A Fourth Church Sermon by Joanna M. Adams

September 22, 2002 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

The Complaint Department

Joanna M. Adams
Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 105:37–45
Philippians 4:10–14
Exodus 16:2–15

“The Lord spoke to Moses and said,
‘I have heard the complaining of the Israelites.’”

Exodus 16:11–12 (NRSV)

Since we do not live by bread alone, O God, but by every word that comes from you, we pray that you would make us hungry for heavenly food, that we may be nourished in the ways of eternal life, through Jesus Christ, the bread of heaven. Amen.

I like to imagine that there is a real complaint department somewhere. Perhaps I will find it someday in the back of the third floor of a department store or in the front of an airport terminal. There will be a man sitting behind a desk. There will be no line in front of him, and over his head will be a sign that reads, “Tell me what your problem is, and I will solve it.” He will be deeply concerned with my predicament, and even as I tell him all about it, he will not call attention to the fact that complaining, even if a person has every right to complain, is not a particularly attractive state of being. I will tell him about how I called the telephone number I had been given to get my coffee pot fixed or my plane ticket changed, how the call was answered by an automated voice system, how I had pushed seventeen different numbers, each followed by the pound sign, how I was lost in “telephone wilderness” and had to spend thirty minutes listening to Barry Manilow sing “I Write the Songs.” He will be sorry that I had to do that, and he will let me know that whatever my problem is, his world will not be right until my world has been set right again.

Problems and complaints—the Bible knows a great deal about these things. It understands that life is full of setbacks and that people become fearful and frustrated. In the Bible, people often complain, though not always for legitimate reasons. They murmur; they whine. Between the exodus from Egypt and the arrival in the promised land of Canaan, the Hebrew people wandered for a long time. A consistent theme of that journey was lament and complaint.

Today’s Old Testament lesson picks up the story early. It is only the fifteenth day of the second month after the people’s liberation from the hands of their oppressors back in Egypt. Only forty-five days into the trip, with thirty-nine years to go, they have already thrown two pity parties and are on the verge of another one. The first time, it was Pharaoh’s army that put fear into their souls, and they blamed Moses. “Why have you done this to us? We would have been better off eating bread back in shackles in Egypt; here we are going to die in this God-forsaken place.” Moses had patiently said, “Be not afraid. Stand firm, and you will see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today.” So it was that the people passed safely through the bed of the Red Sea and their pursuers were vanquished, but it wasn’t three days later, they were grumbling again. The problem this time was the bitterness of their drinking water. Once more Moses interceded on their behalf before the Lord, and once more the Lord showed mercy. Moses was directed by the Lord to pick up a piece of wood and throw the wood into the water in order to turn the water sweet.

I wonder if you saw the cartoon in last week’s New Yorker. Five very glum-faced people are sitting around a conference room table in an office building. One says to the others, “Before each of you, you will find a bitter pill and a glass of water.”

The Hebrew people were finding freedom to be a bitter pill. If they were not dealing with one set of worries, they were dealing with another. Before long, food, or the lack thereof, became the problem that consumed them. I don’t know about you, but these days I am having a hard time selecting which problem I ought to be worrying about—the economy, the personal portfolio, the church budget, the threat of war, the intractability of human suffering. Wearily, Moses and Moses’ brother Aaron listened to the people lament about their new problem. “If only we had died back in the land of Egypt, we at least would have had bread. You brought us out into the wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

Here is a question. Were the Hebrews wrong to whine? They had problems, didn’t they? The water was bitter. The horses and the chariots of the Pharaoh had been breathing down their necks. There was no bread in sight. This was a tough trip, and it was hard for them to imagine that God intended to be with them all the way and whatever peril they faced, God would give them what they needed to endure it.

I sometimes watch the Travel Channel. You see a lot of people who are relaxed on the Travel Channel. No one seems to be worried that his or her suitcase had been sent to Peoria instead of Acapulco. They sit beside the pool, looking as if they had enjoyed a sauna and a massage earlier in the day. A smiling waiter in a white coat is leaning over to hand them a frosty drink with a little pink umbrella in it. I like to think that all the trips I take will be like that. I like to think that the journey of the rest of my life will be something like that, but life is not the Travel Channel. There are terrible and challenging problems to deal with and real fears to be faced. As someone wise has said, “In this business called human life, it’s hard to get twenty-four smooth hours in a row.”

It seems as if the Israelites really had two choices. These are exactly the choices we face: we can either trust God, or we can give up on God.

