Scripture: The Great Equalizer
1 The whole congregation of the Israelites set out from Elim—which was Israel’s first encampment site after their dramatic exodus from Egypt. Elim’s description suggests that it was a rare oasis in the desert: twelve springs of water, seventy palm trees. Needless to say, it probably wasn’t easy convincing the people to pack up and leave.
[A]nd Israel came to the wilderness of Sin—which is just a Hebrew place name; it has no connection to our word “sin”—which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt. So it’s been about a month since they’ve left Egypt. Any adrenaline from the excitement of escape and their newfound freedom in the wilderness is probably beginning to wear off. Reality is setting in. This barren landscape is their new life.
2 The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.
It is worth pausing here to note who is complaining: “the whole congregation.” Not just the poor. Not just the misfits. Not just the Eeyores and grumpy old men and the glass-half-empty folks. Everyone. The phrase—“the whole congregation”—only appears seven times in Exodus, and over half of those occurrences are in this story (i.e., Exodus 16). The reason will become clear pretty quickly. The wilderness is a great equalizer. In the wilderness, there are no barns or storehouses. In the wilderness, there are few goods to accumulate, no real estate to secure. You only have what you can carry on your own back.
All of this to say, the wilderness has made all the Israelites equal in their need. And specifically in their hunger. They are equally famished, equally desperate. And so they cry out together, in unison.
Scripture: Nostalgia: Mistaken Memory
3 The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”
The Israelites’ hunger is real, but their memory is mistaken. More than once in their wilderness wanderings (cf. Number 11, 14), they romanticize the past and express a desire to return to Egypt. They get things completely upside down, mistaking the wilderness for a death trap and Egypt for a paradise, when in fact it is the opposite. Egypt was a miserable life of slavery unto death. They did not recline by a buffet of meat and bread, eating their fill. They groaned in their slavery and cried out in their pain. The book of Exodus tells us that their lives had been made bitter. (To this day, during the Passover seder, the Jewish people eat bitter herbs to help them remember the bitterness of slavery in Egypt.)
My suspicion, though, is that Israel’s mistaken memory contains a grain of truth in it. In other words, there were pots filled with cooked meat, and there were people who ate their fill of bread. It just happened to be other people. Their Egyptian taskmasters. The Pharaoh, the princes, the nobles. Egypt’s grandeur did not come out of nowhere. It was the product of a well-organized hierarchy, a chain of power and command. Later in Israel’s life, when the people begin to clamor for a king, the prophet Samuel will warn them that a king will take their best land, their sons for warriors, their daughters for cooks and bakers, a portion of their harvest, and so on (1 Sam 8). In other words, in such a hierarchy, goods and benefits are apportioned unequally. Pharaoh and his entourage most certainly reclined by a buffet of pots filled with meat and plates filled with bread. But the Israelite slaves? They would have been given the bare minimum to survive.
And yet, I think the Israelites’ mistaken memory makes sense. Egypt is all they know. Egypt is the best that they can dream. When they earlier heard God’s promise of a land of milk and honey, they probably computed that promise in terms of the world that they knew. They expected that God would be leading them to the other side of the hierarchy, where they would be the ones enjoying the surplus, the profits, the abundance. They would be on the ones reclining in front of a buffet. And so it’s no great surprise when this dream for the future leaks out in their memory of the past. They remember Egypt correctly—with one little revision. They imagine themselves in the place of the haves rather than the have-nots.
Scripture: “As Much as Each of Them Needed”
4 Then the LORD said to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day. In that way I will test them, whether they will follow my instruction or not.
…
13 In the evening quails came up and covered the camp; and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. 14 When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. 15 When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. In Hebrew, the Israelites said, “Man-hu?” (“What is it?”) You can hear how their question becomes the basis of the word “manna.” Man-hu. Manna. Thus the name itself encases a reminder that God’s provision often exceeds our best calculations or imaginations. As Paul will later put it in Ephesians, God “is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine” (Eph 3:20). With this in mind, we might recall that the best the Hebrews can dream of right now is Egypt upside-down. The best they can hope for is a reversal. So they imagine a society of surplus and lack, abundance and hardship, but where they are on the top rather than the bottom, they are the haves rather than the have-nots. But God has something different in mind…
Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat. 16 This is what the LORD has commanded: ‘Gather as much of it as each of you needs, an omer to a person according to the number of persons, all providing for those in their own tents.’” 17 The Israelites did so, some gathering more, some less. The “some…more, some less” seems to refer to larger and smaller families. Larger families gathered more according to their need, smaller families gathered less according to their need. Because, as we read in the next verse… 18 [W]hen they measured it with an omer, those who gathered much had nothing over, and those who gathered little had no shortage; they gathered as much as each of them needed.
What is the lesson of God’s manna? It is manifold. God hears us when we cry out in our need. God provides. God’s grace is sufficient to our need.
Indeed, that word “need” pops up more than once. It is worth reflecting on for a moment. This manna, this bread from heaven, is not apportioned the way food is often apportioned in our world. It is not “for the predator.” Not “for the powerful or the privileged.” Not “for the lucky or the entitled.”[1] It is rather for those who have need—which is “the whole congregation,” everyone.
Later in the story, some Israelites will try to accumulate the manna, to gather more than the designated amount, more than enough for that day. The best they can dream, remember, is Egypt. A society of surplus and lack, abundance and hardship. They just dream of being on the other side of the power balance. And so some of them try to start accumulating the manna, storing it up, saving it. The more you have, the more leverage, the more power, the more control. They want to recline in front of buffets of food like Pharaoh.
