When We Thirst: Finding God in the Wilderness | Lakeside Light Podcast

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This audio podcast is a weekly sermon message of intellectual, spiritual, and sometimes humorous nourishment for the road.

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Lord, by the power of your Holy Spirit, give us the words of life, that we may understand your way and follow your truth.

In Jesus Christ.

Amen.

This morning's Old Testament reading is the script of the children's service.

It's found in Exodus chapter 17, verses 1 through 7, but sadly lacks the word deal from Moses.

Exodus 17:1–7

From the wilderness of sin, the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages as the Lord commanded.

They camped at Rephedim, but there was no water for the people to drink.

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?

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 our livestock with thirst?

So Moses cried out to the Lord, What shall I do for this people?

They are almost ready to stone me.

And 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.

I will be standing there in front of you on the rock of Harab.

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.

He called the place Massah and Merubah, because the Israelites quarreled and tested the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us or not?

The New Testament reading comes from Philippians chapters 2, verses 1 through 13.

Philippians 2:1–13

These are the words of the Apostle Paul, which were just sung by the choir.

If then there is any comfort in Christ, any consolation from love, any partnership in the Spirit, any tender affection and sympathy, make my joy complete.

Be of the same mind, having the same love, being of full accord of one mind.

Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.

Let each of you look not to your own interest, but to the interest of others.

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptying himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Therefore, God exalted him even more highly and gave him the name that is above every other name, so that the name given to Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work on your own salvation with fear and trembling.

For it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

For the word of God in Scripture, for the word of God among us, for the word of God within us.

Thanks be to God.

O God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.

Amen.

In 2003, philosopher Glenn Albrecht coined a new term.

The term is solostalgia.

Albrecht describes solostalgia as the home sickness you have when you are still at home.

Solostalgia.

It's the distress, the sadness, the awfulness you feel when your home environment, though you have not left that environment, when your home environment is changing around you.

And while this term solesterolgia can refer to feelings caused by very specific local events like volcanoes, that kind of thing, the term is mostly associated with climate change.

It's a little different from eco anxiety, by the way, which is kind of the distress you feel about what will or could or might happen in the future.

Solostalgia is about the here and now.

The homesickness you have when your own home seems to be changing all around you.

Have you, do you think, ever experienced solostalgia?

Have you ever felt homesick even while being in your home?

The weather here in Kentucky finally broke this week, right?

But did anyone else sweat through a 90-degree Oktoberfest last weekend?

I personally feel solostalgia most acutely when I am in the Southwest, which is my family's home away from home.

Colorado and other parts of the Southwest are experiencing the hottest and driest year on record this year.

One of my favorite hikes this past summer, I was in Estes Park, and we went on a hike down to Bierstead Lake, which is this gorgeous area.

And it was a phenomenal hike in part because we had the lake, we had it all to ourselves, which is pretty unusual in the Rocky Mountain National Park.

And it was kind of cool, but kind of so nostalgic, that we could get right up to the water's edge on this hike, the edge of the lake.

And while we were at the edge of the lake, it was really cool looking at the rocks, um, because usually, of course, that section of the of the hike is covered in water, right?

But the water was really, really low, so you could get into the water almost and see skeletons and fossils and really cool uh stuff.

Um I have this app, by the way, that tracks hikes.

If you've ever seen this, it makes this little green line wherever you walk, right?

So that you can look on a map and see where you are or see where you've been.

It's fun for stuff like tracking your elevation or your distance or like not getting lost and dying.

It's good for stuff like that.

Anyway, looking at that beers lake hike was really funny because uh you can see all these teeny little zigzags, and it looks like I was walking on water because they thought I was a lake there.

Things are changing.

Much of what we have taken for granted is shifting.

When even the rhythm of seasons feels out of whack, what can you count on?

How can you feel safe?

How can you feel at home?

The people of Israel knew a thing or two about homesickness, right?

And they knew a thing or two about zigzagging all over dried up land.

The Israelites at this point in Exodus from this reading that we've looked at, they've been freed from slavery in Egypt, right?

But now they have begun what will be 40 years of wandering around in the wilderness, and this wilderness is no joke.

First, there's no food, and so God provides manna, provides bread, enough bread, by the way, for just one day at a time, day at a time.

Um, and this is where today's text picks up, which is that uh now they're facing no water.

They've moved out from the wilderness of sin, which I name partly so that you know this is not related in any way to our word sin.

It's just the name of that area.

And from the wilderness of sin, the whole congregation of the Israelites journeyed by stages.

And as they journey, they have daily bread, but they no longer have water.

So let's not skip, by the way, straight to how ungrateful everyone is.

Because this is a big deal.

This is a big deal not having water.

Fresh water is a big deal, right?

The people are exhausted.

They're away from anything that has ever resembled home.

They have food, but even this is only a day at a time, right?

So it's taking a tremendous amount of trust each time they go to bed at night to hope there will be food the next day.

And now they're getting thirsty, right?

The old folks are thirsty, the babies and children, they're getting thirsty, the sick people, they're thirsty, they need water, and no one has any water, and this journey has just started.

So the people of Israel in this story, what do they do?

They turn to the oldest trick in the book.

They assign blame, right?

The people quarreled with Moses, Exodus tells us.

