Cherith Fee Nordling—Year A Propers 18–21
Welcome to the Gospel Reverb podcast. Gospel Reverb is an audio gathering for preachers, teachers, and Bible thrill seekers. Each month our host, Anthony Mullins, will interview a new guest to gain insights and preaching nuggets mined from select passages of Scripture in that month’s Revised Common Lectionary. The podcast’s passion is to proclaim and boast in Jesus Christ, the one who reveals the heart of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And now onto the episode.
Anthony: Hello friends, and welcome to the latest episode of Gospel Reverb. Gospel Reverb is a podcast devoted to bringing you insights from Scripture found in the Revised Common Lectionary and sharing commentary from a Christocentric and Trinitarian view.
I’m your host, Anthony Mullins, and it’s my delight to welcome our guest, Dr. Cherith Fee Nordling. Cherith has taught at a number of institutions, including Calvin College, Northern Seminary, and Regent College. She’s currently adjunct professor of theology and Scripture at Saint Stephen’s University.
Cherith earned a PhD from the University of St. Andrews, and now she is an ordained Anglican priest at the Diocese of St. Anthony, enjoying life together around the table of the Lord. Hallelujah.
Cherith, thanks for being with us, and welcome back to the podcast. This is your third time. That’s a record, so congratulations. You get the prize.
And we’d love to know how you’re doing and especially what has you experiencing delight these days.
[00:01:33] Cherith: Oh, I’m doing so well. I am delighted actually to be with you. This is such fun to just have the chance to love Jesus together by listening to him in the company of two or three gathered, and suddenly here he is, right in our midst and revealing himself. So, really fun, and I’m honored to get to do it.
I am also just finding such delight in being a new priest. Boy, I was a cranky priest at the beginning because I just didn’t expect to be one. I just thought I was leading into a leadership position with our other church, and it turned into ordination, and I found myself there.
But God has just given us a people who are very hungry to be a people of God, and so I know what my role is among them, but I am really just among them. And so, there’s just so much joy in that space. I’m also just loving turning 67. My body is old and creaky, but it just means I get to be the grandmother of three amazing little people who are teaching me so much more as I get older to grow down into childlikeness, as my bishop likes to say. And there’s just nothing like watching and being part of the trust of their lives and also just the openness of their lives. And so, besides just the gift of my husband coming through a really serious illness and God giving him back his life, literally, and all the good things that we are enjoying in the life of our family. I just feel particularly grateful to be the grandmother to these little people in my life.
[00:03:21] Anthony: It’s the best. I only have one grandchild, but man, it’s whooh, what a sweet season of life it is. And I’m just … I celebrate the fact that you’re an ordained priest, and I can only imagine just the joy and communion that you’re experiencing there, which kind of leads me to a question I’m curious about your thoughts on.
And there’s been a recent kerfuffle about women in pastoral leadership teaching men. And of course, that’s been around forever. It’s an old conversation, and I imagine on some level it’s got to be exhausting for women like yourself who are gifted, called, and equipped to lead, to pastor, to shepherd, to preach, to proclaim.
So, I’m just curious; any thoughts that you’d like to share about what’s this kind of conversation going on?
[00:04:09] Cherith: Yeah, just very briefly. I think one of the things that I am reminded regularly is that where we see the humility that it is necessary to recognize the Spirit of God really being poured out, especially in places where we don’t anticipate it, because we look for sort of big signs and wonders.
One of the evidences of seeing those signs of renewal that have come historically, but also just in the small ways through the Church, there’s always a resurgence of women. Suddenly, the Lord just levels the playing field in the best way and says, “This is my field, and it’s my play. And I invite any and all to serve me, to love my world.”
And so, I just have to keep rejoicing in the fact that he keeps doing that. And to just also accept that part of my calling at this stage of my life is to read these headlines, watch these stories, weep many tears, see the faces of so many women who have suffered, and to realize that part of the intercession at this stage of my life is just be faithful and not embittered.
And that just means knowing that the witness to the beautiful gospel is the same witness, right? It’s not our entitlement to anything except to be participants in the fellowship of suffering and glory with Jesus, and that the glory of God is right there, where he is willing to stand with those in the midst.
So, I just think He’s standing in the midst of all of us in all of that. And one other quick aside is just so interesting to me. A number of years ago now, probably, I don’t know, 10, I was asked to do a talk at a gathering which was predominantly going to be made up of men who were serving in spaces that did not allow women to lead.
But the leaders of that institution did ask me. And even though I was meeting in a church that actually did not allow for women, and I had done a wedding there years before and was very limited in what I was allowed to do because of that. And so, I was back there, and it was a beautiful time. God made a beautiful opportunity in the lives of many people.
And at the end, one of these gentlemen who’s actually serving on the church, who’s an African American teacher at an institution in Chicago, and was also on staff, and he just came up to me in tears and was waiting and waiting to catch his breath and to both hear a peace in his own heart to talk to me and the ability to talk to me.
