Last Sunday we began to think about salvation while contemplating the story of Israel escaping from slavery in Egypt and how God helped them by parting the Red Sea. The main theme of Exodus is salvation. Not only did God save Israel from the misery of slavery to the Egyptians who were harsh taskmasters and implemented cruel policies like drowning the baby boys in the river, but after Israel escaped from Egypt, the Lord spent 40 years saving them from themselves and teaching them to trust only in him. During this time the Lord used the wilderness as a tool for salvation.
In the second year after I graduated from college I had a miserable year. The recession of the early 90s had hit causing the preschool where I worked to close. I searched in vain for new work, finding only babysitting jobs for the summer, and then finally accepting a position as a nanny which paid only room and board for 20 hours a week. I soon discovered that this family was not so pleasant to work for and worse to live with, and I was unable to find any other work so I was very poor. This experience was very hard on my self-esteem – it is not where I expected to be after four good years of college. While I had clearly felt God’s hand leading me when I was in school, now I felt abandoned, rejected, aimless and alone.
But one day as I was talking with my friend Louise – who was like a second mom to me – she said, “Sarah, you are in the wilderness.” She proceeded to tell me about some of her wilderness experiences and helped me see the connection between our lives in the wilderness, and what the Israelites experienced as they made their way from Egypt to the Promised Land. After a while, I too began to see how the Lord was using my wilderness time to strengthen and teach me and help me grow in my faith.
There are many lessons to be learned in the wilderness, but the focus for today is on the bread of heaven. After wandering around for a while the Israelites’ rations began to run low. So the whole congregation began to murmur, grumble and complain to Moses and Aaron. They started to wish out loud that they were still in Egypt, where at least they had food to eat. Not only did they complain, but they accused the very ones who led them out of slavery of now trying to kill them. They had no trust in God.
What I find amazing in this story is that while the Israelites were being whiny, insolent, ungrateful brats, God only responded with grace and mercy. God’s response to Moses was to promise; “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you.” You are hungry, I will provide. Now many parents would not be quite so generous. We might tell our children, stop complaining, and apologize first. You won’t get anything until you behave better. But not the Lord, he hears the cries and provides for the needs of his people. This is the beginning of salvation – God’s providential grace given lavishly, with no requirement that we do anything to deserve it.
It is commonly thought that the wilderness period is a time when the Israelites learned how to live into being in covenant with the Lord. And while God gave the manna from heaven as pure grace, he also used this gift to teach the people. He taught them not only to trust in him and draw near to him, but also how to take only what they needed, and to observe the Sabbath day, for on the sixth day the Lord provided twice the manna, so that on the seventh everyone could rest, and simply eat what had been gathered the day before.
In the gospel of John chapter 6, after feeding bread to the five thousand, Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty…Very truly I tell you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from ever. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”
While in Exodus the bread of heaven was for the salvation of the people God chose first to be in covenant with him, the life death and resurrection of God’s son, Jesus Christ, expanded salvation beyond the children of Israel, to all who believe. As followers of Christ we enter into this covenant through our baptisms, and from time to time we have opportunity to renew this covenant at confirmation or when we join a particular congregation.
Next week we will have the blessing of renewing our covenant with God, with the church universal, with the United Methodist church and with each other and celebrate God’s saving gifts in our lives as Kevin and Zara join Wesley. One of the vows Methodists typically ask new members to take is to support the church with their prayers, presence, gifts and service. But at General Conference last spring an addition was made. Our witness.
Witnessing is a very important part of being a Christian and it’s one that we sometimes forget to do. Witnessing simply means telling others what God has been doing in our lives. When Louise helped me understand that really hard year after college as wilderness, and told me about how God was with her in her wilderness, and pointed me to Exodus so I could read about all the blessings that can come to God’s people in wilderness times, she was witnessing. When the woman at the well ran back to town to tell everyone that she had just met the Messiah, she was witnessing. Witnessing doesn’t have to be hard – we don’t all have to be good at public speaking, we don’t have to try and convince a stranger to come to church. We just need to remember to tell the people in our lives about our relationship with God, our prayers, and how God has answered them. But our culture is not always open to witnessing, so we might have to practice a little to get into the habit. I think the safest place to practice talking about they wonderful things God is doing in our lives is here at church.
After we sing the next hymn I invited you to come forward and take part in a time of witnessing called a love feast. We will just gather together and share God’s love with one another over some good bread. We will remember that Jesus is the bread of heaven, the bread of life, and that in him and through him the Lord gives us everything we truly need. We will practice witnessing, telling one another how we have seen God at work lately. How has God fed you, renewed you, or comforted you? When have you been aware that the Lord was on your side, walking beside you? Or how has God been working in others around you? Let us sing praise, and practice giving witness to the salvation of our God.
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