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Please take a moment to reflect. I want you to think about the life threatening experience that God has commanded you into….Well, that didn’t take long. I would venture a guess that most of us would never imagine God intentionally putting us in situation where our lives were in danger. Aside from missionaries, war veterans, and first responders who often have a sense that God called them to risk their lives for others, we are more apt to say those life-threatening times just happened and God got us through them; or, it was my own stupidity that got me into it but God got me out of it. We are very uncomfortable with the thought of God putting our lives at risk. We tend to confess, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, Thou art with,” not “Yea, God sent me to walk through the valley of the shadow of death.”
But, if we take a moment to ponder the obvious here in our reading, that’s exactly what God did with his people. At God’s command they left the Wilderness of Sin and camped at Rephidim where there was no water. Let me show you a picture. This is not a picture of the planet Mars. It is of the likely location of Rephidim. Rephidim is about a day’s journey to where they were headed, the place that the locals today call Jebul Musa, or the Mountain of Moses, which is the best candidate for Mt. Sinai. It’s pretty bleak in the Region of Rephidim. There’s no water there anywhere. Just to let you know how the story is going to end, here’s a picture of a rock that is along the way from Rephidim to Sinai in the Wilderness of Horeb. Horeb means “dry place”. And wouldn’t you know it, the ground around this rock looks like water flowed there at one time.
Anyway, God sent his people to Rephidim where there was no water. It is likely that this journey took place during May or June when the temperature there can average between 35-40degreesC (95-104degreesF). The people of God were walking all day in those temperatures carrying loads of stuff and they came to camp at Rephidim where there was now water. Medical science tells us that two days is the life expectancy of a person in that situation. If it were especially hot (45C or 110F or higher) cut that expectancy in half.
God had put their lives at risk, it would seem. Israelites were one day away or less from dying for lack of water. They were at the end of a long, hot day of trekking. They were dangerously thirsty with no hope for water anytime soon.
Have you ever been that thirsty? I’ve had a couple of times once on a hike and once on a run in very hot temperatures with no water and gotten to the point of not being able to do anything more than stagger about a bit confused. Never have I been a day away from death by dehydration. But, if I were to imagine what it would have been like to be the Israelites that day, well, the feeling of thirst must have been excruciating; dry mouth, sore throat. And, they weren’t able to get out of the heat and instead were loaded down and trekking on in it. Your insides feel like a swarm of bees. Your thought processes go all haywire. No wonder the Israelites were complaining. It really would appear that Moses had led them out into the wilderness to die; even turning back to where they last got water was too far.
They bring their complaint to Moses. Yet, it’s really God they are after, but they don’t know how to get to God except by yelling at Moses. (And, I can relate to Moses here. It often happens that people take their grievances against God out on ministers.) We’ve been taught to not get angry at God or at least don’t show anger at God. But we do get angry with God because sometimes, or actually quite often. it just seems that God isn’t there and you never know what a day may bring and some days really bring a load of manure. So, the Israelites really quite rudely/sternly make the demand for Moses to give them water to drink. “Work a miracle Moses. You’ve been doing it all along.”
Because of the immediacy of this life-threatening crisis that appears to have no earthly solution, the Israelites are at the point of wondering whether the LORD was really in their midst or not. I’m sure each of us has felt that desperation at our most difficult times and wondered, “Is God really with me?” The Israelites are so out of sorts with thirst, they are so overwhelmed with life and death reality they were in, that they couldn’t see the obvious anymore; that God had been with them to save them all along and things weren’t any different now in Rephidim just because there was no wonder.
Just to refresh our memory, they had seen God plague Egypt. Their firstborn lived while the firstborn of Egypt died. The Egyptians even gave them gold as they left Egypt and in that way, the Bible says, they plundered Egypt. A pillar of cloud led them by day and a pillar of fire watched over them by night. When Pharaoh pursued them, the pillar moved in behind them to be between them and Pharaoh’s army. God parted the Red Sea for them to cross on dry ground and then collapsed it back on Pharaoh’s army. They had even been thirsty once before at the beginning of their wilderness trek. They needed water at the very beginning and the only source they found was brackish. But, God had Moses throw a piece of wood into it to make it drinkable and sweet. Then God led them to an oasis. They needed food and so God provided them daily with quail and manna. God was certainly there with them. That was obvious, but in this moment of being scared and hopelessly overwhelmed with physical thirst, they needed God to provide water…right now.
As I said they went to Moses, not God, and demanded water, but even Moses seems at a loss. Moses does what every great church leader does when threatened by the minions (and I’m being sarcastic here). He places the blame somewhere else and threatens that God will get them for their complaining against the leadership. He says, ”Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD?” That’s like saying, “Don’t blame me. I’ve just been doing what God’s told me to do. Y’all are testing God, folks. You are just trying to get God to do what you want him to do. Is God now at your beck and call? God’s provided before and will do so again. Just show some patience. Don’t be churlish children or God will strike you dead for testing him, because that’s the way god’s are, you know?”
