First Pass at This Sunday's Bible Lessons (February 24, 2008)

[Every week, I try to post a these explorations of the Bible lessons around which worship will be built on the following Sunday. The idea is to help the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, to prepare for worship. Others may be helped, too, since our lessons are those appointed to be used by what's called the Revised Common Lectionary. That's explained here.]

The Bible Lessons:
Exodus 17:1-7
Psalm 95
Romans 5:1-11
John 4:5-42

The Prayer of the Day:
Merciful God, the fountain of living water, you quench our thirst and wash away our sin. Give us this water always. Bring us to drink from the well that flows with the beauty of your truth
through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and forever. Amen

General Comments:
1. Each of these lessons are unique and have their own important themes. But a single motif runs through all of them and a single theme unites them.

The motif is water.

In the Old Testament lesson, there is a crisis of faith experienced by Moses and the people of Israel when, during their forty years in the wilderness, they run out of water and see no ready supply at hand. They doubt that God will provide it for them.

The Psalm recalls this incident, calling a later generation of Israelites to trust in God.

In Romans, the apostle Paul uses the image of water to speak of how God's love is "poured into" the hearts of believers through Jesus Christ.

Finally, in the Gospel lesson, Jesus' encounter with a woman at a well is the occasion for Him to describe Himself as "living water."

Water, of course, is fundamental to life. According to Wikipedia. com, "To function properly, the body requires between one and seven liters of water per day to avoid dehydration..." Scientists tell us that while human beings can live for long periods of time ingesting only water. And, of course, water is essential for agriculture. Wars have been fought over water.

So, you can see the point of all this water imagery: God is as essential to life as water AND it's a gift.

2. The theme is one that extends from last week: Faith or, more accurately, trust.

The Israelites, who had seen so many of God's miraculous signs, didn't trust that God would help them in the wilderness.

In Romans, Paul demonstrates to those who think his faith is bunk because his life was so marked by pain and adversity, that a Christian's faith is not based on God making things easier for us in this life. We know that our faith is authentic when, as we trust God, we experience peace with God. Peace isn't, he says, the absence of difficulty, pain, or tragedy, but reconciliation with God through Christ.

At the end of the Gospel lesson, the people of Samaria, enemies of God's people, believed in Jesus as the long-promised Messiah. Faith in Christ can transform anybody from an enemy to a friend of God.

3. Exodus 17:1-7: This incident is recounted in more detailed form in Numbers 20:1-13.

4. The Wilderness of Sin was a place lying between Elim and Mount Sinai. "Sin" doesn't refer to sinfulness. It's thought that the word has to do with a moon-deity worshiped by some Semitic peoples there. It would also appear to be the word Sinai.

5. This incident, in many ways, echoes incidents recounted in Exodus 16. Those involved the desire of the one-time slaves, recently freed from their captivity in Egypt, for bread and meat. Now, they want water.

6. Chris Haslam interestingly points out that earlier in Exodus, God gradually gained freedom for His people through the performance of ten signs, which He did through Moses. Now, in the wilderness, God undertakes ten tests, each designed to demonstrate the faith--or lack of it--of His people. The question is: Do the people believe in God as their provider? As Howard Wallace notes:

The people appear not to have developed much trust in God’s providence from the provision of the manna, for here again, they begin by complaining to Moses that he has brought them out of Egypt only to kill them, this time by thirst rather than hunger.

The upshot is that the people of Israel and their leader, Moses, fail their tests. God is with them. But the generation God sprang from captivity in Israel--with the exception of Joshua and Caleb, who always trusted in God--won't get into the Promised Land. It's their children who will make it.

Their experience and that of Moses point out that even when we repent for our sins and have our relationship with God restored, there are consequences to our faithlessness. Moses, as is confirmed in his appearance with Jesus at the mount of Transfiguration many centuries later, was and is part of God's kingdom. But by his rebellion, his life here was less than God had in mind for him.

7. The staff God commands Moses to use at Horeb is the same staff Moses had used to strike the Nile River (when God turned the water of Egypt into blood) and which he held up when God caused the waters of the sea to part for the escaping Hebrew slaves.

The staff had no magical powers. It was simply what God used at particular moments and at particular times, a means by which Moses was signaling God's presence and power. The act that God performs when Moses strikes the stone with the staff addresses the key issue behind the quarreling and questioning of the people: "Is the Lord among us or not?" (v. 7)

The same issue is addressed, in a different way, in the next incident recounted in Exodus. There, God's people face enemies who want to prevent their advance, the Amalekites. Moses puts Joshua in charge of recruiting and leading a group of Israelites in battle. In the meantime, Moses goes to the top of a hill and holds his staff aloft to God.

Again, the staff isn't magical. By lifting the staff to God, Moses was seeking the help of God. It was a confession that the battle to do God's will--which entering a promised land was--could not be done unless God accomplished it.

The staff may be easier to understand for those believers of a more sacramental bent of mind. When it comes to the bread and wine of Holy Communion or the water of Holy Baptism, we Lutherans, for example, believe that something really happens in these sacraments. The presence of God comes down to earth. The Spirit really does move in the water of Baptism to claim the baptized as a child of God. Jesus really is mysteriously present, body and blood, in the bread and the wine. But these elements remain, at the same time, what they were: water, bread, wine. As Martin Luther responds, in The Small Catechism, to the question about Baptism, "How can water do such great things?":

It is not the water indeed that does them, but the word of God which is in and with the water, and faith, which trusts such word of God in the water. For without the word of God the water is simple water and no baptism. But with the word of God it is a baptism, that is, a gracious water of life and a washing of regeneration in the Holy Ghost...

Luther writes in similar terms in answering two questions about Holy Communion:

How can bodily eating and drinking do such great things?

It is not the eating and drinking, indeed, that does them, but the words which stand here, namely: Given, and shed for you, for the remission of sins. Which words are, beside the bodily eating and drinking, as the chief thing in the Sacrament; and he that believes these words has what they say and express, namely, the forgiveness of sins.

Who, then, receives such Sacrament worthily?

Fasting and bodily preparation is, indeed, a fine outward training; but he is truly worthy and well prepared who has faith in these words: Given, and shed for you, for the remission of sins.

But he that does not believe these words, or doubts, is unworthy and unfit; for the words For you require altogether believing hearts.

Like the bread, wine, and water of the two Sacraments, Moses' staff in itself wasn't special. But what God did with it for one who faithfully used it in accordance with God's command was special.

8. I find it so interesting here that God shows such patience with the people--and with Moses--in spite of their whininess. Remember, this incident is a test from God. Like many of the tests of faith we go through in life, there will be no Technicolor sign posts saying, "This is a test of your faith." Often, it's only after we've gone through--and failed--a test of faith that we see it for what it was.

The time to prepare for a test is before it comes. We're prepared when, in the good and easier times of life, we rely on God, seek Him out in prayer, read His Word, attend to worship, and seek to do His will. God is close at hand all the time.

[More tomorrow, I hope.]