February 24, 2008

Larry Rasmussen

Lent 3     Exodus 17:1-7

God of Lent, Spirit of the farthest reaches of mystery, we gather in awe and thanksgiving and trepidation.

We stand stunned by your power and presence in a grain of wheat fallen to earth to die and to grow green and gold anew; in the bread rising, in the bread broken, in the bread shared.

We stand stunned at your power and presence in the water and the fruit of the vine; in the tears of the newborn child of Bethlehem nourished to life at his mother’s milky breast; in the anointing wash of baptism from his cousin John; in the water from his own side, running down the rivulets of history for us all.

Bless with the hospitality of your endless mercy our meal of Lenten preparation together, food in the eating place, drink in the drinking place. And bless with your power the lives of all those to whom we are indebted for this and for all food and song, music in the singing place. Bless the good and endangered Earth, faithful season after season, even when we are not faithful to it.

Fed again with the bread of life and the cup of mercy, lead us anew deeper into Lent, fraught as it is with all the terror and beauty of life. Prepare us, who would be your journeying people, to stand by Jesus, who would be your Way, come what may.

In anticipation of the joy yet to wash over us, we and all the church say Amen.

Moses and the whole congregation are journeying “by stages,” the text says.

Jesus is also journeying by stages across these forty days of Lent, alone in the wilderness with the demonic one, crowded about with a public in need of healing and feeding, and gathering scorn from some who would plot his death.

We are journeying, too, joining Jesus, remembering Moses and the congregation, and pausing to break bread together, food in the eating place, drink in the drinking place, bread and drink for the journey.

But the congregation is cantankerous. “The people quarreled with Moses, and said, “Give us water to drink.” “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?”

Moses complains to God about this unruly and ungrateful people. But of course the people are right. They know that water is life and they know the waters of life. We were born in it, our mother’s warm womb waters, and it’s surer than taxes we will die without it. Millions of critters have lived without love, none has lived without water. Life itself likely emerged from the waters of the sea, and most life is still in the salty brine, though much is dying there as well. The planet should really be dubbed “Water,” not “Earth,” since it, like our bodies, is 70% water. So when the people cried out for water in the wilderness, on their journey, they were only insisting on what their lives had to demand – that their thirst be quenched or they and their children and the livestock with them would surely die.

Nyla and I live in the high mountain desert of New Mexico. The sanctuary of our church has a trough running the length of the east wall. The desert sun shimmers on the water of that trough as the light pours through the glass spaces set between the timbers and sections of the brick adobe wall. The water is moving and that trough is an acequia, the desert irrigation ditch of four hundred years of Hispanic farmers and hundreds more of the native pueblo peoples of this desert. When the waters of life flow in the acequias, life blooms along them like an Isaiah vision. When it does not, the livestock and the people must move or die. In our sanctuary, that acequia is the baptismal font: the waters of life in the desert mirrored in the waters of life of the desert.

We are all haunted by waters. The congregation on the hard wilderness journey with beleaguered Moses could no more forget the life-giving Nile than the peoples of Aoteroroa New Zealand could forget the oceans and rivers and fjords and melting glaciers, or the peoples of the U. S. Southwest could forget their acequias. We are haunted by the fragile waters of life.

Moses strikes the rock for water. Maya Angelou writes of the rock and the river.

But today, the Rock cries out to us, clearly, forcefully.

Come, you may stand upon my

Back and face your distant destiny,

But seek no haven in my shadow,

I will give you no hiding place down here.

Across the wall of the world,

A River sings a beautiful song. It says,

Come, rest here by my side.

Each of you, a bordered country,

Delicate and strangely made proud,

Yet thrusting perpetually under siege…

[T]oday I call you to my riverside,

If you will study war no more.

There is a true yearning to respond to

The singing River and the wise Rock

So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew

The African, the Native American, the Sioux,

The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek

The Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Shiek,

The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher,

The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.

They hear. They all hear

The speaking of the Tree.

They hear the first and last of every Tree

Speak to humankind today, Come to me, here

Beside the River.

Plant yourself beside the River…

…

The horizon leans forward,

Offering you space to place new steps of change.

(Angelou, On the Pulse of Morning)

Friends, this Lent the whole planet, Planet Water, is journeying by stages. We could say that what we see on the horizon leaning forward is a ship on the vast waters of space. But which is it? It might be the little boat of the Children’s Defense Fund that sails for all the children of the world and their precarious future. Their logo is: “Dear Lord, be good to me. The sea is so wide, and my boat is so small.” Dear God, let us be good to all the children of the world. Their boat is so small.

But do you know what? Our boat is so small now. We’re all at sea, and the planet is vulnerable. We’re all boatpeople now.

Or maybe the little ship on the horizon that “leans forward” with space to place new steps of change is the good ship Oikumene, rocking on the waters. The Oikumene ship is the logo of the World Council of Churches. Oikumene means “the whole inhabited earth.” It’s Habitat Earth, our ship, the one where we’re all on board together – a ship of “the Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek, the Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Shiek, the Gay, the Straight, the Preacher, the privileged, the homeless, the Teacher.”

Or maybe the ship on the horizon is Noah’s little ark. The Ark of Life itself, carefully adrift in the haunting waters of deep space. Earth, the Ark of Life. Earth, the only home to life known to date in the whole universe. Apparently good arks, like good planets, are hard to find. Earth the Ark of Life, God’s covenant with creation. And guess who the sailors are? Dear Lord, be good to us on this journey. The sea is so wide, and our boat is so small.

Let us pray: Lord God, you called Moses and the congregation, and this congregation, to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet uncharted, through perils unknown. Feed us with the bread of life in the eating place, and the fruit of the vine in the drinking place, that we might have faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us; through Jesus Christ, the One who goes before. Amen.