When we speak of manna from heaven, we usually do so with a big helping of irony. In our time, the term has come to mean "something that's unheard of and unachievable."
This year the lectionary texts will be heard on the tenth anniversary of 9/11. It will be hard for many preachers and congregants to hear this pivotal scripture from Exodus above the rat-a-tat-tat rhetoric of partisanship and triumphalism that still grips our culture at the end of the first post-9/11 decade.
God sent Moses on a mission to
rescue his people from oppression. He was asked to risk his life in a costly
but exciting adventure--a mission of compassion and justice on behalf of a
million other people.
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