This morning I’m going to do something that I don’t entirely approve of. We have this gospel lesson from the ninth chapter of Mark this morning, and it’s what we could understatedly call one of those “difficult passages”. Its words of Jesus, but maybe not of a Jesus that we know or think we would care to know. All of this about sin, about going astray, about drowning and cutting off limbs and tearing out eyes. Is it Jesus speaking, or is it Jesus’ much less likable twin? What do we do with a passage like this? It’s difficult enough, harsh enough, that one commentator points out that even those who claim to be biblical literalists don’t take this particular passage literally. So here’s where I do something that I have mixed feelings about. I’m not going to tackle this passage from Mark this morning, not because it’s a tough passage and it’s hard work to make sense of, but because we have something else we need to be considering today. For that, I want to take us back to our first lesson, to the book of Numbers.
In Numbers this morning, we come in to see the followers of Moses behaving badly. To recap what has happened before we find them in this place, this people had suffered in slavery under Pharoah in Egypt; God heard their groaning, and God gave them Moses to lead the people to freedom. They crossed the Red Sea safely; they escaped their unhappy life in Egypt. But this escape did not come without a price. They are now in the wilderness, where God has been with them every step of the way. . . but it hasn’t been enough for the people. They worry that they are going to starve, they whine and complain about not having enough to eat. So God hears them, and God sends them manna – a bread-like substance they collect every morning. God hears them, and God responds. But is this enough for what Moses calls ‘a stiff-necked people?’ No. At the point where we meet them, they are tired of eating manna. Slavery in Egypt is looking better and better, as they recall the taste of meat and other good food they used to eat. God hears their whining, as does Moses; and, we’re told, God became angry, and Moses was displeased. In fact, in this passage we have before us, Moses has what we could call a meltdown. He’s had enough. He’s had enough of the complaints, the grousing, the whining, the constant needs of the people, all coming in his direction, as their God-given leader. Moses says to God – and I’m paraphrasing here – what did I ever do to you, God, that I get stuck with these people? It’s a real burden, you know. I didn’t give birth to all of these people, and now I have total responsibility for them? How on earth am I going to find them meat, and quiet their complaints? I can’t do it by myself, LORD. I can’t carry this burden, all of these people, on my own. They’re too heavy for me to carry by myself. Please, if this is how it is going to be, end my misery now.
Now God does not always take well to people complaining. God doesn’t always have patience for the groans and grouses of God’s people. But this is Moses . . . God has a soft spot for Moses. In this passage we read today, God hears Moses, and God responds. God calls a number of people to help Moses – seventy, to be exact – and, we’re told, God puts God’s own spirit upon them. God heard the cry of Moses, and God responded, giving Moses elders to share the burden of leadership with him. And just for the record, God gives them meat to eat as well, in the form of quail. But soon they have so much quail that they start to complain about that, much to the tried patience of both Moses and God.
So this is a good story, right? It tells us something about God, and it tells us something about those called by God to lead. It tells us something about ourselves – we can see ourselves in the complainers, and maybe in Moses too, and in the seventy called to share the leadership with Moses. It’s a good story. But . . . what is the point, exactly? Why this passage, and not the gospel? Good question, and here’s why: I think this story from Numbers, this story about the Hebrew people, our ancestors, in the wilderness on their way to the promised land, tells us an enormous amount about two important, central things: about love, and about gratitude.
