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A long time ago back when I was in seminary, my first wife and I decided we would like to graduate from campground camping and take a stab at backcountry camping. This was something I had done plenty of times when I was young and in scouting, so it wasn’t a completely foreign experience to me. But for my wife...well, she would have to trust me. So, we acquired what extra gear we would need to backpack into a place and camp.
For our first and only attempt, we chose a side-trail just off the Appalachian Trail in the George Washington National Forest in Virginia not far from where we were from. The trail descended rather gently to level ground good for camping, but it was about a 1,600ft climb to come out with a waterfall along the way. The trail book said that backcountry camping was permitted and most importantly there was water available but filtering was highly recommended. What it didn’t say was that water may not be available year-round. The topographical map pictured in the book had a clue that we weren’t privy to. The line that indicated where the stream lay was not a continuous blue line but occasionally had dashes and dots meaning not a year-round source of water. A bit of an oversight, you might have guessed.
We planned our trip – hike in on Saturday, stay overnight, and out on Sunday. We packed up and headed for the hills. When we got to the ranger station at the entrance to the Skyline Drive we learned that there was a complete fire ban which meant we couldn’t even use our cookstoves which meant no food so we decided to just go make a day hike out of it. Thinking there would be water along the way we thought we would be ok with just a small water bottle between the two of us and the filter. Off we went. It turned into a very hot day. Our water ran out quickly as we descended into the bottom but we didn’t worry as there would be water in the bottom. We got to where the stream was supposed to be, but there was no stream to be found, just a dry bed. There we were. We had no water and a couple more hours of hiking in heat with a 1,600ft climb at the end.
I was a runner accustomed to long runs on Saturday morning so my body was familiar with thirst. But my wife…I was worried. She wasn’t in any kind shape for what lay ahead. As we got into the steep ascent alongside the non-existent waterfall, she was getting redder and redder. We had to stop often with no choice but to soldier on. I’m sure she was wondering if I had brought her out there to die. It was well into late afternoon before we came off the trail and still had a bit of forestry service road to walk to get back to the car. We met another hiker who after remarking that we weren’t looking too good, offered us some water. We made it back to the car where we had water. We never made another attempt at backcountry camping. The marriage lasted five more years.
Thirst is dangerous business out in the wild. It does not take long for dehydration and heat exhaustion to get life threatening. I don’t think we were far from that point. We should have picked a place we were familiar with for our first attempt at backcountry camping as a solo couple. Some trust was destroyed that day.
Looking here at Exodus, we could say it was a bit of an oversight on the part of Moses to lead the people out into the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula apparently without a plan for food and more importantly water. One of the biggest gambits we can make is to assume that God will provide. We like certainty, self-sufficiency, security and we admire people who can forge their way through life never owing anybody anything. We want Frank Sinatra to come sing his anthem at our funerals. If we’re thirsty, hungry or without a roof over our heads, then we presume that we have miscalculated, made some huge errors in judgement and can only blame ourselves or those whom we thought we could rely on.
Such was the case with Moses and the Israelites. The sparseness of the wilderness made it difficult for the Israelites to trust Moses, much less the God who had delivered them from slavery in Egypt. For 400 years they had lived in Egypt. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had seemingly abandoned them to slavery there. There’s no way to know for sure but it is highly likely they had forgotten the God of their fathers and given themselves over to Egyptian religion which was largely utilitarian in nature. If you wanted crops to grow, children, safety, power there were sacrifices to be made to the particular gods who oversaw such things and nothing was guaranteed. The gods were capricious and certainly did not love those annoying humans who were always wanting something from them.
For Moses to claim that Yahweh, the God of their fathers, had heard their cries and for love for his people was delivering them from Pharaoh with a mighty hand, well, that was a bit much to chew and swallow. And here they find themselves in the middle of nowhere with no water. Four days is about the max a human can go without water. They are about a couple hundred thousand in number. I would think that Yahweh, the God of their fathers was appearing quite capricious to the Israelites and Moses looked like a short-sighted zealot. They play the blame game. “Have you brought us out of Egypt to kill us?”
Then came the clincher question, “Is the LORD among us or not?” Had they not noticed that their God had plagued the Egyptians and delivered them from Pharaoh's army by parting the Red Sea. They crossed on dry ground and Pharaoh's army got drowned. They had been following a whirlwind cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night. And yet, they couldn’t see past the life and death nature of their thirst. Though God was obviously among them, they couldn’t see the obvious and so they complained against God and blamed the leadership. The true question was not whether God was with them, he obviously was. It was whether they were with God.
So well, it’s the third Sunday in Lent. Thirst, thirsting for God, is the traditional theme. The Israelites were literally thirsty to the point of it being life threatening. God provided the water and nobody died. Yet, there are other times after this when some Israelites do die for complaining against God in times of crisis, specifically for longing to return to slavery in Egypt and to the gods of Egypt…which was apparently an easier life because it didn’t require so much actual faith from them. It’s easier to believe God doesn’t care. It’s easier to believe that God is capricious, unfeeling, and uninvolved. It’s easier to believe that God has left us here to fend for ourselves…than to believe that God actually is with us, among us, in our midst; that God actually is involved in what is going on in our lives; that God actually does love us…especially when a crisis is involved.
We live in a culture that is having a crisis of faith. The people who do polling on matters of faith and religious affiliation as well as the national census are telling us that the institution of Christianity in our culture, the Church we all grew up in and cherish, has been abandoned to the point of extinction. Less than 10% of the Canadian population actively participates in the life of a congregation. There are two statistical categories that are kind of catchy but so relevant, “Nones” and “Dones”. The percentage of people with no religious affiliation, the "nones" is nearing 40% and many of them do not like the privilege that particularly Christianity has enjoyed in our culture particularly in the area of tax breaks, moral policing, and political influencing. They really don’t like it when money they donate to things like hospice care gets used to pay a chaplain. Then there are people who are “done” with the Church. They may still have beliefs in or about Jesus but they got sick of church politics and the lack of social compassion and left. They are done and are not coming back.
All the while, there is a growing thirst that is at an epidemic level. I’m not sure I can call it a thirst for God but it certainly has arisen in conjunction with the demise of Christianity in Canadian culture. This thirst goes by the name of loneliness. If we are to believe the results of mental health pollsters, almost 60% of our population is suffering loneliness or had a bout of it in the last year. In the five years prior to Covid, the world of medicine announced that sitting all day was the new smoking. To sit all day at a desk at a computer is as lethal as smoking nearly a pack a day. Now in the wake of Covid, studies are showing that loneliness is the new smoking. Lack of meaningful human contact takes its toll on us emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Two social events have accompanied this rise in loneliness: the introduction of smartphones and social media and the demise of social institutions such as the church and civic organizations.
For the senior citizens who make up the bulk of our congregations, who for the longest time made up the bulk of those who suffered loneliness in our culture, the church family is living water. But for the younger crowd, most of them addicted to a device, with no religious affiliation and an inexplicable antipathy for anything Christian…well, we have to stand firm in trusting that the God who is with us is somehow with them as well and at the right time God will call up a Moses who smites the rock from which the living water will flow.
Until then, it is gravely important that we who are imbibing of this water, that we love our literal neighbours. More than half of the people we encounter in a day are dealing with the effects of loneliness. They are thirsty. Be that person on the trail who notices and give them a drink. Amen.
