Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: Numbers 11:4-9, 16-23
October 24, 2004
Truth be told, I’d go back to Egypt in a heartbeat. Where I’ve been twice, dragging tourists behind me. I’ve descended into the bowels of the pyramids, claustrophobic though I am, singing in the darkened dungeon of that inner sanctum:
Go down, Moses,
Way down in Egypt land.
Tell old Pharaoh,
Let my people go.
I’ve kicked the stones of history in Luxor, traversing the Valley of the Kings, and entering the tomb which holds (so I am told) the remains of King Tut. I have also seen the Sphinx, bargained in German to purchase a cartouche from an Egyptian, danced with my wife in the rooftop lounge of the Ramses Hilton (appropriately enough, to the tune of “As Time Goes By”), and pooled my shekels with Dave Tenniswood to hire some guy with a boat to take us and our wives on our own private cruise on the Nile. I have bought perfume from the fragrance sellers and a rug from the silk weavers. And next to London, I find Cairo the most fascinating city in the world.
But I went to Egypt with money, authority, legitimacy (thanks to my passport) and, given that I was leading a tour that was decidedly churchy, I suppose I went with divinity. I was not a deportee, a starving immigrant or a peon forced into brick making as a slave laborer. Nor was I a fourth generation child of Abraham.
Biblical history (which, in this early period, is as anecdotal as it is analytical) recalls the Jewish saga. Which included a time in Egypt that was horrific. So much so, that the cries of the people reached God’s ears and melted God’s heart. So God said to Moses (who had married well and was farming on “easy street”): “Get ’em outta there.”
Which Moses did, reluctantly but heroically….with a little bit of creative oceanography lending a hand. One individual involved in the Red Sea crossing was overheard to complain about the ground being damper than expected. To which Moses is alleged to have said: “I hear you, friend. But all things considered, it strikes me as a rather petty complaint to raise at a time like this.”
The exit from Egypt has a name. It’s called “The Exodus.” And it has a timetable. It’s numbered “forty years.” Lots of things are numbered “forty” in the Bible. The Bible is in love with certain numbers, “forty” being one of them.
· Forty years in the wilderness for the Jews.
· Forty days in the wilderness for Jesus.
· Forty days (and forty nights) for the waters of the flood.
· Forty days between the resurrection and the ascension.
· Forty days for Moses on Mt. Sinai.
· Forty days for the reign of great Jewish kings (Saul, David, Solomon and Joash).
· Forty years for cyclical periods of peace and oppression in the book of Judges.
What do we make of this? Not much, really. God neither initiates nor is subject to laws of numerology. The number “forty” (whether applied to days or years) is the Bible’s way of saying “a long time”….or a long enough time for something (or someone) to grow into maturity.
Just this past week, I found myself wondering whether our comfort level with the forty-hour work week or the forty-year career might have some connection with the biblical status accorded the number “forty.” But if anybody ever pondered that question before, their thoughts never reached the internet. Although I did find a therapist who argued that six-week programs (forty days plus) are far more effective in the treatment of drug and alcohol abuse than 28-day programs….the latter being defined, not by treatment facilities so much as insurance companies. And, thanks to the Web, I also ran into the film critic that said that “forties” are shorthand (in rap videos) for forty-ounce bottles of malt liquor….which, themselves, represent the attraction of the gangster subculture and the rejection (by black youth) of law and religion. Which is why rap icons like Dr. Dre, Ice Cube and Snoop Doggy Dogg (now there’s a name) are frequently seen in commercials for malt liquor in forty-ounce bottles.
Not that the Jews had malt liquor in the wilderness. Water from the rock, yes. Malt liquor, no. Though they did have manna….which, depending upon where you turn in the Torah, was either a miraculous product or a natural product. As food, manna sufficed. But it wasn’t very tasty. What it was, was daily….which was what was both good about it and bad about it (if you know what I mean). You could count on it. But you got tired of it.
“Give us this day our daily bread,” we pray. But along about the third day, I wouldn’t mind a little cake….or corned beef….or even kohlrabi. At every college I visit, kids complain about the food. Which, when I check it out, is nutritious, tasty and plentiful. But they hate it. So whassup with it? Or with them? Are they stupid? No. Spoiled? Maybe. But what gets to them is the repetitive cycle with which it is set before them. What they hate is “not this,” but “not this again.”
