Is The Lord Among Us or Not?
“Is The Lord Among Us or Not?” by Pastor Rosanna McFadden
Good morning! Welcome to this Lenten Sunday as we continue to consider the Wondrous Works of God. I have spoken to some people this week, from Creekside and not, from the Church of the Brethren and not, but all people whose work and commitment and good sense I value and respect. The general consensus is that the world is a mess. The war in Iran seems to spreading into other parts of the region. Iranians, Israelis, and even Americans have been killed, and there are certainly more deaths to come. Closer to home, our immigration system seems to be broken, the economy is not working for everyone, and politicians seem to be more interested in throwing mud at each other than they are in actually finding solutions. As I prepare for Mission and Ministry Board meetings, we are faced with the reality of dwindling financial support because of fewer and smaller congregations. Staff who have served the denomination for years are retiring and taking a lot of institutional wisdom with them. I have plenty of questions about all of this, but I was struck by Moses’ question at the end of today’s text from Exodus: “Is the Lord among us or not?”
The context for that question is both particular and universal. I want to start with some context about how this came about in the book of Exodus, and consider what it might mean for us in this moment, and in the future. The book of Exodus is the account of how the Hebrew people were enslaved in Egypt, miraculously liberated by God, and then led through the wilderness for a generation — forty years — until they reached the land which God had promised them. A lot happens along the way, as you might imagine–not all of it good — but the wilderness is the place where God’s people receive God’s instruction and guidance. This text from Exodus 17 happens near the beginning of the odyssey through the wilderness. An angel of death passed over Egypt killing first-born children and animals. Only Hebrews who smeared the blood of a lamb over their doorways were spared. Pharoah’s own son is dead, and in a fit of grief and despair he tells the Hebrews to leave and take their animals and their possessions with them. They hurriedly gather their families to leave before Pharoah changes his mind. Pharoah changes his mind, and send his troops to cut off their escape. Moses, the leader of the Hebrews, leads them to the edge of the Red Sea with riders and chariots hot on their heels. It is a huge tactical blunder — until God parts the Red Sea and the people walk through on dry land. When Pharoah’s troops charge in after them their horses and chariots get mired in the mud, God closes the sea, and they are drowned and defeated. The people are saved!
That is Exodus 14, there are songs of celebration in chapter 15, and by chapter 16 there is a shortage of food and potable water, the people are complaining bitterly, and the general consensus is that it would have been better to have stayed in Egypt where they were slaves, but at least they had food. In chapter 16 God provides flocks of quail for the people to eat, and a curious white stuff on the ground each morning, called “manna” which means What is it? I don’t know, but takes pretty good.
By chapter 17 the people have again reached an existential crisis. They are camped at a place with no water, and they are faced with dying of thirst. Again, they blame Moses for bringing them out of the Egypt, and Moses realizes they are about ready to bring about regime change by stoning him to death. God shows the way for Moses to strike a rock with his staff, and sweet water flows out for the people to drink.
I received the Messenger denominational magazine this week, and would highly recommend an article by Joanna Wave Wiiloughby entitled “Reorder and the Resurrection.” Joanna is a Mission and Ministry Board member and first presented this material as a sermon during morning worship at our October meeting. I found her article especially compelling in this season of Lent, this moment in our world, and this time in the church. Joanna draws on the work of Richard Rohr, an American priest and writer, who says that transformation and change come in three stages: order, disorder, and re-order. A time of order may not be perfect, but it is predictable and manageable — at least we know what to expect. This is what the Hebrew people had in Egypt. Order is always deconstructed by disruption, death, disease or disaster — or all of those. This disorder is what jolts us out of order; we are forced to leave predictable routines and patterns because they simply don’t apply any more. Most of us try to go back to the previous order, like the people of Israel wanted to, or at least think of it with nostalgia — often more rosy than reality. Don’t you miss those good old days when we were slaves in Egypt? Because, of course, anything seems preferable to dying of thirst.
Disorder is the place between Egypt and the Promised Land. Disorder is the wildness where we realize our own resources are not enough. Disorder is the place between where we used to be and where we wish we were. Disorder is the place between the crucifixion and the resurrection. Disorder is the place we must go through in order to get where God is calling us to be. Is it difficult? Yes. Do we think we might die? Yes. Is it optional? No, it isn’t. What we can choose is whether we move through disorder, if we just stay there. Rohr says, “Permanent residence in this stage tends to make people . . . negative and cynical, usually angry, and quite opinionated and dogmatic as they search for some solid ground.” (Center for Action and Contemplation, Aug 25, 2024)
Moses asks, Is the Lord among us or not? And if the answer is Yes, the Lord is among us — that is a lifeline in times of disorder, and it is our hope for the future. That space of transformation and new life is what Richard Rohr calls re-order. Re-order is not quick or simple. It is not simply waiting for God to fix things so we can step into a different order and get back to the comfort of our certainty and routine. Rohr say, “We dare not get rid of our pain before we have learned what it has to teach us. Most of religion gives in too quickly, dismisses pain too easily, and seeks to be distracted — to maintain some ideal order. So we must resist the instant fix and acknowledge ourselves as beginners to be open to true transformation.” (Ibid)
The cycle of order, disorder, and re-order is always in motion. We are not, praise God, always in the midst of life-changing trauma, disaster, or death, but neither do we get to stay comfortably static, with our lives under control and everything carefully balanced. We may long for a life like that, and even pretend that we have one, or try to convince other people that our lives are all in order — but there is place for the Lord in tidy, carefully ordered lives which we construct for ourselves. We have to acknowledge that God is in the storm, as well as the calm. What we experience, and usually try to avoid, as disorder, disruption, and uncertainty is unavoidable. Disorder, disruption and uncertainty may be God’s way of getting our attention and reminding us that we cannot control the present or the future. Disorder, disruption and uncertainty may be God’s way of shaping us into more compassionate and more faithful people; people who have learned what pain has to teach us, and know that the certainty we can hold on to is that the Lord is among us, and with God’s help and in God’s time, we can find the transformation of re-order.
This is, of course, the journey of Lent, and the message of the cross. It finds an echo in the natural world when growing things begin to die in the fall, and are dormant in the cold and snow of winter, only to come to life and grow again in the spring — so the cycle can repeat again. We remember and repeat stories like this one from Exodus because they remind us that human beings have always had a tendency to be stiff-necked and complaining and resistant to disorder — and so we are still. Most of all, we tell these stories and other biblical stories of disorder and transformation to remind ourselves that God is faithful. God has been with us and will be with us. God is the author of re-order and transformation, and God has promised us water in the wilderness if we trust in Him. Our immortal and invisible God has walked with us in the past, is beside us now, and will be with us in the future. The Lord is among us. Amen.