Exodus 16: 2-15 Psalm 145: 1-8
Philippians 1: 21-30 Matthew 20: 1-16
Grace and peace to you from God, our Creator, from Jesus our Redeemer, and from the Holy Spirit, our Advocate and Comforter. Amen.
My friend Darren is the Parish Administrator for Phinney Ridge Lutheran Church. Yesterday I received this email from him: “I experienced something this morning I had to share with you…traffic was horrible so I drove the back way to work and as I was driving down Greenwood and passed Luther Memorial I saw a young… girl sitting in the garden with her hands folded and praying as she looked toward the sunflowers. My first thought was ‘I wish Julie could see this’. My second thought was ‘I wonder if PRLC would cut down the trees in the front yard and plant a garden if they thought a little… girl would come and pray in the morning?”.
My response to Darren was to tell him something of the marvelous ways our Giving Garden has yielded fruits we might never have imagined, in addition to the vegetables and flowers we’ve planted there. I have shared some of those stories with you before. Stories of the two older women who often divert from their regular walking path to walk through the garden and sit in the chairs under the tree to rest and visit. Stories of the children and their parents on their way to school, who walk along the path, offering words of encouragement or reminders…”turn in your homework, pay attention to the teacher.” Stories of the patients from Foss whose caregivers and family members wheel them down to the garden to see what is growing there. Stories of the pre-school class field trips to the garden to identify vegetables as they grow. All of these are stories that are beyond what we thought might happen when we planned the garden. We hoped that neighbors who did not have space for a garden where they lived would enjoy gardening in our space, and they do! But what gifts we have received, from the very heart of God, that we did not imagine when the soil was first turned and the old ugly bushes were relocated.
The Israelites were being returned from captivity in Egypt. They had been given new life…life not in captivity, but in freedom! For years they were being led back to the land they had been promised, the land of their ancestors. And it was a hard journey. So, they complained to Moses and Aaron who were leading them, because they were hungry. In fact, they even whined that they’d rather have been back in Egypt, where they were slaves, but at least where they had food, than be hungry and headed toward God’s promises.
Psychologists will tell you that it is common for people to choose what is familiar and known to them, even if it is not what is best for them, than to choose what is best for them, even if it is unfamiliar and difficult. It is why people stay in unhealthy or even abusive relationships. It is why people stay in jobs that are draining and depleting, rather than venturing out into some new field. And I don’t say this in judgment, I say this as one who has been there. As one who has allowed the ravages of a spouse’s substance abuse to practically take all she had before walking away to what ended up being a life filled with joy and light.
In this story from Exodus, God tells Moses and Aaron that food from heaven will be provided. In the evening, at twilight, meat will appear and in the morning, bread. And, sure enough, quails came in the evening and in the morning there was a fine substance, called manna, which the Israelites did not recognize, to eat as bread.
Manna has a reputation for being a mysterious gift from above, but in fact, it is not. Manna was actually an ordinary substance. “In the Sinai Peninsula, a type of plant lice punctures the fruit of the tamarisk tree and excretes a substance from this juice, a yellowship-white flake or ball. During the warmth of the day it disintegrates, but it congeals when it is cold. It has a sweet taste. Rich in carbohydrates and sugar, it is still gathered by natives, who bake it into a kind of bread.” [1]
God had used what was already there, but had not been fully utilized by the Israelites. Meat and bread, ordinary things, used to bring about extraordinary results.
There is something for us to learn from these two stories, about who we are as a people in this place. There was a time when we wished that we had things the way they were before and when we were being forced to imagine a new way of being a congregation. Although I was not here, from what you have told me and from what I have read, that was a difficult time in the life of this congregation. But look at what God has done. Without moving to another building, without doing any sort of special ministry program…there was no formal re-start or intentional transition….what was already here was transformed by your faithfulness to ministry and mission. It was transformed by your unwillingness to stay in an unproductive place. It was transformed just as surely as the front yard was transformed from a barren, scruffy garden into a place where little children come to pray. Just as the Israelites saw new ways of being sustained present in gifts that were already there, so have we been called in ministry.
Now it would be tempting to end this sermon here. To pat ourselves on the back and say “well done!” But that would assume that God’s work in this place has been completed. And that is simply not the case. Daily, we are presented with new opportunities to minister and grow. I am astonished by the numbers of people who turn to this place to find God at work.
Tomorrow there will be a wedding here. The first time I met with the groom he told me that when he was a teenager, this congregation saved his life. Saved his life by reaching out to him with the love of God.
I mentioned in the newsletter the breakfast guest who told me that he could not remember the last time someone had told him that he was loved. How those three words on our outdoor sign: “We Love You” were a gift to him.
Yesterday the Hungarian Assoc.of Washington raised funds to send to a Romanian children’s orchestra by hosting their annual dinner here in our fellowship hall.
Tuesday the mayor of Seattle will speak to gathered Broadview neighbors in this place.
Daily people come here knowing they can find lunch.
And there are more opportunities for ministry out there. With each opportunity there is a need for the support and involvement of each of us. Whether it is prayerful support, or the support that comes through serving on a committee or team…whether it means that you use your talents to support the need, or whether it means you offer your financial support. Maybe it means that you make phone calls, or deliver soup, or make soup, or provide lunches, or pack lunches. God provides what we need through what is already before us. For a year we have declared that it is “God’s Work. Our Hands” Not “God’s Work” and “A Miracle by which we don’t know or understand how it got there.”
Every day we find provision before us and every day we are asked to share what we have been given. When we do that, lives change. The hungry are fed and the downtrodden are lifted up. Little girls find a place to pray. But more than that, more than those lives changing…we are changed. We are transformed more and more into the people God has called us and is calling us to be. We are transformed into people who see what is before us….who see quail and bread and gardens and lunches and breakfasts and soup…..we are transformed into people who can say with certainty that it is: God’s Work.
(Congregation): Our Hands.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
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