First Presbyterian Church of Watertown

Exodus 16

“And God Heard Their Grumbling”

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

September 21, 2008

There is a place where all travel plans come to die. To the uninitiated it looks like any other airline desk, but woe to you when you hear the words, “you need to go to the transfer desk.” With these words departure times, reservations, carefully crafted pick-ups have just been dashed against the stones.

Officially the transfer desk in Nairobi is run by Kenya Airways. But Kenya Airways is just a front for Air France, for KLM, and a host of other airlines from around the globe. The actual desk has five stations. It is tucked into a carved out corner on the busiest stretch of the airport. The design of the desk is to accommodate around twenty people. And there are moments where twenty lucky people are cued up. They might not think they are lucky, but if you are standing in line of twenty that means you’re grounded, diverted, overbooked, or otherwise not happening flight has yet to be blended with ten others.

Part of the transfer desk chaos is language. Once the three or four hundred frustrated fliers actually get in line the cacophony begins. Arabic, Hindi, French, Dutch, German, English, Swahili (and these are just the ones I can recognize by ear) are all being spoken with a tone reflecting their rising ire. (That’s a fancy way of saying the people who aren’t shouting because they are angry are shouting because they won’t be heard otherwise.)

I am not sure what God intended with this part of our travels this summer; perhaps it was a test, a lesson, a moment of discovery. But whatever it was, it felt like we batted 0 for 2 in Nairobi. Each time we stepped off a plane, filled with the excitement of arriving in Africa or bracing for the mixed feelings of leaving, each time we heard the words, “you need to go to the transfer desk.”

To get this much information took maybe twenty minutes and some hazing at the help desk. (Spending many, many hours in the Nairobi Airport has tempted me to suggest other titles than “help desk” should be placed above the station.) At least though we knew where to go. Walking down the single, curving hallway of the airport that is ever jammed with travelers in lines, lying on the floor, or otherwise just standing where they should be walking, we encountered the transfer desk in all its glory.

The line was bulging with hundreds of travelers. Their wives and children where strewn everywhere so you had to snake through the legs of exhausted mothers and sleeping children. As I stood and looked over the madness I turned around to find Kathy and the boys had already joined the stranded on the floor. Soon I could see three lines in the one. The first line was composed of people who obey, who get in line and wait in line; then there were people who were desperate or just unwilling to wait in such a line who begged the people at the front to let them form an express line. There was about twenty of these people making this request at all times. And then there were the people who formed a kind of line within a line, people who just tried to talk to anyone so they could figure out what this all meant. Theirs was a hard day.

When I reached the head of the line (again I am wondering what God is thinking here) a riot brakes out. One of the flights to India was overbooked and some people were not taking this as a minor slip up. “Why did you sell me a ticket if there is no seat?” This question became a rally cry that transformed weary travelers into a ferocious lot. They started to surge at the desk. I watched in awe as the woman behind the transfer desk with her crisp red uniform and matching hat didn’t blink, didn’t respond, didn’t budge. Obviously this wasn’t her first crisis . . . of the day.

I handled all of this with a posture of patience and prayer. We were heading into a sabbatical of rest and mission; we were on a mission; we were commissioned and blessed and despite the problems all was well. That was my response the first time; that was my response on our way to Malawi. On the way back, even though we were just as prayed over, just as blessed by the church in Mchengatuba all was not well. In fact, it was just not cool.

The airplane, it was not working, and another was being flown in from France, but it wouldn’t arrive until tomorrow morning. I was told a hotel would be accommodated for us, meals, taxis, but no plane. When I heard these words what I actually heard is that a problem has arisen that will make a mess out of your plans unless you demand, grumble, get angry with someone and get seats on another plane. And so for four hours I fought, I stood in line; I demanded, I argued and was less than happy to be me.

Two insights came from these hours of constant wrangling. The first is that if you really try to fight the transfer desk at Nairobi, if you really think that is going to work, it’s your first time. The second was a question: why was it cool coming to Nairobi, but not going? What had changed, what was making this such a different moment than the one ten weeks ago?

Being shuttled to the Intercontinental Hotel with a bus load of fellow travels whose faces belied the experience of having their plans dashed by the Nairobi transfer desk, the motion of the bus started to provide an answer: you are tourist now, you were a pilgrim then.

Pilgrimage is not a first thought for Protestants. Given our belief that what is holy is only in the human soul, the idea that any place or building or city would contain holiness is ever a stumbling block for us. It has taken many miles trod on ancient pilgrim paths to start to see this. The first glimpse I saw of this was making my way from Edinburgh to London by train and reading John Knox’s eyewitness account of all the protestant martyrs. Walking Westminster Abbey with his words echoing in my head it changed the ground, it made the stones worth something; they contained a power- even in the power was just destruction.

I saw this happen in Israel when I recognized it wasn’t that the site was necessarily authentic or exact, but that I was part of a throng that was authentic and had made its way to pray here, to be one faith here. And somehow this act of devotion, in this particular place, brought a moment of salvation; a moment where I knew I was following God and God was in the midst of our following. It isn’t just that I am trying to make it to a place, to see something, to be something; it is that God is in the midst trying, hoping, becoming with us.

