Year B
Exodus 16:2-4,9-15
Psalm 78:23-29
Ephesians 4:1-16
John 6:24-35

May the words of my mouth O God…  speak your truth…

Think for a moment about the sandy Sahara Desert…  it’s the third largest desert on Earth…  if it was a square…  it would measure 1,897 miles on each side…  that’s a lot of desert…  it’s just a little bit smaller than the area of the United States…  but certainly bigger than the wilderness through which the Israelites wandered…  though no less forgiving…  a place where food and water…  equal life…

Now think for a moment about Arrakis…  the imaginary planet in Frank Herbert’s science fiction novel Dune…  if you haven’t read the book…  or don’t remember…  Arrakis is a planet whose surface is almost entirely desert…  water is so precious…  that the native people…  the Fremen…  don’t use the word blood when referring to that crucial life giving force…  instead…  they use the word water…  and early in the novel…  when newcomer Duke Leto Atreides agrees to abide by an unfamiliar custom…  one of the Fremen…  spits on the table around which they are meeting…  many are outraged…  it seems disrespectful and derogatory…  but one of the Duke’s right-hand men…  who’s familiar with Fremen ways…  thanks him for offering the water from his body…  for giving up some of his life…  it was a sign of deep respect…  and not an insult at all…

In our reading from Exodus…  the Israelites lament their circumstances…  and grumble against Moses and Aaron for bringing them into the wilderness to die…  they claim that it would have been better if they had died by the stewpots of Egypt with their bellies full of bread…  and there is a juxtaposition…  after four hundred years in Egypt…  when all they knew was slavery…  how could they possibly have appreciated the experience of freedom…  and in my description of Arrakis…  there is a juxtaposition…  it can be difficult to appreciate the preciousness of water…  when four of the five Great Lakes surround Michigan…  when we turn on a tap and life flows out of our faucets…  and it can be even more challenging to imagine an entire desert planet…  when we didn’t travel through the wilderness with the Israelites…

When the crowds who remained after the feeding of the more than 5,000…  realized that Jesus was gone…  they searched for…  and found him…  and Jesus rightly said…  you’re only looking for me because you ate your fill of bread…  and after a bit of back-and-forth…  about believing in the one whom God had sent…  and who it really was who gave the manna in the wilderness…  Jesus tells them to work for the food that endures for eternal life…  and they ask…  what must we do to perform the works of God…  what sign are you going to give us…  so we can believe you…  they wanted to know with certainty…  they didn’t want to leave it to chance…  and there’s a juxtaposition…  they’re talking on two different levels…  the people were talking about bread baked in an oven…  and Jesus unintentionally talks over their heads when he says…  I am the bread of life…

What sign are you going to give us…  so we can believe you…  they wanted to know with certainty…  didn’t want to leave it to chance…  leaving things to chance is foolish…  isn’t it…  it would be like casting lots…  it would be like rolling dice…  which produces an outcome we would normally consider to be random…  but there are at least eighty-eight accounts of casting lots in the Jewish Scriptures…  and seven accounts in the Christian Scriptures…  and this practice is believed to reveal the will of God…  according to Numbers 26:55…  Moses allocated territory to the tribes of Israel according to each tribe’s male population and by casting lots…  in 1 Samuel 14:24…  Saul demands that his troops take an oath not to eat any food before he has taken revenge on his enemies…  though someone did…  and lots were cast to determine that it was Saul’s son Jonathan…  you may remember that in Jonah 1:7 the desperate sailors cast lots to see whose god was responsible for creating the calamitous storm…  and the lot fell on poor Jonah…  and in the Christian scriptures…  there’s an example in the Book of Acts 1:23–26 when the eleven remaining apostles cast lots to determine whether to select Matthias or Barsabbas to replace Judas…

Far too many of those who have decided not to get vaccinated are rolling the dice…  not only with their own health…  but with the health of their neighbors…  and some churches are still choosing their officers…  by avoiding the hurt feelings that can result when some win elections and others lose…  by pulling names out of a hat…  but how many of us leave the most important decisions in our lives to chance…  most of us ask questions and make informed decisions…  and when we can…  we don’t willingly silence our voices…  can you imagine someone proposing a law that would change elections from the collective “the will of the people” to someone casting lots…  but that is close to what some elected officials are trying to do in a few southern states…  to make it harder for people of color to vote…  because they disliked how so many of them voted in the last election…  among other changes…  they want to be able to appoint one of their own choosing…  to supervise the actual counting of ballots…  but this is wholly antithetical to our baptismal vow to strive for justice and peace for ALL people…  and respect the dignity of every human being…

And this raises some questions…  what are our obligations to each other…  what are the limits of Christian community…  in the post-Egyptian wilderness…  those who had much did not have too much…  and those who had little did not have too little…  and so we must contend with questions like…  who in our day has too much or too little…  and of what is there too much or too little…  and what are we to do about it…  corporately…  collectively…

The Exodus…  the release from slavery…  and the wandering in the desert…  was apocalyptic for the Israelites…  from their perspective…  it was the end times…  the end of their daily patterns…  the end of what they knew and all that was familiar…  even the end of the rhythms of slavery…  all gone…  and many of them believed the captivity they knew was better than the liberation they didn’t know…  but the wilderness journey was an opportunity to expand their trusting relationship with God and what they might think possible…

In 2021…  we are in the wilderness with the Israelites…  and there is a juxtaposition…  we too are living in apocalyptic times…  gone are Pharaoh’s rules which governed their lives…  gone too are many of the rules and social contracts which govern ours…  there are conflicting voices clamoring for our allegiance…  is there really a pandemic or not…  does the vaccine contain tracking devices…  who really won the election…  and in spite of the videos…  were the thousands of people at the Capitol on January 6 nothing more than well-behaved tourists…  as some claim…  we’ve lost our mooring…  as a country…  we don’t know who to believe anymore…

Bur God feeds us with bread…  and God wants to feed us with Jesus…  with the bread that brings eternal life…  and so I wonder what we do…  when God then feeds us with new truths…  do we grumble like the Israelites…  do we say what is this…  which is what manna means…  or do we imagine how it might nourish…  heal…  and strengthen us…  do we imagine how we might read…  learn…  and inwardly digest…  the Living Word…  living in a transitional age such as ours is scary…  things are falling apart…  the future is unknowable…  so much just doesn’t make sense…  but our uncertainty is the doorway into mystery…  the doorway into surrender…  the path to God that Jesus called faith…  and it may seem totally opposed to what we think right…  but through it…  we may turn back to God…  it may seem like spitting on a conference table…  but it will be an offering of ourselves…  an offering that’s no less…  than life itself…