Exodus 17:1-7
Lent 3 - Year A
Proper 21 (26) - Year A
There are so many riddles in life. Is baptism divine or communal? Can a staff that brings bloody water also be a staff that provides drinking water? Do the generations support me or am I the culmination of them? Does G*D give water to Moses at Meribah to support moving toward “a promised land” and hold Moses back at River Jordan on the eve of entering that land?
How we read the story seems to depend on where we are situated. Are we focused on the divine (religiously/priestly) or the human (community/prophetic)? We will come at things differently and be more attuned to one part of the story or another. A grand trick of life is to keep experiencing until we can appreciate both, though at any given time one or the other is more called for.
When is the hardship of evacuation important and when is the comfort of temporary housing crucial? There is a time and a place for both and either can get in the way if we focus on it at the wrong time.
Are we oriented toward anticipation and prevention or on response and band-aids? Both are needed but in differing proportions as time goes by.
Am I really on my own before G*D or are we in this together so none will be saved until all are saved? Our understanding of this basic relationship between creature and creator, between G*D and Humanity, will go far in determining how we interact between ourselves. Wherein, really, lies the distinction of social sin we all are part of and individual sin we are all part of? Trying to cut this Gordian knot with a sword of individualism is no more satisfying than smashing it with a club of generational determinism.
So many riddles, so few eternal verities. Perhaps the best we can do at the moment is to hear a larger positive intention of G*D to keep dealing in hope when we hear such a lament as, “I have no pleasure in the death of anyone.”
The staff used to dry up water becomes the staff to bring water gushing forth. Around it goes. Can you see yourself as a staff of life drying and gushing as needed? So often we image things moving in only one way when back-and-forth is closer to the mark. The stuff of life is too great to be limited to one way of operating (as though everything were a nail because I have a hammer). So be a staff of life, able to be present and helpful in each differing circumstance.
As found in Wrestling Year A: Connecting Sunday Readings with Lived Experience
September 11, 2001 brought a question to the United States of America that others had to face much earlier, "Is G*D here or not?"
There are many within the church and many outside the church that experience the dryness of the institution in its care for all folks, each at their own level of spiritual maturity, and ask, "Is G*D here or not?"
There are innumerable incidents in our own lives where that same question could be raised.
Is death, even our death, reason to claim the absence of G*D? Is the lack of care, even of ourselves, reason to claim the absence of G*D? Is disappointment or grief?
Is birth, even our birth, reason to claim the presence of G*D? Is being greatly cared for reason to claim the presence of G*D? Is fortune or joy?
The staff used to dry up water becomes the staff to bring water gushing forth. Around it goes. Perhaps we might try using this image for ourselves. Can you see yourself as a staff of life drying and gushing as needed? So often we image things moving in only one way when a circularity is closer to the mark. The stuff of life is too great to be limited to one way of operating (as though everything were a nail because I have a hammer). So be a staff of life, able to be present and helpful in each differing circumstance. Oh - to be a simple staff in the hands of a living and loving G*D.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/september2002.html
Is the Lord among us or not? So goes a classic question. Are we left to our own or not? Will we be cared for or not? What is required and what is optional? Can we get away with what we want to get away with or not? Might we choose against a short-term blessing for ourself and for a long-term blessing for all?
There is no getting away from tests or temptations, even though we regularly pray for such. They show up on the spur of the moment when all is going according to our own personal Hoyle and in the midst of dire distress.
Presuming that this passage can be read as an outward and visible sign of an inward and psychological state -- which part of you is wanting more and which part is complaining, "what shall I do with this complaining part?" Where does your "peopleness" come to the fore and where does your “mosaic” part jump up and down?
And don't you love it when your creative, rock-striking, miracle part does its thing, as requested, and then, later, having kept folks alive, brings this scene back up as an excuse to deny some other blessing?
If you can imagine not asking a basic question from Eden eastward, "Is the Lord among us or not?" you have settled for a pause on a longer journey. Now, that may be needed to catch one's breath, but it is very easy to pause and very difficult to rouse up and resume chasing a butterfly in the wind we call Holy Spirit.
I hope we will not give in to the temptation or test from God (raising the specter of not making it to a heavenly promised land) and stop asking the discernment question of the ages, "Is God here or not." This very question allows us to identify both our need and spirit's presence in order to affirm both or to choose, with eyes wide open, one.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/february2005.html
There are so many riddles of life. Is baptism divine or communal? Can a staff that brings bloody water also be a staff that provides drinking water? Do the generations support me or am I the culmination of them? Does God give water to Moses at Meribah to support moving toward "a promised land" and hold Moses back at River Jordan on the eve of entering that land?
