Jack McKinney
Pullen Memorial Baptist Church
February 24, 2008 – Third Sunday in Lent
Text: Exodus 17:1-7
Everybody Has a Water Problem
At the risk of sounding too much like a recent Secretary of Defense, I want to affirm the fact that there are some things that you cannot know until you know them, and then, oh boy, do you know them. And once you do know them you feel a little ashamed for how dismissive you were about them before you knew them.
What am I talking about? Well, colonoscopies of course. A couple of months ago my age and circumstances caught up with me and I was required to undergo this procedure that one friend describes as the “ultimate indignity.” Only, at my house, this event was welcomed with a certain amount of glee. Not by me, the sufferer of the indignity, but by my loving wife who seemed unusually happy about this whole affair.
To understand KaKi’s euphoria about my colonoscopy it is important to point out that she has had more colonoscopies than most people have had headaches. Which is to say, she has had a bunch. KaKi’s colon has been photographed so many times it probably thinks it is on the red carpet on Oscar night.
And, since we are in church and confession is good for the soul, I will admit something shameful. Over the years of watching her go through the preparation process before these procedures, and hearing her complain repeatedly about how awful it was, I may have once or twice thought to myself, “How bad can this be? Quit complaining and suck it up.” Now, did I say these words out loud? Of course not. I may be dumb, but I’m not that dumb.
But a couple of months ago when the tables were turned and I was the one facing the indignity, and KaKi was the spectator, it was like she had been reading my mind all these years. She knew I had been dismissive of her complaints and was clearly pleased that I would get to experience what she had experienced on many occasions. And after it was all over, and I knew what I had not known before, I was converted. Never again will I hear my wife’s complaints about a colonoscopy and feel anything but sympathy.
Experience will do that for you. It will make you more tolerant and understanding. And while no one likes to listen to people complain, if you have suffered through what they are suffering you will tend to overlook the whining.
Which brings me to the children of Israel who have followed Moses out of Egypt into the desert. Exodus 17 begins this way:
From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarreled with Moses, and said, ‘Give us water to drink.’ Moses said to them, ‘Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?’ But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?’ So Moses cried out to the Lord, ‘What shall I do with this people?
Now there are two quick things I want to note about this story. First, when it says they traveled from the “wilderness of Sin” this is not a reference to West Texas no matter what the other pastor of this church says.
The second thing I want to say about this text is that for a long time I have read it and reacted a lot like I did with KaKi’s colonoscopies. It wasn’t that I was unsympathetic to the children of Israel’s water issues, but their complaining sure seemed extreme given that they had been liberated from slavery and led to freedom. In other words, having read this story dozens of times over the years, I came to think of these people as ungrateful whiners.
Until recently. Now our area is in an extreme drought, and we are wondering what is going to happen if we don’t get substantial rainfall before summer, and I have a new appreciation for what those folks following Moses must have been feeling. Now I know what they knew, at least on small level. So, complain all you want, children of Israel, and you will hear no judgment from me in this sermon.
No, this is not a sermon condemning complainers and whiners, because I think there is something much more serious going on in this story. The people’s problem wasn’t that they moaned about their lack of water. Anyone facing death in a desert would have some negative thoughts and words in that situation. The question I have is why do the children of Israel find themselves in a desert without water in the first place? And I believe the answer is that they fell victim to the oldest temptation in the world, the temptation that captured Adam and Eve around the fruit tree and still captures us today. They thought they had no limits.
Why is it that we will ignore the consequences of our choices when we are desperate for a change or when we feel like we must have something immediately? Maybe it is that temptation that comes over us temporarily and says we are creatures without limits. So, if you want to be free badly enough you will run out into a desert without enough water. Or if you are flat broke but want that new car badly enough you will pay the exorbitant interest rate. Or if you are unhappy in your marriage and desire another person badly enough you will convince yourself that an affair won’t hurt anyone. Or if you want a war badly enough you might justify it based on dubious if not mythical evidence. In each of these circumstances the dynamic holds true: we want something or want to be free of something, so we narrow our vision down to the point that we can’t see any consequences and move forward as though we were creatures without limits. And before we know it we are dying of thirst in the desert; or our new car is being repossessed; or we are in divorce court; or we are trapped in a war we can’t escape.
