God’s grace, peace
and mercy be with you. My sermon is entitled God Visits His People with
Refreshment, and my focus is on our first reading (Exodus 17:1-7, with
emphasis on verses 6-7). Let us pray. Heavenly Father, the psalmist wrote, “I
rejoiced when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord.’”
Now that our feet are within your gates, we rejoice to hear your Word. As we
listen, may your Spirit enlighten our minds and move our hearts to love deeply
as Jesus loved. This we pray to you, Most Holy Trinity. Amen.
When we moved from
Livermore, California to Whitesboro, Texas, we would travel to Dallas for
tourism and networking events. The first time we drove south on I-35, we approached
Denton. When we reached the football stadium for the University of North Texas,
we saw a larger than life-sized mural of its most famous Mean Green alumnus,
and undoubtedly the greatest football player born in Texas – #75 of the
Pittsburgh Steelers, Mean Joe Greene. Today, Mean Joe Greene and his six
Superbowl rings lives a quiet, Christian life in Flower Mound, Texas.
Why open a sermon
entitled God Visits His People with Refreshment with Mean Joe Greene?
Two reasons. First, in the time it took us to drive from Edmond, Oklahoma to
Dallas, Texas, Moses – if he had a bus and an interstate – could have driven
across the Sinai to Israel. It’s 200 miles. That’s the distance from here to
Buffalo or Toledo. Even with traffic and construction, it doesn’t take 40 years
to travel 200 miles. Second, because, in 1979, Greene starred in a Clio
Award-winning commercial for Coca-Cola that changed his life more than his
helmet-slapping, stunt stance ferocity. In the commercial a sheepish boy offers
an injured Greene a Coke, prompting Mean Joe to grab the bottle and guzzle the
contents, before turning to limp away. He then turns back toward the
crestfallen child, smiles and tosses the kid his jersey with the famous
punchline, “Hey Kid, Catch!” The heartwarming commercial became
immensely popular and made Greene an international celebrity. 44 years after
Tommy Okon offered Mean Joe his Coke, kids still approach the Steel Curtain
stalwart with theirs. No one sells refreshment better than Coca-Cola, but no
one refreshes better than our Triune God.
Today, we reflect
on first, how God refreshed His people in the wilderness. Second, how God
refreshes us with His Word. Finally, how God calls us to refresh the world
today.
First, how God
refreshed His people in the wilderness. After leaving Egypt, Moses did not
travel east along the Way of the Philistines, but turned south into the
wilderness of Shur. After three days without water, they arrived at Marah,
where the water was bitter. Here, Scripture records, “The people grumbled
against Moses, saying, ‘What shall we drink?’” (Ex 15:24). As he was
prone to do, Moses cried to the Lord, who showed him a log, which Moses threw
into the water, and the water became sweet (Ex 15:25). This was the first of
three times God provided refreshment to the Israelites wandering in the
wilderness. Shortly thereafter, they camped at Elim where there were 12 springs
and 70 palm trees.
A few weeks
passed, and the people again grumbled against Moses. “Would that we had
died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots
and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to
kill this whole assembly with hunger” (Ex 16:2-3). Hearing their
complaint, God provided bread in the morning and meat in the evening.
That brings us to
today’s reading. The Israelites camped at Rephidim, an oasis in Sinai that
provides enough water for large flocks and people.[1] As Exodus records,
however, there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarreled with
Moses. ‘Give us water to drink.’ Moses replied, ‘Why do you quarrel with
me? Why do you test the Lord?’ Unsatisfied with Moses’ inaction, the
people grumbled, ‘Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and
our children and our livestock with thirst?’ Moses then cried to the Lord,
‘What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me’
(Ex 17:1-5).
We know God
provided refreshment once again when Moses struck the rock as commanded, but …
what is really going on here?
More than
providing water and food for His people, God was initiating a relationship
between Himself and Israel with Moses as their leader. Bear in mind, God’s
people were in Egypt for 400 years before Moses led them out of slavery. In
Egypt, who was God and who led the people? … Pharoah.
The Israelites
were accustomed to a cruel, murderous leader who enslaved them and made life
unbearable. As the nation’s leader and god, Pharaoh did not hesitate to kill
the Israelites or their young (Ex 1:18-21).
Imagine that the
only god you have ever known is a murderous slave-driving tyrant. Along comes
Moses, a prince raised in Pharaoh’s palace. This fugitive murderer tended
flocks of a cultic priest in Midian. There, he met Yahweh for the first time.
Now, he returns and talks of freedom in a land of milk and honey (Ex 3:7-10). …
You would be crazy not to follow him, and you would be crazy to follow him –
and his God who promises faithfulness, mercy and loving-kindness.
The Israelites
could not believe life could be different. They had no experience of a loving,
merciful God. He did not exist in Egypt. That is why the Israelites had
difficulty adjusting to Moses as their leader and Yahweh as their God. They
were accustomed to a precarious existence.
Is it any wonder
why the Israelites had trouble entering into a faithful relationship with a God
who not only responded to their cries as oppressed slaves and wandering
sojourners, but also provided refreshment and protection? They grumbled out of
desperation because they honestly believed that Moses led them into the
wilderness to kill them. … One day Israel would look back at Massah and
Meribah, where they wondered, ‘Is the Lord among us or not?’ and realize
He was. Having examined how God refreshed His people in the wilderness, we turn
to how God refreshes us.
