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when the Israelites saw something that looks like frost on the ground, The evidence that God had heard all of their complaining, all of their complaining about the good old days back in Egypt before they set out

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into this hostile wilderness. All of their complaining about how hungry they were. Now, all of their complaining about how back then they just sat by the flesh pots all day long and they ate their fill

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, all of their complaining about God, where you have brought us out into this wilderness, They complained to kill this whole assembly with hunger, all of their complaining about the wilderness, and all of that

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complaining wouldn't be the last time in scripture when the notion of wilderness comes up, it comes up for sure. When jesus gets baptized in the Jordan, by john the baptist there at the beginning of his

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ministry, and just after he was baptized, he's driven into the wilderness, a place where he's surrounded by both wild beasts and dangerous. Mhm. And in these times to of course it is as if

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we are also going through a wilderness experience. And we know something about how hard it is to tell the difference. Sometime between the wild beasts and the angels here we are now wearing our masks, waiting

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for our vaccines, praying for all those we know who have or have had the virus flung, it seems, from a pristine garden where everything was nailed down and nicely labeled and going our way and thrust

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now into another kind of wilderness where we're not always sure what levers we can pull what buttons we can push to make a difference. It is as if this wilderness is a kind of purgatory and also if

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we dare to be fair, a kind of womb where something formative is happening too. What if this wilderness that we are in is at the same time a harsh and deadly thing and a hopeful and formative

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thing? What if this wilderness that we are in is the same thing as harshness and hope? Where there are wild beasts, of course, and angels , what if this wilderness we're living in right now

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is an ultimately purposeful experience because God is in it with us, so that through the eyes of faith , we see this horrifying wilderness in another light, not just a wasteland where we're wandering around aimlessly,

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but something more formative. Where perhaps were being prepared to be the people we will need to be in God's future. That's what this wilderness was for those Israelites, fresh from Egypt and wandering in it for

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40 years. Egypt for them was yesterday's world and the promised land represented a distant tomorrow, and it was the wilderness, 40 years of it that prepared them to move from one to the other part of

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what helped them do. That was this layer of something that looked like frost on the ground. That they saw one evening there in the wilderness. When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another

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, What is it? What is it? Eventually they learned what it was because eventually moses told them it was manner, manner from heaven. We think of this story about manner and we leap in our

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imaginations to the spectacular and we can be forgiven for that. I mean, the Book of Exodus after all, is a veritable catalogue of things spectacular. The burning bush, the 10 plagues, the Crossing

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of the Red Sea, the 10 Commandments, The Glory of God entering the Tabernacle as if the point of this book is to spoil us with all the evidence that can be mustard of the spectacular ways in

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which God interacts with God's people. But truthfully, the provision of manna in the wilderness is a far more modest thing. The Israelites are out there wandering , stupid Israelites from our point in time when it

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appears that every molecule on earth has been mapped, we look at these Israelites and we decide that they're kind of stupid for losing their way. If only they had a GPS system. This didn't have to

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take so long as if in the mind of God . The holy point of that wilderness wandering was for them to get from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible. But that wasn't the point.

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There was a purposefulness behind those Israelites taking 40 years wandering all over creation. This was after all, a people forming journey, all of you know something about the people forming journey that Children take, that

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that we have taken to. It isn't necessarily over in a neat four year college career, just because the diploma has been handed out. No, it's harder than that. Some things have to be forgotten

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and other things have to be discovered and lifted up into the claimed status of cherished memory. And we all know that that often takes as long as it takes. Is this a story about stupid Israelites with

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a bad sense of direction and no GPS system? No, it's more complicated than that. And in this story, Manna from Heaven is not a spectacular thing at all. In fact, by design,

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it is rather homely. These people in the wilderness , these whiny complaining, ungrateful people are whining and complaining. Let us remember because they are starving to death. They are dying of thirst. They're given

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they have given up lusting after the Chateaubriand and the bottles of some amusing merlot and the slices of key lime pie that they remember. No, they will settle for anything now. They are hungry and they

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are starving to death. So finally God provides them with drum roll please bread or at least a kind of bread. No fancy pyrotechnics, no strobe lights , no fog machines, just the daily provision of

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a day's worth, of the most basic staple of life, something that will get them from today to tomorrow, bread. In his commentary on exodus years ago, terry fred hahn old testament scholar from Luther

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Seminary who just died a couple of months ago, offered this neat, scholarly, plausible explanation for this miracle and the wilderness. As if this miracle needed a plausible explanation. He noted a natural phenomenon in

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the Sinai Peninsula in which a type of plant lice punctures the fruit of the tamarisk tree and excretes a substance from this juice, a yellowish white flake or ball. And during the warmth of the day it

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disintegrates, but it congeals when it is cold. It has a sweet taste rich in carbohydrates and sugar , and it's still gathered by natives who bake it into a kind of bread. Well, fair enough

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, maybe that's all there is to it. But in this story, for people hungry enough to notice even something ordinary given to them each day, as a completely unearned gift is understood not as a scientifically

