Sermon: Test and Trust
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Sermon: Test and Trust Text: Exodus 17:1-7 Date: September 27, 2008 Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church
It’s not that unusual for people to name a place after what happened there. In Idaho, for instance, there are places named Treaty Rock, Massacre Rock, and Register Rock. So what do you think you might have named the place where Moses struck the rock with his staff and God provided water for the thirsty Israelites? Wouldn’t you think it would be Miracle Rock, or Salvation Point, or Wet-Yer-Whistle Rock? Moses named the place; he could have even named it for himself, like explorers sometimes do. But it’s not Moses Monument. Nope--Moses called it Massah and Meribah—that is, Test and Quarrel. Test Rock. Quarrel Point. Seems like there could have been a little more positive spin put on the events at that location, especially if you’re going to immortalize the location on a map. Apparently Moses thought the most important thing people should remember about that place was the Test that took place there, and the Quarrel-some way it unfolded. Test. Who exactly was being tested in this story? That may depend on your point of view. If you had polled the chapped-lipped, dry-throated Israelites who was being tested, they might have claimed God was testing them. Here they were on this journey that God was theoretically leading and they had no potable water to drink. Talk about your basic necessities—people can only go without water for about 3 days before they start dying. Why would the God who had chosen these people for God’s own bring them out to a place where they might die of thirst? Was God testing their faith? Moses’ opinion was that the people were testing God with their whiny, querulous demand for water. The test was not the need for water itself, but the way they suggested for the umpteenth time that God and Moses did not have their best interests at heart, implying that if they had, the people would have been safely ensconced in slavery in Egypt with enough to eat and drink. It sounds like Moses has just about had it up to HERE with the Israelites’ lack of trust in God, not to mention God’s representative, Moses. And it sounds like the people are so irate over the lack of water that they have moved beyond complaining and graduated to threatening Moses. They are testing God’s ability to provide both sustenance and leadership. If this really was a place and time of Test, who was being tested? Perhaps it truly does swing both ways. God was being tested by the people and the people were being tested by God. They’re not exactly the same test, but they are intertwined. Biblical scholar Walter Bruggeman’s commentary in The New Interpreter’s Bible suggests that the story, with its odd ending, is “to be understood as a critique of utilitarian religion in which God is judged by the desired outcomes for the asking community. Thus the community in this story would conclude that if the Israelites lack well-being, then God is not present with them…The text provides the ground for criticism of communities of faith that seek to ‘program’ the capacity of God to do the wonders required by the community.” [1] In other words, some folks mistakenly believe that God is not God if S/He does not perform, right now, as the people demand. The narrator who ended the story of the miraculous provision of water on the sour note of proclaiming the bleak name of the place wants to remind the people that Yahweh does not perform on command, and to demand such is to mightily test the Lord. “But wait!” the people thus indicted might reply. “It was God testing us! Here we are in the wilderness, little food, not enough water, no path, no plan, no map, no destination, no E.T.A . All we have for a leader is this stuttering, stammering Moses, a known murderer, who got us out of Egypt by lying to Pharaoh. He claims he can see and hear the Lord, but none of us can see and hear this Yahweh. This whole trip is a test. If God wants us to trust him, why doesn’t the Lord just show himself?” The question the people ask in the Exodus story is one any one of us could ask and probably have: “Is the Lord among us, or not?” Maybe Moses should have named that place “Existential Question Rock.” It’s doggone hard to believe in God all the time, and it’s especially tough when things are going badly. I can entirely sympathize with the people who raised this question—can’t you? The place Moses named “Test” and “Quarrel” is a long way from here, the other side of the world, somewhere in the Sinai desert, near Rephidim. On the other hand, it’s right around the corner. The people assemble themselves on one side of a line in the sand, moaning, “Is the Lord among us, or not? If you’re out there, God, DO SOMETHING! SHOW YOURSELF!” The unseen God whirls on the other side of the line, humming “Trust