Standing On The Rock
Exodus 17: 1-7
A Sermon by the Reverend Odette Lockwood-Stewart
Epworth United Methodist Church

If you knew that you would die today
If you saw the face of God and love
Would you change?
Would you change?

This question comes from Tracy Chapman on her new CD in a song called “Change.” She goes on to ask,

How bad how good does it need to get?
How many losses how much regret?
What chain reaction
What cause and effect
Makes you turn around…
Makes you change?

Our scripture lesson this morning seems to be about thirsty people getting water. Seems to be about God proving God is God by showing up and intervening miraculously in a desperate situation.

Last Sunday, we heard the story of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness murmuring against Moses because they were hungry. Today, we heard the story of the Israelites wandering in the wilderness murmuring against Moses because they were thirsty.

Last week we learned how God gave and gives daily bread in places and forms we do not expect. Today, we listened as the people journeyed in the wilderness by stages and God provided for them.

But when they come to a place named Rephidim, desert, there is no water, and again they murmur against Moses. They cry out: We are thirsty! They quarrel and complain that Moses is trying to kill them with thirst as he leads them between promise and fulfillment. God tells Moses to go ahead of the people with some of the elders, to take the staff, strike the rock at Horeb and water will come out of the rock that the people may drink.

Now chapters 15, 16, and 17 of the Book of Exodus are filled with the struggles, complaints, cries of the people murmuring in the wilderness. Our text this morning is the last of these murmuring stories. Moses tells God that the people are so angry they are ready to stone him to death!

Moses even called this place Massah (testing-place) and Meribah (quarreling), because there the people asked, “Is God here with us or not?”

But maybe this story isn’t about whether or not God shows up. Maybe this story is about how we are shaped by the wilderness, the wild places in which we live, and by the tests we set up for God for others, and for ourselves.

Have you ever decided on a test for a loved one, a community, a colleague, for God? You say, silently, or even subconsciously, “If you do this, if you show up the way I need you to show up, THEN I’ll trust you, believe you , love you, forgive you. Have you ever decided that God was absent because a prayer was not answered according to your answer sheet? Well, perhaps, as we develop those tests for others let alone for God… we’re the ones who need to show up, to answer, to change.

If you knew that you would die today,
If you saw the face of God and love….
Would you change?

This week, a beloved member of this community came very close to death. His testimony to Christian faith isn’t that he made it out of the hospital and is now home, even though he did and we praise God for this. We praise God. His witness to our faith is that, knowing he might well see the face of God and love, he was ready.

Meister Eckhart: God does not expect anything else of you except that you let yourself go and let God be God in you.

It’s not just about thirst. It’s not just about water. It’s not just about striking rock to find life and health and beauty inside. It’s not even about standing on rock solid faith in the midst of wilderness. It’s about seeing the face of God and love before your eyes, within your soul, in the face of stranger and enemy and loved ones. It’s about a journey that changes us so that who we are becomes congruent with who we are created to be.

The people of Israel wandered in the wilderness for a long time. Wilderness can either be a school for the soul’s growth, or a harsh setting for a hardening of hearts. Moving from enslavement to a just, sustainable, and beloved community takes time. It takes change.

And it is not an individual journey in the wilderness… To survive and thrive we travel as a people, depending upon God to provide for and guide us.

Epworth is not only praying for the people of Louisiana and Texas, not only collecting funds, health kits, flood buckets, school kits, organizing a Volunteer team for the holidays, helping folks resettle here in the Bay Area in a variety of ways. Epworth is also, working through Berkeley Organizing Congregations for Action and the national PICO network, toward a massive effort to “help now-scattered New Orleans families come together to have a voice in rebuilding their city,.. rebuilding is about jobs and homes, but also about empowering communities to define the agenda and outcome.”

Through our connectional giving in the United Methodist Church, Epworth is at work in places that are no longer on CNN Headline News or the front page of the paper. Through Church World Service we are steadfastly working in Indonesia in “everyday examples of deliberate initiatives and dedication to longterm recovery” from the Tsunami. Through our global ministries every day we are in Darfur, Sudan, where 2 million people remain displaced in camps and 400,000 people have died.

Even as we wonder if God is with us or not, God’s presence guides us beyond self-interest in the wilderness between promise and fulfillment of God’s reconciling love for all creation.

In case you didn’t recognize it, this is a stewardship sermon. Stewardship means caring for and sharing the gifts that God has entrusted to us. Gifts of life, of creation, time, money, resources, community and spirit.
Our Stewardship theme this year is : Stewardship Rocks! Stepping Out in Faith.

The first gift is God. The first faithful step is caring for the gift of God’s presence. God says to Moses, “I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.”

God was standing on the rock. The rock, the water, the manna, the parting of the sea … love that sustains in the face of hatred…God stands on the rock in our time. God stands on the rock in our presence.
How bad how good does it need to get?
How many losses how much regret?
What chain reaction
What cause and effect
Makes us turn around…
Makes us change?

Walter Brueggeman in his commentary on this scripture passage makes the interesting observation that the structure of this story and many of other miracle stories in the Bible is that a problem is presented, a need voiced (in this case, thirst), then God intervenes and there is a resolution of the problem by a gift of God. He then writes, “It is worth considering that the same structure is used as the standard form for television commercials in the United States. (Iin the television ads) problems are not turned over to God … they are solved by “the product.”

We’re trained to believe … at some overt or unconscious level, that whatever our problems are, a commodity, “the product,” will not only solve them, but will generate joy and well-being as well.

We are taught and trained to seek sustenance in empty calories.
We are taught and trained to fear one another and to place our trust in walls and weapons rather than peacemaking.
We are taught and trained to invest in usury rather than in human beings.
We are taught and trained to trust the powers and principalities of empire rather than believe in the power of justice love.
We can murmur … we can build or buy false idols … we can give up hope and the power to change, beginning with ourselves.


Or we can look to the one who stands on the rock and offers water for thirsty souls … we can remember the promise as Meister Eckhart offered it

“God does not expect anything else of you except that you let yourself go and let God be God in you.”

Amen.