Which version?

Proper 22 A 2008 (RCL)
(Exodus 16: 2-15; Ps 105: 1-6, 37-45; Phil 1: 21-30; Mt 20: 1-16)


Version one: the people of Israel moved majestically, triumphantly out of Egypt. Everyone worked together, everyone was happy. In front walked Moses, tall and strong and handsome and chiseled, thumping his staff on the ground as if he knew exactly where he was going. Sometimes there was a little trouble. Sometimes people got a little anxious, a little testy. But Moses would open his mouth and put on that God-voice, lifted up his staff with a well-muscled arm, and then everything would turn out just fine. Even when they ran out of food in the desert, we knew it was no sweat. It was all under control.

Here’s version two, same story:

Everyone is cranky, everyone is tired, everyone is scared. Everyone is full of doubt. Moses is stressed and fed up and scared too, scared that he’s this close to getting lynched. He wants out, out from in between these frightened angry people and a faceless, mysterious God. That God seems cranky and angry too, just like Dad on those long car trips—“We’ll get there when we get there! Don’t make me come back there!” Or maybe more like Mom in the kitchen at 4:15—“Can’t you see I’m busy? Dinner’s coming, you’ll just have to wait!”

Which version sounds more like the Bible we’re reading? Which version sounds more like the real community life we are living?

We may want our life together with Christ to be like Hollywood, with a great sound-track, clean white robes, and Charleton Heston or maybe Brad Pitt in charge. But that’s like wishing our family Christmas dinner to be just like the movies, where everyone sits down peacefully and listens to the youngest say the sweetest grace, and then all eat and talk and laugh because all the conflicts got resolved by 6:00 PM Christmas Eve. Family is a lot messier than that. So is church, so is Christian community. But real, messy life is the ground where God meets us.

In today’s story, do you notice how nostalgic people are?

Everyone is sure that things were so much better before. Everyone wants to go back to Egypt, because “Remember the food? It was good!” Nostalgia is the best sauce there is. The past is almost always better. We forget our slavery. In this viewpoint, God is always back there, where we think life was so much more orderly. There is no way that God can be with us now, because now is so anxious and so unresolved. And there is no way that God can make a future for us. God cannot be trusted to do that.

So let’s go back. Turn the clock back, to Egypt, or to 1964, or to when we were much younger. That’s the way to worship the gods of Egypt. The gods of Egypt want their worshippers to return to how things were, and will teach us the proper ceremonies to keep things the same.

But the God of the Bible is present now and opens a future. God is here with us. We may not see the path. We make the path by walking. But God leads and God provides, and God promises new life for us even as we hash things out together and with God as honestly as we can.

Do we believe that God is with us here and now? Are we ready to walk our own path? Do we embrace the new future that is promised? Are we a community that would rather return to Egypt? Or do we choose to follow the God who leads in the midst of all our doubts, all our fear, all our human truth?