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proven natural event, but as a miraculous generosity of God. Rightly. Then the people perk up at the sight of it and ask the question, what is it? What is it this extraordinarily ordinary thing

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that God gives us in such abundance. It's bread , let's call it wonder bread, a homely example of the everyday smorgasbord of giftedness by which we are surrounded. This is a giftedness that is available to

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us in practically any moment. It does not save itself from mountaintop moments, but it rains down upon us constantly. Give us today our daily bread, we say in the Lord's prayer, thereby acknowledging that

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we depend on the grace of a gracious God whose provisions never fail as our own attempts for providing for ourselves. Almost always do. Mm This is a giftedness that is available to us practically in any moment

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if we have the eyes to see it and more often than not, speaking for myself, generally don't have the eyes to see it. I remember vividly a moment in january just a few years ago when

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it comes to the calendar that I keep january is always a blur. In normal times. The very first week of January is always a week that I spend every year in continuing education with a study group

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have been in this group for more than 30 years . We write to exit jellicle papers that we spend the week presenting to each other various texts assigned for each sunday in the upcoming election erI And we go

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home with 40 papers and sermon trajectories. That will be useful as we form sermons in the upcoming year and later in the month. In january. In normal times, there's a sunday or two in which

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I've got a preaching gig and that means the whole weekend is gone and there's the annual weekend meeting of the presbyterian seminary presidents and board chairs and spouses and partners. And then of course there's midwinter lectures and

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hard on the heels of that there's the winter board retreat, I'm not complaining, it's just that january is boom boom boom boom boom every year, it's like that. And there was this particular thursday,

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late in january a few years ago, the day after mid winners and the day before the board retreat that I had been living for for weeks. What would I do with that delicious little window of time

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? Should I surprise K and say, let's get in the car and spend the day in san Antonio . Should I walk up something in the kitchen, Should we walk around Lady Bird Lake? Should we

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have some friends over? None of that felt right in this particular year. It all sounded contrived. So I decided no grand breakfast, no marching bands serenading in the front yard, no special music on

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the sound system. We just sat in the din for a while before I would go later in the day to prepare for the board retreat. We just sat in the den and talked. It was the

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first time we had talked in a long time. I mean talked okay, shared with me that are older daughter up in new york, had been taking classes to be a yoga instructor. And the K's

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best friend from decades ago was coming up on the first anniversary of her father's death. And so she needed to send her a card. And then our younger daughter in Brooklyn had started playing the saxophone and

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an all girl band and they were coming to play at South by southwest later and pretty soon it'll be time to get a new border teller shot for the dog. And as she mentioned the dog, she

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called the dog's name and the dog wagged her tail . And then there were some silence, okay? And then she looked out the window and said, you know what I see? Some buds already on

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that great myrtle out there. And so we took our coffee and went out in the backyard and looked at the tree, the conversation, the girls, the best friend, her father, a dog,

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the tree, the work, the life. I shook my head with amazement. What is it? I thought to myself just yesterday I was in the car and NPR was on and there was this interview

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which mary louise kelly was having with a social scientist . Mhm. The social scientist was talking about how this covid time we're living in is so flat, we're not socializing, we're not even seeing our families

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, our closest friends. And what we're discovering said the scientist is that families and long friendships still matter . Yes, But beneath that layer, there is this loss of what she called weak ties. That's

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what she called it. Weak ties. A whole layer of secondary relationships. We're not getting our hair cut as often. And so we're not checking in with the people who cut our hair. We're not

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checking in with our favorite waiter in our favorite restaurant because we're not going to restaurants or the banker or the guy at the bike shop or the folks at the dry cleaners were not interacting with them that much

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. That's the loss of the weak ties that believe it or not are important as important, maybe in their own way as the strong ties, the social scientists said. When the weak ties are lost,

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there is a diminishment of humanity so that what's left is simply transaction. I thought about that. Since I was also thinking about this sermon, our world is full of people who, like those Israelites in

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the wilderness or either so preoccupied by past experience or are made anxious by the unknowns of this pandemic time , that they are often unable to behold the modest graces that are abundantly available to them in every present

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moment. But when you notice it, there comes this incredulous, grateful question, What is it okay in Matthew's Gospel before his arrest and trial and crucifixion , jesus sat down at a table with his disciples

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and there at that table at that table there was more bread this time there were words that went with that bread take eat, this is my body. He was offering to them just like he offers to

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us himself and when that supper is over he points over the horizon of time to God's ultimate victory to that great day, when many will come from east and west and we'll eat with Abraham and Isaac in

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the kingdom of Heaven. But meanwhile he also promises to drink it a new with anyone gathered whenever the church comes to the Lord's table to taste the fruits of the kingdom when the church eats and drinks with

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the risen christ, when the Children of the Kingdom gathered to sing and pray and break bread, anticipating that great moment when the whole human family, hair cutters, restaurant workers, dry cleaners, bankers will

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gather at the banquet table and the mercy of God will cover the earth like the waters cover the sea . What is it? Yeah, it's manner God's provision for us even in this broken time and it

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keeps happening over and over and over again in the name of God creator christ and holy spirit bird.