“Quenching the
Unquenchable”
Old Testament Lesson
and Sermon Text: Exodus 17: 1-17
New Testament
Lesson: John 4: 13-14
Dr. Matthew Brown
Bunions. The neighbor’s lawn ornaments. Hangnails. A child’s messy room. That first scratch
on a new car. The flat
tire on an old car. All elements
on that endless list of things which change our moods from fair to foul,
calling forth complaints seasoned with bitterness, complaints you probably didn’t
intend to make or hope to make at the beginning of the day. I don’t think we wake in the morning hoping that
this will be the day others will experience us as embittered, irritable,
touchy, testy, crotchety, cross, and crabby, but (as with Alexander) some days
just turn out that way.
And yet, there are those sour souls who seem to feed on the
negative in every situation. Before the
first bell of the first day of school they are carping about the
administration; before you enter the restaurant you can almost sense that
companion gearing up to complain about the food and the service; before the sun
rises you just know the day will not meet their expectations.
In a church I served years ago, we always knew that Thursday
was going to be a dark day, because that was the day that Margie Ann would be
volunteering in the office. She looked
innocent enough but by the end of each of those days you were thinking you had
just encountered the dark angel of the apocalypse.
We walked around on eggshells wondering how to communicate
without using some innocuous word that would spark yet another harangue of
malaise and misery. I swear, the woman could curdle milk with a word.
Consider the irony, she was volunteering to answer phones,
and she would constantly complain about having to answer the phones, often to
the people who were calling in. People
learned not to call on Thursdays. And
when they did call, the rest of us were diving for the phones, hoping to avert a
public relations disaster.
Fred Craddock tells the story of a break he took during a
speaking engagement at Antioch Christian Church down in the
He says, “I was reading the markers in this cemetery, and I
found one section with a huge stone bearing the family name and a lot of burial
plots on either side that stretched out for some distance. This is the low country, with shallow soil
and much sand, and for reasons I do not know, many of the graves have concrete
slabs over the full length and width of the plot.
In this large family section, there was a most unusual thing. All the graves were lined up. There were small graves for infants and children, and there were adult graves, quite a few of them, but there was one grave in which the marker and the slab indicated that the grave was at a right angle. All of the other graves were lined up in a row, but this one grave was crosswise or, as we used to say “cattywampus”. At that angle, it actually took up three burial plots. I ponder that. What a careless thing to do. Why would they do that?
Suddenly I became aware of another man walking around in the cemetery, perhaps for the same reason as I was. I said to him, “Are you from around here”?
“Yeah”, he said. “You’re looking at that grave, aren’t you?”
”Yes.”
“I knew that fellow.” The grave marker recorded that the man had died
in 1994 in his seventies. “We were in
the same church. I knew him well. Knew him all my life.” I said, “Why this burial at an angle?”
“Well, the family wanted that, and the church agreed”.
“But why”?
“Because that’s the kind of guy he was”.
I said, “What do you mean, ‘That’s the kind of guy he was?’”
“He was crossways with everybody and everything. We never knew him to be pleased about anything
at home or at church. ‘Well, why’s she
doing that?’ he’d say, or ‘Why’d they ask him to do that?’ or ‘Well, he’s the
wrong one to be doing this,’ or ‘Well, I wonder who decided to do that?’ He said that kind of stuff all the time, all
the time, and the family decided they wouldn’t try to
change him just because he was dead. So
they buried him crosswise.”
“That was an awful thing to do,” I said.
”They wanted it to be a witness. The family said if God wants to straighten
him out then God can straighten him out.
But he left here just like he lived.”
Some folks just live cattywampus,
don’t they? But I don’t think most
people aspire to be the class curmudgeon.
Some days you just wind up playing that role without even knowing you
had auditioned for it.