And just said, “I’ve been teaching in this place. Women are not allowed to preach. Women aren’t allowed to go into ministry. But I have had a young woman student who’s the best I’ve ever had, who I had to say yes to coming and watching her preach because she took a preaching class. And I came from this denomination in the Southern Baptist Convention that did not allow for that.”
But he said, “I was like, ‘Lord, what do I do? Do I not go? Do I go?'” And he said, “I couldn’t imagine hurting her by not listening to her.” And he said, “It was probably one of the most powerful sermons I’d ever heard.” And he said, “While you were speaking, Cherith,” he said, “I texted her and said, ‘Hannah, I have seen your future, and she’s standing on the stage, and so will you be.'”
And in those 10 years, Eric and I have had the opportunity to be involved in anti-racism work together, in the work of the church together. And just two weeks ago, it was just like, here’s a picture of me standing on this stage with all of my leaders 20 years ago, and here I am standing on the stage of my current position in this institution with these women.
And God just transforming his heart and making room for him to make room for these women. You just realize those small faithfulnesses, you do not know what the results will be. But God is just opening so many doors by those kinds of obediences. And so, I just want us to keep leaning into going where Jesus is asking us and not trying to save the world or any denomination or a cause.
[00:08:33] Anthony: Ah, that’s so well said. And I give thanks to God that you have gone from cranky ordained priest to a joyful priest … and that Hannah’s voice is being heard. And it is … a joy to be the priesthood of all believers. So, thank you, Cherith.
Let’s do this. Let’s move to the lectionary passages of the month. Our first text is going to be Exodus 12:1–14. I’ll be reading from the New Revised Standard Version, the updated edition. It is the Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 18 in Ordinary Time on September 6.
The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, 2 “This month shall mark for you the beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year for you. 3 Tell the whole congregation of Israel that on the tenth of this month they are to take a lamb for each family, a lamb for each household. 4 If a household is too small for a whole lamb, it shall join its closest neighbor in obtaining one; the lamb shall be divided in proportion to the number of people who eat of it. 5 Your lamb shall be without blemish, a year-old male; you may take it from the sheep or from the goats. 6 You shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembled congregation of Israel shall slaughter it at twilight. 7 They shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. 8 They shall eat the lamb that same night; they shall eat it roasted over the fire with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. 9 Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water but roasted over the fire, with its head, legs, and inner organs. 10 You shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn with fire. 11 This is how you shall eat it: your loins girded, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand, and you shall eat it hurriedly. It is the Passover of the Lord. 12 I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike down every firstborn in the land of Egypt, from human to animal, and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. 13 The blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live: when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague shall destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. 14 “This day shall be a day of remembrance for you. You shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord; throughout your generations you shall observe it as a perpetual ordinance.*
So Cherith, what does this text reveal about the God of Israel, and how could a preacher proclaim this text in a Christocentric way?
[00:11:12] Cherith: I think one of the first things that we always have to be recalled to is that there is only one God, and that God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who looks exactly like his self-revealing Son and the Spirit of the Father and the Son, and that we look to him revealed in Jesus, incarnate forever.
And in that revelation, we not only see God, but we see what is true about what it means to be a human being in his resurrected image. Everything begins and ends with him. And so. when we read his scriptures, which ― these are his ― it’s to imagine, like our friend Bradley Jersak invites us to do, it’s to sit down and read them in the company of Jesus, as he would read them in the company of his disciples on the road to Emmaus, and let him tell us what it is that is true about God in these scriptures as that truth will finally be revealed in Jesus.
So, we ask him, “Where are you here?” And that would mean we have to look for him in the dying, and the suffering, and the promise, and the presence, and the humility, and the response to the crankiness, and look for how he will gather up everything that’s happening in these people that isn’t of God and will cleanse it.
And to watch for that through here, the consuming fire of his ascension. So, we just have to orient ourselves there, right? And then suddenly we go, oh, the God of Israel is the one who Jesus says you may call him Abba, because he is your Abba, and he is not just the God of Israel, he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
But that covenant with them is the God who will bring every nation to himself and every tongue and tribe to proclaim. And so, it just stops us reading the othering that we do, and the retribution and vengeance as if these are God’s ways of being God instead of the ways that we want to construct an orientation.
So, that’s just my very big overview for reading all of these Old Testament texts. We just can never read them apart from the gospel. I guess that’s the simplest way to say it, is read them as on-ramps to the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and then ask your questions from there.
[00:13:44] Anthony: Yeah, it’s like seeing the end of a movie, so once you know how it ends, then that reshapes, if you go back and watch it, everything.
Cherith: Yep.
Anthony: There are all the clues all along, like this is pointing toward an end, to tell us it’s going somewhere, and now we know.
Cherith: Yep.
Anthony: And that going somewhere is the person and work of Jesus.
I don’t know that this question’s really as much about the calendar, though I’m curious, God does establish a new calendar for Israel in connection with Passover. But really what I want to get to: tell us about redemption and how it reshapes Israel’s identity, history, and understanding of time. And I think in some ways you’ve already answered it, but help us to understand Israel’s redemption.
