All preachers need at least one trusted conversation partner
whom we can call in the middle of the night, if necessary--someone with whom we
can share our sermon ideas (they even listen to our sermons read out loud), and
from whom we can get advice and encouragement and even helpful critiques.
Of the texts appointed for Sunday, the tenth anniversary of
what we now simply call 9/11, the Old Testament reading seems most capable of
responding to the range of emotions we may feel as we remember the atrocities
of that day.
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.
