Waiting with Our Thirst - Exodus 17:1-7, Psalm 95

They were thirsty, a parched people, wandering in the wilderness. There had been mana to fill their hunger, but now they were in the arid lands of Rephidim with no water. Anyone who has gone backpacking knows that water is an essential for any journey. When Emily and I have hiked portions of the Ozark Highlands Trail or the Ouachita Trail, we’ve been guided by the books of Tim Ernst, each with a description of exactly where to find water in each portion of the trail. The best campsites are always those with water nearby, places where it is easy to fill a pot or get a drink whenever needed.

There are times, however, when the path to a place has few places for water. On a hot day, when the sweat is pouring down and the Nalgene bottles have only a swig left in the bottom, it can be easy to begin feeling desperate. Will we make it to the creek, or the spring, or that muddy puddle we’d drink from in no other circumstance than desperate thirst? When I’m in this situation in the woods, I can find solace in Tim Ernst’s promise that in just a mile I’ll find a creek. But the Israelites had no such map, no guidebook. They were walking in the day-to-day unknowns of an unfamiliar territory. Which means that they were walking a path a lot more like our lives than a backpacking trip on well-worn trail.

However hard we try to insure ourselves against it, life will lead us beyond the map and guidebook. It may be a wrong turn we made, somewhere along our path, that we now see has led us into a dangerous territory. It may be that we were doing everything right, but now we find ourselves in a stretch of land where no sustenance can be found. It could be a spouse lost or a child in trouble or a job or a diagnosis delivered—at some point, we will find ourselves like Israel, in a place we do not know, a place that seems to be without what we desperately need to go on living.

This is why our reading in Exodus today is so important. What happens here, in the unfolding journey of Israel toward the freedom in the Promised Land, is a lesson for all of us when we find ourselves in an unknown place, desperate for the most basic needs for life. Any culture finds its central stories, its key moments to keep pointing back to as a defining moment. Think of Paul Revere’s midnight ride, or FDR’s speech after the bombing of Pearly Harbor. For Israel, the story of Massah and Meribah was a central lesson from their national story. There are a half dozen references to this short episode from the Exodus throughout the bible, from the Old Testament to the New. At least four Psalms center on it and today we have one of the key ones. So what are we to learn from this moment between God and Israel when it seemed like life was to come to its end? Why were generations after the Exodus so interested in remembering what happened when Israel complained against God?

It comes down to trust. One would think that after the liberation from the Empire of Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, the giving of manna and quail for food, that the people would have trusted God’s provision by now. But desperate thirst, if you have ever even slightly experienced it, has a way of wiping away the memory. The body goes into a deep survival mode, and all things fade in importance except for water. This is why those who work in hospice know that the time for death has come when someone will no longer drink. The desire to live has finally, completely gone.

In their thirst, however, Israel found that it no longer trusted God. And this was their great error. Instead of learning to wait through their thirst, knowing that they are God’s and that God will provide for them as their good shepherd, the people of Israel became desperate. God answered their desperation with what they needed, but the result was a break in relationship. That generation did not get to receive God’s ultimate promise, the land where they could finally rest.

How many times have you not trusted God and sought to fulfill your own needs in desperation? My own life is full of moments when I longed for something that I though was necessary for my life, but rather than waiting on God to give it, I tried to find it for myself, only to end with more heartache and emptiness. We do this as people, as communities, as churches, whenever we seek to simply solve a lack or need, without waiting for the movement of God in our lives.

I’m not saying that such a waiting is easy and I’m not saying that it will save us from death either. We must remember that ours is the God of resurrection, which means that though death is not the last word, we must sometimes journey through it in our path of faithfulness. A person, or a people, or a church, that is unwilling to die is unlikely to find the resurrection power moving them toward new life. Desperately trying to hold onto life without trusting God’s action will only lead to a more tragic and full death in the end.

Jesus was the exemplar of this trust. Jesus lived into the calling of Israel as Israel never could. And in that trust, Jesus was able to live without anxiety in the face of constant threats. I once heard a talk by the philosopher and teacher Dallas Willard in which he said that he believed that when Jesus was asleep on the boat in the storm on the sea of Galilee, that it was because Jesus so entrusted his life to God that he didn’t really care if he lived or died. It is a truth that matches what Jesus taught: those who try to save their lives will lose them, while those who lose their lives in order to live into the way of Jesus, will save them.

I don’t know about you, but I needed these scriptures this Sunday. Truth be told, this has been a busy and disrupted season, one full of longings and thirsts that have gone unquenched. Like the people in Exodus, I have felt at times like God has led me to places where I can find no water. I’ve had my own Meribah moments of grumbling against God. But through our scriptures I have been reminded of the best way forward from such places of desolation. God was never going to leave the people of Israel in their thirst, and has never left me ultimately unquenched either. Despite my own wants and desires, I know that I can trust God for goodness and life, for God is the God of the living and not the dead. I know that even if I were to die, in whatever since that might be, my life belongs to God and God will not let any death be the final word. So in response, I need to give up my desperate attempts to find water on my own, to tap the mirages in the wilderness that promise to quench it, but prove to be only dry illusions and dashed hopes.

Where ever you find yourself today, whatever thirsts you have that go unquenched, I hope that in the story of Israel in the wilderness you can find a reminder to wait on God. God is our good shepherd, who will lead us, even through the valleys of death, to the waters that will never end. When we find them, we will never thirst, for Life itself will be like a spring, flowing in our hearts. Amen.