A New Menu (Exodus 16:2-15)

Aimee Mullins wears many hats, some of which are athlete, actress, and public speaker.

If you’re a fan of Stranger Things on Netflix, you might recognize her as Terry Ives, Eleven’s birth mother.

If you’re a fan of TED Talks, you might remember her popular speech about adversity and adaptability.

It was the latter of these credits that caught my attention this week.

Mullins was born with a medical condition that required doctors to amputate both of her legs beneath the knee. She is well versed, therefore, in the conversations, emotions, and policies that shape our understanding of topics like accessibility and disability, even as she tries to deconstruct and expand how we think about those things.

One of her points of emphasis is the importance of seeing adversity as normal, not as some sort of deviation from what we should expect, not as some sort of curse that requires a hero’s effort to survive.

As sure as there will be sunny days and rainy ones, too, we will encounter resistance, pushback, and hardships as we move through life.

“Adversity,” Mullins remarked, “is just change that we haven't adapted ourselves to yet.”

The combination of matter of fact realism and optimism in these words really appeals to me, in no small part because few things get me thinking about the need to adapt like the start of a new school year.

September mornings in the Radmacher house look very different from August’s.

Three kids in three schools, two drop offs, one bus stop, new classes, new expectations, new schedules, new after school routines–even as I get caught up in how all the changes are affecting me, I’ve had to check myself and remember that all of these changes hit the kids even more intensely.

It’s no accident that within the first two weeks of school, everyone in our house has called it a night and gone to bed before 7PM at least once already.

Change can be exhausting.

So I was ready to hear what Aimee Mullins had to say.

“Adversity is just change that we haven't adapted ourselves to yet.”

Please, tell me more.

Mullins’ TED Talk continued,

The idea I want to put out there is not so much overcoming adversity as it is opening ourselves up to it, embracing it, grappling with it….maybe even dancing with it, and perhaps if we see adversity as natural, consistent, and useful we're less burdened by the presence of it. [To paraphrase Charles Darwin,] “it's not the strongest of the species that survives, nor is it the most intelligent that survives, it is the one that is most adaptable to change.”

And that’s when it hit me. Our capacity to adapt is one of, if not humanity’s greatest trait.

Across the wide expanse of the human experience, we find examples of individuals and entire communities adapting to meet the challenges of specific moments, particular climates, and emerging threats.

Humanity has found a way to thrive in the extreme heat of summer and the bitter cold of winter.

We’ve figured out how to live in tiny isolated villages and sprawling megacities.

And people have survived situations and circumstances that they never would have chosen, that they wouldn’t even have wished upon their worst enemy, because deep inside they were determined that this moment, this challenge, this hardship would not break them.

This brings me to the scripture before us this morning, another episode of the Bible’s epic story of Exodus.

Last week we jumped into this story by reflecting on the moment when God created a space at the edge of the Red Sea where Moses and his people collected themselves and saw a way forward revealed where no way once seemed possible.

I told you then that I am approaching this season at Asbury as if we’re standing on the water’s edge like Moses and the people and that this is our moment to catch our breath, steady ourselves, listen, and find our way.

The Exodus story continues this morning on the other side of the sea where Egypt and slavery have been left behind, but new challenges arise daily–challenges like answering the timeless question, “What do we have to eat?”

Unfortunately, for the Exodus people, the answer was, “Not a lot.”

We pick up the story in chapter 16.

The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. The Israelites said to them, "If only we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and ate our fill of bread, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger." (Exodus 16:2-3)

Now it’s very tempting to shake our heads as we read these verses and stand in harsh judgment of the Israelites.

“They’re so ungrateful.”

“All they do is complain.”

Nag. Nag. Nag.

There have been a lot of sermons preached in that vein, and I’m sure I’ve preached a few of them–as if we’ve never been so “hangry” that it overwhelmed our sense of gratitude and reason.

But that quote from Aimiee Mullins got me thinking about getting into this story from another angle–of not seeing it as an indictment of the people’s lack or gratitude, but as an acknowledgment that adaptation is an essential characteristic for moving forward with faith and purpose.

Let me explain.

Those people who were complaining to Moses were, in fact, survivors. They had seen some things and, confronted by tremendous hardships in Egypt, they adapted and thrived.

Exodus chapter 1 says, “the Israelites were fruitful and prolific; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.” (Exodus 1:7)

We should be really careful, then, about making them out to be weak-willed complainers.

But even still, in our story, those survivors are facing an existential threat.

They’re not imagining things.

