September 18, 2011
“The Legacy of Complaint”
Rev. Dr. David A. Davis
It is difficult to avoid all the complaining in the 16th chapter of the Book of Exodus. The complaining actually starts at the end of the last chapter, right as Moses orders the people to set out from the Red Sea. After three days in the wilderness with no water to drink “the people complained against Moses” (15:24). The complaining starts in the 15th chapter and it finds its way into the 17th chapter as the people camped at Rephidim, again with no water to be found. “The people thirsted there for water and the people complained against Moses” (17:3). So there’s a bit of complaining around the edges, but as for Exodus chapter 16, in an of itself, it is chock-full of complaint. Actually, it’s not even the whole chapter, all the complaint, only the first dozen verses.
It was a month and half in, on the wilderness wanderings. Which means there was about 478 months to go. As it is recorded in the scripture, the people had arrived at the oasis of Elim, “where there were twelve springs of water and seventy palm trees and they camped by the water” (15:27). It doesn’t mention how long Moses let them stay at the resort but right out of the gate in chapter 16, they’re back in the wilderness. That’s when the complaining starts. Some form of the word “complain” occurs 7 times in 12 verse, and that doesn’t count the verse that actually includes the complaining: “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger” (3). The Israelites complained. Your complaining. You complain. The complaining. Your complaining. Your complaining. The complaining. It’s not just the complaining; it’s all the talk about the complaining.
This story of the people in the wilderness is told again in the Book of Numbers. There’s a fair amount of complaint there, but nothing like the rapid fire appearance of complaint in Exodus 16. Job complains a good bit. The Pharisees and Sadducees complain about Jesus once or twice in the gospels. The disciples themselves complained on occasion. The psalmist is known to voice a complaint in the prayers, the songs, the poetry of the psalter. But the vortex of complaint in all of scripture is here in the first part of Exodus 16. For those who are able to drill down on the Hebrew language, the uniqueness of that abundance of complaint only becomes more clear. The prayerful, meditative complaint of the psalmist is not the same as the murmuring complaint of the people in the wilderness. All the complaining. All that complaint. “Your complaining is not against us”, Moses said, “but against the Lord” (8).
You can’t ignore the complaining but there is little consensus about what to do with it. This text from Exodus, it is the Old Testament lesson in the lectionary assignment for today, the 25th Sunday of Ordinary Time. That means that in congregations all around this morning; Presbyterian, Methodist, Episcopalian, Roman Catholic, in congregations all around, if the preacher is preaching from the lectionary, and if the preacher chose to preach the Old Testament Lesson, then the sermon text is Exodus 16:1-12. So we if took a “Christmas Carol” flyover with the ghost of sermons present, we would inevitably hear varying opinions on what to do with all the complaining.
One preacher is going to make it very simple: the complaining is evidence of doubt and a lack of faith in the Lord’s provision. Just as the Israelites nostalgically glorified their days in slavery and turned their backs on the God who heard their cry, so too, the people of God so easily blame God and find the easiest of life’s excuses to turn and run the other way. Stop your complaining, suck it up and return to the Lord who made heaven and earth.
A second preacher will rise enthusiastically in defense of the wandering, complaining people. The suffering in the wilderness, even for six weeks, would have been beyond the imagination. Life in Egypt would have been better, and life back at that oasis better still. Of course they complained. An honest encounter with the God of their forebearers would have required nothing less. Offer the breadth of your life, the joys and the concerns, the thanksgivings and the petitions, to the God who hears your cry and your complaint. Come, bring it on, to the Living and Loving God!
Somewhere a preacher avoids the whole complaint thing by focusing on the bread from heaven and offers a call to reclaim the sabbath. Somewhere a preacher’s had a bad couple of weeks in the congregation and uncomfortably but very adeptly crafts the sermon into a response to a small group in the congregation who complain about everything and anything related to his ministry, including his wardrobe, the cookies at coffee hour, and the way he lifts the cup at the Lord’s Supper. Somewhere a preacher offers the theological corrective that the text is not about the people’s complaint. It is about God’s response and how God’s glory appeared in the cloud smack in the middle of all that whining. And somewhere a preacher rises to offer a word on behalf of all those who cry out and complain and bear their soul to God, and the sea never parts, the manna never comes, the suffering never ends, and the grief never goes away. “Are you hearing every complaint, Lord?” is her refrain in the sermon.
So much complaint and so many explanations. The legacy of complaint handed on to us as a people of faith. Exodus 16 rests at the heart of the scriptural witness on complaint. A take away, a key to understanding all this complaint, it is tucked in surrounded by all the complaint. Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole congregation of the Israelites, ‘draw near to the Lord for the Lord has heard your complaining.” Draw near to the Lord. Here in Exodus 16, surrounded on both sides by complaint, a simple command; not just an invitation, but an expectation. From Aaron, who got it from Moses, who heard it from the Lord, “draw near.”
