Joshua 5:9-12 

There are certain times in life, certain events, that hold great significance for us, because they mark for us a shift, a transition, from one thing to another. One era to another. For example, I remember driving south on I-95 at around 9 pm on August 28, 1976.  Why do I remember that date?  Because that afternoon Dianna and I were married. The reception was over, the car got packed, every square inch of space in that little car – an AMC Hornet – was filled with our stuff, and an overloaded roof rack on top… we were heading to Baltimore, our first stop on the way to Kentucky and the beginning of our new life together. 

I remember what was going through my mind that night!  Not doubt, or second guessing! I knew even back then that I was blessed and fortunate to have found someone like Dianna. But I was really feeling the weight of responsibility. That roof rack was nothing compared to what was sitting on my shoulders! I was trying to process this new reality – that my life from that moment on was going to be inexorably bound together with this woman sitting next to me. Our future was wide open, but neither of us knew where it would take us. And there we were, speeding down that dark highway. (Kind of like that old joke, “We don’t know where we’re going, but we’re making good time!”) 

I felt very much the same way – maybe even more so – after the birth of both of our children. This thought kept running through my mind – “You are responsible for these little lives”. There’s no turning back now! You have to provide for their needs – physically, emotionally, spiritually. There is so much that is required of you! And it is all so terribly important! And I knew full well that this would be a deep and long standing commitment and responsibility. (I’m still realizing that!)  I knew that my life, and Dianna’s life changed on each of those three nights. They were turning point events for both of us. 

There were lots of others, other transition points as well, and I wish we had time to hear you share some stories about the transitions points in your lives – what were some of these moments for you? I Hope you’re thinking about that now. Moments when you just knew that things were going to be different from that point on… 

Well, that’s the thought that kept running through my mind as I first read this passage from Joshua 5 this week.  For some reason, one of the last verses of this Lectionary reading (vs. 12) kind of jumped off the page at me, it seemed so ominous sounding: “No manna appeared on the day they first ate from the crops of the land, and it was never seen again.” …it was never seen again…no more manna! 

Think about the significance of those three words!  The manna had been pretty much the total source of nourishment for the entire Hebrew nation since they were freed from their slavery in Egypt. For over a generation they had been wondering around the Sinai wilderness, and six mornings a week they would get up and there on the ground were these little white flakes that tasted like honey. They could gather up enough for the day, and it was always enough, and it was there again the next day. And on the eve of the Sabbath they could gather twice as much, and it would not go bad. Because God was providing for their needs. 

The word ‘manna’ in Hebrew is a kind of a one word question, meaning something like “What is it?” For over forty years they had gone out each morning and gathered up a pot of ‘what is it’. For all these years God had been literally taking them by the hand and feeding them, protecting them, leading them. But now that was over!  The first day that they ate from the crops of the promised land marked the end of the manna.  It was never seen again. 

I see this as not only a significant event in the history of that generation, but I also see it as one of those life illustrations; an illustration of a basic Spiritual principle. In other words, in this event I think we can see a clear example of how God still works with his people in the process of building mature, complete disciples.  (Which is really God’s ‘goal’ for each of us, don’t you think?.) 

Imagine a father or mother who is teaching their young child how to walk or ride a bicycle. It’s a powerful picture of this principle: what do we do?  We walk alongside them with our hand in theirs, or holding on to their shoulder, or the bike seat… but somewhere along the line comes that moment when we have to let go!  We remove our support, we draw back and we stand and watch, not knowing what will happen. They will either walk, or ride, or they will fall. Or both, more than likely. And we’ll help them get up, and try it again. And eventually, they are doing it on their own. 

Now, we will never come to a point where we no longer need God’s hand of guidance or blessing in our lives. Nevertheless, inevitably a time will come in our development, when God, in a sense, withdraws his hand from us, and allows us to choose our paths.  It’s a risky thing, and it doesn’t always have good results, but it is the common experience of all those saints who have gone on to maturity. 

Richard Foster, in his wonderful book Prayer: Finding the Heart’s True Home – (if you only read one book on prayer in your life, this should be the one!) has one of his first chapters – chapter 2, in fact – titled, “Prayer of the Forsaken”.  This is a hard teaching.  Right in the first paragraph he quotes Jesus from the Cross saying, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” and writes, “We might just as well get used to the idea that, sooner or later, we, too, will know what it means to feel forsaken by God.”[1]   From that day on, there was no more Manna. 

