Today's Gift, Today's Manna

"Today's Gifts, Today's Manna"

Exodus 16:2-4, 9-21
August 2, 2009

The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the
wilderness. 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.” 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.
Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole congregation of the Israelites, ‘Draw near
to the LORD, for he has heard your complaining.’“ And as Aaron spoke to the whole
congregation of the Israelites, they looked toward the wilderness, and the glory of the
LORD appeared in the cloud. The LORD spoke to Moses and said, “I have heard the
complaining of the Israelites; say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the
morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the LORD your
God.’“

In the evening quails came up and covered the camp; and in the morning there was a
layer of dew around the camp. 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. When the
Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it
was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat. 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.’“ The Israelites did so, some gathering more, some less. But when 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. And
Moses said to them, “Let no one leave any of it over until morning.” But they did not
listen to Moses; some left part of it until morning, and it bred worms and became foul.
And Moses was angry with them. Morning by morning they gathered it, as much as
each needed; but when the sun grew hot, it melted.

One of the habits I am not very proud of is that of hoarding, of thinking that I have to
constantly store up on things that are on sale, or are a bargain—most of the books in
my library are bargain books, books I’ve found at a steep discount, and have thus
stored away to be read for another day, when I get time, I suppose. Every once in a
while, Hardings has a sale on mushrooms, and thought I don’t do a lot of the food
shopping, whenever I see mushrooms on sale, I stock up on them, a dozen or so, at
least, and even though I may have nothing else in the cupboard, I have mushrooms.
Did I mention that I love mushrooms? I wish I did a bit more hoarding of money, rather
than books, and cans of mushrooms, which is kind of pathetic, isn’t it? Still, there is
something universal to this phenomenon of hoarding, isn’t there, something deep and
structural about the human need to make sure there is enough, enough food, enough
money, enough stuff, to make us feel safe, secure, free from danger. I know that
saying that it is universal is probably pushing it—we all know people who never hoard,
never save, never plan beyond the very next day---so, what I mean by universal is
something a bit nuanced--universal in the sense that the issue of storing away,
sometimes needlessly storing away, is something that has haunted us humans down
through the ages. Perhaps we really do believe that if we surround ourselves with
enough food, enough clothing, enough money, enough books, enough mushrooms,
that all will be well in the world, at least in the little world of self, in the kingdom of self.

And yet, there is always a universal response from God, from the universe, to this
desire to hoard, and that is that such a thing is never possible—that one cannot store
up the goodness of God, the goodness and blessings we have been given at this
moment, that we cannot store up the gifts of this moment, and think they were actually
meant to be used for another moment, for tomorrow’s needs.   You only have to look at
the story before us today to be reminded that God is good, and that God provides, and
God provides for today, and that God will provide for tomorrow, and that there is no
need and no point in trying to store today’s manna in the refrigerator, thinking that
somehow I can keep today’s manna and have it for leftovers tomorrow. Here you have
a story about a group of folks, newly liberated from Egypt, on this journey to the
promised land, who find themselves hungry, wondering where the next meal was going
to come from, even after having complained to God twice already about not having
enough, both times during which God provided for them. The story tends to get
bogged down in our criticism of these Israelites for being ungrateful and whiners and
complainers, but, to be frank, if we were told to set out into the desert with only a limited
amount of provisions, leaving behind the fleshpots of Egypt, so to speak, we might not
be so quick to be so judgmental on these poor folks.

And no doubt that their memory has not served them well, like it doesn’t for many of us,
who tend to romanticize the past, to idealize it, claiming our own fleshpots way back
when, when, in fact, it is highly unlikely that the slaves of Egypt would have ever had
the best of anything, much less an appetizing and filling meal at the end of a hard day
of slave labor. But we all do it, don’t we: we all tend to romanticize the past, and make it
better than it was—back then it was all better, much better than it is right now—sure, we’
re free right now, but at least when we were slaves we had food on the table, we tend to
tell ourselves. First, we clamor for freedom, and then when we get it, we suddenly
realize how difficult it is to be free—when we are teenagers, we can’t wait to be adults
and when we are adults, we wish we were teenagers, or that we at least had the energy
of teenagers. It seems that we so often want we cannot have, and that we have is so
often what we do not want. Ironic, isn’t it?