me. Trust me. Trust.” Do something! Trust me! Show yourself! Trust me! A place called “Test.” I’ve been there. I’ve camped there a while. Have you? I think—I hope—I’ve finished with the kind of testing the Lord that demands performance from God. My faith doesn’t hinge on my loved ones and me being protected from disease or disaster. That hasn’t always been so. I had some very dark moments of doubt when I was a kid about the existence of a loving God when my brother drowned right in front of my eyes. I was screaming for Jesus to rescue us then, and brought low afterward not only by grief but by distrust. This sort of story has been played out in human history millions of times. I heard it again recently, as a friend spoke of being deeply involved with a healing prayer circle and her deep disillusionment when good people who prayed sincerely died anyway. Hearing variations on that story always makes me sad. It would be cruel to bring up the subject of “Test” at a time when suffering has made someone terribly vulnerable. It is enormously cruel to inform someone that their faith has been tested and has failed in such an instance. Some people of faith, clinging to a warped understanding of God’s faithfulness, do actually say such merciless things. Appalling! It would be heartless, as well, to haughtily advise a vulnerable, suffering person not to test the Lord by expecting specifics while they are mired in their pain. We can hope to teach people before a crisis occurs that an easy life is not what we are guaranteed when we pull up stakes and follow Jesus. But I think we should shy away from viewing anyone’s depth of despair as a teachable moment in which they might upgrade their theology. We might secretly conjecture that this is a place called “Test” but we don’t have to amplify a person’s difficulty by pointing it out. Love sometimes counsels a patient silence. As I said, I think or hope I am finished with the kind of testing of the Lord that demands specific performance from God. I cannot be so confident that I am over asking the question, “Is the Lord with us, or not?” I hope you don’t mind one of your ministers saying this. My faith in the existence of God is not exactly bullet-proof. I wish it was. No, I don’t. Yes, I do. No, I don’t. Here’s the problem: I would like to be completely 100% confident that God exists, God loves me and is actively involved with the creation. That’s the part of me that would like to have “bullet-proof faith.” But I’ve met a lot of people who have absolute certainty about what they believe, and they make me nervous. I don’t want to be any kind of fundamentalist. I agree with many atheists that fundamentalism—bullet-proof faith in a particular way of thinking about religion—is often a dangerous and destructive force in the world. Certainty is so attractive that people become possessed by it. Walter P. Stacy once observed, “It would be almost unbelievable, if history did not record the tragic fact, that men have gone to war and cut each other’s throats because they could not agree as to what was to become of them after their throats were cut.” [2] People who are thoroughly convinced they are right about what they know about God, the Bible, proper Christian lifestyle and so forth make me cringe. Karen had a close encounter with someone who was trying to save souls at the Folklife festival a year or two ago. Some confirmed secularists were treating the evangelist very rudely, and Karen, feeling sorry for him, tried to intervene to protect him. When the hecklers went away, she got in a conversation with the evangelist. He asked her a few things about her beliefs and quickly informed her she was going to Hell. She’s still mad about that. There are equally strident atheists who have come down on the NOT side of the question “Is the Lord with us, or not?” Here’s a passage from an article entitled, “The Honesty of Atheism”: “Belief is delusion. Belief is based on your feelings and ignorance, not on any factual evidence. If you had factual evidence for what you believe, you would not have to believe it—you would know it, and we could all share in that knowledge. We would all come to the same conclusion, the same god, the same story.” [3] Atheists can be as strident about the severe lack of evidence for gods as Fundamentalists are strident about God’s hot plan for atheists. Catherine Keller describes this as a stand-off between the Absolute and the Dissolute. There is, she notes, a great polarization between those committed to religious absolutism (the claim that there is absolute truth and the accompanying claim that the religious person knows that truth) and secular relativism, which is based on an understanding that all understandings of truth are relative to the context and perspective of the observer. Oftentimes those committed to either viewpoint mirror each other in tactics and hostility. I went fishing for some