Most of us were
raised in Christian homes by parents who taught us about a Triune God. We
attended worship and religious instruction on Sundays. Unlike the Hebrew slave
under the oppression of Pharaohs, we live in a nation where most people know
God’s presence, mercy and loving-kindness. As Lutherans we recognize the means
of grace as God’s Word and Sacraments, namely Holy Baptism and the Lord’s
Supper.
God refreshes us
through His Word, that is, Scripture. Read the Bible daily and you will
undoubtedly find a passage where God promises you His presence, mercy and
loving-kindness. My favorite is Matthew 11:28: “Come to me, all who labor
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Rest in God’s presence.
Rest in God’s Word.
Baptism. When we
were baptized, we were joined to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
His Paschal Mystery sets the pattern and rhythm for our daily lives,
strengthening and refreshing us.
Confession. Most
of us do not like to admit our faults, our sins, even to ourselves or our
Savior. What God’s Word says about our favorite vices may make us angry,
ashamed or afraid. However, God’s call to repentance is one of love. God did
not call the Israelites into the wilderness to kill them but to love them.
Absolution: For
us, repentance or that rhythm of turning from sin and to Christ is no
theological abstraction, but a concrete practice of Christian living. I need to
hear, “I forgive you all your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Spirit,” from my pastor. Pastors restart our crushed hearts
with Jesus’ words of ultimate love: I forgive you all your sins.
Holy Communion. I
need to be in a faith community that believes Christ is present under the
elements of bread and wine. Eating and drinking His Body and Blood refreshes
me. Through this Sacrament, we experience God’s love in the resurrected body
and blood of Jesus in the bread and wine.
One way we can ponder
the refreshing power of this Sacrament is to pray after receiving Holy
Communion these words that are often printed in our hymnals: “We give thanks
to You, almighty God, that You have refreshed us through this salutary gift,
and we implore You that of Your mercy You would strengthen us through the same
in faith toward You and fervent love toward one another; through Jesus Christ,
Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God,
now and forever.”
Finally, God
refreshes us through one another. Have you pondered how God calls you to
refresh not only the people you like, but everyone? Why do I greet some people
with enthusiastic joy, but others with the same enthusiasm I feel when my
doctor prescribes MiraLax.
Daily God greets
each of us with enthusiastic joy and His renewed promises of faithfulness,
mercy and loving-kindness. Many of you have been greeted by Maggie when we
bring her. She’s happy to meet everyone. Not to diminish the enthusiastic joy
of God, but let’s magnify her joy in order to understand God’s visit of
refreshment. Refreshed as God’s people, we now ask how we might refresh the
world today.
As a Synod, the
Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod responds to people in need. One particular
ministry is Lutheran Comfort Dogs. These are … wait for it … Golden Retrievers!
Golden Retrievers (like Travis and Maggie) who are trained to offer comfort to
people who have suffered some communal disaster or act of violence. Recently,
these canine cuties were in East Lansing, Michigan after the shooting at
Michigan State University. To quote President Matthew Harrison, “When disasters
strike, we make an enormous difference by bringing our resources to bear where
people are hurting.”[2]
We strive to ease
their hurt and bring refreshment through grace. All Christians should respond
as such, but to apply my theme drawn from the refreshing waters of Exodus,
think about a population of people who, like oppressed Hebrew slaves, grew up
not in a Godly home, but in an environment where God was absent.
Twice in my life,
I ministered to the incarcerated. My first experience was to men at the Collins
Correctional Facility in New York, an exclusive, gated community, whose motto
was – “You pulled the crime. You do the time.”
My second
experience was the Allegheny County Jail. I created a program for incarcerated
mothers. Few experiences are as distressing and dispirited as meeting with
incarcerated mothers. These women committed non-violent crimes related to their
addiction – theft, trafficking, solicitation and so on. They sorely missed
their babies, their toddlers, their teenage sons and daughters.
Like Hebrew
slaves, they grew accustomed to cruel people who made life miserable. They grew
up in harsh environments with no knowledge of a God promising faithfulness,
mercy and loving-kindness.
I designed “I to
I” or “Incarceration to Independence” where I went into the jail to see what
these women needed before they went to court or sadly returned to the former
lives and habits. Suffice it to say, this is but one way God calls us to
refresh the world today.
God does not call
everyone to minister to incarcerated, addicted mothers or homeless men with
mental health disorders. God knows, however, there are many people in our world
who sigh desperate cries of anguish that fall on deaf ears. However, if we
listen, we can hear them in our children’s classrooms, in nursing homes or just
down the block. We can hear them from here, from our homes and from our work
sites, and we can minister to them. We can because God has visited us with
refreshment, just as He did in the wilderness.
When people in
crisis wander in the wilderness, refreshed Christians walk alongside them. We
strive to ease their hurt and bring refreshment through grace. As thirsty as we
get when we wander through life’s wilderness, we realize that the Lord is among
us. So, stay thirsty my friends. Stay thirsty for God’s refreshment and you
will meet the world’s most interesting men and women. When you do, may the
peace of God that surpasses all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in
Christ Jesus. Amen.
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