[00:14:28] Cherith: Yeah. I think this passage, and certainly the section leading up to it and then the section that will lead up to the next one and the next one that we don’t get to read in the weeks. And so, hopefully people are reading through the week to catch them.
But I’m always amazed at how reluctant we are to be the people of God’s redemption. And then …
Anthony: Tell me more.
Cherith: When I think about, like almost every single passage where God is going to do something that actually really reveals the goodness of God in ways that cannot be mistaken for anybody or anything else, or just the ways that we would manage our own salvation and redemption and get ourselves out of our own trouble, because he knows we really can’t except to keep doing it in the ways that got us into the trouble in the first place, every time we resist and say, “God, it would’ve just been better to be back in Egypt,” with what we were familiar with. And we would control our lives or complain about our situation and put the blame where it goes and blah, blah, blah.
And so, I just think there’s something to be marked about the fact that God’s redemption is never based on our readiness. It’s never based on, or at least our awareness of our readiness, or our bringing ourselves or our doing something in order for God to respond with salvation. It is God from first to last. And to watch him in this, as your initial questions are even around time, is watch him, enter this time ― which is all his, because he is all and in all ― but to mark it as a way that reorients them and us as part of them, to see that it is God who makes time for us, and he makes the time that we need to work on us to help us become who we are in relationship.
And without that time, and the ways that he helps us remember it and mark it and see it, and get it into all of our senses so that we actually enact it, instead of coming to church and thinking it for 20 minutes, and then going about our lives and enacting completely different narratives all the time.
Anthony: Yeah, come on.
Cherith: When God says, like you can have something that enacts, which is what the liturgy is doing, or ways that we can create liturgies in the lives that may not be part of the formal tradition, that help us enact, because God knows we need our bodies will hold the memory, and keep the score and taste and see and smell, and remember that God is good, that we need this kind of liturgy, like do this, and I am doing this in this big overarching way, and I will be moving through all of these pieces.
And they don’t love it, but I do love that, like going through the text really quickly, is that the simple like obvious things, like it’s available to everybody, right? And equally you’re going to share it, and if somebody can’t afford it, then the neighbor next door, you get that sheep together. And it’s both for quickness and ease and necessity, but it’s also, man, it’s your next-door neighbor, and they might be the person who you really trust, and it might be the person who drives you nuts. But God’s like, this is who you’re going to be entrusted with so that it’s not just Egypt who is the other. Your neighbor doesn’t get to be your other. This, I am making up people for my name, like boom.
And then, oh, by the way, you don’t even get to just privatize this. Everybody’s offering is going to be consumed together so that you receive this as gift from me, right? This is a communal act. It’s not a privatized act. It’s not a privilege act. It’s not an earned act, and it leaves nobody out, right? They get, everybody gets marked by the blood of the lamb as a testimony, not to their obedience, but to God’s action, and it’s God’s prior …
[00:18:53] Anthony: Wow.
[00:18:54] Cherith: … and promised action. And suddenly they become witnesses to the presence of Jesus already, right? If you do this, it doesn’t just save you from this moment, but the Son of God will be recognized, because when he comes, he will tell this story with himself as the blood on that doorpost, and as the blood at this table and this Passover meal. And if you do this, it will mark the world, right? It will mark time for a new world.
And so, just seeing how many beautiful ways that he creates our Eucharistic Thanksgiving table of the Lord, communion, Lord’s supper, all the ways that he’s like, “I want you to remember,” reconnect as members of the body of Christ, not just memory looking back.
I don’t think this is a memory exercise. If in fact in time, all time is God’s time now, that he makes time for us to move through to grow. But for God, everything is already finished. He’s seen us finished, so he’s not stressed. And our becoming at the same time is the place where we learn how beloved we are, and we learn what trust looks like, and we learn how to be his witnesses in the world because we have seen him and know him, right?
And so, to say that God loves both to make our time and to remark our time is then to also go, oh man, he is going to execute judgment as the Passover lamb, but that means every Egyptian Hebrew among us, which is every one of us, as both every Egyptian heart and every Hebrew heart is our heart. And he will become the judgment that actually says, “I will burn up in that consuming fire as the lamb everything that is not of God, and make something new that is neither Egyptian nor Hebrew in you, but that is Christ in you.”
And to make these waters, the waters of our baptism, into his death, I’m like, okay, every single thing that is the redemptive story is going to be this story if we’re just paying attention. And he’s going to do it in the company of our Abba. So, lest we think God is against Egypt and for Israel, as if we aren’t both the grumblers and the oppressors …
Anthony: Right. Right.
Cherith: … he’s like, “No, I’m just for my beloved children, and I will redeem all of them,” because the one who is the first and the last holds the keys of Hades. And that means whatever has to die, his last word is life, right? So, we’re going to see that in the next section, so I shouldn’t go too far ahead. But it’s a big gospel, and we are very reluctant to let him have his way in it most of the time. But it’s his story, and he’s graciously let it be our own
[00:21:53] Anthony: Wow. Have your way, Lord. That is brilliant what you just said. Ah, I want to package that up and share it with the world, that all in all, our Lord.