quotations to represent each side of this divide. Here’s a word from R.J. Rushdoony, a Christian reconstructionist: “All who are content with a humanistic law system and do not strive to replace it with Biblical law are guilty of idolatry. They have forsaken the covenant of their God, and they are asking us to serve other gods. They are thus idolaters, and are, in our generation, when our world is idolatrous and our states also, to be objects of missionary activity. They must be called out of their idolatry into the service of the living God.” [4] And from well-known best-selling atheist Christopher Hitchens: “I am not even an atheist so much as an antitheist; I not only maintain that all religions are versions of the same untruth, but I hold that the influence of churches, and the effect of religious belief, is positively harmful…I do not envy believers their faith. I am relived to think that the whole story is a sinister fairy tale; life would be miserable if what the faith affirmed was actually true…” [5] Both ends of the that polar spectrum get such good press that it may be hard to remember that there is a third way between them: What Keller names as the Resolute. Between the Absolute and the Dissolute, we may walk a path of the Resolute. Faith is not certainty; faith is not absolute knowledge. We don’t need a claim of absolute truth to have faith. On the other hand, as Keller points out, “you don’t want to hem and haw your way through life, to compromise and qualify every claim, to relativize every revelation. You may relinquish certainty, but you need confidence. You want to be able to live purposefully, to communicate the force of those values and insights that burst through the haze of business-as-usual.” [6] To that I would answer, “Yes!” That is what people of faith who are not attached to Absolutes want. We want to be able to live with confidence and purpose, live without the security blanket of certainty or the aimlessness of complete secular relativism. How to accomplish this way of the Resolute? We must acknowledge that it is not an easy way—it’s a lot simpler to throw your lot in with the Absolute or the Dissolute. But it certainly is possible; I have seen it embodied in the lives of thousands of faithful people who draw inspiration from both the wisdom of the faith traditions handed down to them and from their openness to experiencing the lure, the lead of the Holy in everyday experience. Believing, as Keller points out, is not so much intellectual assent to doctrines or dogmas as it is putting our trust in a God of Love who leads us into an open future. It’s going forward in trust and hope without having to know the route in advance. Karl Barth once said that hope comes “in the act of taking the next step.” That trusting step is the path of the Resolute. One step, followed by another. One of the beautiful revelations of the story this morning is God’s promise to Moses: As Yahweh sends him out to the rock to seek life-sustaining water, God says, “I will be standing there in front of you on the rock.” I consider that a trust-worthy promise to all who seek to follow God into freedom. God will be standing there in front of us, giving us guidance, sustenance, and strength. Even when we are wobbly, asking ourselves if God is with us or not—God is standing close. Not far away in some celestial throne, standing right in front of us where we might catch a glimpse or hear the still, small voice that longs to lead us. Can you sense God standing in front of you on the rock, whispering “Trust me…” Rainer Maria Rilke once imagined the voice of God like this. I am, you anxious one. Don’t you sense me, ready to break into being at your touch? My murmurings surround you like shadowy wings. Can’t you see me standing before you cloaked in stillness? Hasn’t my longing ripened in you from the beginning as fruit ripens on a branch? I am the dream you are dreaming. When you want to awaken, I am that wanting: I grow strong in the beauty you behold. And with the silence of stars I enfold
[1] Brueggeman, Walter The New Interpreter’s Bible Volume 1 Nashville: Abingdon, 1884, p. 819 [2] Stacy, Walter P. Quoted in The Quotable Atheist: Ammunition for Nonbelievers, Political Junkies, Gadflies, and Those Generally Hell-Bound Jack Huberman, ed. New York: Nation Books, 2007, p. 285 [3] Narciso, Dianna “The Honesty of Atheism” Everthing You Know About God Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Religion Russ Kick, ed. Disinformation Co., 2007, p. 184 [4] Rushdoony, Rousas J. http://www.anomalousdata.com/Quotes+To+Curl+Your+Hair.aspx [5] Hitchens, Christopher Quoted in The Quotable Atheist, p. 150 [6] Keller, Catherine On the Mystery: Discerning God in Process Minneapolis: Fortress, 2008, p. 8 [7] Rilke, Rainer Maria “I Am, You Anxious One” Quoted in Alive Now July/August 2006, p. 43 |
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