“Daily Bread”
Rev. Matthew Miller
Last week one of our daughters sent us an Instagram post about a sourdough starter that has been cultivated and handed down from one generation to the next since one family set out from Missouri on the Oregon Trail in 1847. Eventually, the starter was passed down to a then 10-year-old Carl Griffith in 1930 in a Basque-American sheep camp in southeastern Oregon where his family was establishing a homestead. On the trail and at the homestead, the campfire had no oven so the bread was baked in a Dutch oven in a hole in the ground where a fire had been built, scraping in coals around the rim. Toward the end of his life, Carl got involved in an early internet usenet group where he would offer to mail people a few teaspoons of his family’s desiccated starter for others to use. He would include family recipes with the starter, as well as instructions for reviving the dormant organisms. Upon his death, a group of faithful volunteers known as Carl’s Friends continued to maintain the starter and share samples free of charge.
Something about this story struck a chord this week, thinking about and reflecting upon this story from Exodus about bread in the wilderness. Just like Carl’s bread, the material by-product wouldn’t be nearly the same with the story that goes with it. It’s the story that gets handed down from generation to generation that gives meaning and richness to everything from bread, to tomatoes, to quilts, to jewelry and more; where it came from, whose hands it has passed through, what it can tell us about those who went before us.
As a general rule, we like to pass along items of value and positive worth. The story that gets handed to us today, the story of bread in the wilderness, is a curious one. Curious because most of us prefer to tell the stories that show us in a good light, that reflect well on us and the kind of people that we are. Conversely, we tend to steer clear of those anecdotes that expose a flaw, or weakness; a bad moment, or a poor decision. Of course, if all that we want to hear are the good things about ourselves without coming to terms with or acknowledging our failures, not only are we living a half-life, we are- as the apostle Paul puts it, “deceived and the truth cannot be in us.” This, I think, is how we know the truth of scripture, because it does not shy away from telling hard truths that ultimately point us to God’s goodness and mercy.
For instance, this story begins with the congregation of the Israelites complaining against Moses and Aaron for leading them out of slavery and into the wilderness. As can often be observed in scripture; the more things change, the more they remain the same. For four hundred years the Hebrew people had labored under the yoke of the Pharaoh. Earlier in Exodus we are told about taskmasters being set over them to oppress them with forced labor. We hear the story of two courageous midwives who defy the Pharoah’s order that male babies born to Hebrew women be killed. And we’re introduced to Moses and the women who save him from that fate: his sister, his mother, and the daughter of the Pharaoh himself. When the people cried out to God, God answered them. Seeing their misery, hearing their cries, knowing the depth of their suffering. And through Moses, God set about the events that led to their liberation from all of that. But on the other side of liberation, on the other side of being freed from all that has oppressed a people for so long is the wilderness of unknowing. The wilderness of the unfamiliar and the uncertain. The sad truth is that people will often choose a misery that they can predict- the devil or Pharaoh they know- over the kind of freedom in which all bets are off and the wideness of the future that lies before them feels entirely too vast. Which is why, some forty-five days into that future they begin to complain. And since the hidden hand of God makes for an elusive target, they go for the next best thing- the people who led them there: Moses and Aaron. The people were more than hangry, they were starving. Had no one thought to plan ahead? Sure they’d made some unleavened bread on their way out the door, but that didn’t last for long. The truth is that it’s hard to know what you’ll need when you’re running for you life. But now the threat the armies of Pharaoh had posed to their existence had been replaced by the threat of starvation. They conclude that if all of this was going to end in their death, but to die with a full belly than an empty one.
What we know, even without this story that’s been handed down to us for thousands of years, what we know to our bones is that once you have been set free- there is no going back. Let me say that again, because if you hear nothing else that I say this morning you need to hear this. Once a person has been set free from their enslavement to work, or sex, or drugs, or booze, or money, or status, or any number of other taskmasters that would oppress us and force us to do their bidding; once a person has seen what is possible on the other side of liberation, there is no going back. Even if we fall back into old patterns, old habits, old enslavements thinking that’s easier because it is what we know- what we’ve always known- the persistant pull of God toward our freedom will never let us be, will never stop haunting our dreams, or reminding us of God’s still more excellent way of abundant life.
Still, when a person has been fed a steady diet of gruel. When a person has been fed a steady diet of abuse, or neglect, or numbness, or escape. When a person has been fed a steady diet of quarterly earnings, and status reports, of social sanction or disapproval. When a person has been told that they’re only what they produce, what they earn, or own (which usually ends up owning them), when they’ve been told they’re only as good as they look, or talk, or act, to be set free can feel like starvation. After all what will sustain us now that we’re not swallowing the all the half-truths that would hold us captive? What will keep us going in a wilderness where every familiar landmark we mapped our lives on is gone?
And this is where every generation has a choice to make. We can continue to cling to a past that no longer owns us, complaining bitterly about all that was lost when we were set free. We can look at the wilderness that lies before us and be overwhelmed by the enormity of it and see only the scarcity that seems to lurk behind every barren bush. Or, we can trust the promise that has sustained us in the past to provide what we need to move forward, through the wilderness of uncertainty to the promised goodness of God that is always waiting for us. Ultimately, that is what it means to have faith, whether we’re nine years old or ninety. It means trusting that the one who has set us free will also sustain us daily as we make our way through the wilderness. When Jesus teaches us to pray for daily bread, it is an image that comes directly from this story that had been handed down for countless generations. It isn’t just the assurance that God provides what we need each and every day. It’s also an assurance that in the midst of our anxiety over what’s been lost, our tendency to worry about scarcity, and our complaints against God and God’s representatives; in those times when our faith waivers, God’s steadfast love never does. God’s response is to feed us that we might be sustained and satisfied by God’s own hand. Blessed are those who hunger, says Jesus, for they will be satisfied. From generation to generation we have seen it bear out. It is our starter, if you will. The belief that the faithfulness of God in the pass will continue into the future and for eternity because that is who God is, that is what God is. As we trust this truth, day by day, we are fed, we are sustained, and we will rise.
