Exodus 16:1-12 "The Good Old Days"

         Be honest now!  Have you not sometimes wished for the good old days?  Have you not at some point yearned for a time in the past when you believed life was better than it is now?  A simpler time perhaps?  Or maybe it would be a happier time.  And where would you go to find those good old days?

         Perhaps you would go back to high school.  I know I personally would never do that, but those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer hold a certain appeal for me.  Ah, for the years of the Beach Boys, the Beatles, and the Drifters!

         Or perhaps instead of sitting in a church with less than 50 people on a Sunday morning, you would return to the days of yesteryear when every pew was filled because going to church was just what everyone did.  Would you return to the good old days when all the hymns were the ones you knew – and your parents knew – and your grandparents before them, and when the Sunday School was bursting at the seams with neatly dressed and always well-behaved children?

        Perhaps you would go back to the first days of your marriage when you felt so loved each and every day – or when your children were little and conformed to all the benchmarks Dr. Spock had laid out for growing boys and girls – or when your son had not yet brought his boyfriend home for dinner - or your daughter had not yet run away to California on the back of that guy’s motorcycle.

         Perhaps you remember when you never locked your doors at night, when people chatted with their neighbors on the front porch on warm springtime evenings, when Muslims were not around every corner, and African-Americans – from our culture’s perspective, that is - knew their place. 

         Perhaps you remember when air travel a delight and not a nightmare, and when youth sports were not played on Sunday, in fact, no stores were even open on Sunday.

         Ah, yes – the good old days:  The days of Burma Shave signs along the side of the road, Brill Cream (“a little dab will do ya”), rickety wooden roller coasters, the Mickey Mouse Club, and cheap gas. 

         Did you know there is a magazine entitled “Good Old Days”?  Its focus is – not surprisingly – nostalgia.  The magazine tagline is this:  “Remembering the old times through the stories of our readers.” The summary goes on to say that the magazine offers an opportunity to “step back in time with those charming stories about the good old days.”

         But were those good old days really that good?  Or do they just seem that way because, with hindsight, the past is so predictable?  We know how to navigate its waters.  We know where the trouble spots are. 

         Were those good old days really that good?  Or do they just seem that way because the present is so awfully complicated and the future so fearsome and outside of our control?

         The former Hebrew slaves that we just read about certainly felt that the past was worth hanging on to.  Only two months into their newly found freedom, they were thinking that maybe Egypt was not so bad a place to live after all. 

         You see, life had not been easy and predictable since they had followed Moses safely across the Red Sea and watched the demise of the less fortunate Egyptians: their chariots destroyed, splinters of wood tossed up recklessly by the waves, soldiers and horses alike screaming for mercy as the water closed in around them. 

         They were eerily alone now and had found no comfort in the vastness of the wilderness that stretched endlessly in all directions. This little band of early Israelites had walked many miles in uncharted territory.  The unleavened bread they had fled with was nearly gone.  They had already suffered one crisis at Marah where the water they had expected to find had turned bitter.  It was only because Moses threw a stick into the pool at God/Yahweh’s direction that it became fit to drink.

         Barely any food, no dependable source of hydration, hot desert sun, endless sweat, tired feet, blisters, sand everywhere, not a palm tree in sight:  No wonder Egypt looked so good.  What they would not give for the sight of the rich green of the Fertile Crescent and the Nile River – clear and cool – overflowing its banks!

         And it was at that moment, at the confluence of all the negativity about the present and the nostalgic visions of the past, when the Israelites went on strike, so to speak.  They sat down, refused to take another step, and complained bitterly to Moses and his sidekick Aaron.  “Why didn’t God let us die in comfort in Egypt where we had lamb stew and all the bread we could eat? You’ve brought us out into this wilderness to starve us to death, the whole company of Israel!”

         The grass is always greener on the other side – or so the saying goes.  The Israelites seem to have forgotten the backbreaking labor, the spontaneous floggings, and the brutality of Pharaoh.  They failed to remember the days when there was no bread, no lamb stew - no food at all.  They had repressed what happened when they failed to make their daily quota of bricks, when they were too sick to work, and when the slave master took out his personal frustrations on them.  And, come on, they never got to frolic on the Fertile Crescent or bathe in the cool waters of the Nile – ever.

         But now they felt so hungry, so thirsty, so dirty, and so alone.  That was the worst part – being in the wilderness, in the desert, and feeling so doggone alone: That - and knowing that they could not return to Egypt.  Returning to the way life used to be, to the good old days, was not an option if, for no other reason, than they were certain that the Red Sea would not part for them quite so readily a second time. 

        Of course, we know that this little band of ancient Israelites was not alone.  They had never been alone.  Yahweh/God was always just ahead of them, or just behind them, or sometimes right next to them.  God never forgot them.  Not even all their complaining and rebelling and threatening to turn around and rediscover their past once again, not even their clear desire to return to their chrysalis, to revert to their cocoon of safety and predictability could send their God away. 