Listen to this:

The old writers spoke of this reality as Deus Absconditus – the God who is hidden. Almost instinctively you understand the experience they were describing, do you not? Have you ever tried to pray and felt nothing, saw nothing, sensed nothing? Has it ever seemed like your prayers did no more than bounce off the ceiling and ricochet around an empty room? Have there been times when you desperately needed some word of assurance, some demonstration of divine presence, and you got nothing? Sometimes it just seems like God is hidden from us. We do everything we know. We pray. We serve. We worship. We live as faithfully as we can. And still there is nothing…nothing! It feels like we are “beating on Heaven’s door with bruised knuckles in the dark,” to use the words of George Buttrick.

   I am sure you understand that when I speak of the absence of God, I am talking about not a true absence but rather a sense of absence. God is always present with us – we know that theologically – but there are times when he withdraws our consciousness of his presence.

   But these theological niceties are of little help to us when we enter the Sahara of the heart.  Here we experience real spiritual desolation.  We feel abandoned by friends, spouse, and God. Every hope evaporates the moment we reach for it. Every dream dies the moment we try to realize it. We question, we doubt, we struggle. Nothing helps. We pray and the words seem empty. We turn to the Bible and find it meaningless. We turn to music and it fails to move us. We seek the fellowship of other Christians and discover only backbiting, selfishness, and egoism.

   The biblical metaphor for these experiences of forsakenness is the desert. It is an apt image, for we do indeed feel dry, barren, parched. With the Psalmist we cry out, “I call all day, my God, but you never answer” (Ps. 22:2). In fact, we begin to wonder if there is a God to answer.”[2]

Foster, in his great wisdom, recognizes this experience as not only something that is familiar ground for most people who journey deeply into the things of God; but he also recognizes it as an important part of that journey. A necessary part, even. In fact, he says that the road to maturity always runs through the desert.

Now, I realize that this is not a commonly heard message in our feel-good, ‘it’s all about me’ society!  But it is such a basic part of growing up that we can hardly not talk about it!  We read the Scriptures and see instance after instance of God in action. This miracle, that amazing thing that God did. It’s a big book.  Lot’s of great stories, and mighty acts in here. But we can easily get the wrong picture in this by forgetting the enormous time frame of the Bible. 

When you look in the context of history, there were a lot more times of utter silence than there were times of God’s obvious action among his people! For a season, God holds the hand of the people of Israel, spoon feeds them, if you will, until they have finally arrived in the Promised Land. Then there is a time when the Covenant is renewed, and God, in effect, says,  “OK then, that’s it. I’ve taken you this far. I’ve given you the Law, I’ve told you how to live. You’ve entered the land. Now it’s time for you to walk in it.” And he lets them go! 

The thing is, this is not the only place where we see this kind of thing in the Scripture!  I’ve already mentioned those long stretches of silence – times when the constant cry of God’s people was “How Long?”  O Lord, how long?  Where are YOU?”   400+ years of slavery in Egypt.  40 years of wondering about in the wilderness.  After hundreds more years, in fulfillment of all those prophecies, Jesus is finally born.  To great fanfare! Angels celebrating! Magi arriving from points East.  Then… 30 more years of silence. 

Then again – John the Baptizer announces the imminent arrival of the Messiah, and sure enough, Jesus appears to begin his public ministry. He calls disciples, teaches them, empowers them, sends them out in mission, listens to their good reports as they return. He feeds them, lives with them … for three years.  It looks like it’s all over when he dies on the Cross, but then he Rises from the dead, and once again appears to them in victory! 

The disciples, surely, are thinking, “This thing is really going to take off now!”  Who can possible stop us?  And just 50 days later, Jesus gathers them together and says, “It’s really better for you that I leave you now.”  And off he goes to heaven.  It’s time for you to walk!  Don’t worry, I’ll be back. And we’re still waiting… 

This is one of those teachings that is kind of ‘everywhere’ in the Scripture, but we don’t always see it because we aren’t looking for it.  In Philippians 2:12, Paul writes these words: 

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. 

