Preached at First Presbyterian Church, Baldwin, NY, March 3rd, 2013
A printable PDF file can be found here
Long journeys can severely test your patience. You get up late, break a few speed limits to get the airport only to arrive and look at the information board and find your flight has been cancelled. So maybe you decide to drive.
It’s a hot sticky one, you’ve got a whole days traveling ahead of you, 40 minutes into the journey and a voice comes from the back, “Daddy, I need the bathroom”. “Why didn’t you go before we left like we asked you to?” “I didn’t need to go then, I need to go now”. So you stop and get back on the road again, another ten minutes and it’s “Are we there yet?”
No, we’re not there yet. And then the trouble really starts. “She touched me!” “He touched me first”. So you play a game, O.K first one to spot a blue truck. “There’s one”. “That’s not blue, it’s aqua-marine”. “Aqua-marines a shade of blue, so I win” “No you don’t, that was a car, not a truck, mom said a truck”
By this time dad has come off the main road into the traffic and managed to end up in an area that is totally unidentifiable and there’s not a sign in sight that gives a clue as to which way the interstate may be. So you drive around and somebody suggests dad should stop and ask for directions. Now that is not going to happen in a hurry because men are from Mars and women are from Venus. And on Mars, when you need help, you ask.
Finally, after passing the same gas station for the fourth time, Dad pulls in and sends mom to ask directions from somebody inside. It’s only then, whilst parked up that you notice the sign for the Interstate you’d already passed five times. And it’s right there.
Hours later you get to the hotel and everybody is hot, bothered, and not in the best of holiday spirits. One of the kids is wiping away the tears. The other is squirming and red in the face because they really can’t hold off from the bathroom much longer. Mom has her arms folded and is breathing just a tad faster than normal. The receptionist greets you with a chirpy “Welcome to the Hotel Sandy-Beach”. And everybody is just praying that Dad doesn’t express how he’s really feeling right that moment.
Vacations can turn into the sort of excursions that can cause even the most seasoned families to lose their marbles. When the Israelites came out of Egypt it was no vacation, but an act of liberation. Liberation to a hot and sticky forty year long journey through a desert before any of them ever made it to a promised land.
Along the way were occasions when the people expressed the strongest regret at having left Egypt. They complained. A lot. They felt that slave life was a preferred option to starvation in the wilderness. They doubted Moses ability to lead them. They wondered if the God that Moses kept talking about was really all that Moses claimed.
And there were occasions when they gave up on God altogether and turned to golden calves, unrestrained excess, and the fulfillment of their most basic desires as a way to help them cope with the traveling experience.
In our reading that came from the Book of Corinthians Paul uses the example of the Israelites journey through the wilderness as a way to encourage the church to be faithful to God as they make their own spiritual journey. He provides them with some traveling instructions. Let me summarize them under three headings.
1. Remember who you are.
2. Resist the temptation to grumble
3. Realize the faithfulness of God
REMEMBER WHO YOU ARE
We are the people of God. We are people that God chooses to enter into a covenantal relationship with through Jesus Christ. We are people who pass through baptismal waters and eat around a table laid with bread and wine as a sign of community. We are accompanied on our journey of faith by the cloud of God’s presence, the unseen cloud of many witnesses and words of promise passed to us across the centuries.
We are the inheritors of a faith that was forged in the experiences of Israel, our ancestors were under the cloud and passed through the sea, they ate the same spiritual food and spiritual drink, they drank from the same spiritual rock, the rock of Jesus Christ.
Remember who you are. This journey didn’t begin with you nor will it end with you. Yet your life is an intrinsic part of the fabric of faith, your personal faith journey is one of many threads that make up a great tapestry that pictures the Grace of God, in which every perspective is welcomed, every heart is embraced, and all are called by name and valued.
Remember who you are. A child of God greatly loved. Such knowledge does not mean all our problems and trials instantly evaporate into thin air. But it surely can help us travel through them. And it may well prevent us from indulging in a second thing identified in this passage
RESIST THE TEMPTATION TO GRUMBLE
Speaking of the experience of the Israelites in the wilderness Paul writes in verses 10 “Do not complain as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer”. Going back to the illustration I used at the start, there is one thing that for sure can ruin a good journey. Groaning, Complaining and Mumbling.
Paul is not writing about a family vacation. He’s writing to a church about the church. He knew that one thing that can destroy any congregation is when it’s membership cease becoming encouragers and start to become complainers. The church community provides a setting where grumblers and mumblers destroy each other.
There is a huge difference between offering constructive criticism and grumbling. There is nothing wrong with evaluating a situation, pointing out any strengths and weaknesses and working together with others to bring about positive change. That’s constructive. That’s positive. It builds. It moves us forward.
Grumbling comes from selfishness. I don’t like this. I can’t control this. So I’m going to pull it down. Grumbling is not voicing an opinion; it’s voicing an opinion in such a way as to cause discouragement and discontent. It’s having your mouth in motion whilst your mind is in limbo. It kills churches.
It causes a process. The same process as happened amongst the children of Israel. First came the murmurs and grumbles. “Well, I don’t know about Moses, we were better off back in Egypt”. Discontent with Moses leads to discontent with the God of Moses. “Great God, huh? Delivering us from Egypt only to perish out here!”
Discontent with God led to idolatry. “Y’know I think we can find a better God than this one”. Idolatry led to self-indulgence. “Hey this golden calf thing is great! Let’s party! Let’s do whatever the heck we want to do, because nobody can stop us now!” Unrestrained indulgence led to tragedy. “Twenty-three thousand fell in a single day”.
Paul says 10:6 “These things occurred as examples for us”. He warns us in verse 12, “If you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall”. How do we then stand firm? We remember who we are. We resist the temptation to grumble. Thirdly we ;
REALIZE THE FAITHFULNESS OF GOD.
Our reading concluded, “God is faithful, and He will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing He will also provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it.”
There are numerous things we can do to ensure that when temptation comes, we find a way through. Sometimes we will fall, but such experiences are common to everyone, and we should not let our walk with God be determined by the stumbles but by the strides.
One of the greatest things God has given us is the gift of each other to help us along the spiritual road. That’s why ‘grumbling’ is such a bad thing for community life and ‘encouragement’ is such a builder. Facing our problems and sharing our struggles together creates a way forward for us when the going is rough.
The spiritual disciplines of prayer and reading God’s Word likewise build into our lives strengths that help us out when difficult times come along. Just as we take care of our bodies through physical exercise it is important that we take care of our spiritual lives through regular and disciplined spiritual practices, sharing in worship, feeding our minds on solid things, nurturing our spirits by allowing God’s Holy Spirit to move us and renew us.
Simply recognizing that God is on our side, and that the tests that come our way are not to catch us out, but to deepen our relationship with Him, can help us see things in a different light. God is faithful. God’s people? “They are weak, but He is strong”.
- Remember who you are
- Resist the temptation to Grumble
- Realize the Faithfulness of God.
Traveling Instructions
Things that can help us move along on our spiritual journeys.
Rev. Adrian J. Pratt
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