The New Manna of the Gospel

September 20 sermon by Jamie Howison on Exodus 16:2-15 and Matthew 20:1-16

“The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.” In her sermon last week—a sermon aptly titled “There is No Going Back”—Rachel alerted us to the fact that this was going to happen. The Israelites so recently freed from lives of enslavement said to Moses and Aaron, “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.”

Whether they actually had an abundance of meat and bread back in Egypt is something one might question, but what the story does very clearly tell us is that they were being worked to death making bricks for the Pharaoh’s ambitious building projects, and that they were aching to be set free: “The Lord said to Moses, ‘I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians…” (Exodus 3:7-8)

But you know, we humans can be a funny lot, and memories—individual and collective—can turn the past into something it never was. And when a people has been enslaved for generation after generation, well, it isn’t easy to turn on a dime. Accustomed to a life in which the Pharaoh held sway and in which any power or control you had over your own self was that which you could gain by your wits—witness the way that Moses’ mother managed to save him from being killed as an infant—well, that meant they had a lot of letting go to do.

As so as the story unfolds what we see is that first and foremost they have to change a mindset that said, “we are Pharaoh’s slaves” to one that said, “we are God’s people.” We are God’s people, and we have to learn to trust that God will indeed provide, even here is a desolate place. Trust comes slowly, though, no matter what they’d seen happen during those final days of their captivity and in their flight across the Red Sea. Trust comes slowly, even as both bread and meat—manna and quails—are faithfully provided. Getting Egypt and its old patterns of thinking washed out of their system came slowly, which is why they will end up having to spend forty years wandering the Sinai wilderness. Only two of those who’d originally fled enslavement in Egypt—Joshua and Caleb—actually made it through those forty years to cross over the River Jordan and enter the promised land. With those two, it was the children and grandchildren of that original group that crossed over, for even Moses was able only to see across from the top of Mount Nebo. That’s how deep in their bones the legacy of enslavement had set.

But that’s getting about forty years ahead of myself, so turn back to the provision of the manna and quails. When Moses addresses the people, his address includes a bit of a jab: “When the Lord gives you meat to eat in the evening and your fill of bread in the morning, because the Lord has heard the complaining that you utter against him—what are we?” he says to them. “Your complaining is not against us but against the Lord.” What he’s saying to them is they need to stop this grumbling—this “why have you brought us out here to die, Moses?”—because what they really need to be doing is praying to God, who is the only one who can provide for us in the first place. Change your attitude!

And then the story continues,

In the evening quails came up and covered the camp; and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, ‘What is it?’ For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, ‘It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.

“What is it?”, which in Hebrew is the word “man-hu”, which is where the word “manna” comes from in our English translations.

But prior to the arrival of the manna and the quails and prior to Moses dressing down the people for their bad attitude, he had received one crucial piece of instruction to share with the people, which would become part of their maturation; part of the beginnings of a new way of seeing and being. The people were to go out in the morning and gather just enough for that day, except on the sixth day of the week—Friday—they were to gather enough for two days, for on Saturday—the seventh day, the Sabbath day—there would be no manna and no gathering to be done. A few verses further comes the story of how some ignored this instruction to just gather enough for the day, and who tried to hoard. Guess what? It doesn’t work. “But they did not listen to Moses; some left part of it until morning, and it bred worms and became foul. And Moses was angry with them.” (16:20) Yet this doesn’t happen with the Sabbath manna, because the Sabbath manna is meant to be a part of their deeper learning and formation as a freed people, as God’s people. Listen to how Amy Erickson puts it:

In the ritual practice of daily gathering of food that falls from the sky, they will learn, with their very bodies, to come to trust their God; they will learn to share their basic human resources equitably. They will come to know a food distribution practice antithetical to the one designed by Pharaoh. And the keeping of the Sabbath will remind them that they are more than technologies of empire; they are human beings who, like their God, require rest and rejuvenation. Even in crisis, with chaos all around, Sabbath practice is essential to their lives and their emerging identities.

This theme of there always being enough—of the sharing of basic human resources equitably—is picked up on by Jesus in the parable we read tonight, and in a way that presses things right to the wall. Jesus is telling this parable in the context of a different kind of captivity for Israel: not enslaved in Egypt under the Pharaoh, but rather subsisting as a vassal state under the rule of the Roman Empire. Under Roman rule the people were allowed to maintain their traditional religious practices centred in the temple, and some—notably the Pharisees—lived a thoroughly devout and faithful practice of the traditional faith, believing that if the fullness of the Kingdom was to come, it would be through a faithful practice of Torah righteousness. Others, while perhaps not so scrupulous, were living within the faith; think here of the disciples, we who were observant Jews but who did not worry so much about something like plucking a few heads of grain on the Sabbath day. Then there were those like the notorious tax collectors who were in total collusion with the Empire to the extent that they were considered traitors and outcasts. Others in the territory were considered outsiders because they were living lives that didn’t honour the Torah or even because they were Gentiles or Samaritans. It is in this context that Jesus tells this parable of the kingdom.

We begin with a vineyard owner who needs to get his grapes harvested, and so early in the morning hires labourers, promising them the usual daily wage. A few hours later he hires more workers, and then again at noon, three o’clock, and at five o’clock. At the end of the day he lines them all up for their payment, beginning with those who’d worked just an hour, and ending with those who’d laboured the full day. And surprise, the vineyard owner pays them exactly the same amount, the usual wage for a day’s work. Those who had worked the full day were outraged, but the vineyard owner addresses one of them saying,

Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?

Well, yes, actually, those who’d worked the full day are filled with envy—to say nothing of resentment—on account of the generosity of the landowner. Yet Jesus’ insistence here is that this is precisely the way the Kingdom works. He’s constantly inviting in the tax collectors, the sinners, and the lost, and at different points in the gospels he extends grace and welcome to Gentiles, Samaritans, and others considered the consummate outsiders by the righteous, devout, and observant folks like the Pharisees. The Kingdom has room for all, he’s saying, whether you’ve spent your whole life in harmony with the Torah or—like Zacchaeus the tax collector—just wakened to your own need to get your life turned around. This is what being justified by grace looks like, people: there’s room at the table, so long as you’re willing to accept the invitation to dinner and don’t mind sitting beside someone you consider too sinful, too dirty, or even too pious for your own good taste!

This is the new manna of the Gospel. Of course there’s enough. You can’t hoard this gift of grace, you can only receive it, relish it, and trust that it will always be the one thing that will feed your heart and soul and mind. Oh, and you must take great delight when anyone else takes up the new manna of the Gospel, which is precisely the thing that was so tough for the labourers who had worked all day in the vineyard, and so tough for the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal. It isn’t fair, they protest. Nope. It isn’t fair. Thanks be to God, for if grace was all tangled up in fairness, we’d all be dead ducks.

Man-hu, manna, what is it? The only thing you really need, that’s what it is.