How we read the story seems to depend on where we are situated. Are we focused on the divine (religiously/priestly) or the human (community/prophetic)? We will come at things differently and be more attuned to one part of the story or another. A grand trick of life is to keep experiencing until we can appreciate both, though at any given time one or the other is more called for.
When is hardship of evacuation important and when is the comfort of temporary housing crucial? There is a time and a place for both and either can get in the way if we focus on it at the wrong time.
Are we oriented toward anticipation and prevention or on response and band-aids? Both are needed but in differing proportions as time goes by.
Am I really on my own before G*D or are we in this together so none will be saved until all are saved? Our understanding of this basic relationship between creature and creator, between G*D and Humanity will go far in determining how we interact between ourselves. Wherein, really, lies the distinction of social sin we all are part of and individual sin we are all part of? Trying to cut this Gordian knot with the sword of individualism is no more satisfying than avoiding it with the club of generational determinism.
So many riddles, so few eternal verities. Perhaps the best we can do at the moment is to hear a larger positive intention of G*D to keep dealing in hope when we hear such a lament as, "I have no pleasure in the death of anyone."
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/september2005.html
"Give us water to drink," quarreled the people with Moses.
"Salvation is present in rocky ground!" rejoices the Psalmist.
"Peace with G*D," is Paul's lifeblood.
"Give me a drink," focuses Jesus' challenge.
An old standard is 6-8 glasses of water per day. In a world of increasing ecological disaster and civilian-oriented warfare, even 1 glass a day is a challenge in many places.
A next war may be fought over water rights. Quarrels have already begun about water's availability. It may be that where folks literally thirst for life - they will rise to take the life of those who withhold such a basic necessity.
Such physical realities have cosmos-wide implications. We can't separate water gushing up for eternal life from water gushing up for daily life. These are not just religious, theological, doctrinal passages, but political and prophetic ones. If you have not already been called to use your gifts and resources in some other arena of life, this would be a worthy place to engage to see if this is for you and your life-giving community.
- - - - - - -
water
water everywhere
drinks on the house
bottoms up
filled to the brimwater
water everywhere
rights to be wrangled
dams to build
levees to rebuildwater
water everywhere
and yet thirst
and yet division
and yet ignorancewater
water everywhere
water in rocks
water in wells
water in star dustwater
water everywhere
ho, come to the water
dive deep
until a spell is snaptwater
water everywhere
watering prayers
watering love
with sips and gulpswater
water everywhere
and not a god to drink
then a little vesper bell
rings out a changewater
water everywhere
staff to rock
voice to ear
salvation saved
suggested by a Wikipedia article Info about The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
Fulford, Tim, "Poetry of Isolation: The Ancient Mariner," Coleridge's Figurative Languages (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1991), 62-73.
Fulford analyses the composition of the poem's discourses in the context of the assumptions of the historical biblical hermeneutics with which Coleridge was familiar. Fulford argues that the poem's discourses disrupt the hermeneutic circle of believers posited by biblical hermeneutics, and illustrate the isolating freedom provided by an exegesis discontinuous with tradition. Historical biblical hermeneutics attempts to deal with the problem posed by the finitude and historicity of interpretation. By positing a grand unity of perspective in God, historical biblical hermeneutics can deny the inerrancy of scripture (an embarrassingly untenable notion) while placing each sacred text in a cirle with other spiritual interpretations of existence authority, a circle which progresses toward though never reaching the circumscription of truth. Spiritual authority thus rests in a continually reinterpreted tradition of spiritual texts. McGann and Butler argue that Coleridge organizes the multiple levels of discourse in his poem to create such a hermeneutic circle: the Mariner interprets his own experience; his interpretation is affirmed but reinterpreted by the poem's narrator, the balladeer; the narrator's reinterpretation is deepened by the scholarly author of the gloss, who typologically integrates the poem into the tradition of Christian hermeneutics; critics such as Warren perpetuate the circle with their interpretations of the poem, which are modernizations and expansions upon the gloss. Fulford argues that the poem is more problematic than either McGann or Butler perceive it to be. The poem brings together, not in unity but in collision, radically discontinuous hermeneutic discourses; the poem breaks the hermeneutic circle. The Mariner's interpretation of his experience cannot be reduced to the narrator's moralizing or the glosser's typological interpretation. As in "The Wanderings of Cain," in "The Mariner" traditional interpretations of guilt and punishment are destabilized by the poem's sypathetic treatment of the Mariner. The tension thus created between the Mariner's tale, the narrator, and the gloss is left unresolved. Furthermore, the Mariner himself breaks with hermeneutic tradition when he denies the Christian interpretation of the albatross and shoots it. His interpretation of the consequent events disconfirms the hermeneutic circle: through imagination the Mariner creates an interpretation of reality as chaos which is incompatible with the unifying assumption of the hermeneutic circle. His fate as a misunderstood prophet outside of society expresses the radically isolating consequences of the dissolution of the hermeneutic circle into the babble of competing discourses. Even the glosses are fissured by the incompatibility of the various interpretive discourses the glosser draws from the hermeneutic tradition and puts into play in the poem. The unity of the poem's hermeneutic circle is on the verge of collapsing into the fragments of a forced appearance. The poem does not capitulate entirely to radical discontinuity, but suffers intensely from the strain, created by the movements toward unity on the one hand and dissolution on the other, which is inevitable in all hermeneutic endeavors.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_03_01_archive.html
An intriguing image of G*D is presented in Philippians -- an emptying G*D [?in distinction to a creating G*D, or are these integrally bound?] If you substitute Moses for Jesus Christ and then look back at Exodus you can catch a glimpse of this emptying G*D.
