Farewell Manna

I am not sure if have been camping before. If you have, you know that a great part of the preparation concerns what you will eat and how you will prepare it. Keeping it simple is important because food preparation is not easy at the campsite. As good as camping meals can be, it is probably not what you will prepare yourself when you return home.

The children of Israel wandered for more than a generation out in the wilderness. It was not camping. It was the movement of a people, a search for a new land, an effort of survival. They knew only their life in Egypt when it began, and knew nothing about the place they were hoping to find. I guess you could say they were neither here nor there. It must have been forty years of displacement misery. Only the care and guidance of the One who had called them, only God secured and sustained them. One of the symbols and tangible realities of that care was the manna provided for daily sustenance. What they ate appeared in the mornings, was only good for that day. Manna an odd substance, but it did keep them alive.

When they came to the place they would make their new home, they ate grain, the product of that land, and on that day, the manna ceased. They looked no longer for the miracle daily rations; they turned to the other kind of miracle food, nourishment from the earth. Look at the passage we are digesting this Sunday:

The Lord said to Joshua, "Today I have rolled away from you the disgrace of Egypt." And so that place is called Gilgal to this day. While the Israelites were camped in Gilgal they kept the passover in the evening on the fourteenth day of the month in the plains of Jericho. On the day after the passover, on that very day, they ate the produce of the land, unleavened cakes and parched grain. The manna ceased on the day they ate the produce of the land, and the Israelites no longer had manna; they ate the crops of the land of Canaan that year. (Joshua 5:9-12)

There is apparently in the Hebrew word, Gilgal, a root word meaning “circle” or “wheel.” In coming to the land of divine Promise, the disgrace and stigma of their identity as slaves in Egypt rolled away from them like a wheel. So they called the place Gilgal. They are between the dreams: the dream of their original Abrahamic covenant (A promise of people and land is behind them, and the physical recovery of that dream is ahead of them. Their disgrace begins rolling away from them like a wheel. Lent is a season holding out just such a promise for our attention each year. Sometimes we have a sense of being between the dreams, and it’s not always timed with Lent. It can come any time of year, pass quickly or last for longer than a season. In it, we long for fulfillment. We yearn so strongly we can almost taste it.

I am not sure how tasty the unleavened cakes and parch grain right after the Passover were, but it marked their monumental, new challenge, and new life. The first Passover in Egypt sent them into the desert. This Passover at Gilgal is the liminal experience, passage to new life, and new challenge. As we finish the second half of Lent, our spirits know that our camp rations are ending, and our feast will begin. Goodbye trail mix, jerky, and freeze-dried vittles; get the oven preheated, a big pot of water on the stove. Start chopping and measuring: the full-fledged feast is just ahead.