So Freely from So
Little
Danielle Mayfield grew up wanting to be a missionary. She wanted to travel overseas to strange and wonderful lands, to save all the innocent souls who had never heard the name of Jesus. When she was seventeen, she went on a mission trip to India. Her group visited a tiny village to perform an evangelistic play. It was a drama, she says, “about the temptations of money and women and alcohol, and how Jesus has the power to overcome them.” Never mind that this village was dirt poor and had more pressing concerns.
She remembers eating dinner in the village before their play. Sitting on a swept dirt floor, she and her companions ate the rice and curry that had been carefully prepared by a scrawny old woman with only a few teeth left intact. The curry was “hot-as-hell,” she recalls, and seemed to be composed of little more than okra. Having heard that spice is often used to disguise rotting vegetables, she was thankful for the fire in her mouth. She cooled it as best she could with the tall metal cup of water, which must have been drawn from a well outside the village.
Later in the evening, after she and the team had performed their play and no one had come forward at the altar call, they climbed into their SUV and rolled out of the dusty village back to their flat in the city. On the way home, their guide and interpreter remarked in his singsong voice: “That was their one meal of the day, and they shared it with you.”[1]
There are infinite variations on this story. I’ve heard friends share similar anecdotes from their mission trips. It seems to be a common experience. Rich folks from the “developed” world are overwhelmed by the generosity of their dirt-poor hosts, who give so freely of what little they have.
Two Freedoms
These stories of precious gifts so freely given draw a striking contrast to our scripture today. It has been only one month since God delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Their freedom is fresh. No more impossible brick-laying quotas to meet. No more taunting and tormenting. For the first time in their lives, their bodies are their own.
And yet we discover here in the freshness of their physical freedom, that they are actually still enslaved. Their complaints in today’s scripture are not simply the cries of hunger. They are the cries of delusion. The Israelites long for the land of Egypt, the land of their slavery. They may be free in body, but they are not yet free in soul. They are free from constraints without, but not from constraints within, such as their own selfish impulse. I find really helpful Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ observation that the exodus story is really a story of two freedoms. The first freedom comes in a single chapter, as God liberates the Israelites from slavery. The second freedom, however, takes over three books—over forty years in the story world, over an entire generation of Israelites. It takes a long time for the Israelites to learn what the dirt-poor hosts in India know, which is that true freedom consists not in the absence of difficult conditions but in a faith and joy that can endure any condition. Paul shows us this second freedom, this soul freedom, in his letter to the Philippians. He writes from prison, and yet his letter is filled with joy. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say, Rejoice,” writes the man who is sitting in chains, who is sitting behind bars (Phil 4:4).
The Wilderness as a
Training Ground
In today’s scripture, God shares with Moses his plans to “test” the people of Israel. I prefer the alternative translation “try” instead of “test,” because the word “trials” seems to me a more accurate theological description of what we daily endure. As the Lord’s Prayer suggests, God does not “lead us” purposefully into “temptation,” or trials. Rather, trials happen, but God is with us to “deliver us” (cf. Luke 11:4). And perhaps to teach us. To help us change and grow. Paul actually talks about the wilderness trials of Israel in his letter to the Corinthians. He says we all go through wilderness trials. “No trial has overtaken you that is not common to everyone” (1 Cor 10:13). I read this to indicate that trials are not purposefully planned by God, but rather are common experiences, such as loss or need or unexpected change. Paul continues, “With the trial God will also provide a way out so that you may be able to endure it” (1 Cor 10:13). In other words, while trials are difficult, sometimes even bad or evil, they are also experiences from which God can always draw good. God may not cause them, but God can always use them to teach us soul freedom.
A few chapters earlier in Exodus, there is a little aside where God thinks to himself. What he thinks, turns out to be a big clue to the meaning of the wilderness and its trials. Here’s the verse: “When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines although that was nearer”—in other words, God did not take them directly to the Promised Land. “For God thought, ‘If the people face war, they may change their minds and return to Egypt.’ So God led the people by the roundabout way of the wilderness” (Ex 13:17-18). The Jewish philosopher Maimonides suggests that this verse shows us the true meaning of the wilderness. It is a training ground. God worries that the newly liberated Israelites are not strong in spirit. God worries that when they face adversity, they will want to return to Egypt, to relapse into old patterns of thought and behavior. So God chooses the “roundabout way of the wilderness” in order to train the Israelites through their common trials, to teach them soul freedom, to teach them how to trust in God’s provision and guidance even when conditions are difficult.