They need to eat.

And it’s an ugly side of our privilege that would shame hungry people for not being thankful.

No, I think it’s possible that the point of our story isn’t to show us that the people lacked gratitude as much as it is about helping us to see that they were trying to solve today’s problems with yesterday’s solutions and that the old way wasn’t going to work for them anymore.

Egypt’s flesh pots and bread ovens couldn’t do anything for the Israelites in the wilderness.

Those were just memories now, memories of a different problem with a different solution that wasn’t relevant to people’s current situation at all.

Doing what had worked in the past was a recipe for hunger in the present because the menu was changing in the wilderness.

The LORD spoke to Moses, "I have heard the complaining of the Israelites; say to them, 'At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the LORD your God.'"

In the evening quails came up and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, "What is it?" For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, "It is the bread that the LORD has given you to eat.” (Exodus 16: 11-15)

“Adversity is just change that we haven't adapted ourselves to yet.”

As we consider the challenges we’re facing today, I believe it’s helpful to ask ourselves if we’re trying to solve them with solutions to questions that aren’t even being asked of us anymore.

Maybe age and health have shifted the options available to us.

Maybe you’re moving into a situation in which you need to be more independent than you have been, maybe it’s time to be more of a team player.

And for our church—every church for that matter—we’re always confusing the timelessness of the Gospel with the timeliness of the ministries to which we’re being called.

How many people, how many churches, are beating their heads against the wall trying to figure out what happened and why what they’re doing isn’t working for them anymore, when it used to work so well?

Like life in the wilderness, doing what worked in the past is a recipe for hunger–or frustration, or aimless church life–when we fail to hear the questions that the present moment asks of us.

But thanks be to God, hunger isn’t our destiny.

We just need to learn to live with a new menu.

The promise of our faith is that God offers us what we need to face our present moment, whatever our present moment is.

The Exodus story calls it manna from heaven.

Jesus said it’s daily bread and we should pray for it.

And in the lived experience of God’s people, it’s the willingness and openness to say this challenge, this hardship, this “adversity is just change that I haven't adapted to yet,” but I can, and I will, because God has more to say about who I am and what I can accomplish than any one or anything else.

And that’s why, even in the wilderness, especially in the wilderness, our’s is a story of Good News.

Thanks be to God for this Good News today. Amen.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Flaming_Grill_New_Menu_board,_Malpas,_Newport_-_geograph.org.uk_-_7747384.jpg

Slowed Down to Move Forward (Exodus 14:19-31)

I enjoy doing genealogical research, learning about my family’s history, and, occasionally, working what I’ve found out into a sermon. For example, I remember preaching a sermon after Dana and I visited the small German town where generations of Radmachers lived about how my great great great grandparents Peter and Anna left that place and came to the U.S. with their kids in 1851. In fact, stories like that reflect one of the things about this kind of research that I find most interesting.

I suppose there are people who get into genealogy because their family tree holds secrets about long lost ties to royalty, tales of fortunes lost and found, and connections to famous people.

That’s all well and good, but it’s not my story.

No, I come from a long line of ordinary people who worked (usually as farmers), got married, raised their children, and, every now and then, picked up everything and started over in a new place.

And I love trying to figure out why they made the decisions they made.

Were they running away from trouble, running toward opportunity, chasing a dream, restless, desperate?

Did they feel like they were jumping into the unknown or did they see themselves as part of a larger migration, a historic movement of people?

Maybe it was a mix of forces and feelings like these.

Thoughts like these filled my mind recently when I did something with my research that I’d never done before. I plotted on a map all the places I knew about from which my German ancestors emigrated.

It started when I noticed that both Dana and I had ancestors from small villages in what is today the modern state of Bavaria. I found their hometowns on a map.

This person lived in a small town in Alsace, so mark the spot.

Hanover, Baden, Westphalia–more ancestors, more villages, more spots marked on the map, and so on and so forth until my map had about a dozen pins in it.

And then I took a look at the big picture.

While pins were scattered across Germany, more than half the spots I marked formed a tight cluster–really it looks more like a straight line–just south of Frankfurt, Germany.

I looked closer and checked some names and dates.

It turns out that, over a fifty year period in the middle of the 19th century, entire branches of my family and Dana’s lived in and left behind small towns in a region that you could drive across in a single afternoon today. Some of our people lived as close as ten, fifteen, twenty miles to each other, before making their way to America.

And it fascinates me to think about and imagine both the personal and collective forces those families felt working upon them.