Well, let’s transition to the next text. It’s Exodus 14:19–31. It’s a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 19 in Ordinary Time, September 13. Cherith, would you read it for us, please?
[00:22:22] Cherith: Happily.
19 The angel of God who was going before the Israelite army moved and went behind them, and the pillar of cloud moved from in front of them and took its place behind them. 20 It came between the army of Egypt and the army of Israel. And so the cloud was there with the darkness, and it lit up the night; one did not come near the other all night.
21 Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea. The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and turned the sea into dry land, and the waters were divided. 22 The Israelites went into the sea on dry ground, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left. 23 The Egyptians pursued and went into the sea after them, all of Pharaoh’s horses, chariots, and chariot drivers. 24 At the morning watch the Lord, in the pillar of fire and cloud, looked down on the Egyptian army and threw the Egyptian army into a panic. 25 He clogged their chariot wheels so that they turned with difficulty. The Egyptians said, “Let us flee from the Israelites, for the Lord is fighting for them against Egypt.”
26 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea, so that the water may come back upon the Egyptians, upon their chariots and chariot drivers.” 27 So Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at dawn the sea returned to its normal depth. As the Egyptians fled before it, the Lord tossed the Egyptians into the sea. 28 The waters returned and covered the chariots and the chariot drivers, the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed them into the sea; not one of them remained. 29 But the Israelites walked on dry ground through the sea, the waters forming a wall for them on their right and on their left.
30 Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. 31 Israel saw the great work that the Lord did against the Egyptians. So the people feared the Lord and believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.
[00:24:31] Anthony: I could listen to you read scripture all day. Maybe that’s a new profession for you someday, Cherith.
So, Moses tells the people, “The Lord will fight for you,” yet God commands Israel to move forward into the sea. And I’m curious, how does this passage hold together God’s sovereign action and Israel’s responsive obedience?
[00:24:55] Cherith: Lest we forget the reluctance …
[00:25:00] Anthony: There it is.
[00:25:00] Cherith: It says The Lord will fight for you.” They’re saying to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us into the desert to die,” right? “Didn’t we say to you,” ― I love this ― “Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone. Let us serve the Egyptians. It would be better to serve them than to die in the desert’?”
And I also find it’s fascinating that right before this passage and the promise of the Lord fighting for them at the water, as he pulls them out of Egypt, there’s a shorter way. There’s a way straight into the Philistine land of Canaan, and the Lord says, “I’m not going to bring them the shorter way, because they’ll face the Philistines immediately, and they’ll turn back. They are going to be afraid of war. And so, I’m going to take them a different way. Literally, “I’m going to make a way where there seems to be no way so that I can create a barrier of protection for them, but they will absolutely have to trust Me.”
And I was like, “Oh no, we want the shorter way.” We always want the shorter way. And then we feel so betrayed when it’s hard. And so, when the Lord’s like, “How about I give you my way?” But it really looks impossible. The Lord has to fight for them, right? Because he’s basically set them up for death from their own perspective. They’re trapped on the one side by the sea and the army that’s coming.
So, only he can move them through and into a space that isn’t just rescue, but it is precisely to give them, after 400 years, like imagine, that’s like the length of the time that people have conquered this continent, right? And lived upon it. That’s how long they lived in that nation state under these pharaohs who thought they were divine, and every corner you’re on has a different god.
That they would remember the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or Joseph who brought them into Egypt for safety, like, God has to basically reintroduce himself to them, and to grow them into relationship with him. And so, to allow the ways that he makes to not just be a submission to obedience to something he wants to do, as if…
So, offending all the people who use this language, I apologize in advance. But I’ve really just come to find myself cringe a little bit around the language of God giving us assignments and having plans that we have to act out. I think God is just good, and relationally always with us, and growing us into his life as our life is hidden with him in Christ.
And so, if in fact, he’s doing something here and he wants Israel to respond, these Hebrew people to respond, he must be doing it to make a space for them, a way for them, that brings them into relationship with him, and the manifestation of his love and life. And so, I think it’s always us living in response to something God is doing, even if we can’t figure out what that doing is.
If he has said, “Trust me,” which is what he’s, Jesus is just always saying, “This is your life, is that you just trust me and do with me what I am doing in the world, that you trust my love for you and come with, to be part of what I am doing,” then that’s what we do. We don’t trust him once we’ve stood with him in the war room and seen the game plan and say, “Okay, that’s a good plan,” right?
But that’s such a different way. And so, I think there’s both providence and obedience at play, but I also think it’s always just call and response in relationship. That’s really, maybe, the deeper categories of which to consider what this is really about.
[00:29:02] Anthony: That’s … I’m going to ponder that: call and response in relationship.
So, as you think about this particular pericope, and you think about your own faith community, what else would you herald? You’ve given me a lot to think about, and I’m sure our listeners to think about already, but is there anything else that you would want to glean from this text that, that points us to our Lord?