Indeed, if there is a figure from Greek mythology who represents our tendency to ignore the consequences it must be Icarus. This boy who escaped prison by flying on wings of wax and feathers made by his father ignored the urgent warnings that came with the gift. “Fly a middle course” the father urged, knowing that the heat of the sun would melt the wax and the water of the sea would ruin the feathers. But Icarus, in his haste to be free and in the exuberance of flight, ignored the fact there were limits to the gift and flew too close to the sun. He crashes to his death as a symbol of what happens to those who are temporarily blinded to the consequences of their choices.
We are a culture of Icaruses. Not because we are arrogant or dumb or sinful, but because we are spectacularly impatient. And so we rush out into our own deserts of life, thinking only of what we are running from or what we are running to, and fail to pack enough water for the trip. Blinded by the urgency of our need and driven by an impatience that says it must happen now, we are destined for disaster. And sometimes it is only by the grace of God that there is a Moses in the vicinity who knows how to get water out of a rock.
But you know, it doesn’t have to be this way. It is possible to live with an awareness of our limits, to know the consequences of our choices, and survive that desert crossing that leads to liberty. We can be free and do it in a way that doesn’t result in our flying too near the sun. And all it takes is that we practice a simple spiritual discipline called reflection.
Reflection is an act that we undertake in the present, looking to our past, so that we might move wisely into our future. When we take the time to reflect we slay the temptation that says we must do something right now and ignore the consequences. The impatience that drives us much of the time is halted in its tracks and suddenly we find ourselves contemplating not just our next move, but the next several moves after that. Like the late chess champion Bobby Fisher, who was said to be able to see the next ten moves in a chess game at the height of his genius, reflection allows us to draw on our experience so that we might peer into the future. And the truth is we don’t have to be clairvoyant to benefit from a little reflection in life. After all, it doesn’t take a sage to figure out you will die of thirst in a desert without water. All you need is the ability to pause a moment and take inventory before the trip: Spouse? Check; Kids? Check; Camel? Check; Water? Hey did we pack any water? Sometimes just that much reflection can save you a lot of heartache on the way out into the wilderness.
And I know what some of you are thinking. You are assuming that pausing to reflect before you act will make you less likely to take risks. But that doesn’t have to be the case. If you want an example of someone who took incredible risks after undertaking a great deal of reflection consider the daredevil Evel Knievel. Mr. Knievel died in December of complications from lung disease at the age of 69. Those of you who followed his career will be surprised that he lived so long and died of something so mundane. But the secret to his longevity was that he planned his stunts down to the tiniest detail. He knew if his motorcycle could jump fifteen buses but not sixteen, and then he would jump only fifteen. Knievel was the anti-Icarus even though both loved the illusion of flight. Knievel knew he had limits and considered all the consequences before taking to the air. Did he crash a few times? Absolutely. But he never seemed surprised when that happened and refused to complain because he understood better than anyone the risks he was taking.
During our Lenten season we are encouraging you to live into the questions of your faith. We have even proposed a process for how you might do that: ask, listen, reflect, and then respond. The reflection part of the process is invaluable. For many of us we move too quickly from asking big questions to taking decisive actions. The questions we ask ourselves can lead us to recognize the bondage we are in and create a desire for liberty. But if we just head out without reflecting on how we are going to make the trip we will soon be angry and thirsty. We might even start to blame God for getting us into such a predicament. That’s not fair, given how many reminders God sends us about our limits, but it seems the Lord is pretty patient about all the whining and complaining we do. After all, everyone has a water problem these days.