June 14, 2026 · Rev. Rick Spalding · Exodus 17:1-7; Matthew 5:1-16
A song of longing from the musical The Band's Visit opens Rev. Rick Spalding's sermon on thirst, and on the Israelites at Massah and Meribah asking, 'Is the Lord among us or not?' God answers at the rock, then asks us the same question through the commandments at Horeb; the evidence of God's compassion in the world, it turns out, is us.
Transcript
A couple of years ago, there was a Broadway show that came to the Huntington in Boston called The Band's Visit. It had an odd little story that hardly sounds like enough to hang a whole musical on, let alone crack open a sermon. A ceremonial policeman's band from Egypt is supposed to play a concert in a town in Israel as part of a sort of cross-cultural exchange. But the band members take the wrong bus and end up in very much the wrong place. In a tiny, nowhere town on the edge of the Israeli desert. Too late in the day to catch another bus to take them where they're supposed to be. So they end up having to hang out in a cafe overnight in this nowhere place. And there, through the night, a motley collection of human beings come and go, as happens in a café, and people who think they're very different from each other start to learn that they're maybe not so different. That's pretty much the whole story.
One of the denizens of this nocturnal café is a young man who spends pretty much the whole duration of the show waiting by a payphone in a corner for a call from someone, maybe his girlfriend. That's about all he does, actually, other than glowering or chasing away anyone else who might want to use the phone. As night settles in to the café, the moment finally comes in the show when this guy pours his heart out to the phone that doesn't ring, and he sings. [sings a few lines of the song]
It's haunting and beautiful. As he begins to sing to the unresponsive Plexiglas bubble of the phone box. And the next lines of his song are the ones that got stuck in my imagination. [sings]
And there's something so familiar, so human. About the way those words land. Among all the different people in the nighttime café. That within another few lines, every one of them is singing the words. Each in their own way. [sings] That's the sound of longing. [sings]
And that's the last song in the show. The next morning, a bus finally comes to take the band where they were supposed to go, and the quick relationships that formed through the night in the cafe come to a quick goodbyes with some of the rough edges smoothed over, some not. But what wrote itself into my software was the wistful idea of ears being thirsty, and the lingering memory of everybody singing out that longing. Are you there? Will you answer me?
Thirst makes a good metaphor. It's as plausible, I think, to think of ears being thirsty for a particular longed for sound as it is to think of the kinds of thirst that Jesus saw as he looked out over the people on that hillside and said, blessed as his first recorded public word. Or as the kinds of thirst that we might feel now, as we look out over the sad, parched wilderness of the public square as our national birthday approaches, the thirst for integrity, the thirst for empathy, for generosity. Or maybe the kinds of thirst gathered in this sanctuary for the time that you all hope is coming, you believe is coming. When you'll round a corner and see this church full of blooming new life.
There are lots of different kinds of thirst. Two of them are on display in this story that Donna Reed us read for us this story from the long wilderness journey of the Hebrew people in Exodus seventeen. There is, of course, the physical kind of thirst of bewildered people in the parched desert. When body chemistry begins to go haywire and the mind begins to lose its balance because it can think of little else but the sweet cooling of liquid relief. Fear follows soon after, and fear is another kind of thirst. I think that was on those people in the wilderness. Fear dressed as anger. Fear that grows into desperation for some sign of hope, some inkling of the involvement of God.
During the offertory. Later in the service, as Phil said, we'll hear how the psalmist cries out the words that we use to call ourselves into worship this morning. My soul is a thirst for God, yea, even for the living God. When shall I come to appear before the presence of God in the fearful desperation of thirst in the wilderness? Is the Lord among us or not? Are you there?
The story in Exodus seventeen, as you heard, has a happy ending, a rather biblical ending, in fact. But when you think about it, isn't it remarkable that the people Israel chose to enshrine in their sacred literature not only the physical trauma of their desperate thirst, but also the trauma of their spiritual dehydration? So interesting that the way the story is told, as you heard it, ends not with the satisfying splash of running water, but with that anguished hanging question as the takeaway line is the Lord among us or not? And they recorded it for posterity. One of the things they were going to need to remember eventually, when they finally settled down into the place of promise that it took them so long to get to one of the things they had to learn while they were on their way. They even gave their memory a name.
Like so many episodes in the book of Exodus, the names of the places where things happen become part of the story passed on from grandparents to great grandchildren, even long after. No one could quite find the exact location anymore. They camped at a place called Rephidim. The story begins, but there was no water there for the people to drink. And then, after that astonishing moment at the rock, Moses called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord. Not even just one name, but two names. Massah means test in Hebrew, and the name Meribah ups the ante a bit because it connotes an argument not only in the sense of a disagreement, but in the sense of a prosecution, a trial, almost that place grandparents told their children down the generation. That place is where we remember that our people put God to the test, saying, is the Lord among us or not?