But underneath that tendency to lie to ourselves about how good that past once was,
there is the lie that if we had just stored up enough of the good stuff from that past, we
could somehow carry that gift into the present. If we could just have kept the fleshpots
of Egypt with us as we journeyed in the desert, if we could just have the energy of
youth without the silliness that sometimes accompanies it—sorry, young people, but I
am not that far removed from my teens not to remember how silly I could be at times—if
we could have just refrigerated that manna from long ago, and had it for today, it would
all be good, or so we tell ourselves.   That is the problem with the gifts that we are given
for this moment in our lives, the daily bread for we are given for only today—it isn’t
meant to be stored, it isn’t meant to be hoarded.

Sally Harris, a Canadian minister, shared this story with her own congregation a few
years ago in order make this very point:

A child of the South once told me about grits — how she ate grits for years without
knowing what they were. She ate cheese grits, buttered grits, grits with pieces of crisp
bacon stirred in — all sorts of grits. When she was about 12 she asked a friend if he
knew what grits were.

“The truth?” he said grinning. “You really want to know the truth?”

And naively she responded: “Of course!”

“Grits,” he said, “are small bugs that live in colonies on the surface of fresh-water lakes,
like algae, and at the end of every summer they are harvested, shelled, and dried in
the sun so that you couldn’t tell that they had ever had legs. Mm-mmmm,” he
concluded, as her stomach curled into a ball.

Now, first of all, as a child of South, I can tell you that’s not true—her friend was having
some good fun with her, but Sally continues with these words:

Somehow manna reminds me of grits. They are both fine, flaky things that are
absolutely no good as leftovers. Each day the people shall go out and gather enough
for that day, God told Moses. One day’s worth, no more, because manna would not
keep.
(Sally Harris, “The bread of angels,” October 13, 2002, Trinity United Church Web Site,
trinityunitedchurch.ca)

Those are wise words, I think, but I have to admit, as I have said at other times in
sermons that have carried this common theme, that it’s a truth that is sometimes hard
to believe, to believe that God really will take care of us tomorrow, just as God took
care of us today, and the day before that, and each moment of our lives. You know, in
almost twelve years of ministry, I have been beside a lot of people who have told me, in
moments of great pain and tragedy, that they didn’t think they could survive, that they
couldn’t imagine being able to get beyond this great loss. “I won’t be able to get
through this, I know I won’t” are familiar words to many of us, of course, but especially
us preacher types, and though I never say it, because it is important to honor the
feeling, and the pain that reflected in those words, to not sound paternalistic or
dismissive of the deep loss being gone through in that moment, the reality is that I know
they will get through it, someway and somehow, because all that needs to be gotten
through is the next second, the next minute, the next hour, the next day, the next
month, the next year. And each day that we think that there is nothing left, we find gifts,
small gifts, large gifts, from God, reminders that we have not been forgotten, that we will
get the gifts we need for this day, just as we received what we needed for the day
before.

I think the reason why God only wants us to pick up today’s manna, today’s gift, is that
God wants us to trust that God’s generosity is present every day, not just for a season,
not just for a moment, but is present everyday and every moment of everyday,
sometimes in ways that we can only discover years later, as we reflect on our times in
the desert. It is that moment of testing that you see hinted at in verse 4—will we follow
God’s instructions, to pick up only what we need for today, and let God provide us what
we need for tomorrow, or will try to store some away, hoping that it will last ‘till
morning?   The text is clear about what happens to that attempt to save some up for
tomorrow—it becomes riddled with worms and becomes foul. Today’s bread is today’s
bread, and tomorrow’s bread, well, tomorrow’s bread will come tomorrow. What God
seems to want to teach these Israelites in that desert, and wants to teach us as well, is
that God blesses us daily, God is a regular giver to us, in every aspect of our lives.
Think about this for a moment, friends: every week in this congregation we pray the
Lord’s Prayer, this gift to us from Jesus, and in that prayer we ask God to give us our
daily bread—note that: DAILY bread. We don’t pray for tomorrow’s bread, for next
month’s bread, for next year’s bread—no, we are told to pray for today’s bread, and
only today’s bread, because that is all we will need for today.

