This week we continue passing through Creation Time. As a reminder our theme verse for Creation Time this year comes from Romans: We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together the pains of labor
The Scripture Readings this week are:
- Romans 8:22
- Exodus 16:4-21
The Sermon title is Take What You Need
Early Thoughts: What do you need? What do you want? Are we always aware of the difference?
Because taking what you need is a bit different from taking what you want. One is much healthier than the other.
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Exodus 16 tells a fairly well-known story of God's miraculous providence. The people are in the desert, there is no food. The people are getting antsy. So God tells them to wait and watch. At evening a flock of birds descend on the camp and the people have meat. Then in the morning the ground is covered with a flaky substance. They collect this stuff, (manna is related to the question "what is this stuff") and have bread. As it happens everyone gathers as much as they need for their family, no more and no less. Nobody goes without. Nobody has too much. The manna that is not collected melts away with the morning sun. The story will tell us that the people live on this bread from heaven until they cross the Jordan.
It is a great story for talking about trust in God. It is one of many in Scripture that reminds us that God will provide what we need (there are others from he wandering in the desert, Jesus counsels his followers not to worry in the Sermon on the Mount). That is a great lesson for the faithful to remember. We will talk more about it next week. But there is a bit in the story of manna that almost gets missed.
Moses tells the people to only take what they need for the day. He specifically tells them not to keep any for tomorrow. But people are people. Some decide to keep some in storage. It rots. Once a week they can take more than they need for one day. The day before Sabbath they gather two days worth of manna since they can not gather any on Sabbath. Then it does not rot, but stays fresh for the Sabbath day. But excess, hoarding, taking more than you need simply does not work with manna.
Maybe there is a message for us there as well.
Why did some try to keep manna past the best before date? were they hedging their bets, wondering "what if it doesn't come tomorrow?"? Were they hoping to sell it to their neighbour when they got hungry in the middle of the night? Did they just want to look important because they had more than anyone else? The story doesn't tell us. It is one of the gaps we can let our imagination fill in. All we are told is that the kept back food rots overnight and the Moses is not pleased.
I think that the story reminds us that taking what we need means only taking what we need.
I remember more than once as I was growing up my mother reminding me that want and need are different things. We live, I believe, in a world where we have forgotten the difference. That is not surprising since there is a multi-billion dollar industry committed to making us forget the difference. We are routinely told that we need something that we really don't -- some of it stuff we didn't even want until somebody decided to convince us it was a necessity.
What would happen if all the stuff we got because we wanted but didn't need it rotted or broke or ceased to work overnight?
Paul tells us in our theme verse for this season that all creation is groaning. I have a very strong belief that part of Creation's groaning, part of Creation's pain, comes from the fact that we have mistaken wants for needs. I believe that a large part of why we have such incredible discrepancy between the haves and the have-nots in the world is that we have forgotten the difference between wants and needs. I believe that many issues would take a big step toward resolution if we re-learned the difference between wants and needs.
Years ago a friend of mine who was a recovering alcoholic told me how lucky I was to learn the difference. They said that the first thing they were told went they went into rehab was that they were confusing wants with needs. Obviously addiction is more complicated than that one piece. Still, as I look at the world around us I have to wonder what addictions have been allowed (or even encouraged) to run amuck and thus led to the fracturing of society and the degradation of Creation?
LEt's be honest, we will always fulfill some of our wants. WE don't have to limit ourselves to only what we need. Wants are part of what gives life joy. But we have to find the right balance as we hear creation groaning.
--Gord
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