How amazing would it be to sit with them around their tables or take a walk with them to find out what they were thinking, what they were worried about, what they wanted to accomplish?

You see, while our ancestors ultimately took part in a mass migration of millions of persons from Germany to the U.S in the 1800s, each person, each family, in real time, had to make a decision to stay or to leave what they knew and step out into the unfamiliar, and, to me, those are the decisions and stories that truly capture and express the depth of the human experience.

You know the experiences I’m talking about.

The moments where you ask yourself, “Should I stay or should I go?”

Times when you question if the wise move is to hunker down and ride this situation out where you are, or if you need to get out of there as soon as possible?

The realization that you’re not even sure how you came to be where you are, but you’re here now, so what are you going to do about it?

Now look, as far as I know, my ancestors were able to ask and answer these questions for themselves. Their journey to this country wasn’t forced on them, a luxury that not all of our ancestors had.

Even still, if questions like that stir anything within your heart or spirit, if they get you thinking about your life, your family, or the lives of people you care about, then you’re in the right frame of mind to hear one of the most familiar and powerful stories from the Bible in a new way today.

Moses and the Israelites were on the run.

Theirs was a freedom movement–a sprint to leave trouble, oppression, and bondage behind.

But their former captors–Egypt’s pharaoh and his army–were in hot pursuit.

Then, to make matters worse, trouble got out in front of the Israelites again.

The people were on the run until they couldn’t run anymore.

They’d reached the sea, or was it a swamp? Regardless, Moses and his people were stuck.

They were stuck, but they were not hopeless.

Up to this point on their journey, the people had been following God’s lead.

The Bible says that God guided the people by appearing to them in the daylight God as a cloud of smoke and as a pillar of fire at night.

But now, at the water’s edge, something new happened.

The angel of God who was going before the Israelite army moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them. It came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel. And so the cloud was there with the darkness, and it lit up the night; one did not come near the other all night. (Exodus 14:19-20)

The people were sprinting, their captors were chasing, everyone was heading toward a calamity, and then God slowed everything down.

With Pharaoh's army held at a distance, Moses and the people caught their breath, steadied themselves, listened, and found the way forward.

Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The LORD drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and turned the sea into dry land, and the waters were divided. The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left…. [and they] walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left. (Exodus 14:21-29)

The miraculous crossing of the Red or Reed Sea is theological bedrock because it speaks to the very nature of God.

God is a God of liberation.

God rejects oppression.

God will go to great and creative lengths to make a way forward possible for those who yearn to be free.

Now let me just stop here for a moment and point something out. I don’t think our nation or any nation, for that matter, will find a full and comprehensive immigration policy in the story of the Exodus, but we as people of faith can most definitively say a few things about the subject.

Lying about people, treating them with contempt, like they are less than human, that the color of their skin or the place of their birth makes them inherently inferior to red-blooded white Americans, or anybody else for that matter—those attitudes and any policy based upon them deserve to be washed away like the forces of slavery in our story.

Borders and laws exist, of course, but when cruelty becomes policy and people are made to suffer as pawns in the schemes of the powerful and entitled, God’s Faithful Ones should be crystal clear about where we want to be when the Holy Presence moves to separate oppressors and those destined for freedom.

But, I digress.

I am approaching this season at Asbury as if we’re standing on the water’s edge like Moses and the people and that this is our moment to catch our breath, steady ourselves, listen, and find the way forward.

Behind us is a whole litany of challenges that required us to take action, challenges that required us to respond, and challenges that by God’s grace, we’ve met.

I’m talking about things like broken boilers, COVID, and the sea change that has occurred in church life over the last decade.

We’ve met the challenges before us, but life and ministry aren’t just about reacting to what’s chasing after us or what we’ve left in the past.

Sometimes we need a new vision for where we can go with God and sometimes God gives us the space and the time to glimpse a way into the future that we might otherwise miss.

A lot of life is meeting the moment when you have to do something, and that’s ok. Life’s “Have To”s are important.

But sometimes the moment comes when we say, “Of all that I can do, I’m choosing to do this because it’s where God is calling and leading me.”

I think it’s possible that we’re in such a moment—like when the pillar of smoke and fire became a hedge of protection around God’s people—and that the series on prayer we just finished, and the Dream Catching sessions we’ll begin next week, and our retreat next month can help each of us find a new way to be our best selves and a reinvigorated church.

That’s what I hope and I pray that we’ll find our new path together. Amen.

Image: Kotarbiński, Wilhelm, 1848-1921. Crossing the Red Sea, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt University Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.