See again where G*D is - in front of Moses - where Moses will strike (unless he swats at a rock behind him). Can you see G*D facing Moses (no backside here) and saying, "Strike through me." Would you have the courage and humility of Moses to strike G*D to strike water for the people? Whether anyone else could be witness to this or not, Moses understood he was to strike G*D that the waters from beyond (that had been pent up at Creation and again in Noah's time) might surface through G*D, through Horeb, through a suffering and emptying of G*D.
Where are you called to strike that life-giving water might flow? Does it feel like you would have to muster more strength and humility than you have, to do so? Does not G*D always need to be bruised for life to flow? Do we always need to work through our own resistance to striking G*D that we might grow the next stage of our journey?
- - - - - - -
obey this why don't you
here it comes our difficulty
work out your own salvation
not someone else's
work it out in the absence of G*D
not for G*D's good pleasure
for your own
this is G*D's pleasure tooobey this past pleasure
again a difficulty
work with your fear and trembling
not someone else's
work in the presence of G*D
enabling with pleasure
a willingness to face fear
our pleasure too
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html
So, is G*D among us or not?
This is a question that often cannot be asked or responded to because survival questions of one kind or another get in the way - sometimes physical survival, sometimes emotional, intellectual, spiritual, or relational survival.
Presuming we are able to get past the survival level, it isn't long before we end up in the confusion of what we will use for measurement. Is it our feelings, traditions, peer group experiences? What that will suffice to quantify whether or not G*D is with us?
Even if we periodically are able to come to some standard, we find it soon irrelevant as we move, by stages, to a next level of maturity and all the old certainties fall by the wayside.
And so, here we have the never-ending question: Is G*D with us now? Is G*D with us now? The Verizon phone company is a late-comer to this type of question.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.html
The Mayo Clinic says the symptoms of dehydration are:
Mild to moderate dehydration is likely to cause:
• Dry, sticky mouth
• Sleepiness or tiredness — children are likely to be less active than usual
• Thirst
• Decreased urine output — fewer than six wet diapers a day for infants and eight hours or more without urination for older children and teens
• Few or no tears when crying
• Muscle weakness
• Headache
• Dizziness or lightheadedness
Severe dehydration, a medical emergency, can cause:
• Extreme thirst
• Extreme fussiness or sleepiness in infants and children; irritability and confusion in adults
• Very dry mouth, skin and mucous membranes
• Lack of sweating
• Little or no urination — any urine that is produced will be dark yellow or amber
• Sunken eyes
• Shriveled and dry skin that lacks elasticity and doesn't "bounce back" when pinched into a fold
• In infants, sunken fontanels — the soft spots on the top of a baby's head
• Low blood pressure
• Rapid heartbeat
• Fever
• In the most serious cases, delirium or unconsciousness
Unfortunately, thirst isn't always a reliable gauge of the body's need for water, especially in children and older adults. A better barometer is the color of your urine: clear or light-colored urine means you're well hydrated, whereas a dark yellow or amber color usually signals dehydration.
= = = = = = =
So were the Israelites dehydrated or not? Only their urine knows. Perhaps they simply still trying to work out the effects of generations of slavery – impotence?
