Slippery Rock
Exodus 17:1-7; Matthew 21:23-32

September 25, 2005

Miracles are a problem, and miracles create problems. Even though the Gospels do not actually have a word for “miracle,” we all know what they are. Miracles are by their very nature disruptive. They do not fit in the nature of things. They make us think about what could be and what has been and how things really are. The real problem with miracles is that while they are pointing towards a higher reality, they tend to hog all the attention to themselves. A miracle is never an end in itself.

Miracles are critical in another way that does not fit easily. Listen to the cultured despisers of religion and to them religion all boils down to miracles which they reject as improbable and impossible, and probably ignorant. That’s it - all religion is reducible down to belief in the existence of miracles. Listening to such despicable criticisms makes me wonder how cultured these critics really are. Among other things, they have not taken the time to read the Bible carefully or critically.

Reading the Bible is no simple task, and you’ve got to be more than merely cultured to be able to comprehend where it is taking you. No matter what those cultured despisers of religion want to pretend intellectually, the Bible is unique among world religious literature because it has the courage and the audacity to describe its chosen and holy people as unfaithful and sinful to the call and commandment of the Bible. The Bible does not write about angels, but about real human beings. There are many times in which the Bible can be found speaking against itself to call Israel - and we the readers - back to a faithful relationship with God. Beyond the wilderness of Sin, at the waterless camp of Rephidim, this is just such a passage, just such an episode in which an alternative voice speaks louder.

Oh, wouldn’t we want to take literally the starting point for the getting thirstier Israelites, the wilderness of Sin, but this is not Pilgrim’s Progress, but a simple place name. The pun only works in English anyway, but we can start from Sin nonetheless.

When they reached Rephidim they quickly discovered that there was no supply of drinkable water available. People get thirsty more quickly than they get hungry, so it did not take long for the complaining to start. I can’t imagine in such an arid environment that this would be the only time they encountered such a problem, but by then their complaining had become an art form. It has been noticed that the format of their complaint mirrors at first last week’s protest against the lack of meat and bread.

All complaints begin not against God, but are targeted at a very specific person. Moses knew he was really on the hot spot, so he complains to God, “they are about to stone me.” Not a nice way to be reprimanded by your congregation, or was that just an angry anonymous mob? Stoning was a way of execution for someone who had desecrated the faith and sacred principles of one’s community. There was never any honour for the one who was stoned. Moses was seriously desperate, for the Israelites were now considering him to be a murderer of a nation.

God tends to listen empathetically to such a desperate plea and tells Moses exactly what he needs to do. Go to Mount Sinai, carry your big stick with you and hit a rock where God will show him. Up to this point, this is pretty much a parallel with God’s solution of quail and that mysterious manna, bread from heaven, from an earlier chapter. The rock, the stone that is struck, will gush forth with water and all will be able to drink. But this is not being performed publicly. Just an executive committee of elders and Moses will go check out this arrangement. In fact, there is no word that the thirsty Israelites were ever explicitly told about this slippery rock. All that is said is that Moses did what he was told to do, and the elders were watching.

Now if I am not mistaken, this water out of a rock meets the criteria of what people think of as a miracle. Most rocks gave up water for Lent a few millennia or so ago. God’s people are delivered from a thirst that could easily kill them, and it came out of the driest source imaginable.

Yet there are no songs of thanks and praise, no response of relief and deliverance from the Israelites. No word. The only handle the story gives us about how Israel remembered this miracle was Moses naming the place a double name - Massah or “testing-place” and Meribah or “quarreling.” Normally, one would think that such an important place would be named and remembered as a heaven-on-earth site of one of the mighty acts of God. All right, Slippery Rock or Water from the Rock, or something more clever that would make one tingle with the recollections of God entering our natural sphere in a way impossible for human beings. Instead, the miracle is an embarrassment. Look, you complained so much that God had to resort to such cheap theatrics. What is to be remembered is that in this spot at Rephidim, God’s people whined and complained, quarreled and were arrogant enough to test God. “Is God with us or not?” they huffed and puffed. The Psalmist remembers that they demanded to know, “Can God spread a table in the wilderness?”

This is the peculiar and remarkable feature of our Scriptures in that the narrators of the Bible take no prisoners. They are not afraid to challenge the politically correct assumptions of their own leaders and people even a few chapters before. Is the test of Christianity the belief in miracles? The narrator is almost audibly whispering between the lines, “I would be ashamed of being the beneficiary of a miracle like that under those circumstances.”

Yet the author of Genesis chooses words carefully and not accidentally. When Moses frantically calls for help to God because his people are about to stone him, the author could have suggested almost any other weapon of mass destruction. Stoning was a somewhat later invention of human cruelty in Israelite society. Stoning meant utter annihilation of Moses and all he had been and done. God tells Moses to go strike a stone and it will give them water, living water, a stone not of death, but of life. All puns were intended.

Miracle or no miracle, our God responds nevertheless to our arrogance and testing and craving demands with life, not with death. How do we deserve this grace and mercy abounding to the chief of sinners? We don’t deserve it, but thank God we get it.

Two sons were asked to work in the vineyard. One was quick to answer, “Yes, sir,” but he went out the back door. The other complained and refused, but his better side took over and he went to labour long in the vineyard that day. It is not a simple question - but the most important question - to ask, “Which son/daughter am I?” At least, we will get to drink water out of a rock and it will be no miracle, just God’s grace so that we may continue on our journey in the wilderness.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan