So there they are, in the middle of the desert. Freed from slavery in Egypt, Moses has led them across the Red Sea. And now they are wandering in the desert, in search of a promised land.
In the desert. Get it? The desert, with lotsa sand…sand for as far as the eye can see. And the sun, beating down on them, toasting them on a perpetually hot summer’s day.
Only one thing is missing: water. You know the feeling. On a hot summer’s day when you are parched, so thirsty that you would pay big bucks for a little Dixie cup of cold refreshing water.
So they scream at Moses:
"Why did you ever make us leave Egypt?
Was it just to have us die here of thirst
with our children and our livestock?"
And Moses turns to God, and like an overwhelmed pastor, and asks "What shall I do with this people? A little more and they will stone me!"
And God tells Moses to do something that makes no sense. He tells him to take a stick and bang on a rock. A stick and a rock. And water will flow from the rock like a river. It works. Not because it makes any sense, but because, as God tells Moses, “I will be standing there in front of you on the rock in Horeb.”
Because the real question in the hearts of the people was not “Is there any water?” Their real question was “is there a God who cares?”
We too ask that question, when we bring to this altar all the thirsts of our lives: the pains of our heart, the worries of our souls and the fears which keep us awake at night. We come here with all our thirsts and say to the Church and her Priests, “Why did God allow all this to happen to us?”
And the Priest goes to God, and God tells him to do something that makes no sense. He tells him to take a piece of bread and a cup of wine and to remember the words spoken on the night before he was nailed to a Cross. And like stick to rock, words to bread and wine consecrate and transform into a life-giving stream of grace that saves our lives.
For, in the end, we spend most of our days in pursuit of that final question asked by the thirsty Israelites: "Is the LORD in our midst or not?” And the answer is “yes!”
