Questions God Asks Us, Part 3: What Is That in Your Hand?

 Friends, we’re now in week 3 of this sermon series that I put together based on the book Questions God Asks Us by a pastor and author named Trevor Hudson. In every chapter of this book, Hudson has us look at a question that our Creator God or Jesus asks in the Bible, and how we might faithfully respond.

This week’s question takes us out of Genesis and into Exodus, and the beginning of Moses’ long and harrowing journey freeing his ancestral people from slavery in Egypt. Hudson takes us to chapter 4 of Exodus. By this point in the story, Moses was born to a Hebrew woman, hid from the Pharaoh–who wanted to kill all Hebrew boys–until he was three months old, put in a basket in the river, found and adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter, and raised as a royal who always kinda knew he wasn’t Egyptian. He doesn’t want to mess up his life, but he also feels compassionate and righteously angry for the Hebrew people, who he realizes are his biological relatives. He sees an Egyptian enslaver beating a Hebrew, and Moses kills the Egyptian. Then he panics and runs away. When God finds Moses in hiding, he’s been a shepherd in the middle of nowhere for 40 years. God shows up in a talking, burning shrubbery, and announces that Moses will go back to Egypt to free the Hebrews. 

Moses has more than a few questions for the flaming plant who wants him to incite a slave revolt. Among them: uh…who are you, opinionated blazing hedge? And when did shrubbery become so political? And once Moses got past that, he asked the more pressing question: what on earth makes you think an octogenarian shepherd can pull this off?

God shows Moses that all he will ever need, he already has in his hand–just a stick. “What is that in your hand, Moses? Throw it on the ground.” God turns the stick into a snake. God allows Moses to perform this same magic to scare the Egyptians later. After that, the stick turns the water in the Nile River into blood. Then, the stick parts the Red Sea. Later on, while wandering in the dessert, the Hebrews are dying of thirst and ready to kill Moses for bringing them to a barren wasteland. God repeats to Moses, “what is that in your hand? See that stick? See the rock over there? Hit the rock with the stick.” Moses is a deeply faithful leader, but also an exhausted one. He’s never sure he has it in him to keep going, and you can hardly blame him for thinking that way. But God stays consistent with Moses–he never needs more than what he has in his hand. Moses hits the rock with the stick, and water gushes out.

By the time of this morning’s lectionary-appointed OT story, the Hebrews, who have a very short memory span, are ready to kill Moses again because they’re starving. This time, Moses doesn’t have to do anything with his hands but resist the urge to start punching people in frustration. God makes bread rise up from the grass every morning, and quail meat appear every night. Fun fact: the Hebrew word “manna” literally means “what is that?” The Hebrews saw the flaky miracle bread on the ground for the very first time, turned to each other, pointed to the bread, and said, “Manna? Manna.”

When we’re exhausted and burnt out. When we’re starving and all dried out. When we’re flat broke. When our health is failing. When all our friends are mad at us. When we don’t think we’re in a safe place. When everything we know says otherwise. When we’re convinced we’re out of chances, out of resources, and out of hope, God asks, “What is that in your hand?” And we live another day. Not because any of those dangers cease to be true. But rather because we’re much stronger than we give ourselves credit for, and God fills in the gaps.

But God’s manna solutions require profound trust and patience from us. God warns the Hebrews: don’t hoard up a bunch of manna and quail meat thinking it will help you out later. The manna spoils and the end of the day. The quail meat rots in 12 hours. You get a brand new supply every day, as long as you need it. But you have to keep trusting that it will be there. And then the Hebrews who secretly don’t trust God get outed real quick when the worms start crawling out of their hoarded manna and quail.

Jesus taught us how to pray for “daily bread”, or manna, but we struggle with that kind of patience and trust as much as the Hebrews did. We want instant, grand solutions. We want to earn a bazillion dollars by investing in crypto, or we go on crash diets to lose 10 pounds in 3 days. On a church level, we tend to miss the daily bread, the manna, entirely. We overlook the small signs of growth–the one new person who visited our church today, the family that decided to tithe for the first time, the Bible study that felt great–because none of those small accomplishments can fill in our big anxieties about the state of our congregations. None of those small blessings are a time machine that will take us all back to 1958 when all of our churches had more members. What we’d love to see is a bus with a thousand people in it park outside this building, everyone come in here and not only stay for worship, but then leave stacks of Ben Franklins in the collection plates. PS, next time you fantasize about something like that, try to remember that the fire code says we can only have 85 people in Fellowship Hall. But worse, we all have a tendency to get so focused on what our congregations have lost in our living memories that nothing but loss gets our attention anymore, and not only do we miss the morning delivery of manna, but we never even look at what we’re holding in our hands.

So, what is that in our hands? Instead of focusing on what we lack, what do we possess?

From my standpoint, quite a lot!

Last week we had a room full of kids in Sunday School.

Our average worship attendance since July 1st had been between 60 and 70 people.

We have three delightful, capable organists.

We have a boss bell choir.

We have two different Blessing Box ministries in this community–one in HF, and one in EB.

We’re involved in a spread of mission work, ranging from Red Bird to care packages for college students to ride sharing to recycling to Taco Tuesday and Feed My Lambs and the senior lunches in Ionia to building houses in Rochester to Common Good Radio and Pastor Robin’s work all the way in Belize!

Beyond that, we have our history, of these three historic churches. I got to read up on a bunch of it yesterday at Ionia’s Fall Festival!

And, speaking of, if we ever take for granted what we have in our hands, we need to remember the fall festival and then look again. Because I saw fun, fellowship, food, games, art, tractors, and 3 goats.

What do you personally have in your hand? What talents, gifts, history, and experiences do you bring here? For some of us it’s music, for others teaching, or math skills, or budgeting help, or handiwork. For others of you it’s custom card making, prayer quilt knitting, or service dog training. Some of you have the memories of elephants and keep the past in our hands, and make sure no one gets left behind in the process. And some of you make delicious casseroles. 

In moments when we’re feeling burnt out and we don’t know how we’ll ever keep this crazy church thing going, please, remember to look at what’s in your hand. And maybe even more importantly, try to remember what Jesus teaches us about the vineyard laborers in this morning’s Gospel story, who were all paid the exact same wage no matter how much work they did. We usually don’t choose what’s in our hands, it’s circumstance, or we’re born with it. We don’t get to assign a value to what we have in our hand. That’s not our job. And we don’t have time for jealousy over what someone else has in their hand. God will sort that all out, and it might not make any sense by our rules, but that’s ok. We need to keep hearing God’s question, What’s that in your hand? We need to keep looking and seeing. And then we need to stay willing to put those hands to work.

Amen.