Getting back to our little story from the book of Numbers (and I’ll admit I am taking an extraordinarily long time to set this up for you), the children of Abraham are in route from Egypt to the Promised Land….although the promise is getting flatter by the hour. As they near the forties (years, not bottles), they are not happy. I love John Gray’s understated description of them, when he writes:
The traditions of the Torah stress thatIsrael….being led by God to a homeland…. was, by no means, a cooperative people.
Which is how some of my colleagues describe their churches (as being, by no means, a cooperative people). In this case, however, the issue was food. The people began by murmuring among themselves. Beware the murmuring, Jeff. When they start murmuring, tell Bridget to start packing. Then murmuring became weeping. But angry weeping….coupled with that other form of complaining that begins with the letter “b” and ends with “ing,” that I probably shouldn’t say here.
“Let us tell you what we do not have,” they said to Moses. “We do not have meat. Neither do we have fish, leeks, melons, onions and cucumbers. But especially….hear this, Moses, and hear it good….we do not have garlic.” Maybe they thought they were headed for Italy. “And do you want to know where we last had these things? In Egypt, that’s where we last had them. Let’s go back there. Sure, we were slaves there. But at least we were slaves with bouillabaisse.”
So Moses approached God and said (in effect): “Listen to ’em. Then tell me what to do with ’em. They aren’t my children. I didn’t conceive ’em. I didn’t birth ’em. I didn’t suckle’ em. I just went and got ’em. Because you told me to. Now I can’t control ’em. So, for my sake, assume responsibility for ’em.”
To which God said (in effect): “Single out seventy from among them. Call them the Administrative Board. I’ll soften their hearts so they will stand with you against the complainers. It won’t shut everybody up. But you will have a bunch of guys with whom to go have a beer (oops, no beer) and play ‘Ain’t It Awful.’”
Then God continued: “What will shut everybody up is if I stuff their mouths with meat. Quail meat, to be exact. When I am done, you’ll be knee deep in quail meat. There will be plenty for everybody. And they will eat quail, not for one day….not two days….not five, ten or even twenty days. They’ll eat a month’s worth of quail until they’re full of it….so full of it that it will come back up the same way it went down.” Which isn’t very pretty. But which is what happened. And before the story ends, several are dead. And one imagines the remainder to be saying: “In the future, we’d better be careful what we ask for.”
I’ve yet to meet a church that didn’t have a Back To Egypt Committee. When I was in Atlanta with my friends who pastor large-membership churches, Marvin Vose said (with no small amount of pain in his voice): “This was the year the Back to Egypt group formed in the choir.” Which it sometimes does. When you bring all those people together for two hours on Wednesday and another hour on Sunday, not all of the music they make is beautiful.
I suppose Moses could have handed his committee that wonderful book entitled You Can’t Go Home Again. But Thomas Wolfe was going to take 3,300 years in getting around to writing it. Besides, Wolfe was wrong. At least in part. We can go home again. Some of us ought to go home again. But we shouldn’t plan to stay. A visit will usually suffice.
Some of us go back to satisfy curiosity. I don’t know about you, but one of the things I am going to do in retirement is trace some of the places I’ve left and the people I’ve lost. Not because of anything I’m missing, but because of some dots that need connecting. As I’ve told you before, there is a radical dislocation between where I came from and where I’ve come to. Which will not retrace a lot of miles. But will force me to recolor a lot of memories.
Others of us will need to go back to Egypt (or wherever) to fix some things that were broken there….heal some wounds that first festered there….or rebuild bridges that we (or people close to us) once torched there.
While still others may need to go back, not to reconstruct what was bad there, but to reclaim what was good there. In the days when I did more marriage counseling than I do now, I would get tired of the pain and complaint that was sung in something other than two-part harmony. So I would say: “Time out. Let’s try something radically different. Let’s scroll back to a time when it was good in your marriage….when it looked good, felt good, smelled, sounded and tasted good. Maybe if we get in touch with that time and those feelings, we can figure out where things got derailed and how we might get them back on track.” Which worked surprisingly well until the day the wife said: “It never was any good. I was just too stupid to see it.”
For the Jews, even in the midst of an ugly situation, there were good things about Egypt….even if there were only onions, cucumbers and garlic. Maybe the children of Israel left those things so fast that they were never able to settle their feelings about them, so as to move beyond them. Could it be that even we who trust in God….and in the leading of God….look backward from time to time? Longingly, from time to time? Of necessity, from time to time? Going over unfinished business, from time to time? Lot’s wife did. Only to become the world’s first human salt lick. Which only means that there are times, as every parent knows, when the word “go” means “right now,” and the appropriate response to the “why” question is “because I said so.” But among the hardest New Testament commands I know is the one where Jesus tells me to “put my hand to the plow….don’t look back.…and let the dead bury the dead.” Which may be truth. But it is very hard truth. For there is much to settle before I can follow.