         God/Yahweh always turned up – and often when the Israelites were at their worst. This time, in the passage we just read, God told them to quit their belly-aching and then provided that mystery food - those flaky little bits of bread-like substance that the Israelites called manna, which in Hebrew means, loosely translated, “What the heck is this?”  God also provided flocks of quail for them to snare and roast over an open fire as needed. 

         God is so good! Isn’t that what these verses are illustrating for us?  However, believing that (as good church-going folk like us are led to believe we should) raises a series of difficult questions. 

         If God is so good, then why do we try to reclaim the good old days?  Why are we so tempted to stay put and not move forward into the future?  Why do we fail to heed the words of Thomas Wolfe in his book, You Can’t Go Home Again:  “Make your mistakes, take your chances, look silly, but keep on going. Don’t freeze up.”  If God is so good, then why is the future – and sometimes even the present – so daunting? 

         There are at least three reasons I have come up with.  First, we tend to have a narrow and unrealistic view of the past.  As a Baptist blogger I read this week noted, “I can’t help but chuckle when I hear the Israelites talk about their wonderful past. They act like they grilled steaks every night, complete with Bojangles’ biscuits and sweet tea and a slice of chocolate pie for desert. They act like their life in Egypt was one of plenty, like it was such a great joy.

         (But what about these other instances we read about in the Biblical Book of Exodus?  After all,) the Israelites suffered through 400 years of slavery. For a time they grieved as they saw their babies thrown into the Nile River. They made bricks without straw. They suffered under their harsh taskmasters. Yet, when they think about it now, it was all so wonderful. I guess the grass is greener even on the other side of the Red Sea.”

         And so it is for us.  Our blogger goes on to say, “When we face hardship in the present, we tend to pine for the past. And in our pining, we tend to overemphasize the goodness of by-gone days and minimize the hardships.” 

         Think about it.  Those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer have led to unsightly skin cancer treatments.  Those well-behaved children in our Sunday Schools were also the ones who went under their desks during air raid drills and whose parents stockpiled canned goods in the basement, so frightened were they at the specter of nuclear war.  Our churches were filled but did not welcome anyone other than white heterosexuals – even if that meant excluding our very own son and his boyfriend. 

         Face it.  The good old days were not all good.  As our blogger notes, “life has always been a mix of hardship and blessing, of pain and pleasure.”  Times of challenge often distort our view of the past.

         Second, we tend to have an unrealistic perspective on the present.  The Israelites perceived themselves as being completely alone, subject only to the whims of the wilderness.  However, as our Baptist blogger suggests,  “the Israelites had God.

They had (God’s) presence with them in the pillar of cloud and fire and (God) had provided for them repeatedly…(And so) just as the past is never quite so good as we imagine it to be, the present is never quite so bad as we imagine it to be.”

         We too have God.  Perhaps then we should look for the signs of abundance that are all around us here and now – children growing up with open minds and hearts, people accepted for who they are, men and women coming to church because they actually have chosen to be here growing a community that is the Body of Christ. 

         Perhaps we need to trust that God will provide for our needs just as God provided for those of the ancient Israelites.  Perhaps we need to intentionally search out all the blessings that today can offer – all the ways that God has provided for us.

         Third, we tend to have little hope for the future.  As our Baptist blogger writes, “The people of Israel are in such despair that they wished they would have died in Egypt. They are saying that they would rather have stayed slaves and died after a life of slavery than to see the hand of God at work in their lives. The work of God was too painful. The way was too hard. They weren’t interested. Just a few weeks out of Egypt they are ready to pack it in and give up.”

         Sometimes it is hard to embrace the future.  It is so easy to look back at what we had rather than forward to the possibilities of what might be. 

         And yet, the God of Israel, our God, is not a God of the past.  Our God is the God of the future, the God of new possibilities, of new ways to relate to one another and to the world.  Our God seeks life and transformation over death and retrenchment.  And let’s not limit our God by thinking that God will provide for us now and in the future in the same way God has provided in the past!  Times change.  We change.  Our needs change. 

         The Israelites could not return to Egypt.  The butterfly cannot return to the chrysalis.  We cannot live in stagnation.  Like the Israelites, like the butterfly, we are called to new lives and new heights.  There are no good old days.  There is only the good new future.  We are called to let go of the past and look to that future, trusting in our God who is with us – caring for us, loving us – always.  

         And so – as we prepare to leave these sheltering walls for whatever lies ahead this week, may God bless us with minds and hearts open to new perspectives – able to see all that is provided to us each day in new and different ways. May God help us to let go of the past, so that the Spirit might lead us into a future where, though our faith may be tested, in the end, we will flourish.  And may God bless the butterfly within each one of us, emerging from its chrysalis and poised for flight.