One Day at a Time
It will take the Israelites forty years to learn this soul freedom. In the meantime, we will find them complaining, again and again. Perhaps more than anything else, complaining characterizes the Israelites who wander in the wilderness. Their complaints boil down to a desire for control. But the lesson of the manna that God gives them in today’s scripture challenges this desire for control. This trial in the wilderness teaches them that they must relinquish control and trust in God one day at a time. In the wilderness, there is no stockpiling, no silos of grain like there were in Egypt. There is no rationing according to status, no honor-shame meritocracy like there was in Egypt. There is even no method to master, no intellectual know-how that secures their food. The very name, manna, means “What is this?”—which is to say, “Where did this come from? How?” Trusting in God one day at a time runs counter to everything the Israelites learned in Egypt, everything they learned from the way of empire, where goods must be accumulated, where individuals must be ranked and earn their separate living, where planning and efficiency secure the future.
The Church in the
Wilderness?
The more I think about Israel in the wilderness, I find myself pondering the church today, who is entering a wilderness of its own. For a long time—over a millennium—the church was the darling of western civilization. Just think about it in the context of our nation’s history. There used to be blue laws against business and recreational activity on Sunday, to safeguard the church’s day of worship. Oaths in the courthouse used to be performed exclusively over the Bible. Christian prayers have regularly been offered in the public sphere, everywhere from school assemblies to presidential inaugurations. National holidays have made special accommodation for Christian holy days like Christmas and Easter. The money we carry is stamped with a religious confession, “In God we trust.”
I do not mean to challenge these laws and customs. I follow Jesus and render unto Caesar—and Congress—what is theirs. What they decide is not my business. I mean only to observe that the church has long held pride of place in our world. But today it is losing ground. It is no longer the darling of our culture. The longer you’ve lived, the better you probably have a sense for this change, this loss of public favor. But it’s becoming evident to everyone now, as church attendances decrease each year, as funds dry up and buildings are closed, as church loses Sunday to sports and yoga and breweries and brunch. It really is a watershed moment in history. Many Christians are worried. Many are taking an increasingly defensive and combative posture, making plans for how they might battle with culture and win votes and reclaim what they consider to be their rights.
But I must confess, this defensiveness feels “off” to me. I see no such defensiveness in Jesus, whose way is not force but bearing witness. I see no such defensiveness in Paul, who writes in Philippians (one of our lectionary texts today), “[God] has graciously granted you the privilege not only of trusting in Christ, but of suffering for him as well” (Phil 1:29). For Paul, the only privilege we bear is to follow Christ, even when that means hardship at the hands of a world that insists on competition instead of collaboration, vengeance instead of forgiveness, looking out for one’s own instead of taking interest in the other.
Nearly five hundred years ago, a group of Anabaptists (whom we might consider our forebears) saw something similar happening among the established church of their day, as Roman bishops made plays for power and pulled strings all over Europe in order to achieve the aims of the church. They concluded of the church: “The sheep [has taken] on a thoroughly wolfish nature.” In other words, it has never been the way of Christ to rule over others. The lamb is not a wolf. To fight for power and to wield it is already to have lost the struggle, for Christ invites us not to enforce his way on others but to celebrate it before them and invite them onto the way too.
I think the story of Israel in the wilderness might be good news for the church. It reminds us that, at its essence, the community of God never was about buildings or budgets or paid, professional clergy. These institutional trappings have more to do with the way our world likes to operate, whether in ancient Egypt and Rome or in the United States today. When God delivered the Israelites from slavery into the wilderness, God stripped them not only of their chains but also of grain silos and building projects and all the other means of security that are sought in the midst of empire. Similarly, the church is being stripped of its traditional securities: bricked buildings, filled pews, growing budgets, favors in the public sphere. Perhaps we are being invited to learn the freedom that God was teaching the Israelites, the freedom that Paul knows in prison, the freedom that the dirt-poor hosts in India showed their guests. Perhaps we are being invited to learn the simpler life of faith. Manna. One day at a time. For every person.
Prayer
Who leads us on the “roundabout way” of the wilderness
That we may grow in faith—
May we know our trials,
Both as individuals and as a church,
As opportunities for change and growth
…
Teach us the trust that Jesus had,
That we may shed our wolfish ways
And rejoice in your simple provision,
One day at a time.
In Christ, of gentle and humble heart: Amen.
[1] D. L.
Mayfield, Assimilate or Go Home: Notes from a Failed Missionary on Rediscovering
Faith (New York: HarperOne, 2016), 173.
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