August 6th, 2006 Ninth Sunday After Pentecost

“There's a spot!” Julia yelled. “Over to the right. Stay close to that side when you come out of the rapids.” My canoeing partner in the stern passed the welcomed news to the canoe behind us, and on down the line it went. Finally, a clear wide space in the river to beach the canoes and eat lunch. Breakfast back at Camp Marymount was a good six hours ago, and that was pretty skimpy. With the eggs overdone and the bacon burnt, we ran out of the only really edible food—toast and the ever present raisin bran. With Lucky, the camp cook out sick, the “kitchen boys” as they were called, struggled to get three meals a day on the table for the 200 plus female campers.

So I never did learn for sure whether it was a genuine mistake, or payback for some of the complaints about the kitchen boys' cooking, or the fact Miss Wagner spurned an invitation for an after lights out rendezvous with Mike, the ringleader of the kitchen boys. Whatever the reason, when we opened the food boxes all we found was can after can of pork and beans.

Now we were hungry so that wasn't so bad for lunch, and still the beans were tolerable for dinner that night. But this was day one of a three day canoe trip. To this day, the thought of eating pork and beans makes me gag. Perhaps you, or someone you know, once had to eat the same food day after day week after week because that was all there was. Do you eat that food now if you have a choice? And sadly, according to Bread for the World over half the world's population has to eat pretty much the same food day after day because that's all they can find or afford—a few potatoes, little corn flour, a bowl of rice.

So when we think about the manna God fed the Israelites 365 days a year for 40 years, if you multiply that by three meals a day that's 43,800 meals of manna. Even though it was a miraculous feeding by God, how much would you bet that many of the Israelites at least thought to themselves, “ooh yuck! Manna again.”

Despite, despite I'm sure the resourcefulness of the Israelite women figuring out dozens of ways to fix that manna. Manna fried in olive oil, manna boiled with lamb bones, maybe even the women scavenged for almonds or pistachios and baked “manna nut bread!”

You would think after having to eat all that manna writing psalms and prayers thanking God for this steady diet of bread would be the last thing the Israelites would want to remember. But here we are this morning praying psalm 78: “The Lord rained down on them manna to eat. He gave them the grain of heaven. Mortals ate the food of angels. God sent them food in abundance.” And in today's gospel lesson, the crowd recalls that God provided manna to their ancestors in the wilderness hundreds of years later.

For the Israelites manna truly was the bread of life sustaining them on their transition from a life of slavery in Egypt to a life of freedom in the Promised land. Or said another way, manna was the very practical concrete sign of God's continual care for them, so the Israelites remembered in psalms and prayers God's gracious and loving action towards them, no matter how sick and tired they got of eating manna.

The manna was unlike any bread they ate in Egypt . In fact the name, manna, is a pun on the Hebrew phrase man hu which means what is it? Man hu, what is it? Manna—bread from God. A few verses later manna is described as “like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey,” Folks have speculated over the years exactly what it, manna, is. But if today you traveled to the Sinai peninsula , where the Israelites wandered for 40 years, you could find Bedouin nomads living there, gathering a yellowish white flaky substance to bake into a bread they call manna. This flaky substance is the excrement of plant lice feeding on the tamarisk trees. Because the sap is in poor nitrogen the lice have to eat a lot of it to live, and so they make a lot of small droppings rich in carbohydrates and sugars. This substance decays quickly and attracts ants, so a daily portion is the most any Bedouin gathers. Could this be the same manna that the Israelites gathered? Insect excrement?

For some folks this explanation of what happened takes away the mystery and power of God's miraculous working. They might even say this explanation demeans who God is and what God does. What kind of all powerful loving God would give folks 43,800 continuous meals of insect droppings?

How you answer that question may indicate how you understand God working in your life. If for God to be active and working in your life, there has to be some kind of supernatural stupendous event that proclaims in big neon flashing letters “Hey, Margaret! I God have done this for you!” then prepare to be disappointed.

Like that old story about the church leader who's trapped in rising flood waters, praying to God to deliver him from the flood. A boat filled with the ladies of the evening paddles by offering him a spot in their boat. No thanks, he says, not wanting to be seen with such women. “My trust is in the Lord. The Lord will look after me.” And the man keeps on praying for a miracle of deliverance. A little while later as the flood waters creep up over the porch, two migrant workers from the farm down the road float by on a makeshift raft, and one hollers “Senior! Swim out to us, you can hold onto this stick and we will pull you along.” But not wanting to demean himself, the man declines. “You boys go on. My trust is in the Lord and the Lord will deliver me from this flood.” The waters rise still higher and the man is forced to move to the top of his roof. He increases the fervor and intensity of his prayers. Finally, a national guard helicopter arrives, hovers above him, and a rescuer throws a rope down. But the man is afraid of heights and flying so again he declines the help to safety. A few hours later, the man arrives at the pearly gates, welcomed by St. Peter and enters heaven. He immediately seeks God out and says, “Lord God I have attended church every Sunday of my life, even when I wasn't feeling well. I tithed 10% of my earnings to the church and worthy causes. I was chair of trustees at my church and taught bible in the county prison. Why did you not come to my rescue as I prayed for? I had the faith to move mountains!” And the punchline of the story is…

I sent a boat, a raft and a helicopter, what else did you expect? Three times I performed a miracle and each time you refused.

Because each of the miracles God provided the man also entailed some vulnerability, some breaking down of what Robert Mulholland calls “the thick crust of self-ego” because each miracle was about more than the man's immediate need to be rescued and more about transforming him away from prejudice and fear to reconciliation and spiritual growth. How often in our own lives do the miracles pass by unnoticed? Because we are looking for something else?

Like the man trapped by the flood, many of us when we do not get the exact miracle or result we are praying for, we think God is either ignoring us or punishing us—or worse yet, we begin to doubt God's existence. We are boxed into thinking that we know what is best for us, and if we pester God enough with a certain request, God will do exactly what we ask to shut us up. Instead of being like the Israelites who when confronted with a new type of food ask, “What is it?” Answered bread of the angels God sent to feed us.” We are more likely to respond –“ooh yuck, Insect droppings!” Too often we are like the crowd in today's gospel, seeking Jesus, God, for the wrong reasons, demanding signs that we control, rather than placing our trust in God.

After Jesus fed the 5,000 the crowd follows him likes ants to honey tasting manna. They want more. “Give us this bread always,” they said. Jesus warns them and us to carefully distinguish between the perishable and the imperishable, our bodies and our souls. All too often in life we confuse the two, and end up devoting ourselves to the wrong things. Things that give us temporary security or pleasure, rather than things that help us to grow in our faith, in our spiritual formation, as persons made in the image and likeness of God.

“I am the bread you are looking for, says Jesus. The one who reminds us that God gives us not what we want, but what we need to grow and move into the whole person God intends for each of us to be, our true self. The real miracle is, as with the Israelites in the desert, God is always sending us something to sustain us in our lives day by day, and to empower us on our journey to our promised land. Sending something our way to help transform us from brokenness to wholeness one degree at a time. Experience may tell us that what God sends is sometimes as appealing as insect droppings, or being in the same boat with folks we would prefer not to associate with. But if we can begin to cultivate eyes that see and ears that hear and begin to view everything that happens to us as a potential gift from God, there will be no end to the miracles that happen in our lives empowering us to abundant life.