[00:29:25] Cherith: Yeah, I think there’s just that deep reminder that God is not for some and against others. God is just for us, for all, all of his children have been made in his image, and all of his children are called to stand before and see face to face the one whose image has been finally made what it will be forever, as the resurrected, ascended Son of God who sits as a human being upon the throne of God.
And I think we just have to keep holding the fact that in Christ, everything is reconciled. Death, in the form of the Egyptians, putting to death everything that is untrue about God and about what it means to be human, that we are not to be oppressor or oppressed, or to build up gods in our own image so that we feel like we are in control of the world, or that we can make excuses for the ways that things happen instead of trusting a God who may be doing things in ways we do not understand. All of that, lets this picture of dying in the waters of baptism, that we die with Christ in our Egyptian life, with Christ.
And we are raised with Christ as God’s people, not because we’ve done anything except the goodness of God has brought us through those waters with Christ and everyone else into ― we just happen to know the name of our Father right now, and we happen to know the name of our Lord. But I keep becoming more and more aware of how these first centuries of the Church don’t talk about hell. They see Jesus as entering Hades, and the icons are always pulling up Adam and Eve and everyone else in their train from these deep waters. And sometimes you see the icons from these waters of the Red Sea that everyone is being pulled up. What could the resurrection not cover?
And does that depend on people knowing or not knowing what story they’re in? So, I think, actually, it’s holding so much more mystery to me, and just saying, “If you want to make it smaller, and you want to try to decide who’s in and who’s out, then let’s go back and just pray Ephesians 1 prayer with Paul, and just watch how big that story is, and how lavish the love of God is, and how he is, in fact, reconciling all things to himself in Jesus Christ.”
And I’d just say, where is he inviting me to die, to the ways that I keep people away or judge instead of letting God be the one who takes that judgment upon himself? And then where does he want me to live into the real life of God instead of the things I’m very petty about and small life about, and then want to run back to Egypt and say, “That feels like enough life for me.”
Because that isn’t the life of God. So yeah, I think there’s just a lot here to, to just sit with Jesus in and say, “How would you have me know you better, and myself in it.”
[00:32:41] Anthony: Yeah, this, this whole business of othering keeps us from looking at ourselves with honesty and seeing that there’s an Egyptian in me that will die, that has died and I think ultimately will be burned away. Hallelujah that the liar in me won’t inherit the kingdom of God. That the oppressor in me won’t inherit the kingdom of God. That has been covered in Christ’s death and resurrection. There’s just so much to chew on here. Thank you for making my mind wander to thoughts of other things I’d want to say from this text I didn’t see before. That’s part of the beauty of having this conversation.
Let’s move on to our next text. It’s Exodus 16:2–15. It’s the Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 20 in Ordinary Time, September 20. And it reads:
2 The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. 3 The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat and ate our fill of bread, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”
4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day the people shall go out and gather enough for that day. In that way I will test them, whether they will follow my instruction or not. 5 On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather on other days.” 6 So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, “In the evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, 7 and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your complaining against the Lord. For what are we, that you complain against us?” 8 And Moses said, “When the Lord gives you meat to eat in the evening and your fill of bread in the morning, because the Lord has heard the complaining that you utter against him—what are we? Your complaining is not against us but against the Lord.”
9 Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole congregation of the Israelites: ‘Draw near to the Lord, for he has heard your complaining.’ ” 10 And as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the Israelites, they looked toward the wilderness, and the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. 11 The Lord spoke to Moses, 12 “I have heard the complaining of the Israelites; say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’”
13 In the evening quails came up and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. 14 When the layer of dew lifted, there on the surface of the wilderness was a fine flaky substance, as fine as frost on the ground. 15 When the Israelites saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was. Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.
So, Israel’s complaint against Moses and Aaron reflects a longing for Egypt despite their deliverance. What, if anything, does this reveal to modern people about the challenges of living between redemption and the fulfillment of God’s promises?
[00:36:02] Cherith: Oh, boy. It reveals, if anything, and there’s so much, right? So, we’ll pick one thing. Two things. Again, as we’re reading this and hearing this with Jesus, I’m amazed that in the, I’m thinking of John’s Gospel in particular right now, of all the ways that Jesus is going to put in his own mouth the I Am, right? That everything that we’re reading of the Lord, capital L-O-R-D, as you and I are seeing it in this translation, is the unspeakable name, right? The name they won’t say at the point that Jesus is alive and hearing these read in the synagogue. But it’s the name of Yahweh who is the Lord of Hosts, is the transcendent one, and the I Am That I Am who has met Moses.
And Jesus starts putting the I Am in his own mouth, and one of the I Ams that says, “This is, if you really want to know God, you do not keep his laws and think he is a taskmaster who will give you a good report card and keep you alive and bless you. You find out by my life what your Abba, who is the Lord,” the unspeakable name looks, “and he is your bread. I am your bread from heaven,” right? “And I will be the one who feeds you.”
