Readings for the Day:
Sermon:
Original Manuscript:
In Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, Elizabeth Bennet gets off to a rough start with Fitzwilliam Darcy, to say the least. Her first encounter with him is overhearing him say disparaging remarks about her hometown. Then he seems to try and place a wedge between his friend, Charles Bingley, and Elizabeth’s sister Jane during their courtship. It doesn’t hurt that she learns some nasty rumors about Darcy from George Wickham, a man once supported by him. This is not to mention that Darcy’s manner seems blunt, rude, and prideful.
Darcy, however, has fallen for Elizabeth Bennet, and asks if she will marry him. She immediately goes off on him, listing his terrible behavior to her sister and to Wickham. Darcy is furious and leaves. Later he returns with a letter, listing all the reasonings behind his actions. He did not, for one, realize Jane loved Bingley back. He also lays out, in full detail, his dealings with Wickham that show Wickham is not the man Elizabeth thought him to be, nor was he in the right.
When Elizabeth takes time to think through the facts and her experiences, she starts to feel that, as Austen puts it, “she had been blind, partial, prejudiced, absurd.”
In truth, the same things Elizabeth condemned Darcy for were the same things she herself was guilty of, hence the title: Pride and Prejudice.
It’s easy for us to do the same with others, especially those we hear of in Scripture like the Israelites today. Once again, as they make their way out of Egypt, out of living in slavery, they start to complain. They even go so far as to say “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt.” They’d prefer death to freedom because of their suffering in the wilderness.
It’s really tempting to look at the Israelites and think “what a bunch of whiners!” or think of them as acting like infants and toddlers. But to do so would fail to learn the lesson from Jane Austen’s novel. When we truly look at ourselves and our own actions, like Elizabeth we will realize that we too have just been like the Israelites. We too have complained to God when we should have been grateful. We too have whined and acted worse than children who don’t know any better. We cannot condemn the Israelites because we are just like them.
This is the reason Scripture includes these stories that often do not put the people writing them in a good light. It is a warning to us so that we don’t make the same mistakes and act like them because we have the same tendencies. The hope with Scripture is that on looking at the example of those before us that we might be better.
Even when we aren’t, there is good news. God provides for us anyways. God provides us what we need, even though we do not always like it or want it. We see this in the bread God provides from heaven, which our readings from Exodus, Psalms, and John all discuss.
Our hope is that we will be open to what God has done for us so that we can move on from our childish ways. As we hear in Ephesians, “we must no longer be children…. But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into Him who is the head, into Christ.” We are called to move on from who we were before to represent Christ Jesus to the world.
We all have our moments when we whine and complain, just like the Israelites. We cannot condemn them for what they did. Instead, we need to learn from them so that we might grow into what God wants us to be: followers of Christ Jesus and sharers of the love and grace he gives us in this world. God didn’t condemn the Israelites for their whining, but instead provided them what they needed. God is ready to do the same for us too with the wonderful gift of grace.