“If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into the wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”
We talked last week about the stories that repeat themselves throughout the Bible, and it seems that today again, we have a perfect example of a theme that goes on and on again as we learn about the time the Israelites spent in the wilderness. We left them at the crossing of the Red Sea, and today we see that, to their surprise, instead of arriving right away in the promised land where they would have had “milk and honey” in abundance, they’ve arrived instead in a desert where they experience thirst and hunger – of which they start complaining about to Moses. And they will keep on complaining for a while, actually they will complain all the time they’re going to spend in the wilderness, forty years! Now, they will complain each time for different reasons and Moses and God will deal with them differently each time, but the complaining itself is certainly sort of a recurring issue, which can sometimes lead us to feel compassion for them, after all they had a difficult life for sure, and then, it can also bit a bit annoying and also a little bit amusing because we know that for us as well, as the people of God, even if much has been given to us, we like to complain often and for much smaller matters.
I don’t know if it was because this passage was coming up, but it seems like complaining was a big theme of reflection this week, at least in the social media I am a part of called “Episcopalians on Facebook”. Someone started a list people had fun completing about all the things we whine about at church. It went like that: “The choir sang a hymn I didn’t know”, “I couldn’t find my name tag”, “There were no cookies at coffee hour”, “The sermon was too political” and then immediately after that came the Christians who complained that “The sermon was not political enough”. This last one definitively made me smile, not because I have actually heard it a lot, but because it has been my struggle this week as I was considering this passage of Exodus and also, and mainly, this passage from Matthew’s Gospel known as “The workers in the vineyard”. I guess because those two stories touch on important economical issues, some commentators assume right away that it should be interpreted politically, as a model for our life in society and a model for what the government should do, while other commentators spend a lot of energy trying to prove that, on the contrary, those stories touch only on spiritual matters and we cannot interpret them literally. So, is it too political, or not political enough? There is, indeed, a lot of back and forth concerning these stories and it is important we try to figure out what’s going on exactly, not just because it will give us a better understanding of these texts, but also, and mainly because my hope is that we will become able to finally nail down what it means when we say that an interpretation of the Scripture is “political”, the question behind that being whether, as Christians, we need to be political, as some claim it is our duty to be, or if should only remain “spiritual”, as some claim that is what church should be all about, and only about.
So let’s have a closer look.
The Israelites are in the wilderness and, unsurprisingly, they start to experience thirst and hunger. In this passage of Exodus 16, we actually learn about the origin of the “Manna”, meaning in Hebrew the “What is it?”, this “What is it?” that came down from heaven and fed the people for forty years. We talked last week about natural occurrences that God uses as a way to provide for the people, and the “What is it?” is actually “honeydew”, an excretion left behind by insects that solidifies into yellow brownish granules during the cold desert night. It sounds a little disgusting but indeed honeydew looks like bread and it is said to be very sweet and in fact very nourishing. Then it is also probably true that Israelites may have been able to enjoy the meat of migrating quails, these birds having been known to occasionally drop from the sky when they are exhausted with flying against the wind. In any case, the story tells us: God took care of the people. And that’s the main theological, spiritual insight of this passage. In the wilderness, the people do not experience a harsh, punishing God but a benevolent and caring God who provides for the people in their time of need. This is something we actually discussed recently during our Adult Formation class. We talked about the way we experienced God taking care of us, not just by sending us comfort and encouragement, but also how God takes care of us very concretely, by providing materially and financially. I also shared that when I was ministering to the homeless, I have heard many testimonies about the different ways these persons said God had helped them along the way. And so this is all very spiritual you see, to believe that we have a loving God. And yet, immediately comes the question: Well, if we say that God provides, then does it mean we should not care for the poor? If they turn to God, then God will help them too and there is no need for us to share. Everyone has the same chances to obtain what they need. This interpretations isthe reason why some have thought it is not possible to read the story of the manna without adding some political content to it: Yes, there is enough in the world to feed everyone but each one of us should be satisfy with its part so everyone can have access to the food. God gives as much to everyone and so we should do the same as well, whether people are able or not, work or not, are deserving or not.