And yet the only prayer that Jesus gives us for being the one who seems to be praying more than anybody in the New Testament, certainly in the Gospels, even though they are, you know, their daily rituals of prayer ― Jesus gives us only one prayer, and in the middle of that prayer is himself, right? Again, which is, “Ask me for your daily bread.”
[00:37:50] Anthony: Yes.
[00:37:50] Cherith: Don’t ask me to give you enough to store up in your barn, because then you will stop looking at our Father in heaven and ask what his will is.
Anthony: Come on.
Cherith: And walk in it, and find your delight by walking in his will and knowing his ways, right? You will not look for the intersection of heaven and in earth, which is actually where you live, because the Spirit has birthed you into this new covenant in my blood, and that is the space that you just asked about, right? It’s the place between redemption and telos, which is already, you have been marked by the Spirit of resurrection, who is the one who raised Jesus from the dead. So, when you want to know how this turns out, you look at the one who is the one who makes himself your daily bread to feed a world that he loves, to see if by you partaking of him, you might be strengthened enough and look enough like him to actually be able to recognize his voice and to go with him in your day, where he would invite you to come alongside him in where he would want you to be the bread of the world, right?
Because you are his body. We are one body, one loaf, to be given for the world. So, I think in some ways it’s like if we cannot keep our eyes on him, who is the host of our table, who lays himself down as the host of what we eat at the table, by which we are fed and made into his image at the table, empowered to go into the world by the Spirit, having partaken of him at this table, if we are not people of his presence who see his face across the table, and those of our neighbor, and everybody sitting next to us as our neighbor, and we’re like, “How the hell did they get there?”
And Jesus is like, ” everybody gets the same invitation,” and so that he might ask you, “How did you get here,” right? “Everybody just gets here because I am here, and everyone comes with me.” And somehow everything about what it means to live the life in between is to say Jesus is, like, “Ask me how I did this, in the power of the Spirit, knowing my Father in heaven as Abba, and also the creator and ruler of the universe, as I am,” right?
“But I am revealing to you that God is humble, and with the marginalized, and with the weak, and with the ones who cannot store up great barns for themselves, and usually doing it on the backs of others,” right? At the expense of others.
But also, he just doesn’t do that. He’s, like, “No, I am enough. I am more than enough for every day. And then what would happen if you actually took that bread and gave it away, and trust that I could multiply it so that there would not just be enough for you and your neighbor? It’s not that I want you to go hungry at your neighbor’s expense, it’s that I have … I am bread. Could you go be that and see miracles happen in your midst in the most ordinary and extraordinary ways?”
So, I just feel like even the manna story, if we just sit with him as the revelation of that, it reorders us into that already-not-yet space that says, “Oh, I am tempted to move out of the storyline, but there is no other story. There is no other story. I’ve got a lot of fake stories that I could act out, but they’re not true and they’re killing me,” right? “And there isn’t bread there. It’s temporary snack, and I’m willing to let it satisfy me for the moment. But it is not life, and I’m dying if I just have that diet.” So, yeah, there’s just so much there.
[00:41:53] Anthony: There is. And the imagery, the way I sometimes think of it is, this daily bread notion, is we really want our bread from Sam’s Club or Costco, don’t we, in bulk …
Cherith: Yep.
Anthony: … where we can store it up and have enough for our people, my people, that we’ll eat well for weeks and weeks. But it is relationship, so it is dependence. It is trust. And there’s something about recognizing our need every day in a way that we don’t live often, here in the States anyway. That’s really powerful. Give us this day our daily bread, Lord.
So, God responds ― speaking of bread ― to Israel’s grumbling, not with punishment, but with provision. So, that’ll preach. So, tell us more of how this points us to the ultimate provision in Jesus Christ, beyond what you’ve already said.
[00:42:48] Cherith: I just think the Lord is just gracious. I used to read these texts. I remember sitting as a girl in church and just being like, “What is their deal?” “What does God have to do?” And then I would re-preach the sermon on the way home. My parents would tell me this, too, “You would sit your brothers in the backseat, and then you would say all the things you thought the pastor should have also said.”
And he said, “And then by lunchtime, little Pharisee that you were, knowing the Scriptures oh so well, but you were just brutal on your little brothers and I would just be like, ‘Oh, yeah.’” There’s this way of kind of knowing but not knowing and I just think it’s so funny that I was that person who could read these things and be like, ” I would not be like that.” And my parents were like, “Oh, honey, we’re all like that, and you were like that within about 35 minutes after church.”
And I think I have to just, at this stage of my life, laugh at how many seasons of my life I have grumbled or been …
[00:44:00] Anthony: Yeah
[00:44:01] Cherith: … pissed off, or reluctant priest, or the whatever.
Anthony: Yeah.
Cherith. And just have to have Jesus really sit me down and almost look at me face-to-face so that I can see how hard he is trying hard not to laugh. But really not at me …
[00:44:18] Anthony: Sure, sure.
