A talk on the experience of migration, or Exodus, preached on Sunday 2nd August.
Exodus 16.2–4,9–15The
whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the
wilderness. The Israelites said to them, ‘If only we had died by the hand of
the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of
bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole
assembly with hunger.’ Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘I am going to
rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather
enough for that day. In that way I will test them, whether they will follow my
instruction or not. Then Moses said to Aaron, ‘Say to the whole
congregation of the Israelites, “Draw near to the Lord, for he has heard your
complaining.” ’ And as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the Israelites,
they looked towards the wilderness, and the glory of the Lord appeared in the
cloud. The Lord spoke to Moses and said, ‘I have heard the complaining of the
Israelites; say to them, “At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you
shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your
God.” ’ In the evening quails came up and covered the
camp; and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. When the
layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky
substance, as fine as frost on the ground. When the Israelites saw it, they
said to one another, ‘What is it?’ For they did not know what it was. Moses
said to them, ‘It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.
I’m going away next week and my daughter is staying with
friends, so there isn’t much food in my house, other than leftovers from when
we had guests last week. In the
interests of research for this sermon, I had a look in my fridge last
night. It contained some harissa
mayonnaise, some pesto, some cold meat, a diet milkshake, some vegetables and a
piece of cheesecake. The cheesecake
looked a bit untidy, so I tidied it away.
I hid the diet milkshake behind the orange juice.
I was doing this research because I was looking at our Old
Testament reading, which is about the people of Israel getting hungry in the
wilderness – the desert – on their way from Egypt to the Promised land. I was thinking how hard it is for us to
relate to their pain – the pain of real hunger – if you are living on even a
moderate income here in the West. That’s
not to say that people don’t go hungry in this country, but it is hard for us
to relate to the fear and desperation of the Israelites, stuck in the desert
between Egypt and Israel, not knowing when – or if – their next meal will be
found.
And so I think we need to work at this reading. We need to understand the fear and despair of
the people of Israel as they look back to Egypt, where they were at least fed,
though they lived in slavery and oppression.
We need to remember that this kind of hunger is not just a matter of
missing a meal, but of missing all your meals.
It’s a matter of long term deprivation of protein until your body
literally starts to eat itself. It can
be a bit of a joke when we read the bible – the people of Israel are whingeing
again – but the reality is that being hungry and thirsty in the desert is one
of the worst experiences of a human life. The people of Israel were getting desperate.
We need to work at this reading, to understand the people of
Israel, because their situation is not just a bible story from the olden
days. There are people in that situation
right now as I speak. Refugees and
migrants cross the Sahara desert regularly in a desperate attempt to find
safety and security. Many die on the
way. This has been going on for years,
it’s just that they used to stop in Libya.
Now things are so bad in Libya they try to keep going and to reach
Europe.
I wonder if we would classify the people of Israel as
refugees or economic migrants? They were
escaping slavery, they were looking for freedom and security.
The people of Eritrea are escaping one of the worst
totalitarian regimes in the world, a regime where you can be called up to join
the army on minimal wages - £20 a month - from the age of fourteen and – here’s
the catch – you are conscripted indefinitely.
It’s a regime with some of the worst human rights abuses in the whole of
Africa. That’s why 3% of the population
is leaving.
Syrian refugees are leaving a country torn apart by war –
many cannot go home because home no longer exists. Other refugees have been terrorised by
Islamic state and lived in utter fear.
Sudanese people leave behind war, desperate poverty and
starvation.
Most refugees are children and young people – worldwide,
half of them are under eighteen. Many are
alone. Most are sheltered in camps in
countries near their point of origin.
86% of refugees are still in the developing world. We only see a fraction here.
The world is full of travelling people, hungry and
thirsty in one desert or another. We are
frightened that they will take more than we have to give, and certainly we
can’t take all the world’s refugees here in the UK – though in point of fact,
nobody is asking us to. A humane and
decent response to this problem will be very hard to find. What we must remember though, and what some
of the scaremongering and frightening rhetoric of recent weeks forgets, is that
these are real people, just like us. They
are all children of God, and we need to search our consciences and inform our
minds before we respond. I’ve heard some
really stupid things said this week – “Put them on the next plane home”. There are no flights to Libya or Syria,
because they are in deadly chaos. God’s
children deserve a more thought-out response than that.
When we read about the children of Israel starving in the
desert, we are not just reading about something that happened three thousand
years ago, we are reading about God’s children today. The difference is that
there is no promised land for these people.
Somehow we have to make the world a better place, somewhere people don’t
live in fear for their lives. Poverty
should be history, but it isn’t.
I think we are frightened to think about this. I don’t think we like to look at the world’s
great problems, because we don’t have any easy solutions. We don’t like to think about all those
suffering men and women, or those terrified children. We don’t like to believe the stories people
tell of rape and torture and summary execution, because it shows us just how
awful the world can be. The documented
evidence is there in the news, but it’s hidden away under World – that tab we
don’t click too often.
But part of being a Christian is being prepared to care,
being prepared to listen, being prepared to understand. We can only find the strength to do this if
we, too, understand that we need the grace of God to survive. The people of Israel received bread from
heaven to meet their bodily needs. In
our gospel reading, Jesus also offers us bread – Jesus met people’s bodily needs
too – but Jesus also offers us the bread of life. Jesus offers us the love and the strength to
keep on going, to keep on caring, even when the problems of the world seem
overwhelming and we feel that we can’t do anything.
Because there is no manna going to fall in the desert
today. There are no quails for the
hungry to have for dinner tonight. It’s
up to us. We are lucky – our needs are
met and we have somewhere to sleep tonight.
We have been given bread and it’s our job to make sure that the rest of
the world has bread too, both the bread that feeds our bodies and the bread
that feeds our souls. Last time I spoke
I talked about how Jesus responded to human need both on an earthly level and a
spiritual level. It’s left to us now to
carry on that work, in this village, in this country and in this world.
So where do we start?
We start, as always, with an open heart.
We start by listening. We seek to
understand before we open our own mouths.
[If only I practiced what I preach, I hear you say]. We come in
humility, not pretending we have easy answers, but we listen to the pain of the
world and then we do what we can.
And if you feel helpless in the face of the world’s pain, if
you are frightened that maybe some of that pain will come to you, then take
heart from our second reading. Jesus
said,
Whoever comes to me
will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
There are no limits to God’s love. We do not need to fear. There is hope for this world, broken and
suffering though it is. We meet together
to share in the bread of life, trusting that there is enough to go around. When we sing ‘Let us break bread together, we
are one’ we mean it. When we take holy
communion, we take it alongside the poor of the world. God’s blessings are not finite. Love is not a limited resource. Have faith, and be willing to share your
bread with strangers.