Wednesday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 397

The children of Israel set out from Elim,
and came into the desert of Sin…
after their departure from the land of Egypt.
Here in the desert the whole assembly of the children of Israel
grumbled against Moses and Aaron.

In today’s reading from Exodus 16 we learn of the people’s grumbling against Moses and Aaron. The fourteenth chapter described God’s mighty victory over Pharaoh and the Egyptian army:

Thus the LORD saved Israel on that day from the power of Egypt. When Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the seashore and saw the great power that the LORD had shown against Egypt, the people feared the LORD. They believed in the LORD and in Moses his servant.

The fifteenth chapter records the Victory Song that Moses and the Israelites sang to the Lord:

I will sing to the LORD, for he is gloriously triumphant;
horse and chariot he has cast into the sea.

If you read these three consecutive chapters in one sitting you’ll have to be amazed that the people should so quickly shift from celebrating to grumbling. But this new grumbling echoes their complaint in Exodus 14:

“Were there no burial places in Egypt that you brought us to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us, bringing us out of Egypt? Did we not tell you this in Egypt, when we said, ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? Far better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”

In their “official history” the Israelites did not hesitate to show themselves in a bad light, in order to reveal the overwhelming goodness of God. The Lord is not only all-powerful; he is also provident to the point of prodigality if we will only rely on him. And the Lord is merciful, giving freely and generously to people who chronically complain.

Democratic nations demonstrate this principle. They forget their history as soon as they are confronted with an uncertain future. No sooner had the first President Bush won a short, glorious war over Iraq in the Kuwaiti desert than Candidate Bill Clinton hammered him on the economy. Although presidents have little control over the economy, the electorate threw him out.

Fortunately, the Lord will not be voted out of the Covenant. He calls us back to the Eucharist time and time again:

Wisdom has built her house,

she has set up her seven columns;

She has prepared her meat, mixed her wine,

yes, she has spread her table. (Proverb 9:2)

Because God’s Spirit abides in the church and our saints sense the movements of the spirit in the manner of sailors in the ocean, they teach us how we ought to respond. Saint Francis abandoned all the privileges, luxuries and securities of his wealthy family to enter the wilderness of poverty. He cast his cares upon the Lord and the Lord cared for him. He found blessings in everything that happened to him and the worse the event, the

more blessings he found. Everything pointed to Jesus; everything led him to deeper intimacy with Jesus. No matter how unsavory it seemed he heard Moses’ invitation: “This is the bread which the LORD has given you to eat.”

Every day has its uncertainties; every day offers opportunities to grumble, invitations to prayer and visions of God’s providential care. We have only to hear the call of Jesus, “Come and see.”