Readings for the Day:
Sermon:
Original Manuscript:
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As a fencer who spent time as an elementary school kid in Japan, the story of Rurouni Kenshin is one that immediately appealed to me. The series revolves around a Meiji era, the time in the late 1800s when democracy came to Japan, and centers on the swordsman Himura Kenshin who, to atone for the deaths he caused in the war, now roams the country righting wrongs with a reversed blade sword that prevents him from killing anyone else.
At one point, Kenshin’s past comes back to haunt him, leading to the supposed death of one of the people he has come to hold most dear in his life. For a long time, he abandons himself in a field of disregarded things and people with a chain over his sword to prevent him from ever picking it up again. His grief is such that he is completely undone. It takes the cry of a child calling for help to get him up and moving again and ready to save the day.
It’s safe for me to say, after the past 3 years, that we all can understand Kenshin’s feelings. When the dark times face us, it feels like they will never go away. We forget that things will change and get better.
If we feel this way now, we have more than just stories from back in the 1800s to show us we are not alone. We have our reading from Exodus to show how people felt in the worst of it all the back in ancient times, before the formation of Israel even.
Or rather, we see how people react to the perceived worst times, for this is not the worst the ancient Hebrews have had to face. Yes they may be without water in the wilderness, but they are free. Yet they dare to ask why God and Moses took them away from their captivity, their slavery, for the hardships they now face.
And in their complaining, Moses too complains. Moses complains to God about them and asks how he is supposed to deal with them.
Now I could say sarcastically that neither the Hebrews nor Moses tell us anything that we can relate to. Except they can and they do. We can see ourselves in their story. We can see ourselves in their mistakes, and this is why their tales have been shared and passed down to us.
We share these stories because in the end they give us hope for when we too are in the depths of despair like the Hebrews or when we too don’t know what to do with those we have been given charge of like Moses.
The danger is there and the trouble is real, yet God provides for their needs. It may not be everything they want, but the water they need does come. God provides for them and does so in a way that makes it clear that God is, in fact, with them.
As Paul reminds us in Romans, even when we are on our worst behavior, not unlike the ancient Hebrews, even when no one at all would sacrifice a thing for our unrighteous selves, God is willing to do what no one else could. God is willing to provide us a path away from sin and death into life and wholeness, and God did so through His own Self in the Son, through Jesus Christ His Son our Lord.
Times may be dark for us at moments. It may not seem like there is a way out. That can be true for us as individuals. It can even be true for us as groups. It may feel like we are failing God in the work we have been given to do. It may all even seem hopeless because of our own inability to change the world around us for the better. Yet through all those times, God is still there. The Lord, as we see in Exodus and in our Psalm is the “Rock of our Salvation”. God is the one who will continue to hold us in His hands.
If all seems hopeless around you, know this: God is there. That is the one thing in our lives of any significance. It is the one piece of knowledge that will get us through. Though everything else may be crumbling around us, God is still with us, and though we may not always get what we want, as the song and our reading from Exodus reminds us, we will, with God’s help and God’s help alone, get what we need.