Continue to work out your salvation…there is an aspect of responsibility – our responsibility – in the living of our Christian life. God is with us, God will guide us, we have everything we need in Christ. But at the same time, there is a lot of leeway, a lot of latitude that God gives us to choose our direction. At some point we can expect the Manna to stop falling, and we’ll know it is now time to live off the land. And that is part of our growing up in the faith. 

Over the years, I’ve heard people talk about their experiences in various churches, particularly churches that people have left (although occasionally my churches, too), and they often evaluate these churches using food terminology; i.e., spiritual food. And I’ll hear this statement: ‘I left there because I wasn’t being fed’. 

And I think I know what people mean when they say such things, but I think that they may need to find some new terminology. When I hear that, I always have this picture of a person sitting at a banquet table, frustrated, and annoyed, waiting for someone to cut this meat that’s on a plate in front of them, and feed them. Or, worse, I picture birds in the nest with their mouths open!  Somebody please feed me! 

And I look at this Joshua passage… where the Manna was never seen again. Isn’t the Scripture telling us that we bear some responsibility for the nurture of our own souls?  When we are mature we don’t sit and wait to be fed…we go out and find the food that God provides in, perhaps a different way. A way that is often a bit more difficult than the days of the manna – i.e., when everything was easy. 

There is a reason for this, I have no doubt. In my limited wisdom I know I can’t see the whole picture. But some of this is kind of obvious, isn’t it?  Flash back to those scary life changing moments of understanding, like just after that wedding, or the birth of that child; or graduation from college, or when we decide to take (or leave), a new job… or when you decide on a mid-life career change.  Or when we take a faith risk – forgiving someone, tithing, witnessing. We never know how these things are going to turn out – but it is that very uncertainty that makes the joy of success so vivid when it comes, isn’t it? 

That’s why we try to help our children to ‘leave the nest’; no parent is doing a service to their child in the bigger picture, by refusing to grant them appropriate independence.  And so often Jesus used illustrations of human parenting to illuminate our relationship to himself – and we can see, the greatest joy for a follower of Christ is to come to him by our own will. Joy comes – to God and to us, when we choose God in an act of will, and for unselfish purposes. There is no joy when there are no choices, no alternatives. There is no such thing as forced love. The joy is in being obedient when it is our choice, and when there is no obvious reward. 

Yes, God – being omnipotent – could certainly arrange the world so that his disciples never would have to struggle, where we either wouldn’t get sick, or our sicknesses would all be healed immediately), and our relationships would never break down, where we’ll never be hurt, and where everything we do would be blessed and wonderful and successful.  Yes, God could arrange life like that, and I would imagine that if he did, the churches would be pretty full every week. 

But real love, reliance on God, is best discovered in the tough times, isn’t it?  And the value of grace is made apparent to us in the context of our own sin – not that sin is good, but if we were incapable of disobedience, we would never understand the magnificence of Grace, of God’s forgiveness that covers all our sin. (That’s something that the angels don’t understand, but we do!) 

And so, the moments will come when the Manna stops falling. That may mean different things for each of us. But the purpose in it is the same for all of us: God wants us to walk. To him. For the joy among the angels of God is when we make the right choices, when we keep walking in the face of strong obstacles; and in the midst of a myriad of challenges we keep walking. The joy is continuing to walk in faith and know that God will someday welcome us home saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant.” 

Real joy, deep joy, not simply surface level happiness, which comes and goes, but foundational joy is to be people who continue to do the things that God has commanded, who continue to show love and grace, forgiveness… who continue to invest our earthly treasures in heavenly accounts, who continue to worship, and walk faithfully even when the world is crashing down around us; even when that walk is through a dry, barren desert. 

The ancient prophet Habakkuk understood this. At the end of his little book, he wrote this amazing statement of faithfulness (3: 17 – 18): 

Even though the fig trees have no blossoms, and there are no grapes on the vines; even though the olive crop fails, and the fields lie empty and barren; even though the flocks die in the fields, and the cattle barns are empty, yet I will rejoice in the Lord! I will be joyful in the God of my salvation! 

May we continue, as children of God, to walk humbly and faithfully, and obediently, Manna or no Manna.