And quarrel here is a word for accusation.

They begin to accuse Moses, they blame Moses, they say, Why did you bring us out of Israel to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?

More literally, by the way, they say, Why did you bring us out of Egypt to kill me and my children?

Which is interesting, right?

Because notice here the division.

They're divided.

Moses even echoes this division.

Moses turns to God and says, What shall I do for this people, these people over here?

It's my children, and you have taken us away from safety.

We are away from home.

In the face of crisis, the people are hungry and thirsty and wandering in the desert, and they blame and they divide.

In the face of crisis, the people of Israel choose blame and division, which then also we find out later in the passage through all of this, the people of Israel are wondering and saying, Is the Lord among us or not?

Is the Lord here?

Maybe not.

Is God even with us in this?

Um, here's a little Wikipedia fact for you.

I did some really deep research on solistal.

Here's what Wikipedia says about solistalgia.

Research has indicated that solistalgia can have an adaptive function when it leads people to seek comfort collectively, like other climate-related emotions, when processed collectively through conversation that allows for emotion to be processed and reflective function to be increased, ability to talk to each other, this can lead to resilience and growth.

In other words, maybe don't divide, maybe don't blame, to say nothing of denial, maybe don't deny.

Instead of division, instead of finger pointing, instead of denial, name it, name it, name the pain, face it, and use it together.

Over the course of a year, in partnership with the University of Chicago, uh, mostly through 2025, Chicago-based clergy, environmental nonprofit leaders, and faculty and graduate students met monthly to explore our human response to climate change as part of what was called the Living Well Project, the Living Well with Climate Change Project.

Cynthia Lehler was one of the leaders of this project, and this is how she describes it.

The project's aim was not to debate the veracity of climate science.

It was not to debate whether or not it's true.

It was not to amass evidence of environmental decline or even or even to garner support for one mitigation strategy or another.

The purpose of the project was to create a community of conversation and support for the essential work of determining what it might mean to live and to live well amid the reality of climate change.

Through their meetings and conversations throughout this year, scientists, students, nonprofits leaders, religious leaders, they met regularly and they developed a deep sense of trust and strength and hope.

They didn't skip straight to solutions, but having been girded by their true lived experiences, sharing stories of solostalgia, right?

Sharing experience that included real pain and real grief, they were able to face reality differently.

The people of Israel, the people of Israel name their reality.

They are quick then to blame and even threaten, but they name the reality, and then Moses turns to God.

Moses, who surely felt betrayed and is grieving, and is presumably thirsty himself, he turns to God and he says, What shall I do with these people?

They are almost ready to stone me.

And God responds.

And God responds with generosity and with grace and offers this small miracle.

Go on ahead of the people and take some of the elders of Israel with you, take in your hand the staff which you struck the Nile and go, and I will be standing there, I will be 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.

God brings water from stone.

In the larger story of the people of Israel, right, in the big picture story of Israel, God will ultimately guide them to the promised land.

There is a bigger redemption story at play.

There is bigger hope, bigger salvation coming for them.

Thousands of years later, Paul will remember this story, right?

And we will hear him mention it in 1 Corinthians.

He will tie this story to Jesus as the living water, for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, Paul says, and the rock was Christ.

But even as this larger story unfolds, right, this larger sense of promise and hope, there is an immediate reality for the people of Israel.

And the immediate challenge of thirst and homesickness and wandering.

And all of this leads them to wonder, is the Lord even among us?

And even in the midst of that challenge, God does not, notice, pluck them up and safely deposit them into the Garden of Eden.

But nor does God ignore them.

Instead, God takes the hardest thing, the driest stone, the potential weapon and symbol of division for those who had threatened to stone Moses, and God turns that into a spring.

The source of life, the source of a future, the source of hope, of something that can, even as they wander, help them feel like they're at home.

Especially when we think of the broad scope of God's creation and how it pertains to climate change, it is worth remembering that God's got the whole world in God's hands, right?

That God's story, including God's story of redemption of the whole creation, that story is vast and expansive and beyond our immediate understanding.

But we can hold that big hope alongside something more immediate as well.

We can hold and declare our big faith in a future beyond our earthly experiences and understandings and also say that sometimes we need hope that's a little more immediate.

We can name that.

We can name that and name the reality that sometimes we deeply feel homesick here and now.

We can name the reality that there is big hope to be found, and the reality that we are thirsty.

That sometimes we wonder, is the Lord among us or not?

And perhaps, even in naming it, we can find a way.

We can find a way toward each other, right?

And we can find a way toward God.

Perhaps even the stones of our cynicism and blame and anger and fear can be turned.

Perhaps God can make miracles even now, so that the rocks, the very rocks of grief and pain themselves can be reformed and create water, create waters of community and compassion and innovation and hope.

They said, My first memory is monarch butterflies.

And I can express my witnessing of their decline as a sort of chaplaincy, similar to watching a patient struggle with a terminal illness.

And yet, I still plant milkweed in our church garden, praying at least one butterfly will savor it.

Are you homesick right at home?

Take heart.

The God of all creation seeks to make all things well and all things well and all things well.

And even now, the Lord is among us.

Even now, God can turn stones into springs.

May it be so.org for more information.

Have a great week.