Nancy E. Petty

Pullen Memorial Baptist Church

March 18, 2007 – Fourth Sunday in Lent

Text: Joshua 5:9-12

When the Menu Changes

In the lectionary for today, I had two choices: I could have chosen to preach on the story of the Prodigal Son, but I instinctively recoiled from this perennial favorite, knowing that its message was both too easy—God loves us all, no matter what we do—and too hard, Why haven’t I received a better deal in life since I’ve been good, stayed home, and done my duty? The four verses in Joshua offered little in the way of easy thesis statements or of easy answers. One thing I did know, however. When Jesus in the New Testament or when the prophets of the Hebrew scriptures want to explain something hard and strange to an unbelieving people, food comes up. I haven’t counted the Biblical references to food, but they number, I’m sure, in the hundreds if not the thousands. And the story of the manna that sustains the Israelites through forty years of wandering in the desert is as familiar to Sunday-school scholars as the stories of Jonah and the whale or of Lot’s wife turning to stone. However, the story of the day the manna stopped falling from the heavens is less familiar, and its meaning is as strange as understanding how and why yeast leavens the whole bread, the whole people of God.

The manna stopped falling on the fourteenth day of the month, in the plains of Jericho, at Gilgal, a spot noted for dramatic events. It was there, at Gilgal, that Samuel anointed Saul to be king of Israel; it was there that Samuel anointed David to be king in Saul’s place. Gilgal, this place of memory, is where the turning point occurs between Saul and David in the midst of Saul’s ongoing conflict with the Philistines. Important sacrifices took place at Gilgal, and, in essence, Samuel, Saul and David kept returning to that place when anything of significance occurred between them. Gilgal is clearly an important shrine of the Israelites, one that is marked by numerous conflicts and transfers of power. There is even a connection between Gilgal and the myth of the splitting of the Red Sea which is as ancient and distinct as any story in the bible.

How, then, does this series of events relate to the seemingly absurd cessation of the falling of the manna and the inexplicable turn of events that led the Israelites, on the day after Passover, on that “very” day, to be forced to give up the steady supply of manna and, instead, to take the harvest of Canaan as their own? What do we do when the manna stops falling, and we are left with a different menu, a different means of acquiring food, a different harvest? And what do we do with the hint that the Israelites were perhaps told by God to steal the harvest as their own, even though we’ve grown up with the idea that stealing apples from somebody else’s orchard is neither right or good.

Since we are prone to seek lessons from passages such as these, no matter how mysterious the story, we look in vain for an easy answer. Why the fourteenth day? Why the day after Passover? Why the implicit if not explicit order to steal food one has not grown oneself? Why the change in the menu?

Perhaps at bottom the lesson is about change—how suddenly it comes, how helpless and powerless we can feel in the face of change, how desperately we seek for understanding rather than simple obedience, how the way of survival is no longer clear, how the path suddenly alters and forever. Life’s changes can be dramatic—the death of a beloved, the loss of a job, the birth of a child, the news of terminal illness, a move across town or to another state, or the disgrace of a nation. Other times, the changes are more subtle and seemingly less compelling or worthy of our attention—the transition from childhood into adolescence (maybe that belongs in the dramatic category), the passing of a birthday, the drifting away of a friendship or the gradual change in the landscape around us. I don’t know about you, but I have always wondered what manna looked like, tasted like, and I have imagined it to be rather like a shower of crumbs tasting blandly of processed Wonder bread or unsalted crackers. I have never pictured manna as being comfort food nor a substitute for a square meal. The word “insipid” comes to mind: food that will keep you alive but will not give you pleasure or strength. Diet food. Food for heart patients. Ensure for the desert. Suddenly this sustaining but unremarkable diet shifts, and the word “harvest” conjures fruits, vegetables, whole grains, an abundance of all that would satisfy the palate. There is one problem, however. The food does not officially belong to the Israelites who are as yet interlopers, invaders, in the land they have yet to reclaim.