Love, that’s where it all starts, with how much God really loves us, God’s people. There was a time when God was so disgusted with the people God had created that there was a terrible flood – remember that? All but a few of the people were lost. Saved were a guy by the name of Noah, and his family. But God promised that that would never happen again. And then came a guy named Abraham, and a woman named Sarah. And they were promised ancestors as numerous as the stars in the sky – and we, you and I, are among those ancestors. God did this because God loved the people God had created. And when that people – our ancestors – ended up as slaves in Egypt, God did not forget them. God heard the groaning of the people. God remembered them, and loved them, and gave them Moses to lead them into a new life. When the people is wandering in the wilderness, complaining, when in retrospect slavery started to look better and better – God heard their complaints, and gave them food in the form of manna. And then meat. And God did this because the people were God’s beloved. When the people wanted a king, even though God didn’t think it was that great an idea, God gave them a king, and a succession of kings, and though it didn’t turn out that well in the end, as God had suspected it wouldn’t, God knew that the people God loved so much would have to figure that out for themselves. And when the people then got wealthy, and satisfied, and complacent, God didn’t let them stay that way. God sent the people prophets to speak and declare God’s word to those beloved people, to try to get them to live up to the potential that God knew that they had. And when God didn’t feel that God was reaching the people that well anymore, God came up with another way to love them: God sent the people a special teacher, prophet, healer, and leader to incarnate just how much they were loved by God. “For God so loved the world” that God sent them Jesus, remember that? And when the people didn’t get Jesus, couldn’t hear his message of God’s overwhelming love, found it too frightening and threatening and killed Jesus to try and stop his message, God did not let it end there. God said, no way will evil and death have the last word here. I will have the last word, because I am God, and that last word is love. And in that love God had for Jesus and for God’s beloved people, God raised up Jesus from the dead and promised that the reign of God, the kingdom of God Jesus taught about could indeed still come true, here and now, as long as it had this love at its center. That’s the kind of love with which we are loved, a love so deep, so broad, so high, so enveloping. . . it’s hard for us to truly comprehend it. It’s hard to really get it. But even if we only get the merest glimpse of the depths of the love God has for us, we have to ask, what is the right response to this kind of love? This kind of love invites two responses, I’d say. One is to love in return. One is to say, okay God, I get it. You love so deeply, so fully, so clearly, in such an amazing way. I can’t love as well as you do, because I’m human and you’re God - but I can give it a try. I can try to love others the way that you love me. I can try to especially love what Jesus called ‘the least of these.’
The other response is to say thank you. To say, with our words, our hearts, our actions, thank you. This response is to live with gratitude at the center of our lives, gratitude for all of God’s gifts to us, for the love which makes all things possible. German mystic Meister Eckhart is quoted as saying, if the only prayer you ever said was thank you, it would be enough. I think the example we have in the lesson from Numbers is telling. The people want food; God sends them manna. They don’t say thank you, they say, okay, now we’re tired of this. The people ask for meat; God sends quail, and they don’t say thank you, they say, we’ve had enough quail, we want something else now. I don’t want us to be that kind of people. I want us to be the people who say a deep and heartfelt thank you to God for all of the gifts and blessings which we have received. I want us to be the people who live and act out of a sense of overwhelming gratitude for God’s presence in our lives.
I have a story to share with you, about gratitude. Several years ago I took a confirmation class, nine teenagers, another chaperone, and myself to do a week of flood recovery work in West Virginia. A number of towns there had been devastated by recent flooding, and there was still much work to do. We did different things each day; one day we spent decontaminating a man’s porch and painting the first floor. Another day we did yard work and reclaiming the outside of a person’s house. One day we did outside house painting for an elderly woman. And one day we worked at a food and clothing pantry that was open one day a month. The whole trip was an experience for our kids. They were all fairly privileged, though some more than others. They had never seen this kind of devastation before. And they had never heard people – West Virginians, in this case – talk so openly about their faith. One of the people we were there to help would tell us their story – maybe their car got taken away by the flood, and then the person would say, but thank God my house is still there. Maybe a person’s house was destroyed, and they would say, but God’s been good to me, and nobody was hurt. One particular experience a couple of our kids had stands out to me. It was the day we spent at the food pantry, where we gave out water, food, and clothing. It was August, and therefore back to school time. Some of our kids were working with the clothing, and they were really struck that there were kids their age – teenagers, high school students – who were excited about picking out some of these hand me down clothes to have to go back to school. Some of our kids were ‘buggy boys;’ they would load the groceries each family was getting into carts and take them to the car for the families. In recounting his experience, one of our kids told us later: some of them tried to tip me. He was just so struck – humbled really – by the gratitude of those we encountered. Everywhere we went, people thanked us for being there. People who had lost everything thanked us, who had so much, and thanked God for sending us. That’s gratitude.
So here’s what I’m asking us to do this week. This week, I’d like for each of you to ask yourselves, what is it that I am grateful for? Make a list, if you’re the list-making type. And then I’d like us each to ask ourselves this question: Where and how do I show my gratitude? Do I say thank you to those around me? Do I say thank you to God? Do I show in my life and in my actions that I am grateful? How do I show my church that I am grateful for this community St. George’s, this unique and wonderful church that I call home?
Love and gratitude are where stewardship starts. And that’s what we are about.
Amen.