In the midst of the withering trials of our lives the illness, the structural injustice, the broken relationships and promises. And these days, the despair as we contemplate the apparent fragility of our nation, our souls, a thirst, and our spiritual and political and ethical and communal chemistry out of whack. We put God to the test. Weren't we promised something better than this? Shouldn't God make the trauma go away? Show us water where we can see only rock. Put the guardrails back in place and bring us safely home to freedom and time for our birthday. Is God indeed among us? The trial turns on the question, is there indeed enough evidence in our history to convict God of active, compassionate engagement in the world. And that's a trial, I think, in which many of us have been called as witnesses down through the generations.
Now, I'm told that there are places in the Sinai wilderness where the porous limestone is indeed honeycombed with channels, some of which connect to underground springs, and that mineral deposits in the way of limestone can accumulate over time and constrict those passages. And that those calcium deposits might indeed be dislodged by a sharp blow at just the right spot from some kind of hand-held object, maybe. But there is something else going on here that's way deeper than an aquifer, and that makes the place of the test more memorable and more life giving even than the inexplicable flow of water.
You might not have noticed when Donna read because it's so easy to miss this detail, but when God gives Moses instructions about finding the water, here's what God says. Go out in front of the people from where they are stuck. Go out in front of them and take with you some of the elders of Israel. Maybe this was the moment in Scripture when the church council was invented or the diaconate. I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. God says. Strike the rock and water will come out of it for the people to drink. Go on ahead to the mountain called Horeb. God says, and let the people follow you there.
You might not realize that you remember what else happened at Mount Horeb, but you do, because it too is a place that has two names. The more familiar name for the mountain called Horeb is Sinai. Horeb. Sinai is not only the place where water somehow flows from within rock, but the place also where God's Ten Commandments about how to live. God's instructions about how to stay alive together in this wilderness, how those ten commandments will soon flow down the mountain. Thou shalt not worship things that are not worthy of worship. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not bear false witness, thou shalt not covet. God sends Moses to the source of the water that keeps body and soul together, and to the source of the design for living that keeps humanity and God together, keeps us together with each other, both engraved forevermore in the memory of the people.
Very soon, very soon after, the people drank their fill of the waters of Meribah, that place that they named for the question, are you there? Very soon after that, the time would come for the people to begin drinking their fill of those instructions that God gave them for life together. And those instructions, when you think about it, are really God's way of asking us the same trial question. Cross-ExaMining us? Maybe. Are you there?
If the question of meribah is the question, is there enough evidence to convict God of compassionate, active, attentive engagement in the world? Well, then the question of Horeb. Sinai is the question is there enough evidence to convict us of living in God's way? Honor your parents. Save some time. That is holy. Do not trample on vows that you have made. Do not steal. Do our people still remember? Is there any evidence among us of compassionate, attentive engagement in the world? That's a question we have to carry on the long journey through the wilderness. That's what we have to learn on the way to where it is we hope we're going.
When Jesus looked out at the motley collection of human beings gathered on that other little mount, the denizens of a little nowhere town on the edge of the Israeli desert, never far from the wilderness. Jesus spoke blessing to all kinds of thirst. Blessed are the poor in spirit, he said to one, blessed are those who mourn. He said to another, blessed are the humble. The generous, the gentle. Blessed are the ones steeped in peace. Blessed are the ones brave enough to stand up for the truth. Blessed are the ones who thirst for righteousness. Who thirst for just trying to live the right way. So many different kinds of thirst, so many dangers, toils and snares in this wilderness. Or that one. So much desperation and anger and fear underneath it.
So much thirst and the living water that Jesus ladled out the living water that still flows freely through the inner passages of us. When he strikes the rock of our constricted hearts with the staff of his forgiveness and the rod of his guidance, that living water comes from the same wellspring that God's engaged compassion always comes from in this world, and the evidence that clinches the trial. The way God passes the test that we put God to when we dare God to show enough engaged compassion to rescue those who are perishing in the wilderness from all their thirsts. The evidence is. Us. The evidence is that we have stood in the flow of both God's compassion and God's instruction that we are there. We have heard what God asks. We have tried to answer. And the water of right living together is flowing among us. Or it ought to be.
We can call the spring by any name we want to. We can sometimes forget how to find it in the wilderness, but in the end. In the end it is Jesus's voice, like the murmur of water softly in the distance. Jesus's voice that brings us back, that tests us over and over again, but only with love. Jesus's voice saying over and over again, are you there? Will you answer me? For you, my blessed ones. For your voices speaking aloud. For integrity and for empathy and for generosity in this wilderness world. For your voices speaking from the roots of who you know you are for your voices, even in this sometimes wilderness. My blessed one says Jesus, are my ears are thirsty. Amen.