Some expressions require local knowledge to understand them. If a freshman here on Princeton’s campus is invited by a group of friends to go out to “the street”, they’re not intending to go on Nassau Street. If an international student at Harvard facebooks a friend and tells her she “lives in the Yard,” it’s not supposed to spark visions of a tent and outdoor living. In Pittsburgh, if you tell someone “Kennywood’s Open”, it has nothing to do with amusement park named Kennywood. And if you are in London and you here the expression “mind the gap” it has nothing to do with growing concerns about the economy; the rich and the poor. A proper understanding of some phrases requires local knowledge.
It seems the same is true for the Old Testament expression, “Draw near to the Lord.” Scholars suggest that “draw near to the Lord” is a technical term in scripture, referring to ancient worship; the sanctuary, the altar, the ritual. In the wisdom of Ecclesiastes, “Guard your steps when you go to the house of God; to draw near to listen is better than the sacrifice offered by fools” (5:1). In the Book of Leviticus, Moses said to Aaron, "Draw near to the altar and sacrifice your sin offering and your burnt offering, and make atonement for yourself and for the people; and sacrifice the offering of the people, and make atonement for them; as the LORD has commanded." (9:7). That part of the Law in Leviticus also has specific instructions for who cannot draw near to the Lord. In the liturgical expressions of the prophet Isaiah, “Draw near, O nations, to hear; O peoples, give heed! Let the earth hear, and all that fills it; the world, and all that comes from it” (34:1).
Draw near to the Lord. It’s a loaded, Old Testament term. To the locals, it conjures up images of worship, and the sanctuary, and the tabernacle, and the ark, and priestly actions and sacrifices offered and a community’s way of life. Draw near to the Lord. When the expression falls on faith filled ears, it is more than a casual invitation to think on God, or to take a few holy steps, or to offer a few cleansing breaths. Draw near to the Lord. It is not simply a broad stroke reference to spirituality that carries with it an individualistic notion of “whatever works for you.” The term came complete with instructions, priestly tasks on behalf of the people, and a ritualized understanding of the collective daily life of the people of God.
Draw near to the Lord…Come, people of God, let us worship God. Sisters and brothers in Christ, let us offer praise to the Living God. Come, to this Feast that has been prepared in the kingdom of heaven. Come, let us sing a new song to the Lord. Come, let us praise the name of the Lord. Praise the Lord. Draw near to the Lord. Here in Exodus 16, if the call of the people is complaint. The response of God is worship. If Exodus 16 is the vortex of complaint in scripture, at the very center of all that complaint is a call for the people of God to be in a relationship of praise and worship with the One who hears their cry and their complaint. It is almost as if the opposite of all that complaint is the community’s worship way of life. And when the people bring the fullness of their lives to God in worship; when they cry out to God baring their souls, their suffering, their questions, their frustrations, their anger, when all the brokenness is lifted to God as part of a faith community’s way of life, well that’s not complaint that’s lament. As Professor Luke Powery says in his book Spirit Speech: Lament and Celebration in Preaching, when balanced and knit together, “lament and celebration may be conceived as doxology, two postures united in giving praise and honor to God.” It’s not stop your whining and come to worship. Rather, take the breadth of your life before the Lord here in the context of the worship life of the people of God. Draw near to the Lord.
The legacy of complaint is the legacy of God’s expectation of the people’s life in worship and praise and adoration and lament. That our life here in this room, that we do here as a people, that how God’s Spirit meets us here and shapes us here, that it is so much more than how you liked the sermon, or what you thought of the music, or what you got out of church today. That part of being in this community and present here in worship, is how you are contributing to the someone else’s deepening relationship with God. You can’t sing today, but we’re going sing for you. Someone can’t bring themselves to pray this morning, so you’re going to pray for them. The one who rejoices here is lifting the one who weeps here. Your presence here in this place, in a community at worship, is helping to transform someone’s distant complaint into an intimate lament before the living God.
At the end of the day, would any preacher like a good crowd in here? Sure. Do I worry about revenues when we have to cancel worship due to weather. Yes, I do. Am I suggesting perfect attendance, or even keeping roll, or looking to use guilt as a motivator for worship attendance? No. But at deeper level, theologically, beyond what sociologists can tell us about religious participation and attendance and the rise of the non-religious, non-participant…what Robert Putnam calls “the nones”…at some point after all of what the sociologists have to tell us, we have to talk about what is lost for each one of us, in terms of a relationship with God, our collective relationship with God, when you or someone else is not here.
Every Lord’s day, when we draw near to the Lord, someone hear, needs you. And many of Sundays, you need them.
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