Water from Stones

Water from Stones A Message delivered by
Marylu Bunting
on September 29, 2002
Lexington United Methodist Church
Lexington, MA

Texts: Psalm 19, Exodus 17:1-7

    Have you ever been thirsty? I mean really thirsty, parched—so thirsty that your tongue simultaneously takes on the qualities of sandpaper and peanut butter—it’s scratchy and dry but it also sticks to the roof of your mouth and to your dry lips. Have you ever been so thirsty that you imagine with longing the cool tasteless-taste and smooth textureless-texture of water?

    I know I’ve been thirsty—the thirst after a run or a basketball game or after too much coffee. But I’ve never been really thirsty. I’ve never had the thirst that I imagine the Israelites in the wilderness had. I imagine that thirst is like the thirst of famines and deserts. Places like Africa come to mind and famines like that in Somalia in the late 1980s—a thirst shared not just by humans but by every creature, even the flies.

    I remember pictures of these famines, as you probably do as well. Everything is so incredibly dry and there are two ever present realities, the children with their distended bellies and the flies. In such places and times, there always seem to be flies gathered at the edge of the thirsty children’s mouths and eyes—flies hoping to take a drink of whatever the children, parched as they are, might have to spare. How can one not be heartbroken when confronted with such a reality, with such a thirst?

    This extreme thirst, where every creature and the earth itself are thirsty, seems to me the kind of thirst the Israelites must have encountered in the wilderness. And with such a thirst, how can we fault them for complaining? I know I’d complain. I’d rant. I’d rave. And boy, I’d want an answer from my leader who told me to leave slavery and follow him because life would be better. I’d want to know “Hey, when’s it going to get better Moses? Huh, when?” I mean you can go without food for a pretty long time, but without water you’re done for in two or three days.

    Even more pressingly, although I might not know how to say it—and this is where the heartbrokenness comes in—I’d want to know where God was in all this. Moses only told us to come out here, because God told him to tell us to come out here. I might think “Sure God, thanks for the liberation, but now what? Are you going to let me starve or die of thirst?” And the passage Alison read from Exodus ends with what must have been the Israelites’ question throughout “Is God amongst us or not?”

    Now surely, even if we have known neither the extreme bodily thirst of the Israelites, nor the thirst of the child trapped by death in famine, we have known the thirst for God, which asks in heartbrokenness at the painful, deprived, and utterly ambiguous realities of this world—Is God amongst us or not?

    One need not look far to find the situations which bring on heartbrokenness—the tragic deaths too soon, too painful, too unexpected, too unjust—the wars too hasty, too bloody, too senseless—the children too young to be so abused, to see so much, to know such pain—the needs and the problems too great, too complex for any one person or community to face alone, let alone solve.

    We cannot help but know the heartbrokenness of this existence and ask “Is God amongst us or not?” And thus we cannot help but know, at some level, the thirst for God that is simultaneously the thirst for God’s presence. We cannot help but want water in the midst of our stony, thirsty lives—the life-giving water of God’s presence in the brokenness of our stony hearts—we cannot help but want water from stones, God’s life-giving presence in our midst.

    And yet, when the heartbrokenness sets in, when the thirst is the greatest, God almost always seems to be absent—for how could a loving God be present to such pain without putting an end to it?

    Now some commentators say that our story of the Israelites demanding water is a morality tale meant to show how unfaithful the Israelites were and how steadfast God is. The commentators say, “Well gee, if God had brought me out of slavery, had already provided manna in the wilderness as is recounted in chapter 16 just one chapter before today’s reading, then I’d have to be pretty faithless to doubt God again.” They go onto say that the closing line in which we are told that the place where water was provided was called Massah, which means quarreling in Hebrew, and Meribah, which means testing in Hebrew, seals this interpretation—for the Israelites should neither have quarreled with God nor tested God, nor ultimately doubted God’s presence, if they had real faith.

    Now, I don’t know whether this interpretation rings true for you, but it doesn’t ring true for me. I think that there is more going on here than a simple morality tale. Knowing the depth of heartbrokenness that the pain of this world brings about, and the depth of questioning that one has to come to when one asks, “Is God amongst us or not?” I just can’t write this all off as a morality tale about unfaithfulness. In fact, in the face of such lack, such threat to life itself, I think testing and quarrelling might be the most faithful action one could take.

    If we proclaim God as love, as ever-present creator of all—If we say with the Psalmist that God is our rock and redeemer, strong to save—then shouldn’t our passion for the love that is God, and the life that is God, drive us to call out, to test, to quarrel whenever love is absent and life is threatened? In this sense, there is no more faithful thing to do than to test, quarrel, and doubt.

    Moreover, as we see in this Exodus passage, while God is ultimately the source of life, and does have the power to provide the water to meet the Israelite’s thirst, God does not do it alone, but through Moses. God uses Moses to meet the people’s needs. Moses becomes the co-creator and partner of God in creating the conditions for love and life. Still, without the people’s testing, quarreling, and doubting, Moses would not have swung into action.

    So today the good news, which is always the hard news, is that even when God seems absent, in the depth of our heartbrokenness, God is present. God is the source of life-giving water. God is present in the midst of the brokenness of our stony hearts. God is the ever-present creator, both love and life. But also, and this is the hard part, our love and faithfulness to God should engendering our passion for justice in the midst of our heartbrokenness and thus our quarrelling, testing, and doubting in the absence of love and in face of the forces of death. In the words of our 50th anniversary motto—by our faith we are called, by our works we are known.

    Now seeing as this is Christian Education Sunday, you may have expected a very different message this morning. You may have expected a word about God’s wisdom, a word about reverence and constant study of the scriptures, and you may expect that our children out in Godly Play are being taught these—and certainly I could have said such words, and in some ways our children are learning these things—but I hope that’s not all there is to be said or learned.

    For to me, Christian Education is about this very struggle at the heart of our lives and at the heart of faith in which we confront our heartbrokenness and all of the heartbreaking realities of our world with the faith to question, to test, to quarrel and to doubt, with the faith that if our God is the God of love, even love itself—an unshakable rock—then our quarrelling and doubting is a holy business of calling ourselves and our world to account. Christian Education ought to be such an adventure, hard as it is, an adventure like the Israelites had in the wilderness. An adventure which starts out with God, journeys with God, and ends with God—but which at the same time involves the holy business of living in and confronting, speaking the truth of and seeking transformation in our thirsty, heartbroken world.

    Christian Education at base is the adventure which seeks water from stones—God’s presence in the midst of our thirsty, heartbrokenness—life confronting the powers of death— love confronting the powers of hate—God’s justice in the midst of injustice—ultimately, Christian Education is the adventure of seeking God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven.

    I’ll say this last thing and then I’ll take my seat.

    I welcome you to disagree with me, but my hope this day is that with our children in Godly Play, we will have the courage to wonder, to ask the tough questions, and to live faithfully the spiritual adventure of water from stones that is before us.

    I pray for us this day that we will accept nothing less than water from stones and that we will never—no matter the heartbreak—lose the faith that is sure enough to wrestle with God, even God, our rock and our redeemer.

    Amen.