[00:44:19] Cherith: … but just, like the older I get, the more kind of childish and childlike all at the same time. And then at the same time, the humor in those eyes, there’s so much compassion that is part of that, because whatever laughter of God is at the ground of the world’s being, because there’s just joy, there also just has to be so much compassion. And I just keep recognizing that actually there is a difference between my daily orneriness and tiredness or whatever else is, and the places where I’m like, “Why can’t I just…”
And instead of being ashamed of that, I just hear his compassion saying, “Cherith, I know the answer to that question. You don’t know the answer, if at all, but I do know. I know what has formed you. I know all the influences that have been on your life. I know the things that have shaped you. I know the country that you live in, the time in history in which you live, in the country in which you live, that is different than had you been born in another country at the same time, let alone a different time. That this time in which you live, people died all the time 100 years ago. People didn’t have enough to eat all the time in your country 100 years ago. But right now, that is not normal for you. And so, even your very framework has been shaped by a sense of ease and entitlement and privilege that assumes so much. And I understand that, and I have compassion on you for being someone formed in convenience instead of hardship. And I have compassion on those who have been formed in hardship. I know what brings you to these moments.”
And so, I think the invitation is always there, and then the invitation becomes one of, “Would you like to see more? Would you like to know what is troubling your heart really?”
And come into a place that confesses that, to just acknowledge, “Oh, this is the sin working on me, that I didn’t even know exists in my deep heart. And you, Lord, are always the Lord whose character is to have mercy and to have compassion. And so, how do you help me realize that what you really provide for me is the love and the mercy that I need to keep entering into the promise of life with you, and not become afraid of you, or not trust that you are one who keeps a record of wrong, or all the stuff?” There’s just a deep call to who he really is as the Lord of compassion and mercy, which he’s been before I ever met him, right? And before I ever recognized him. Yes.
[00:47:08] Anthony: Amen and amen. Yeah. Thank you.
Hey, we’re in the home stretch. We just got one more to go. So, we’ll pick up there. All right, friends, we have one more text. It’s Exodus 17:1–7. It is a Revised Common Lectionary passage for Proper 21 in Ordinary Time, September 27. Cherith, could I hear you read it one more time, please?
[00:47:34] Cherith: Absolutely.
From the wilderness of Sin the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages, as the Lord commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. 2 The people quarreled with Moses and said, “Give us water to drink.” Moses said to them, “Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you test the Lord?” 3 But the people thirsted there for water, and the people complained against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” 4 So Moses cried out to the Lord, “What shall I do for this people? They are almost ready to stone me.” 5 The Lord said to Moses, “Go on ahead of the people and take some of the elders of Israel with you; take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile and go. 6 I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it, so that the people may drink.” Moses did so, in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7 He called the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”
[00:48:42] Anthony: “What shall I do for these people?” Man, you can almost feel it’s in Moses’s heart.
[00:48:49] Cherith: And I’m about to get killed right here, so maybe you can do something.
[00:48:55] Anthony: That’s right. Come on, my Lord. So, the people ask, “Is the Lord among us or not?” And I’m curious, how does this question expose maybe the deeper issue beneath their thirst? And what might we learn from their doubt in the Lord’s presence, even after multiple demonstrations of God’s faithfulness?
[00:49:18] Cherith: I think the deeper issue is maybe, “I will be standing there in front of you on the rock at Horeb,” and that he lets them, he lets Moses strike it. Now, that’s Exodus, so Numbers is like, “No. You just speak to me. We are in conversation with one another. We know each other. You speak to the rock, and the water will come forward. And because I listened, and you don’t need to twist my arm to care. I don’t need to be strong-armed or beaten into caring.”
But Moses struck him twice, right? And that becomes the sign of the end of all things there. But I think at the same time, that striking is exactly the where did we strike him? And go, I think we see a cross, and we see a spear, out of which flows water, right? And from the side of God.
And again, to always keep going, what is it about God, and what is it about ourselves that will not allow us to trust him? And we always seem to use the words, like the New Testament uses the words out of Jesus’ mouth and then into the Epistles. But it talks about, he says, “Believe in me,” right? So, Paul will obviously believe in him. But he doesn’t mean assent mentally to these things and then he will be your Lord and Savior, right? If you just say the secret code.
But it’s to, really, “I believe in my husband. I trust him, because I know him. And when he says something to me, I can trust him.” Now, there are days when I’m like, “Are you sure?” because I’m still wrestling out how I would imagine something happening. Or the way I trusted him, I’m speaking of my husband now, is I might be trusting him to have done something the way I would do it.
And then I realize that actually, why I’m annoyed with him is that he’s done something that isn’t what I expected, because it wasn’t how I would have done it myself. And how often that becomes the way that we simply turn back onto God our projections of our own inadequacies, our own insecurities …
Anthony: Yeah.
Cherith: … our own ways of trying to secure our own lives. Our own perceptions of what is good for us, our own attempts at our own provision, and we’re right back in Genesis 3, right? Which is the narrative of all narratives, which just says, “Can you trust the Lord that what is good for you is his good for you?”
And it’s not even that tree isn’t a good tree. It’s just not for your good. And, because God doesn’t make anything bad, it’s not like he put an evil tree in the middle …
Anthony: That’s right.
