. But between the land of slavery in the empire - and the land flowing with milk and honey - the children of Israel had to move up and into and through and out of the wilderness. And that moving was not easy. Today as we meet up with these “moving on up” emancipated slaves, they have already moved out of Egypt. The Lord has already parted the Red Sea – the pivotal miracle of deliverance – and Pharaoh’s horse and riders have already been thrown into the sea. But now as they move further into the wilderness, the reality of the wilderness begins to set in. The unleavened bread and food and water they took with them on their way of our Egypt is soon is gone, and then they start to complain – and they blame Moses for taking them out of Egypt. “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when se sat by the fleshpots and ate our full of bread: for you, Moses, have brought us out in this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” Notice please there is no mention here of their years of slavery they had suffered in Egypt – of making bricks for Pharaoh each day, every day – with no rest – and in recent months making bricks without straw – brick after brink after brick. And there is no hint of any trust or dependence upon the Lord God – who had sent plagues on the land of Egypt, who worked through Moses to gain their freedom for brickyard slavery - who parted the sea for them and delivered them from Pharaoh’s army. All of that is forgotten, when their stomach begin to growl. Then, as you may remember, once again, the Lord meets their needs. The next morning, some bread arrived. My guess is some of you might recall what the people called that bread, anybody? Right – Manna. The Hebrew word Manna translates in English as, “what is it?” Isn’t it wonderful to have bread called “what is it?” This is wonder bread from heaven – bread they didn’t have to grow and mill and make. Even in the wilderness, bread will be provided. Not long afterwards, again, believe it or not – this cycle of complaining begins again – but to give the people some slack, this time they complain about water – the most basic of necessities – water. We need water in order to live. We are, after all, made up of some 90-plus percent of water. I heard someone speaking on this recently – this guy held a glass of water – and said, “This is a glass of water.” (as my kids say, “duh.”) And then he drank the glass of water, and said, “Now this glass of water is me.” We are – and to survive we must have – water. And now the stores of water for the people of Israel had run out, again – and they complain, once again, to Moses, questioning his leadership – did he bring them out here to kill them with thirst? Moses, again, kicks the complaint upstairs - to upper management – “Lord, these people are about to stone me – what should I do?” The Lord answers, and tells Moses, once again, what to do. This time the instructions are brief, curt, and abrupt. And they are absurd. “Go and take your staff – the same one you used to turn the Nile to blood (one of the ten plagues). “I will stand before you on the Rock at Horob.” “Strike this rock, and water will flow – even in the wilderness.” What is that phrase, “you can’t get blood from a turnip” – or from a stone?” It’s absurd, ridiculous. Water from a rock, in the middle of a dry, arid wilderness? But Moses – he remembers – he was seen and knows God’s power. So Moses goes – he obeys. He strikes the rock, and water comes, and Israel drinks. The immediate crisis is met – and once again the people of Israel can see and taste the goodness of the Lord, God’s providential care over them. Good story – powerful story of God’s care, even in the wilderness places of their lives - and our lives – God’s provision - especially provided when we most need it. Amen – amen – let’s move on - but wait. This story does not end quite yet. There is, for the first time in these “movin’ on up” wilderness stories, there is one brief word of commentary on what just happened. It’s a theological word – about who God is and who the people are in relation to this God. After all this complaining - and after all this seeing of, and then all the forgetting of God sure help in time of need - the narrator cannot let another episode like this pass without offering this word of interpretation: “Moses called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?” I used to read this in a nice tone of voice – and see the question as a rhetorical question – thinking the answer to it was, “yes, of course God is among us.” But studying this text this week, I think this is really a defiant, demanding question – asked by the people of Israel – and quite frankly friends, asked by you and by me - and it is not nice or rhetorical at all. It’s a harsh question for us to ask of the Lord God, so I read it that way. The question centers on a theology which says God must “produce” for me, and for us – that God must be “on call” for me and for you whenever and wherever we ask. The theology here goes like this: If God so produces for us, then “God is among us.” And if God does not produce, if God is not at our beck and call, does not meet our demands in the way we expect God to meet them - then God is absent, not among us. And we might further conclude that God must not really exist at all, or God somehow has it in for us. In this theology God becomes a means to our ends, to our desires – just as God became a means for the desires of bread and meat and water for the movin on up people of Israel. Friends – this ought not to be so. And Moses knew that – and so do we. As I have titled this sermon, you and I need to be movin’ on up from Massah and Meribah – moving up and away from this understanding of God as our sugar daddy, who does want we want, when we want it done - or else. I know this goes against the grain of our individual, ego-centric culture – but the truth is God does not exist for us, to meet my needs – God is not present to be an appendage to my own sense of self – or yours. God is God – above and beyond us – and yet God who wants to be in a relationship with us – but not as equals, and not as our sugar daddy. God is as we spoke in our opening Psalm this morning: the Lord is a great God – the one who holds the caverns of the earth and the heights of the mountains. God creates, God rules – and we are summoned to bow down, and bend the knee – before the Lord, who is our maker – who chooses a people and tends them. We didn’t speak the rest of the Psalm 95 in our call to worship – but there is more – and it is a reminder back to this story in Exodus. “O that today you would listen to God voice. (then) Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness, when your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work... (Psalm 95:8-9) Friends, we need to move up from Meribah, away from Massah. And Lent is a good time for us to make this move - away from this theology of testing and quarreling with God, away from assuming that God is at our beck and call, away from staking our belief in God on whether or not God does what we want, when we want it – away from ignoring God when times are good in our lives, and only paying any attention to God when times get rough. What kind of a relationship would that be? As we move away from Massah, and move on up from Meribah – what we are really doing is moving toward trust – toward a trust in God and in the promises of God – a trust that God is the rock of our salvation – a trust that God is and will be among us – not in ways we can control or manipulate – but on God’s terms – the same God who holds us as the sheep of his hands. Friends, God very much wants your trust, and my trust - and God desires for us to live our lives in joyful, trusting obedience, come what may. O that today we would harken to the voice of this God. And all God’s people said. Amen.
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