This, to me, is the great message of the manna; God was close enough, near enough to hear the grumblings. The Exodus, this wasn’t a well worked out plan, a fait accompli, a series of motions leading to a predetermined end; the Exodus was a wild unfolding. From its conception, the Exodus was supposed to be a simple pilgrimage. Moses, at first, only asked that the people could travel to Mt. Sinai to pray and they would come back. Along the way, in the working out, it became something so much more; it became a new world and new life. But the radical image of our passage is that along the way God was in their midst and God was working things out along the way; this path was a kind of emerging for the Israelites.

Taking tens of thousands of people out into the desert without food or water is not a sign you have worked out all the possible problems. It’s a clear sign the Nairobi transfer desk has precedence. I am not trying to say God is without perfection, or that God is in charge, or that the course of life from sin to salvation is just whatever happens. But I have come to believe that the working out of that salvation is not something preset or determined. If God wants to save us, and he does, it ever has to be in the fragments of freedom and the limits of our own lives. And to bring salvation to the world, well, that is something altogether different yet again. That is to say it is rather open-ended.

Perhaps one of the most shocking parts of the summer was the moment Kathy and I realized we were not on a trip anymore. We were living, staying, grounded, and there was no end in sight. Pilgrimage of service, which is what I have begun to see short-term mission to be, is great when it’s three weeks. Ten weeks, well, that was different. The goals, the directions, the stuff we needed were all different. What you are able to endure, or abide, for three weeks is altogether different when you realize how far you are from home.

From this moment of confusion came the question or illusive revelation that God was just as curious as we were. I didn’t feel that God was patiently waiting for me to “get it.” I felt like God was just as intrigued about what would come of all of this as we were. Ten weeks in Mchengatuba we were blessed and cursed to see to how fragmented and just about out of control salvation can be. This wasn’t a well thought out plan, Jesus dying for our salvation. It is the truth; it is the way; he is the way unto the Father, but how that was going to work, unfold wasn’t quite clear to Paul and Peter and the early church and it was just as unclear in Mchengatuba and my heart.

Where will this path lead? The Israelites, having crossed the Red Sea, wanted to turn back, wanted to die as slaves rather than see themselves as wayfarers. They were tourists. They were not yet pilgrims. This is the big message of our passage today and all the passages that lead up to Mt. Sinai. They were following, but they were grumbling; they were walking, but they upset that the tour bus had a break down; they were going unto something amazing with a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night, but there weren’t enough towels in the room or the buffet line was too long. They were tourists, not pilgrims.

At the transfer desk coming home with Paris looming in the distance I put aside my pilgrim garb and donned the attire of a tourist. Paris to me was not Mecca nor Medina, but a place of really good food and the hope that after ten weeks I could sit on a comfortable couch or walk on side walks or just each cheese that wasn’t a kind of vinegary cheddar. I was the Israelite saying, O that I could just die beside the fleshpots and the bread of Egypt. Only it was the Champs Elise and a good Boudreaux that was calling to me. But they were calling and I was a tourist. Riding the bus to the hotel where I could have spent four hours resting rather than rumbling from one grumble to the next I heard a voice say, don’t be a tourist anymore.

I wish I knew what this meant. I wish it were just a set of steps, a predetermined path that was clear, or even just a code. But while I am not sure what it means to be a tourist no more, I know it is so much more than these things. Sometimes I wonder why we exchange the path of discipleship that leads us to service and devotion for a kind of ten-day-tour life. That is what the Israelites wanted when they grumbled. They wanted more than bread; they wanted the comfort and the ease of the known to be restored. They wanted an end in sight. They wanted to know when they could go home.

Driving around Malawi for ten weeks I never had the gift of the known. There was never a moment where driving a car was just what it was. Near the end I did begin to learn what to expect: don’t ever blink because anything can happen. Arsenal Street is getting busy, but it is not filled with goats and chickens, children playing and bicycles swerving into the road at any moment. Three weeks into our summer I wanted to just drive down Arsenal Street and watch the soldiers drive too fast and the folks from Croghan try to make a left hand turn in a traffic lane. I wanted to think there was an end.

But it wasn’t to be. The pilgrim path was not heading there. Again and again as we faced these moments which culminated with me demanding to know why the plane to Paris had technical difficulties as if my knowing would somehow change the status of the aircraft. Out of this came a voice that said, don’t be tourist, be a pilgrim.

After they left the cruel weight of the Pharaohs the Israelites were led into the desert by Moses and Aaron. The destination was Mt. Sinai so they could worship. Along the way the people grumbled and God heard them. It wasn’t a preset series of plans executed to perfection. It was chaos and God was in the midst listening and hoping. God was in the midst of the people watching and wondering.

On the bus to the Intercontinental I heard a voice say don’t be a tourist, be a pilgrim. Ever since I have asked, prayed and wondered what does that mean. At no point though have I felt God was playing guess what I am thinking. Each time I pause and say tell me what that means, show me, I see a smile, a shrug of the shoulders a turn of the palms that says, I don’t, but I am dying to find out. I want to see what happens to you.

The Israelites grumbled and God listened. Along the way people who were tourists became pilgrims and salvation came. What if God has to begin again with salvation as we do? What if it is ever a question of each of us becoming a pilgrim? To this I get the same answer, “I don’t know, but I am dying to find out.” Amen.