This is part of our series of posts on texts from the Revised Common Lectionary, offering preaching topics and inspiration through intentionally abolitionist readings.
The book of Exodus is my very favorite in the Bible, particularly because of what it reveals about God’s nature: both through the revelation of God’s name and God’s response to the cries of God’s people in bondage, and through God’s longsuffering response in the wilderness.
The pattern, which we see in Exodus 17, goes like this: the people desire to turn back to Egypt, to give up on liberty because of the risk and danger it entails. And rather than punish them, God provides for them. Here, we see that in response to their crying out, God provides water from the rock.
Of course, this mercy is not an entirely consistent pattern in the texts. In Numbers 11, we see God (after providing food in response to the complaints of the Israelites!) send a plague upon them. And even in today’s story of Massah and Meribah, the associated psalm, Psalm 95, reminds us that God is not entirely merciful upon this generation:
95:8 Do not harden your hearts, as at Meribah, as on the day at Massah in the wilderness,
95:9 when your ancestors tested me, and put me to the proof, though they had seen my work.
95:10 For forty years I loathed that generation and said, “They are a people whose hearts go astray, and they do not regard my ways.”
95:11 Therefore in my anger I swore, “They shall not enter my rest.”
Yet at the same time, in the telling of Exodus, God’s nature is clearly revealed: when the Israelites ask, “Is God among us or not?” God answers firmly: “Yes!” and meets their needs.
Perhaps there are two lessons here. The first is about the merciful nature of God, who does not respond to evil and unfaithfulness with abandonment, but always first with God’s own faithful provision.
The second is about the difficulty of claiming liberty, a challenge that the Israelites keep failing. How often do we, as we try to build a more just and liberated society, find ourselves falling back into reliance on patterns, systems, and attitudes of punishment and control, because we don’t know what else to do? And when we do that, where can we see God providing for us a new way forward, what we need to continue the gradual fight for the liberation of all?