Welcome
Good morning, church. I’m Pastor Ashley Dargai. A big wide, warm welcome to those here with us in-person and those here with us online. Virtual hugs, and only virtual hugs, all around.
This morning will be different for everyone. As we transition to a hybrid service, we’ll be exploring yet again new terrain as a church. Lucky for us, the church has a very long history of exploring new terrain. It all started when our Lord appeared in a garden to Mary when everyone was all quite sure he had died, and we Christians have been discovering new life in the garden, so to speak, ever since.
Saying that, there may be some hiccups, things may feel a bit clunky at times as we all learn this new way of life. We are grateful for your grace and patience.
Throughout the service, we’ll be giving instructions on how we worship while caring for one another’s health and safety. At times, we are asked to restrict our own movements in order to care for others. We see this practice in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians when he asks the wealthier church members to not eat all of the dinner before the poorer members arrive. As Christians, we practice restraint and restrict our own freedom in order to care for the most vulnerable among us.
Please keep your mask on and over your nose at all times except to take communion. We ask that you remain in your seats until after the service ends and a deacon comes to direct your exit, just as you came in. During our hymns, please refrain from singing and instead receive the blessing of song from our worship leader, Kat. One posture for receiving a blessing is to close your eyes and open your hands on your lap.
Because the risk of congregational recitation is similar to singing, we’ll be learning sign language for common liturgical phrases we use during worship. When we arrive at the Lord’s Prayer, Pastor Katie will remind you to bow your head and say very softly to yourself the prayer Jesus taught us to pray. Of course, you may refrain from saying it out loud and instead say it in your heart if you so choose.
For those watching online, we invite you to like and comment this video to let us know you’re here. Learn the sign language with us, and sing and pray loudly on behalf of all of us here.
This morning, we continue our worship series on Exodus, what we’re calling, Things Are Different Now. In this series, we’re taking lessons from Israelites on being surprised by God, on learning to be a new community, and on trusting in God’s provision. Today, we witness another way that God provides for the Hebrew people in the wilderness.
Let us prepare our hearts for worship.
Call to Worship
As a deer pants for flowing water, so our souls desire you. Our souls long for you, O God
Deep calls to deep at the thunder, all your waves and your billows
have gone over us. By day the Lord commands God’s steadfast love,
and at night the Lord’s song is with us, a prayer to the God of our lives.
Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for we shall again praise the Lord , our strength and our help.
Children’s Moment
In our Bible story today, the Hebrew people are walking through the wilderness and are very thirsty. They tell Moses, who tells God. Remember all that God has done for these people: God freed them from slavery, delivered them from danger, and gave them bread from heaven to eat. And now, God will give them something to drink. God tells Moses to hit the rock with his staff, and when he does, water comes spilling out.
It seems like a magic trick, but God wanted the Hebrew people to know that even in the wilderness, where things are really different and sometimes scary, God will take care of their needs. God cares not just about our hearts, but also about our bellies, our parched throats, our sore feet. And God asks us to care about the physical needs of our neighbors, too. That’s why our church helps people get groceries, helps provide shelter for people who lost their home, and gives money to our friends at the border and to people who need help here in town.
Moses named the rock “Massah and Meribah” which means, “Is the Lord among us or not?” That’s a question we all might ask in hard times. Is God here with me now? But the presence of water says, “Yes!” Every time we help provide for someone’s need, we get to answer that question with a big yes, too! Sometimes, we get to be God’s answer to someone’s prayer for help.
We learn from our story today that God cares about every single part of our lives, and that following God means that we care about every single part of our neighbors’ lives—when they’re thirsty, when they’re hungry, when they need a place to sleep, when they’re crying, when they need to see a doctor or need to talk to a friend.
Let’s pray.
I invite you to extend your arms out, palms up as if receiving a big gift.
God, we feel so loved that You are a God who cares about every part of us. You are a God who provides for our needs. As we receive Your provision, we continue to hold our hands open for others, knowing that anything we receive from You is not ours to keep, but Yours to share. Help us to be Your people in the way we care for and provide for the needs of our neighbors. We love you. In Jesus name we pray, amen.
Scripture
Before I read the scripture, I want you to practice for your response. We usually say, “This is the word of God for all the people of God, and then we speak, Thanks be to God. But to day we are going to speak with our hands. “Thanks be to God.” Is ….
Exodus 17:1-7
From the wilderness the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. The people quarrelled with Moses, and said, ‘Give us water to drink.’ Moses said to them, ‘Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?’ But the people thirsted there for water; and the people complained against Moses and said, ‘Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?’ So Moses cried out to the Lord, ‘What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready to stone me.’ The Lord said to Moses, ‘Go on ahead of the people, and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.’ Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarrelled and tested the Lord, saying, ‘Is the Lord among us or not?’