Canaan was the land so ideal in our imaginations that even Moses could not enter it. Canaan, the promised land, was a land flowing with milk and honey. And so from blandness and mere sustenance the Israelites undergo at the pleasure and hand of God a change that was no doubt unsettling, maybe even dramatic. All that had not been theirs was now theirs, by default. All that had been familiar during the forty years of wandering was now ended. You have to wonder if the Israelites saw that as good change or bad change. Often when we have grown up eating canned Chef Boyardee spaghetti, as one child of mine has done, a plate of authentic Italian cuisine would be her undoing. Was this change major or minor, God’s or humanity’s, permanent or temporary, welcomed or unwelcomed? What we are used to is often better than or more soothing than what is new, different. So we don’t know if the Israelites were grateful at having to eat manna no longer, but what is obvious is that the manna stopped and God provided another way for them to eat. If we don’t know how they viewed that event, we do know that they were unwilling to go hungry again. When change happens to us, we begin adapting, and sometimes our adapting is healthy, and sometimes our response to change is not so healthy.

What do we know about change? We know that it’s inevitable, that it’s hard, that

it can be a way to see something different, that it makes us uncomfortable, that it can turn our world—and our values—our very lives—upside down. As Mary Oliver says in her poem on the front of the worship guide, we know that change can oftentimes feel like a curse, a box full of darkness, and only later recognize it as a gift. She reminds us that often we have to live into a change in order to understand its meaning and significance. And most often, it is our response to change that brings out either the best or the worst in us. We can dig in our heels or we can start walking.

In some ways this text feels like God forced the change, but maybe in order for the Israelites to live into their new life and to accept the gift of change, they had to take the next step. They had to claim what was theirs, and what better way to do so than to claim the harvest of the land to which they had finally returned? Ironically, the manna stops on the very day following Passover, a time of remembering. Perhaps that change signaled a move forward into a time of looking ahead and of meeting what lies ahead fearlessly. Perhaps the change happening in us and around us now is signaling a move forward into a time of looking ahead and of meeting what lies ahead fearlessly.

For all these words, we are perhaps no less closer to the deepest meanings of the text, and we may never be—that is unless we stay open to the change happening in us and around us. We have some certainties, however, to cling to. God does not desert us and leave us comfortless in the face of change. The manna stops, the menu changes, but another harvest is ready and available for reaping. The promised land is within reach. The rebuilding and reclaiming and replanting can begin. There is hope, but, with Passover, there is the shadow of painful memories lying over the land and its people. But there is hope for that part, too. Part of our hope is that God does not call us to dwell in our shame and disgrace, to be slaves forever, nomads forever, homeless forever. We are called to a kingdom that is ours by right if only because God gives freely even or especially to an undeserving group of wanderers. God has rolled away and is willing to roll away our own “disgraces of Egypt.” Allowing those stones to be moved is possibly the final and most significant part of the change we seek and need. Change is, in the end, a willingness to let go, to embrace something new and different, to accept the past but live in the present. The change we seek, the change we long for, will have a harder time finding its way into our living if we refuse to hear God’s word to us, “Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of YOUR Egypt.” That’s not to say that there are not times in our lives when we need manna—those times when we need to be taken care of and not be pushed to move on—grieving times, empty times, tired times, sabbatical times. Those times are important and as the scripture affirms, God does provide. And yet, God challenges us to move beyond those times—to stretch and grow, to struggle and dig deep—to change. And in that time, too, God promises to be present with us—giving us what we need—courage, patience, creativity, wisdom and grace.

A hundred and fifty years ago, Emily Dickinson lived with these same struggles. She wrote:

I had been hungry all the years;

My noon had come, to dine;

I, trembling, drew the table near,

And touched the curious wine.

‘T was this on tables I had seen,

When turning, hungry, lone,

I looked in windows, for the wealth

I could not hope to own.

I did not know the ample bread,

‘T was so unlike the crumb

The birds and I had often shared

In Nature’s dining-room.

The plenty hurt me, ‘t was so new,

Myself felt ill and odd,

As berry of a mountain bush

Transplanted to the road.

Nor was I hungry; so I found

That hunger was a way

Of persons outside windows,

The entering takes away.

Emily Dickinson (1830-86)

Part One: Life

LXXVI

1924

Indeed, change can make us feel odd, even ill. But when God invites us into change, it is the seed that sprouts forth new life.