And before we think that this is only about bread, about our material needs, I want us to
remember that God doesn’t only give us material things, that God doesn’t just give us
enough money, enough food, enough savings, whatever to get through the day. No,
God gives us the capacity to love for this day, and yet we so often decide to keep it
stored up for another day, that day when that other person we want to love more fully
will do as we want them to do, or be the person we think we need them to be. We are
given hearts that can love today, and yet we so often find excuses for locking up that
love, storing it away in the safe of our hearts thinking that it will keep for another day,
when we are ready to love them on our own terms.   And yet, we find what Anne Dillard
warns us we will find: “You open your safe and find ashes,” she writes so beautifully.
There are other gifts, more important gifts we are given than bread, that we lock up—
forgiveness of that one who has done us wrong so many years ago, grace for that child
who hasn’t lived up to our expectations, mercy for the mother who hasn’t been the kind
of mother we had hoped for, gentleness and kindness for a spouse who does it their
way, and not the right way, as we see it.   If we keep that capacity for forgiveness,
grace, mercy, gentleness and kindness, hid away for another day, those gifts we have
been given by God for today, then we may find that when we are ready to give those
things away, when we are ready to unlock the safe of our hearts, we will find instead is
only ashes. In the movie The Wrestler, you certainly see that truth, as the main
character, after suffering a heart attack, is finally ready for love and a reconnection with
his daughter—and what he finds inside himself is ashes, and a life squandered.

Sometimes when I am visiting my mother in Mississippi, we sit out on the back porch of
my mother’s home, a home that used to be my grandmother’s house, and we talk about
some of the better times, especially those times when our family lived overseas, and
when we traveled the world—I remember those times, even as a young kid, though my
sister remembers very little of it. Inevitably, the conversation turns towards all the
money that was spent on those vacations, money that could have been saved and
used later, as we transitioned back to living in the States in the early eighties.
Admittedly, my parents weren’t great savers, weren’t great managers of money during
those times, and perhaps too much of it was spent on vacations that have become only
memories for our family. It’s always an ambiguous conversation, because my mom
knows that they should have probably been more frugal in those years, when we had a
bit of money. And yet, we almost always come back to the once–in-a-lifetime
experience we had in living in Singapore and Indonesia and visiting different places all
over the world, and there are no real regrets, except that perhaps that they should
have tucked away a few more dollars when there were some dollars to actually tuck
away. Of course, that money could have turned to dust, as easily as it disappeared
from their wallets on those trips we took as a family in the seventies—certainly many of
us have witnessed our own saving and investments turn to dust or partial dust anyway,
during the past year. And yet, for my family that was the gift we were given by God
during that time, during those days, and there is no point in doing anything but
celebrating the gifts of the past, and then naming the ways that God has been present
with us through later, more difficult times, through my father’s health issues, his heart
attacks, and his eventual heart transplant, the five extra years we got from that singular
gift, the gift of a stranger’s heart beating in my father’s chest.

God’s gifts to us were always there, every day, and every day it was a different gift, and
so there was no point in trying to hide it away somewhere so we could have that
particular gift for tomorrow, because frankly, today’s gift is probably not what we will
need for tomorrow, and the gifts we will need for the coming days.   We could all tell
that kind of story, couldn’t we, our attempt to hang onto the goodness of today, and
finding it was impossible to do, and then finding quickly enough that God hadn’t
stopped being generous with us, that God hadn’t stopped loving us and being
generous with us. When we spend time trying to hold onto the goodness of the past,
we fail to recognize the manna God has given us on this day, the manna right there on
the ground before us. So, in closing, I want to quote Anne Dillard more fully, when she
writes these words, an excerpt of which I gave you earlier, and I want us to think of what
we have tried to hide away in the safes of our hearts: forgiveness, mercy, grace,
kindness and gentleness, maybe even understanding: One thing I know is this, Dillard
writes, Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what
seems good for later; give it, give it all, give it now. Anything you do not give freely and
abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes. In this case, may
that not be so. Amen.