Maybe you’ve heard the story my neighbor told me this
week. The Navy discovered a man who had
been marooned on a deserted island for quite some time. He was the island’s only resident, but the
rescue party couldn’t help but notice that there were three huts situated in
that sliver of real estate. When they
asked him about it, he said, “Well, that first hut is where I live, and it has
worked well. That second hut there is
where I go to church.” The Navy Seal
team asked, “Well, what then is that third structure?” And the man said, “Oh that, That is where I used to go to church.”
Of course, it seems that in our passage today, Moses had a
whole class of curmudgeons. If you want
to walk where Moses walked, talk to the people at Burke Christian tours, but if
you want to experience some of what Moses experienced, try chairing a
committee.
I recently attended my first homeowner’s association
meeting. O my! The meeting had not even started, in truth, the association hadn’t even been established. And yet, as you looked around the circle, you
could see pursed lips, heightened emotions, guns cocked. Let me just tell you that there are few
things more unattractive than an adult wearing the scowl of a 10 year old. It scared me!
And I wasn’t even involved in the meeting.
The people of Moses’ extended Holy Land Wilderness Tour were
angry. They had developed sort of a
hostile mob mentality, adopting the policy that if Moses did it, said it,
thought it, it must be wrong.
And, honestly, to a certain extent the people may have had a
legitimate complaint. Moses may have
needed to shore up his leadership skills.
Sometimes our leaders are not those who are the best equipped. They’re just the ones who couldn’t figure out
a way to say no when asked. As the
complaints continued to mount, Moses could have benefited from a good workshop
on organizational planning. I read this
week an old Hungarian proverb that says, "If one person calls you a horse
laugh at him. If a second person calls you a horse think about it. If a third
person calls you a horse, buy a saddle."
After the miracle at the sea and before they headed out to
the arid desert wilderness, it might have been a good idea for Moses to gather
a few civil engineering minds to come up with a plan for transporting some
water with them. For he
had to know that they wouldn’t make it far without it.
In fact, a child hasn’t turned many pages in a science book
before he or she understands how critical water is to life itself. Though the complaining of the people was
somewhat south of gracious and trusting, their fears were real. Would dehydration destroy the promise of
God? Would visions and hopes of the promised land evaporate in the scorching heat of the desert?
Well, as is so often the case in scripture, God takes all
our complaints, all our mismanagement, all our fears, all our grumblings and
somehow as God combines and stirs all these bitter and untasteful
elements, an amazing transformation occurs.
That which is grace becomes that which is grace.
From the same mountain where they would receive the covenant
of the law, God has Moses strike a rock with the very staff he had used to make
the
Of course, the people will thirst again and the people will
complain again. However, if we follow
the theme of water through the Bible we begin to understand that yes, water is
life, but more than that, water is a powerful symbol of the giver of life, who
sustains not only our bodies but also our spirits, our hopes, the deepest
thirsts of our hearts.
To a people sensing separation from God, the prophet Isaiah
offers this hope: “With joy you will
draw waters from the well of salvation.”
Again, Isaiah proclaims the hope of the Lord, “For I will pour water on
the thirsty land, and streams on the dry ground; I will pour out my spirit on
your descendants and my blessing on your offspring. (Isn’t that what we just
enacted with Kyle a few moments ago?)
Listen to this contrast offered by the prophet Jeremiah:
“Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere
flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the Lord... They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and
shall not see when relief comes. They
shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt
land.
Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. They shall be like a tree planted by water, sending out its roots by the stream. It shall not fear when heat comes.”
What is it that truly slakes our thirst in life? Jesus puts it very clearly when, sitting by a
well, he says to a woman whose life had been drained dry of hope: “Everyone who drinks of this water will be
thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will
never be thirsty. The water that I will
give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
Our thirst is often caused by our ill-fated efforts to quench that thirst apart from God. But listen to what the writer of Proverbs says, “Like cold water to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country.”
Well, that far country would give us a savior who took all our complaints, all our discontents, all our thirsts upon himself as he was lifted high on a cross. And yet again, God transforms that which is groce into that which is grace. So come thou fount of every blessing, and tune our hearts to sing thy praise.
Amen.