But the ploy fails. The manna spoils the next day. God is teaching the Israelites a radically different way of life than the way they know. God is teaching them the lesson of “enough” (the word God uses in verse 4). God is teaching them a lesson and a habit of simplicity and sharing. When each person takes only what each person needs and shares the rest, there is always enough. God’s grace is always sufficient to the need.
Later in Deuteronomy, Moses elaborates on the test of manna in the wilderness. He warns the people about life after they have entered the land: “When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks have multiplied….do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God. … [God] fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good. Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth’” (Deut 8:12-17). Moses recognizes that having land and gathering one’s own harvest might be seductive. It could lure Israel away from the way of simplicity and sharing, where God’s grace is enough for the need of everyone. To trust in God’s grace is to receive what is needed and to share the rest, as the people did with the manna. But Moses foresees that in the promised land the people might relapse into the way of Egypt, the way of profit and power, the way of storing up a surplus at the cost of others. (All in the name of security, of course….But when the energy is always moving toward “more, more, more”—as seems to be the case in our so-called “growth” economy—one must eventually ask how much “more” a person needs to be secure, especially while many remain with their basic needs unmet.)
The Church in the World
I recently read a story that led me to wonder about how the church bears witness to the truth that God’s grace is enough, how it bears witness to the way of simplicity and sharing that the people of Israel learned in the wilderness. An old pastor originally shared this story:
There was a young pastor, fresh out of seminary, who had been at his first church for several years. He felt like he had paid his dues and finally was earning some currency, and he was ready to push through his first big idea. The church could provide a day-care center for the community.
“He explained to them why he thought a day-care center would be a good idea for the church. The church had the facilities. It would be good stewardship to put the building to good advantage. [It] was idle most of the week [anyway]. [And] it might be a good way to recruit new members. The church could be social activist and evangelistic at the same time.
But then a church member, Gladys, “butted in, ‘Why is the church in the day-care business? How could this be a part of the ministry of the church?’”
“The young pastor patiently went over his reasons again: use of the building, attracting young families, another source of income, the Baptists down the street already having a day-care center.
“‘And besides, Gladys,’ said Henry Smith, ‘you know that it’s getting harder every day to put food on the table. It’s become a necessity for both husband and wife to have full-time jobs.’”
“‘That’s not true,’ said Gladys. ‘You know it’s not true Henry. It is not hard for anyone in this church, for anyone in this neighborhood to put food on the table. Now there are people in this town for whom food on the table is quite a challenge, but I haven’t heard any talk about them. They wouldn’t be using this day-care center. They wouldn’t have a way to get their children here. This day-care center wouldn’t be for them. If we are talking about ministry to their needs, then I’m in favor of the idea. No, what we’re talking about is ministry to those for whom it has become harder every day to have two cars, a VCR, a place at the lake, or a motor home. That’s why we’re all working hard and leaving our children. I just hate to see the church buy into and encourage that value system. I hate to see the church telling these young couples that somehow their marriage will be better or their family life more fulfilling if they can only get another car, or a VCR, or some other piece of junk. Why doesn’t the church be the last place courageous enough to say, “That’s a lie. Things don’t make a marriage or a family.” This day-care center will encourage some of the worst aspects of our already warped values.’”
The story continues, but I had to take a breather there—in awe and wonder at Gladys’ stinging rebuke. I have to confess, I was both offended and convicted. Offended because I take it for granted that folks like you and me who have not only what we need but also some comforts and conveniences aren’t doing anything wrong. And if any one of us were struggling to make ends meet, I’d have sympathy. But I was convicted because I had just read the story of Israel in the wilderness, where God instructs the people in a different way from what they have learned in Egypt, a way of enough, a way of simplicity and sharing, a way where God’s grace is indeed sufficient to meet everyone’s need. By extension, I concluded, the church as ambassadors of God’s way is not meant simply to help the world live in the way it is already living, to help people who have more than enough to continue to live with more than enough. (To live with more than enough is a fool’s errand anyway, according to scripture, as such hoarding leads to the spoiling or rotting of God’s good gifts.) The church, instead, is meant to bear witness to a better way.
I went to the grocery store the other day and saw a sign that said something like, “Together we can end hunger.” And I found myself thinking, “Yes. And no.” Yes, God’s grace is sufficient to meet our need. Hunger can be ended. But in a supermarket that reflects a culture that resembles Egypt, with advertisements all around us, telling us we need more, we don’t have enough, why not indulge yourself in this new thing you didn’t know you needed—in such a world, it is so easy to forget God’s grace and relapse into the quest to secure our own lives, to be a have not a have-not, to think “my power and the might of my hand has gotten me this wealth” (Deut 8:17), I deserve it, don’t I?
I don’t want to wrap this sermon up for you. (Frankly, I don’t know how to!) I want to leave it open as a question. I want to invite us to ponder how the church stands as a stark alternative to the world around us. As a new people. As a different kind of community. As a colony of heaven.
What does it look like when we live as though God’s grace is enough?
Prayer
Loving God,Who leads us out of the slavery
Of “more, more, more”—
Where our needs
For food, sleep, shelter, love,
Are met,
Grant us peace
…
Inspire us by the example of Christ
To live simple lives,
So that we might receive your grace
With wonder and gratitude
And share it with those in need.
In Christ, the bread of life: Amen.
[1] Walter Brueggemann, “Bread Shared
with All the Eaters,”
https://churchanew.org/brueggemann/bread-shared-with-all-the-eaters, accessed
September 29, 2025.
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