Counselors and psychologists like to talk about the difference between the presenting problem and the underlying problem. A couple comes in for therapy. He says, “She’s always nagging me about turning the television off.” She says, “He never talks to me anymore.” The underlying problem: “Do I still make a difference to you? Do you love me now?” Beneath the Hebrews’ presenting problems of food and water were the deeper issues, the most important of which was the question of the constancy of God’s love. “In the midst of this frightening mess, are you still there? Do you intend to care for us through thick and thin?” The journey had asked a lot more of the Hebrew people than they had ever imagined would be asked of them.

I remember the movie Private Benjamin and the conversation between Goldie Hawn’s character and her drill sergeant a few weeks after boot camp had begun. Private Benjamin sidles up to the sergeant, looks at her with her winsome smile, and says, “Excuse me, but I am afraid there has been some mistake. I signed up for the other Army, the one with the condominiums and the free trips to exotic places.” From that moment on, of course, the drill sergeant sees to it that misery is Private Benjamin’s middle name.

What a striking contrast to the story the Bible tells. When the people say to God, “You have brought us to the wrong place,” God responds not with anger or with punishment, but with mercy. In answer to their complaints, he gives them genuine relief for their misery. The Lord says to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven, and I am going to do it day after day, so that the people will know that I am the Lord their God.” Even when the manna fell from heaven, the people were still perplexed. When they saw it, they had to ask Moses, “What is this?” He told them what it was: “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.”

Several times this week I found myself returning to the prayer of confession that was in our order of service last Sunday. There was a line in that prayer that I have said dozens of times, I know, but I really said it for the first time last week. “Holy and merciful God, you alone know how often I have sinned in forgetting your love.” What an idea, that we sin when we forget the love of God. Indeed, this is perhaps the largest and widest doorway to sin, because when we forget God’s love, we are likely to fall into pessimism, hopelessness, even despair. I do know that despair is the root of every sin, because once you decide that God doesn’t care, then you begin to wonder, “Why should I care? Why should I care about myself or about anyone else, or about the city in which I live, or about the world that is my home?” Once you decide God doesn’t care, then the chariots and the horses of despair descend, and you are done for.

“How often I have sinned in forgetting your love.” To remember to look for signs of God’s love in even the most compromised situations—this is the secret to life. This is the way to counter the human tendency to whine, complain, and to blame. Paul expressed it magnificently when he was in a prison cell facing trial, and perhaps death, as he wrote to his friends in Philippi, “I have learned the secret of being content in every circumstance.” Then he shared the fantastic discovery he had made in his prison cell. When nothing was going right for him, he wrote this glad word: “I have discovered I can do all things through him who strengthens me.”

I want to sound like the Apostle Paul and not Dr. Phil this morning, but this is a word for you: “You can do all things through him who strengthens you.” God will give you what you need. If a negative, worried-about-yourself attitude is closing you in, I want to say that today would be a very good day to get over it. God is good, and you would be wise to remember it.

One of my mentors is a man named Fred Craddock, a professor and a preacher of some renown. He describes a moment in his boyhood when his life genuinely changed. He was ill with malaria and was confined to his home for a long time. He had to take bitter quinine pills and was in quarantine. No one could come in to see him, and he could not go out to play with the other kids in the yard. Dr. Craddock writes, “I was whining too much one day, and my father came into my room. He told me two things: first, there is no way to modulate the human voice to make a whine acceptable. Second, even if you spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair or in a bed, it would still be a full life and a good life” (The Cherry Log Sermons, Louisville: John Knox Press, 2001, p. 65).

At the close of today’s service, we are going to sing one of the church’s greatest hymns, “Now Thank We All Our God.” It was written by a German pastor named Martin Rinkart during the mid-seventeenth-century in the midst of the Thirty Years’ War. In one year, more than 4000 people in his village died either from war or famine or from plague. Pastor Rinkart often conducted forty or fifty funerals in one day. All the while, he was writing hymns. He wrote a total of sixty-six hymns, each of them celebrating the bounteous goodness of God.

Nobody is saying you shouldn’t complain now and then. It gets frustration off your chest and sadness out of your heart. But faith and trust are better. Praise and thanks are better. Never forget to give thanks to God, who has not only given us bread to eat, but also God’s own self in Jesus Christ, that we might be healed, forgiven, liberated, and filled with light.

Thanks be to God from whom all blessings flow.