This is the word of God, for all the people of God, Thanks be to God
Sermon
In 1965, Frank Herbert published a classic Science Fiction novel, Dune. It was published a year before anyone had ever heard of star trek. Sorry Mark. “Dune” refers to a desert planet, Arakis, where nothing grows because of the arid, desert terrain, all over the globe. The fremin, the free people who are native to the planet have engineered a way to reclaim every precious drop of moisture, to filter it and hide it in secret reservoirs in caves and underground. The occupying royal families who govern “Dune” have to import everything they eat and every drop they drink from off world.
I had hoped, when I dug a little deeper, into his inspiration for the story, that Mr. Herbert would have looked to our ancestors in the faith to set the stage for his tale. That would have been fascinating. But he wrote that spending time near the Oregon dunes, is what helped him create the vision. But I thought about it this week, and the simple phrase, “Water is life.”
This story of our ancestors comes as one more in a cycle that repeats over and over in the Hebrew Bible. The people cry out, God answers with a miraculous event. They celebrate for a moment, grow complacent, and find themselves falling into another hardship. They cry out.
We’ve seen it: Slaves in Egypt, they cry out: Boom, the Passover and they are free.
Fleeing Pharaoh’s army, they are trapped at the Red Sea. They cry out: Bang, God parts the water and they move through on dry ground. Hungry. They cry out: Hazaah! Mana in the wilderness! It occurs to me that mana was the original uber eats: Fresh delivered to your …. Tent step, every day.
Our scripture is no different. The Israelites offer their usual refrain: “Did you bring us out here to die of thirst? Everyone wearing their “Egypt was better” t-shirts; sporting their sarcastic bumper stickers: at least in Egypt I could drink. Moses is fed up, God is fed up, and yet, again, another miracle: Water from a rock.
But this story, maybe more than the others, is foundational. Water is life. People can survive on little to no food, but water is crucial for survival. So many of our passages in the Hebrew Testament point to this. “In the beginning, the earth was formless, void, dark, and the spirit blew across the face of the deep.
Psalm 42 that I shared as our call to worship creates the image of flowing water and how God nourishes our souls like water quenches our thirst. In fact, water is mentioned more times than faith, hope, or love in the Bible. Our ancestors built their towns on the river banks. Your schools reflect that: Silver creek, walnut creek, Our brothers and sisters at Ash Creek Baptist, … Water is life.
At the end of our scriptures, those who dreamed of what would happen when this world is finished used images of the sea, as smooth and calm as a sheet of glass. Of a river flowing through the middle of God’s realm nourishing every living being.
No wonder then, when Jesus asked the woman at the well for a drink, he engaged her with this metaphor. “People drink from this well and are thirsty again. If you knew the one asking, you would ask him, and he would give you living water.”
To draw from the wellspring that is God’s spirit is to know true nourishment.
For me, there are two “take-aways” from this story: 1) With God, all things are possible, the miraculous, the hard to imagine, the difficult, the things we don’t hardly dare to dream, let alone speak, are a part of who God is. We need to drink deeply from this well and believe God can do far greater than we have even dared to imagine. Water from a rock? Just watch …
And the second is this: God is attentive to our needs. We’ve been through an ordeal this year. One meme reads like a Yelp review: “2020: zero stars, would not recommend.” By now every one of us knows someone affected, have experienced the deaths of loved ones and friends, haven’t even been able to say, “I love you,” in person before they passed. But I believe God is attentive to our prayers, God is compassionate in our need. God is pouring out God’s own heart into our hearts to nourish us in these awful times.
Here’s something I invite you to do. We take water for granted, it’s so available. We turn the handle, lift the lever and it’s there, hot or cold. I wish we weren’t so complacent. Don’t tell her I said this, but my wife won’t drink water that’s been sitting in her cup overnight, like it has passed its expiration date. I wish that every time we took a drink, we would remember the one who sustains us by quenching our spiritual thirst.
My favorite movie of all time is “Millions.” I dare you to watch it and tell me what you think. There’s about ten different reasons I love it so much. But today, I’ll tell you just one. As the credits begin to roll, we watch one final scene unfold. “It’s a desert scene, hot, arid, dry, but the camera pans to a faucet, sticking out of the ground, “from the rock” and as the people pump the handle … water begins to flow. There is joy, pure, ecstatic, celebration. Intergenerational, multicultural, there is laughter, singing, splashing, the wonder and exuberance is contagious in a good way, as if they are experiencing water for the first time. It is miraculous, it is holy and I wish we would allow God’s spirit all the way into our souls, that much.
Communion
Sharing our Resources
We nourish our brothers and sisters, with physical necessities. But we need to be more conscious of how we can help them in their emotional pain and their spiritual wanderings. Your gifts help us offer so much to our community. But more than that, I invite you to speak to someone this week. Share the ways God has nourished your heart and helped you through a difficult moment. You may be the only bit of good news they know. For those of you here in the sanctuary, there is an offering plate you can fill on your way out. For those of you watching on line, we've listed they ways you can support this ministry we share.
Benediction
I invite you to follow my actions: “Your love, O God, is like a beautiful flowing stream. We find refreshment by drinking deeply of your spirit. … Help us, O God, to nourish our sisters and brothers, help us pour out your grace filled blessings on this community. Let us pour your love all over the world.”