Since they have not had any power with which to effect their circumstances, muttering and complaining rise to an art form. We know what to do with a drunken sailor, but not what to do with a complaining people. In these kinds of stressful situations and these kinds of enslaved minds and hearts a time of testing is unavoidable. If it weren't over water in the desert, it would certainly be the next deviation or delay from being noticeably one day closer to a promised land. Everyone knows it don't take no forty years to move from Egypt to Canaan. A series of complaints, when it appears the journey is going to be longer than anticipated, is to be expected.
This is a situation that cries out for assurance. The question about whether G*D is with us or not presupposes our ability to be able to make that discernment. Unfortunately we have a conflict of interest that arises with this question – we expect that G*D will bring us fortune and if there is no evidence of that, on our terms, then, obviously, G*D is not with us, is dead or, at least, missing in action.
In today's world there are many who are thirsty, at least are able to claim they are, and who need assurance – a key theological need in troubling times.
For now we leave it with a humble recasting of the question: If G*D is not immediately evident to us, is G*D absent?
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_09_01_archive.html
For a G*D famous for showing his backside, here G*D volunteers to play Whack-A-G*D. Imagine a very thirsty people, including leader Moses who has water running in his veins as a sign of deliverance from his time upon the water as a babe and a striking of a Reed Sea. A really thirsty people.
This previously reticent to be seen G*D stands on a rock and invites Moses, in full view of the elders, to whack away. I do wonder whether one of Moses' whacks caught G*D's metaphoric toe. At any rate, we hear the question, "Is G*D among us?". In this case the scope of the question is much narrower, "Is water among us?". The question continues on among folks who have had other oppressions and ask the same question, "Is G*D among us?" - "Is restoration to community among us?" - "Is equality among us?" - "Is health care among us?" - Is a job among us?" - Is . . . among us?"
May you find water flowing through your life and moving you from thirsty quarrelsomeness to fulfillment.
Said another way, may the thirst of others not happen to you and may your thirst not happen to them.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/03/exodus-171-7.html
Quarrels among a "religous" people are not new. Almost anything can set them off. It may be the lack of a survival resources, the color of a bathroom wall, a word of encouragement or correction, a business deal gone sour, a political perspective, a question as basic as "is G*D with us or not?", an undigested piece of cheese.
And so we escalate every smaller grievance to an ultimate one. After all, G*D is involved and it is mandatory to protect a G*D we have bet will protect us when push comes to shove or creeks rise.
What's the out? Complain to G*D about the folks giving you a hard time? Well, that doesn't work out so well [see also Numbers 20:1-12 andDeuteronomy 32:48-52]. Perhaps there is only proceeding as best one can and agreeing to not get the credit earned or the followers due.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/09/exodus-171-7.html
Hmm, G*D set them/us up again.
- The Israelites journeyed by stages (way stops, not wild-west conveyance).
- as the Lord commanded.
- They camped at Rephidim,
- but there was no water.
Of course an argument ensued with Moses, as close as folks could get to G*D. Note the parallelism— why quarrel with me? why test the Lord?
Finally a delineation—Moses cried out to the Lord to save his own skin. We are so easily persuaded to speak for G*D; so desirous to be identified as G*D by others. Until finally the cost is too great.
Eventually the famous plague stick is used. Out comes water and a Chance Card that says: “Go directly to death—Do not pass Jericho, do not collect a Promised Land”
So is G*D still with you when you find yourself at a dry place in your life? Whether planned or not, how do you engage a dry night of your soul? Complain? Blame? Act? Does G*D plan lives? If so you better be ready for a Rephidim or three along the way. Think about that now rather than just reacting in the moment. Hopefully this will change your response whenever you are so tired you can’t reach out for a drink on your own.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2014/03/exodus-171-7.html
We all journey by stages. Whatever stage we are currently in, there is yet another stage to enter. Of stages there will be no end.
One of the clues that we are ready to move on is thirst. When we have made peace with our recent stage of life, it no longer satisfies as it once did. We are thirsty for a next stage of meaning, of engagement with an on-going creation.
Is this all there is? This question stands behind the question asked here, “Were we brought here simply to die?” Have we been through all we have been through to settle for this?
Is this all there is? This is also background to the concluding question, “Is the Lord among us or not?”
The miracle here is not a water-bearing rock, but the thirst that moves us farther along a larger journey. If there was not the thirst there would not be the questioning that brings a sign of water from a rock. If there was not the thirst we wouldn’t be able to affirm both the presence and the absence of G*D.
What more are you thirsting for than can be fulfilled in the current state of affairs. This thirst is a gift from the future to the present that we might move onward.