The people continue to murmur against Moses. I think maybe they think Moses has somehow screwed up or taken a wrong turn or something. Murmuring is low-level background noise. The background noise ringing in Moses ears was. “Why did you bring us out of Egypt to kill us, our children, and our livestock with thirst.” He can’t get away from it and he’s thirsty too.
Feeling a little threatened by the people and perhaps a little hung out to dry by God, Moses cries out to God, “What shall I do with this people? They’re ready to stone me.” You know, riots happen when people have had enough. Just saying. Moses is thinking like a minister in crisis here; thinking that the problem was his to solve and not God’s. “What shall I do?” he asks.
Well, God answers. God tells Moses, “Go get ‘the staff’ – ‘THE STAFF’ - the staff that you struck the Nile with and turned it to blood. Get some of the elders. Walk up through the midst of the people and get in front of them and go to the rock at Horeb” (which means “dry place”). “You will see me standing there. Strike the rock and water will gush forth and the people can drink.”
We just have to take a moment and appreciate the symbolic value of what’s happened there. Remember how President Trump did a perverted version of this when he had his security forces use tear gas and rubber bullets to clear a path through a peaceful protest so that he could parade with a general or two and some key white House people from the White House to St. John’s Church to hold up a Bible for a photo op. He wanted to say, “I am law and order and God is on my side.” That was so wrong. But here, God is getting Moses to make a very symbolic walk through the people with a very powerful symbol of God’s faithfulness - The Staff.
Imagine being in the crowd in Rephidim. It’s hot. You are overwhelmed with thirst. Your feet hurt. Your back hurts. Children are crying. You’ve been murmuring mad and Moses, your trusted leader, is your identified target. You’re wondering where God is in all this. You’re afraid you’re going to die. In fact, you feel like you’re dying and this is the greatest sense of futility you have ever felt. Then, like the Red Sea parting, the crowd starts to part and make way for a group of some of the elders and in the middle of them is Moses carrying “The Staff”. You see that staff; the staff that Moses used to conjure up plagues against Egypt and make a mockery of Egypt’s gods, the staff that Moses raised to part the Red Sea and lowered to drown Pharaoh’s army, the staff that was the weapon by which God decimated Egypt; and now Moses is wielding it again. The crowd goes silent. What’s Moses going to do? Make water out of nothing or wield the staff against the people for their murmuring? Is God for us or against us? What’s Moses going to do? What a pregnant moment!!
Moses leads the elders to a big, prominent rock there in Horeb. Then, in the same way that he struck the Nile and turned it to blood and showed that is was the God if Israel who really controlled the Nile waters that gave Egypt its life, Moses struck that granite rock with a wooden staff and the rock cracked and water gushed forth – from a granite rock. Talk about making life out of nothing. God made water from a granite rock in the driest place of Sinai in order to save his people from death by thirst. When death was certain, God made the means for his people to live. God has power over water. Remember the waters of Chaos sermon a couple of weeks ago. At the Red Sea God drowned the army of Pharaoh in the waters. In Rephidim, the polar opposite of the Red Sea, God made water for his people so that they could live.
People, this is our God, the God who raised Jesus from the dead, who will raise us from the dead. When we walk through troubling, dangerous times, when we walk through the Valley of the shadow of death, God is with us; His rod and staff, they comfort us. I think in these days when trouble seems to abound. COVID has everything out of kilter and is threatening a second wave. The flu season is coming. Winter and lots of snow are coming. Nothing seems safe. There’s so much craziness. You know, if I get a runny nose or a sore throat do I have to get tested and isolate for two weeks. If you turn on the news, it seems they just want to convince us that a civil war is imminent in the US. Everywhere people are murmuring, there’s this background noise of anger against leadership, but really its anger against God. We thirst – we long – we crave – for life just to be normal again. But, let’s not forget who our God is – water from a rock, life out of death. Maybe we should just cool our jets and wait and see what God is going to do because he truly is in our midst.
Maybe, it would be good for us to surround us with a few symbols that remind us of God’s faithfulness. I’ve got things that remind me of God’s faithfulness to me over the years. This is the Bible that my father gave me when I was sixteen, a few weeks after we had a discussion about the possibility of me going into the ministry and look where I am today. This is the Bible that my best friend gave me at graduation from seminary. The mother of my childhood best friend gave this little gold chain of a bookmark to me. It used to have an amulet of a pair of hands clasped in prayer, but it fell off long ago. I went to visit her one-day after I graduated from university and she gave it to me to let me know she would always be praying. These Bibles are never far from me and they remind me of how God has been with me over the years and how he made that obvious by the love of a good many people. I would encourage you in these difficult times to find some symbols of God’s faithfulness to you and keep them in your sight to remind you of who God is and that he is with you. Amen.
