Reflectionary

Are We There Yet?

(Lent 3A    Exodus 17:1-7)

We're coming to the end of the transition at the church I am serving, and I've noticed an uptick in the number of people who are saying how much they like me and how much I will be missed. And although I appreciate that, I'm afraid it also points up how much I will miss them and makes me a little sad. I can contain that feeling, because I need to, and I can work it out appropriately in the right settings, but I can feel that it's time for all of us to move into a last little phase of cranky anxiety with one another. And the difference is, as it was in the beginning, that they are allowed to exhibit theirs.

From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the LORD commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarreled with Moses, and said, "Give us water to drink." Moses said to them, "Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the LORD?"

But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, "Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?"

So Moses cried out to the LORD, "What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me."
(Exodus 17:1-4, NRSV)

That's where we don't want to go: no stonings, please! But there is no question that fear of what lies ahead, simply because it is unknown, can lead us to feel cranky and can drive us to question authority and can inspire us to turn on the very one(s) who most want to help us.

I'm thinking about thirst and how it feels compared to being quenched. If you've had enough water to drink, you feel settled. Your brain works better. You remain cool instead of overheating. Your mouth just feels right.

But if you're dehydrated, watch out! You make bad choices if you can't or won't get water, and of course it's more likely the latter in this era of bottled water everywhere and in a region where the water supply is plentiful and delicious.

Thirst is a downward spiral. Your mouth and your mind and your spirit dry up, sink inward, regress and shrink.

In a congregation thirsty for news of what's next, there is pressure on those who know what's going on, and there is pressure of a different kind on those who don't.

What's my job in the midst of this?

The LORD said to Moses, "Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink." Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. (Exodus 17:5-6)

I believe it's my task to strike the rock. It's my job to keep things flowing, to reassure the people that God is in the process, to keep the focus on God's presence. It's my job to be sure they get enough to drink.

Whence Joshua?

(Transfiguration Sunday A    Exodus 24:12-18)

So Moses set out with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up into the mountain of God.

To the elders he had said, "Wait here for us, until we come to you again; for Aaron and Hur are with you; whoever has a dispute may go to them." (Exodus 24:13-14)

You know the story. Moses goes up the mountain to receive the tablets of the law. (Twice, actually.) But had I ever noticed this part before? He set out with his assistant Joshua? He leaves the elders behind with Aaron and Hur to handle disputes, but he sets out with Joshua. I wonder how far Joshua goes with him?

I have a strange image in my mind of Charlton Heston, as Moses, leaving the elders behind with Charlton Heston, as Hur, to take care of any disputes. Moses knows his merry band of travelers well, and he knows there will be disputes, rather as a mother who leaves three children in the car to wait suspects that there may be pinching before she retrieves the prescription from the pharmacy. This is why God made drive-through windows at drug stores.

But Moses, Moses, as we may remember Anne Baxter purring over and over in "The Ten Commandments," he leaves them all behind. Strange, isn't it? Even Jesus takes companions up the mountain. Even Jesus gets a witness or three. Moses and Joshua, how far do they go together?

I'm reminded that for a long time people thought, and some people do, that Moses authored the first five books of the Bible, the parts that concern him, and the parts that do not. That is not the way I was taught. I understand these stories to have been passed down, but at some point they got into the hands of scribes, and there it is:

So Moses set out with his assistant Joshua, and Moses went up into the mountain of God.

I'm guessing Joshua was a better guy to have along than Peter. I wish we had his point-of-view. Did he wait at a certain point on the mountainside, making part of the journey with Moses? Did he have a sense of the holy, and was it terrifying? Did he have especially good nerves, or was he tuned to receive these powerful vibrations without flipping?

After all, there's a whole book named after him, too.

Someone took the trouble to be sure we knew he went further along the way with Moses than anyone else did. But not all the way.

No conclusions, here, just ramblings and an attempt to picture a Joshua who is not John Derek, nor a cartoon figure as in "The 300." I almost want Joshua to be an unlikely hero, the sort of man no one would ever expect to blow a horn and cause walls to tumble, not a person who was the obvious and golden choice to be the right hand man but a person whose package did not reflect the spiritual strength within, the sort of strength that Moses could draw from to make that walk up the mountain, to meet his God.