And this is also the kind of interpretation we can make of our parable as well. The landowner hires workers at every time of the day, but in the end he gives to all the same salary. Many have understood that it means that God treats all people the same and the “salary” for our work is all the same because it is grace, or salvation, of which we cannot receive a little or a lot. Besides, they say, salvation is not based on our good efforts, but rather on our willingness to accept God’s invitation, whether we accept it earlier in life or even on our death bed. But then, some notice, the parable is also about generosity, this is actually the last line what the landowner says about himself “I am generous”, it’s about the landowner’s goodness, his charity for his workers. I really enjoyed a commentary made by a priest who says: Because I am Latino, I read the story very differently then most. My congregation, they know what it means to be on a parking lot all day waiting to be hired and needing that paycheck to put food on the table. The landowner, he wants a different social order where everybody has enough to eat. The people who don’t work, it’’s not because they are lazy, it’s because nobody comes to hire them, especially if they are older or weaker and yet they need food like every one else. It’s obvious that Jesus preaches social justice here.
So my question for you today is the following: Should the sermon be political or not about those matters? Will the sermon on these passages be “too political” or “not enough”? Well, to tell you the truth, I have not often heard that the church or the priest is not political enough. What I have heard again and gain in many places is that what we do, teach or preach at church should be such that we could apply it to our lives. We want a preaching or a teaching that is relevant to our life. And well, the thing is that, when we do that, when we apply the Scriptures to our life, when we embody the spiritual message, it is in fact when we become political. It is not the Bible or the sermon or the teaching that is “political”, it is what we decide to do after we have heard it.
Let me explain. I was 17 years old in philosophy class the first time I learned about this quote from Aristotle that says that humans are “political animals”. I remember we all say to our teacher: Well for us, we’re not political animals, we aren’t even old enough to vote. But then she replied us: “Political animal means that you live in the city (Polis), in a society, where everything we do affect others, in this sense all the decisions we make are political”. I would add: the way we live out the Gospel, the way we take the Gospel in the world, in our society, that’s also political. Sure, we receive a spiritual message at church, or we should receive a spiritual message, but what are we going to take away for us and apply it to our life? How is it going to affect how we live, what we invest, what we buy, who we hire and how much we compensate them and so on. What do we do with our money, with our time, what is the society we contribute to build? Even not making a decision is still making a decision. Of course Jesus or Moses do not give us guidelines on how to organize our society. It would be crazy to tell hungry people to wait at their doorstep for the bread or the quails to fall “out of the blue”! In the same way, we cannot call our boss to tell them that, because we are Christians, we are all going to work one hour a day and still expect full salary! Of course, the message of the Scriptures is spiritual. It is first and foremost about who God is and what God does.
And yet. Yet the Scriptures show us who God is and what God does and we learn each time that God is a generous God, a God who cares for God’s people and cares especially when God’s people are in danger, or weak or vulnerable. We find a God who takes side with God’s people against injustices, against the strong and the greedy, a God who defends the stranger, the widow, the orphan. We have to wonder: How could this God make us known God’s character without expecting us to imitate God’s character? How could this God not expect us to do exactly the same in our own circumstances? Indeed God does not tell us how to deal with these matters and there are many ways to address these issues, the Bible do not give us technical instructions we could directly apply if you will. But the kindness, the generosity, the sharing, the caring, the including, the protecting and the helping? This isn’t up for debate for us as Christians. This is what God requires of us. We learn from the Scriptures that God is good, and we also learn that God is exigent and expect of us that we would behave according to his moral standards. And that’s why sadly, I wonder if, when we complain that a Christian message is too political, if we don’t mean by that that we don’t really want to live it out. We’re happy with the part of spirituality that soothe and comfort, but we don’t really want to change our hearts and especially make changes in our lifestyles. As followers of Jesus though we should know that our faith needs to be “incarnated” in this world. Our spirituality is not a refuge but a force for transformation, and transformation, that’s what being political should be all about.