As fine as frost on the ground… it is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat. (Exodus 16:2-15)
One difficulty for me – intellectually – is that God answers the people’s complaining. In some stories God answer their confidence, in others God punishes lack of faith, and in still others God surprises us before the question of faith is even raised. Here, the text says, God tests the people – except there is no test: the people complain and God provides.
There is also the likelihood that the morning-dew-bread the Hebrews find on the ground doesn’t taste very good. My understanding is that this is a natural phenomenon that still occurs to this day, but that the manna is a rather bland sort of emergency sustenance (notwithstanding the later description of it tasting like honey wafers [v31]).
I want to complain and have God meet my needs. I want God to deliver me from my anxieties, my frustrations, my uncertainties. I want God to provide for me a simple living. Like the Hebrews, I wanted my freedom more than anything else, but now that I am in the wilderness of adulthood, fending more for myself and finding the struggle terrifying and depressingly difficult, with starvation and homelessness hounding me on and threatening me at every failure. And I wonder if I also am finding the solutions open to me on the ground too bland to satisfy me.
I don’t think God is testing me – surely I would fail any such test, and I don’t think God is so petty as to schoolmarm me so. But I wonder if “test” is really describing our (human) experience, rather than God’s intention. Here we are, holding fast to a set of convictions, a distinct worldview (of hope and generosity, in constant tension with the world’s view of despair and struggle), and along come circumstances that seem to reinforce our basest instincts, our jealousy and rage, our protectiveness and resentfulness. It seems like an opportunity to choose between value-systems. It feels like a test – a test of our resolve, of our creativity, of our commitment to confidence in a worldview or story or hope that just doesn’t make sense sometimes. It feels like we can fail – that once choice is what we are supposed to select, and the other plainly wrong (but tempting for all that). Calling it a “test” is a descriptive term, not a prescriptive term – it describes the situation from our perspective, through the lens of our experience, not from the perspective of God. (Scripture is, we must remember, so often our human description and approximation of our experience of encountering God.)
But realizing that it isn’t a test engineered by God, but just feels like a test to me, doesn’t change how it feels to me. I feel tested – and failing. I want God to hear my complaining and meet my needs no matter what. I just want to cry out and be met by God, soothed by God, handed new life and strength, a change of certain situations, have my needs met (if humbly) without my having to worry about it. That’s what I want.
But can I not worry? Can I not be anxious? Will I not despair? Surely I will fail. But I suppose that’s one point of the story: God will meet us anyway. God will cover us with dew and chill, and when that has lifted (before the heat of the day melts it away) there will be a thin, flaky, surprising hope on the ground, sustenance for a little while longer.

Transformation: Vision and the Veil

Exodus 34:29-35

This week's lectionary scriptures develop the theme of transformation in the presence of God. Here, Moses' face is illuminated, so much so that when he descends people can't stop staring at him, can't stop talking about it, and Moses puts on a veil. Every time he goes to speak with God, Moses takes off the veil, then returns to the world and puts the veil back on again.

Moses understood something about encountering God and then returning to the world. In the presence of God one sees clearly, and is illuminated. When one returns to the world after such an experience, it is like looking at the world through a veil - things aren't as clear or as certain, the confidence and conviction and comprehensive understanding are gone, and there is a barrier between you and the world. This veil is only lifted again in the Presence of that Transforming Power.

Moses would try his best to communicate his experience on the mountain - and he phrased it in the language of commandment - a harsh and ruling word, but sometimes necessary to speak the truth. But note also that these words must be spoken, must be communicated. Commandments given to Moses cannot stay with Moses alone - they must be shared. Hence, the beginning of corporate spirituality, communal responsibility for faith. Even if we see but through a veil, we must share the vision given us in Transformation. When we come down from the mountains, come out from the Tabernacles, are are given new vision of the world, we must share.

Despite partial understanding, confused vision, we are commanded to act as if our world and behavior was sacred - to make our lives a covenant (a living sacrifice).