Cherith: … of the Garden of Good and Evil. … it’s like, no.
Anthony: That’s right.
Cherith: He made a tree and said, “Will you trust me for what is good for you?” and then the evil one comes along and says, “You cannot trust God,” right? “Don’t trust him. Did he really tell you? Because he is a liar and you cannot trust him. He must be withholding something from you, that you would do better for yourself, and so you should trust yourself more than him.” And it’s the lie that’s at the heart of every single lie that we believe and live all the time, right?
So, here we are again in this scenario, just watching a people who ― God is our water, too, right? Jesus is like …
Anthony: Yes.
Cherith: “I am your living water. It is not that I do not know that the ones who I have made, who are very frail and creaturely, and also are the very temples of the living God, must receive life through water and bread, and that this festive, feasting, bread of heaven, water that turns to wine, like all the things are all the way to the end of the Revelation.”
It’s always a table. It’s always a party. It’s always God taking the very basic needs that we have and making them so much more than we know. They become the very food of heaven, right? And so, I think, when we come to places where we’re like, “you brought us here, but I don’t see a stream flowing,” right? “I don’t see you laying me down in the green pasture. But you promised,” right? “That when the travel brochure said you would take care of me, this is how it looks in my imagination, is there would be a stream here, or there would be a lake here. There would be the provision that I imagine would be for my good.”
Instead of God going, “But I want to be your good. I am your good, and everything that is good comes from me.” That’s what you pray at the beginning of the Eucharist, that, “You only bring to me those things which have come from me.” So, there’s just this no pause for trust, right?
That’s why I was, like, the reluctant priest early on, a year and a half ago. I was like, “Lord, how did I get here? I feel like I’m in the wilderness in front of a rock, and I didn’t necessarily want to be the priest of a church. I just wanted to serve your people where I was.” And he’s like, “No, but I made you a priest, Cherith. And can you just take a deep breath, please, and trust that it actually isn’t just about you, that if I can give you this gift of your priesthood, that then you can set the table of my presence for people who I want to partake of me, who will come to a table that you would lay. So, would you just take a deep breath and watch what I would do?”
And to let him be the one where I just think, oh man, like next week’s texts, Elijah is at Horeb, right? And can’t see God again, all the big displays.
Anthony: Yes. Yes.
Cherith: And somehow there’s going to be like that sound of silence that is so loud and so quiet all at the same time that, that Elijah can hear him, right? That speaks, “Let’s have a conversation here. Why are you here?” And I just realized, oh, this is that incredible thing where we need to stop holding God accountable to not being the provider of our sense of entitlement, or our provision, or hold God accountable to feeling like we feel betrayed by the ways that we thought God would look and the things that we thought God would do in the way that he would do them.
And we do that not just because it’s for our good, but it really is for our good because we will miss out and we will grow malformed and we will hold resentment and distrust because we don’t trust that we are loved beyond description, that God’s joy is to be the Lord for all of creation and to be the gift giver, to be involved, to manifest his character, to invite us into life with him, that all of this, his good is literally to give us himself.
And he just needs us to keep being invited into that invitation all the time, because he knows that we’re just children who break and are partial and partial, but he knows why, and he’s putting to death all of the whys and giving himself in it until we are made whole.
[00:56:58] Anthony: Cherith, you’re amazing. I’m so grateful for you. And I mean that from the depths of who I am. I love being at your feet to hear you teach because like you talked about trusting your spouse there are voices in my life that I just trust, that are going to point me where I need to be looking.
And so, thank you for doing that for us here today. You’re just, you’re fantastic.
Cherith: Thanks.
Anthony: And I want to thank the team of people that help make this podcast possible. You know who you are. Elizabeth, Dids, Michelle, you’re great. Love working with you. Thank you for all that you do. And Cherith I didn’t mention this to you before, but it’s our tradition here on Gospel Reverb to end with prayer. I’d be so grateful if you’d share a word of prayer with all of us as we close up.
[00:57:46] Cherith: It would be my privilege.
Our Lord Jesus Christ, firstborn over all creation, firstborn from among the dead, Son of our Father in heaven, who’s with our Father, pours out your Spirit, to make God’s children, to make us the people of the living God upon the earth. Make us heirs of an inheritance of eternal glory that is also familiar with and ready and acquainted with grief and co-suffering love. We bless you that you have been the last and the first, that you have been our end from before the beginning, that you who are the first and the last hold everything that we are in between and make it all our present.
So, thank you for being present to us, that these are not stories that we go back and read as past histories, that this is your life with your people, your communion of saints, that we are currently living with them. So, I pray that you would let us be people who live this life with you, same challenges, same questions, but with the power of your Spirit to walk in a way that knows you and sees you and draws your people from all around the world in every way, every day, to yourself through our lives. We ask this in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Dan Zachariah, Superintendent of Asia
Greg Williams, GCI President
The host of Gospel Reverb, Anthony Mullins, welcomes Dr. Cherith Fee Nordling to discuss the September 2026 RCL pericopes. 
