Exodus 17:1-7

You may not know it, but I am a Southerner.  Not like you can hear an accent or anything.  I was born in North Carolina and grew up in South Carolina.  One of the things we Southerners do well is have sayings.  There are some great Southern expressions that just seem to capture the feeling exactly.  For example, we might say, “Gimme some sugar,” to mean “give me a kiss.”  If someone’s really going berserk, we will say, “She’s having a hissy fit.”  And if someone is really overly proud of himself, we say, “He thinks the sun comes up just to hear him crow.”  If a woman is busy and stressed, she is “running around like a chicken with its head cut off.”  And if someone isn’t too bright, we would say, “The lights are on, but nobody’s home.”  When we get mad at a kid, we threaten, “I’m gonna jerk a knot in your tail!”  If you’re looking for something, and it’s right in front of you, someone will say, “If it was a snake, it’d have bit you.”  When you can’t get a group of people organized, you comment, “This is worse than trying to herd cats!”  If you’re successful in life, you are “living in high cotton.”  If you’re shocked or surprised by something, you might say, “Well, butter my butt and call me a biscuit!”  One phrase that works in a host of situations is, “Bless your heart!”  If you are trying to explain why you can’t pay a bill this week, you might say, “You can’t get blood out of a turnip.”  Or “You can’t get water from a rock.”

But in this scripture lesson, we find out that you can, in fact, get water from a rock.  Or rather, God can get water from a rock.

The Israelites had been freed from Egypt in the Exodus, after a series of plagues afflicted the Egyptians.  Moses led them out into the wilderness, but then the Pharaoh had changed his mind and chased the former slaves up to the edge of the Red Sea.  When all hope seemed to be lost, God had parted the waters and allowed the Israelites to walk across on dry land; when they were safely on the other side, the waters came back down and drowned Pharaoh’s army.  When they traveled on through the desert and could find no food, God had sent manna and quail for them to eat. 

But now they were in another crisis:  there was no water for the people to drink.  And so, as was their habit, they went to Moses to complain and to demand that he give them water.  Poor Moses!  He was often the recipient of the people’s anger and frustration, and they accused him of being ineffective and incompetent.  But Moses acted as the mediator between the people and God.  He let God know that the people were panicking down there and wanted to know what he was supposed to do about it.  Apparently, they were even threatening to kill him if he didn’t produce water soon!

Now, you might think that the people would have a little more faith than that.  It seems kind of surprising that they never even prayed about their problem.  They just went to Moses and complained and made demands.  And, besides that, they had just witnessed all kinds of miracles of God.  He had sent the plagues to convince Pharaoh to let them go.  He had parted the Red Sea to save them from Pharaoh’s army.  He had provided them with food in the desert.  But, now they didn’t have enough faith to believe that the God who had brought them safe so far would not let them die of thirst.  They even implied that they would rather be back in Egypt than out there in the desert with no water.  Isn’t it amazing how good the bad old days can seem when you are in the middle of a difficult situation?  Even slavery in Egypt seemed like it wasn’t so bad compared to this!

The Israelites were so focused on their physical needs that they lost sight of the way that God had provided for them so faithfully in the past.  The real issue here wasn’t the power of God to somehow give them water; the issue was their failure to trust God.  And they should have trusted God based on his previous actions on their behalf.

It reminds me of the story about a tourist who was visiting the Grand Canyon.  He got a little too close to the edge, and lost his footing, and went over the side.  He was grabbing and clawing, trying to get a grip on something to stop his fall.  Just before he dropped off into space, he managed to grab a scrubby bush with both hands.  Scared to death, the man looked up and shouted, “Is there anybody up there?”  A calm, powerful voice came from the sky, “Yes, there is.”  The tourist asked, “Can you help me?”  The calm voice said, “Yes, I probably can.  What’s your problem?”  The tourist explained, “I fell over the edge and I’m dangling in space holding onto a bush that’s about to break loose.  Please, help me!”  The voice from above said, “I’ll try.  Do you trust me?”  “Yes, yes, I trust you!” the tourist replied.  “Do you have faith?” the voice asked.  “Yes, yes, I have strong faith!”  The calm voice said, “In that case, let go of the bush and everything will be okay.”  After a pause, the tourist yelled, “Is there anybody else up there?”

It’s hard to trust in a person that we can see.  It can be even harder to trust in a God we can’t see.  But our trust is based on the faithfulness of God to us in the past.  When I think about the difficult times we are in right now, the pandemic that is still ravaging our country, the social unrest that has led not only to peaceful protests but violence and riots, the political division that has become so deep and so ugly, I cannot imagine how we will ever survive.  But I remember that God was with people during the years of the Great Depression and World War II; God was with us during the Cold War; God was with us during the recession of the 1970s; and God was with us during those scary days when HIV first came to be known.  God was with me during the hard and painful times in my life:  when my grandparents and my mother passed away; when I struggled to make decisions about my career; when I had to pick up and move to a new part of the country; and when I have struggled financially to make ends meet.  I know that I can trust God with the present and with the future because he was faithful to me in the past.  And you can have that same trust.

The trick is, faith means believing where you cannot see.  And people sometimes have to see to believe something.  A man named Harold Bermel was traveling through Pennsylvania Dutch Country with his daughter and 7-year-old grandson.  They passed an Amish horse and buggy, and his grandson was very curious about it.  “Why do they use horses instead of cars?” he asked.  Harold’s daughter explained that the Amish didn’t believe in cars.  After a few moments, his grandson asked, “Can’t they see them?”

God didn’t strike the Israelites dead that day for their lack of faith.  He didn’t yell at Moses for not being able to manage them any better than that.  Instead, God provided something for them to see in order that they might believe.  He told Moses to take his staff and strike the rock with it, and water would come out for the people to drink.  And God promised that he would stand with Moses before the people when he did this.  Moses did what God told him to do, and we have to assume that water came from the rock and the people had what they needed to drink.  And Moses gave that place two names:  Massah, which means quarreling or testing, and Meribah, which means rebellion.  The place wasn’t remembered for the miracle of the water coming from the rock, but for the people’s lack of faith.

We have a choice to make.  We can choose to have faith and trust in God.  Or we can choose to not have faith or trust in God.  We can believe or we can live in unbelief.  We may or may not be given a sign, like water coming from a rock.  But we can be sure of one thing:  there is nothing that a God can’t do who can get water from a rock.