But let’s dress this issue up and take it to church. Like I said, every church I know has a Back to Egypt Committee. Not because church people are resistant to change. Or resistant to movement. When well led, they’re not. Maybe I’ve lived a charmed life, but if (as everybody says) the seven last words of the church are “We’ve never done it that way before,” I have seldom heard church members say them. I mean it. I have yet to have a congregation dig in its heels or allow its feet to become stuck in the miry clay.
What happens in the congregations I have seen is they get out there on a limb….sometimes way out on a limb….and they get scared. Back to Egypt committees do not form unless Egypt is in the rearview mirror. You can’t go back to a place you haven’t left.
I once told you that the saddest comment I have heard from a pastor in the last decade came from the lips of a woman who, in answer to my question “How goes it with your church?”, said: “Things will be wonderful as soon as I can figure out how to make it be 1955 all over again.” But her situation is different. Her people don’t want to go back to 1955. In their minds, they never left 1955. But they are not us. We’re not stuck in ’55….or ’75….or even ’95. In fact, we’re amazingly current.
I don’t have to tell you how much we’ve done together….how far we’ve ventured together….or how many dollars we’ve spent together. We have introduced 31 new programs just since September. And we have a staff with only four people who predate me on the payroll. You’ve just heard Lindsay talk about the fact that “it happens here.” And a lot of what happens here is stuff that hasn’t happened before.
There are thirteen leadership principles I hold dear. They inform whatever limited steerage this great ship requires. The staff knows them. Some day I may even share them. But one of them is that this church will be….at every level….a permission-giving rather than a permission-denying organization. “Yes” being the operative word. “No,” being the rarely-heard word. I challenge you to come back this week and circulate among the staff members, trying to find even one of them who has heard the word “no” two or three times during their tenure.
Which has worked wonderfully. And which has worked for a long time. But some, in anticipation of a change in leadership, have said: “Maybe it’s a good time to button things down….tighten things up….scale things back. Not all the way to Egypt (as if anybody here knows where Egypt was, or is). But partway to Egypt.”
But I have seen the early responses from nearly 900 surveys. As you will remember, you were asked to address 58 ministry-related questions to which you could react in a number of ways…. including an opportunity to say (concerning that ministry) whether it should be expanded, maintained or reduced. I am here to tell you you went 58 for 58 in the “maintain” and “expand” columns. You don’t want to cut back on anything. And you want to expand pretty much everything. Which leads me to conclude that, as a congregation, Egypt is something you fear more than something you desire. Although I hope you know how much money it takes to keep a show like this on the road.
Speaking personally, I have no taste for tucking things in or dialing things down. If you hear me say, even one time, “Let’s put that on the shelf until the new minister gets here,” I want you to take me into my office and ream me out.
Henry Roberts is my buddy at First Church, Pensacola. While in Atlanta, Henry told us about a young clergyperson on his staff who, beginning his third year, came to him and said: “You know, I might leave next year (meaning in June), so I figure I shouldn’t start anything from here on out, given that I might not be around to finish the job.”
Said Henry: “It didn’t set too well with me. But when I told my 35-year-old Pastor-Parish Committee chairperson about the conversation, he said: ‘Let’s let him go right now.’”
Well, being clergy, they couldn’t let him go right now. You can’t fire Methodist clergy. But they did ask the district superintendent to reassign him (at the earliest opportunity).
Now, I don’t know the end of that story. But I figure he’s gone now. I think the District Superintendent called him about “a wonderful opportunity” in a new church (“wonderful opportunity” being the way district superintendents describe everything). I hear he is being assigned to a church where the morale is minimal and the salary, abysmal. But the superintendent has assured him he will not lack for cucumbers.
Note: I have loved the story of the complaining Israelites (Numbers 11) since my survey class in the Old Testament (B. Davie Napier) at Yale Divinity School in 1963. As for discussions of the number “forty,” I have referenced books on biblical numerology as well as the standard commentaries. I would also credit James McGuire who teaches a course called Intro to Film at Duke University, especially his lecture entitled “The Significance of the Forty in Menace II Society.”
As concerns Henry Roberts and First UMC Pensacola, I obviously have taken a few liberties with the fate of his colleague (as described in the concluding story of the sermon). Truth be told, I don’t know whether he is presently knee-deep in cucumbers. I’ll have to ask Henry. Or you can.
