Cherith Fee Nordling—Year A Proper 21
Anthony: Hey, we’re in the home stretch. We just got one more to go. So, we’ll pick up there. All right, friends, we have one more text. It’s Exodus 17:1–7. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 21 in Ordinary Time, September 27. Cherith, could I hear you read it one more time, please?
Cherith: Absolutely.
From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. 2 The people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” 3 But the people thirsted there for water, and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” 4 So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do for this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” 5 The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile and go. 6 I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7 He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”
Anthony: “What shall I do for these people?” Man, you can almost feel it’s in Moses’s heart.
Cherith: And I’m about to get killed right here, so maybe you can do something.
Anthony: That’s right. Come on, my Lord. So, the people ask, “Is the Lord among us or not?” And I’m curious, how does this question expose maybe the deeper issue beneath their thirst? And what might we learn from their doubt in the Lord’s presence, even after multiple demonstrations of God’s faithfulness?
Cherith: I think the deeper issue is maybe, “I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb,” and that he lets them, he lets Moses strike it. Now, that’s Exodus, so Numbers is like, “No. You just speak to me. We are in conversation with one another. We know each other. You speak to the rock, and the water will come forward. And because I listened, and you don’t need to twist my arm to care. I don’t need to be strong-armed or beaten into caring.”
But Moses struck him twice, right? And that becomes the sign of the end of all things there. But I think at the same time, that striking is exactly the where did we strike him? And go, I think we see a cross, and we see a spear, out of which flows water, right? And from the side of God.
And again, to always keep going, what is it about God, and what is it about ourselves that will not allow us to trust him? And we always seem to use the words, like the New Testament uses the words out of Jesus’ mouth and then into the Epistles. But it talks about, he says, “Believe in me,” right? So, Paul will obviously believe in him. But he doesn’t mean assent mentally to these things and then he will be your Lord and Savior, right? If you just say the secret code.
But it’s to, really, “I believe in my husband. I trust him, because I know him. And when he says something to me, I can trust him.” Now, there are days when I’m like, “Are you sure?” because I’m still wrestling out how I would imagine something happening. Or the way I trusted him, I’m speaking of my husband now, is I might be trusting him to have done something the way I would do it.
And then I realize that actually, why I’m annoyed with him is that he’s done something that isn’t what I expected, because it wasn’t how I would have done it myself. And how often that becomes the way that we simply turn back onto God our projections of our own inadequacies, our own insecurities …
Anthony: Yeah.
Cherith: … our own ways of trying to secure our own lives. Our own perceptions of what is good for us, our own attempts at our own provision, and we’re right back in Genesis 3, right? Which is the narrative of all narratives, which just says, “Can you trust the Lord that what is good for you is his good for you?”
And it’s not even that tree isn’t a good tree. It’s just not for your good. And, because God doesn’t make anything bad, it’s not like he put an evil tree in the middle …
Anthony: That’s right.
Cherith: … of the Garden of Good and Evil. … it’s like, no.
Anthony: That’s right.
Cherith: He made a tree and said, “Will you trust me for what is good for you?” and then the evil one comes along and says, “You cannot trust God,” right? “Don’t trust him. Did he really tell you? Because he is a liar and you cannot trust him. He must be withholding something from you, that you would do better for yourself, and so you should trust yourself more than him.” And it’s the lie that’s at the heart of every single lie that we believe and live all the time, right?
So, here we are again in this scenario, just watching a people who ― God is our water, too, right? Jesus is like …
Anthony: Yes.
Cherith: “I am your living water. It is not that I do not know that the ones who I have made, who are very frail and creaturely, and also are the very temples of the living God, must receive life through water and bread, and that this festive, feasting, bread of heaven, water that turns to wine, like all the things are all the way to the end of the Revelation.”
It’s always a table. It’s always a party. It’s always God taking the very basic needs that we have and making them so much more than we know. They become the very food of heaven, right? And so, I think, when we come to places where we’re like, “you brought us here, but I don’t see a stream flowing,” right? “I don’t see you laying me down in the green pasture. But you promised,” right? “That when the travel brochure said you would take care of me, this is how it looks in my imagination, is there would be a stream here, or there would be a lake here. There would be the provision that I imagine would be for my good.”
Instead of God going, “But I want to be your good. I am your good, and everything that is good comes from me.” That’s what you pray at the beginning of the Eucharist, that, “You only bring to me those things which have come from me.” So, there’s just this no pause for trust, right?
That’s why I was, like, the reluctant priest early on, a year and a half ago. I was like, “Lord, how did I get here? I feel like I’m in the wilderness in front of a rock, and I didn’t necessarily want to be the priest of a church. I just wanted to serve your people where I was.” And he’s like, “No, but I made you a priest, Cherith. And can you just take a deep breath, please, and trust that it actually isn’t just about you, that if I can give you this gift of your priesthood, that then you can set the table of my presence for people who I want to partake of me, who will come to a table that you would lay. So, would you just take a deep breath and watch what I would do?”
And to let him be the one where I just think, oh man, like next week’s texts, Elijah is at Horeb, right? And can’t see God again, all the big displays.
Anthony: Yes. Yes.
Cherith: And somehow there’s going to be like that sound of silence that is so loud and so quiet all at the same time that, that Elijah can hear him, right? That speaks, “Let’s have a conversation here. Why are you here?” And I just realized, oh, this is that incredible thing where we need to stop holding God accountable to not being the provider of our sense of entitlement, or our provision, or hold God accountable to feeling like we feel betrayed by the ways that we thought God would look and the things that we thought God would do in the way that he would do them.
And we do that not just because it’s for our good, but it really is for our good because we will miss out and we will grow malformed and we will hold resentment and distrust because we don’t trust that we are loved beyond description, that God’s joy is to be the Lord for all of creation and to be the gift giver, to be involved, to manifest his character, to invite us into life with him, that all of this, his good is literally to give us himself.
And he just needs us to keep being invited into that invitation all the time, because he knows that we’re just children who break and are partial and partial, but he knows why, and he’s putting to death all of the whys and giving himself in it until we are made whole.
Anthony: Cherith, you’re amazing. I’m so grateful for you. And I mean that from the depths of who I am. I love being at your feet to hear you teach because like you talked about trusting your spouse there are voices in my life that I just trust, that are going to point me where I need to be looking.
And so, thank you for doing that for us here today. You’re just, you’re fantastic.
Cherith: Thanks.
Anthony: And I want to thank the team of people that help make this podcast possible. You know who you are. Elizabeth, Dids, Michelle, you’re great. Love working with you. Thank you for all that you do. And Cherith I didn’t mention this to you before, but it’s our tradition here on Gospel Reverb to end with prayer. I’d be so grateful if you’d share a word of prayer with all of us as we close up.
Cherith: It would be my privilege.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, firstborn over all creation, firstborn from among the dead, Son of our Father in heaven, who’s with our Father, pours out your Spirit, to make God’s children, to make us the people of the living God upon the earth. Make us heirs of an inheritance of eternal glory that is also familiar with and ready and acquainted with grief and co-suffering love. We bless you that you have been the last and the first, that you have been our end from before the beginning, that you who are the first and the last hold everything that we are in between and make it all our present.
So, thank you for being present to us, that these are not stories that we go back and read as past histories, that this is your life with your people, your communion of saints, that we are currently living with them. So, I pray that you would let us be people who live this life with you, same challenges, same questions, but with the power of your Spirit to walk in a way that knows you and sees you and draws your people from all around the world in every way, every day, to yourself through our lives. We ask this in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.