Lent 4 Manna

Lent 4B 18 Manna

Numbers tells how the people of Israel came from Sinai up the east side of the Dead Sea to cross the Jordan at Jericho. Numbers includes the Aaronic blessing “The Lord bless you” 6:22-26 said in the Lutheran service. It also has lot of complaining and rebellion.

Six weeks after the Exodus the people started to complain (Exodus 16), “In Egypt we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” That is one of the signs of the spiritual continuity between Israel and the church. The Lord provided manna. Manna tasted like a honey cake, but even honey cakes can get old in time; 35 years of manna every day is enough for people to “detest this miserable food.” 

Manna has been variously identified as tamarisk resin, lichen, plant lice secretions, and mushrooms. The rabbis said manna was a unique and special food, part of God’s provision for his faithful people.

But as the Celebrate notes tell us, not all the people are faithful; many “whine and grumble.” Numbers says God sent poisonous snakes to bite people who complain. Many of us have known at least a few venomous people. We know about the bad consequences of bad behavior. And we have learned the healing power of repentance and confession.

I don’t understand how the snake-bit children of Israel were cured by looking at a bronze serpent lifted up on a pole, but that was the remembered experience of the people. St John says Jesus used the experience in the desert teaching to tell Nicodemus that so “must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

The bronze serpent on the pole was sacramental. It was an outward and visible sign of inward and spiritual grace, the grace of forgiveness which heals the poison of venom in the soul.

Another sacramental is the wedding ring – the unbroken ring a sign of eternal love. And the great sacraments use ordinary things as signs of God’s eternal love and grace. Water washes away dirt – and sin. A small piece of bread and a sip of wine are our spiritual food, our manna in our wilderness of sin.   

Jesus continued with the familiar verse, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”  That is the core of the new covenant. All the covenants – Noah, Abraham, Moses, Numbers, Jeremiah – all are assurances of God’s continued love and presence in this life.  The new covenant is the new assurance of eternal life, life that continues through death into the fullness of God’s presence.

Jesus continued, “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”

These verses frequently raise questions like, “What about those who do not believe, Jews, Muslims, our friends and neighbors who don’t go to church? Does God condemn them?”  The short answer is, No. God does not condemn. “God so loved the world . . . “

So take a step back. Remember the airplane rule. “Put the oxygen mask on your own face first, then on others.” That seems contrary to the Christian ethic of concern for others. But truly, we are to work out our own salvation. The first question is, “Have I claimed for myself the new life Jesus offers? Do I know my own sins are forgiven? Am I a new creature? Have I put the mask on myself? We need to start with what we can deal with, and that is ourselves.  

As I look back on them I recognize my own doubts and fears were not theological, but moral. I was in college, strongly influenced by my hormones. I had not yet internalized the truth that the God who made me loves me. God wants what is best for me. And so I’d best seek to know and do his will. Once I made the commitment of obedience the theology fell into place.

The condemnation is human condemnation, not God’s. We live in lots of human judgment and condemnation. Talk politics; get people of one party talking about the moral failures of the leaders of the other party. Condemnation is human, not divine.  God is righteous and just; he calls us to share divine righteousness and justice. But condemnation is for our own sin, the sin for which Jesus died on the cross.  

“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. . . . God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”