Our Savior Lutheran Church

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ.

I have a question for you to think about … “Have you ever found some sort of food that you just absolutely loved.  I’m not talking about some food which just tastes really good to you.  But rather, what I’m talking about is some sort of food that you like so much, that it becomes almost a weekly, if not a more frequent ritual for you to go and eat.

For me, that food would have to be … pizza.  And I’m not talking about just any old pizza.  What I’m talking about is New Jersey style pizza.  For me, this was almost its own food group.  At least once a week, I had to go out and eat some pizza…and then it happened.  I moved out to St. Louis.

Now if you’re a fan of that style of pizza, I’m sorry, but it is just not the same.  The cheese is different, the sauce is different, the bread is different, it’s all just different.  Everywhere I went in St. Louis, the pizza was just not the same.  For me, pizza was loosing its place in my regular diet.

And then by accident I found Feraro’s pizzeria.  Now, Feraro’s pizzeria isn’t just a different style of pizzeria.   Feraro’s is a New Jersey style pizzeria located in St. Louis.  After I found this place, I would go way out of my way to take a trip there just to pick up a slice.  I would drive the half an hour to an hour trip, through all sorts of annoying traffic, just to have a slice or two of that pizza.

Now, before anyone goes and makes the assumption, let me reassure you that I am in no way trying to tell you that New Jersey style pizza is a bad thing.  However, it’s interesting in light of today’s reading from Exodus.

Here are the people of Israel.  It’s only been a short time since God freed them from their slavery to Egypt.  And here they are complaining.  And they’re not just complaining about a certain lack of food.  In their complaints, they’re actually saying that things were better in Egypt.  They’re saying that the place where they were enslaved was actually better than where they were right then and there.

Now please don’t misunderstand me.  I’m not suggesting that the fact that they were hungry was wrong.  But the fact that they were actually saying that their former enslavement was better than the freedom that God had given them is the issue.  They were flat out saying that God didn’t know what He was doing.  They were ready to go back into slavery just so they could get their temporary fix.

There’s this story about these two guys I once heard.  These two men envisioned themselves to be these sort of Indiana Jones style treasure hunters.  At some point one of them heard about this supposed great Incan treasure off in some deep dark jungle.

Somehow, one of these men got a hold of a map that they claimed would lead them to this “treasure.”  As these two men were attempting to make their way through the jungle, they eventually got lost.  Over and over again they told each other that they “knew” that they were almost there.

As the two men were about to give up and attempt to find their way out of the jungle, one of them spotted something shiny sitting on top of a piece of wood which was in what looked to be some mud. 

The first man immediately ran to try and grab his new found treasure.  His partner thought that something must be wrong and stayed where he was.

The first man quickly realized that he had just jumped into quicksand.  As he was beginning to sink he screamed out to his partner for help.  His partner quickly threw him some rope and managed to pull him out.  The newly freed man quickly and profusely thanked his partner.  And then he turned back to look at the shiny object and told his partner’ “Maybe if I just run fast enough I can get it.”

To which the second man who was somewhat irritated said, “What are you talking about?  I just freed you from that stuff and you want to go jump right back into it?”

“I just freed you from that stuff and you want to go jump back into it?”

So often it seems, that for many of us, we come into God’s house, we come before His altar, or we come to Him in prayer seeking His forgiveness.  Asking Him to once again forgive us of the same sins that we committed last time.  

There seems like there is a whole laundry list of sins that haunt us.  There’s Gossip, there’s various forms of lust, and list of sins that haunt us at various times in our lives can go on and on.

And it seems that at times we actually seek out those sins.  For some of us, we even sometimes think that things were better when we were living in slavery to sin.  We tell God that we need do this act.  Or that it really isn’t that bad.  Or that it can’t really be a sin if I’m craving it this much.  And in doing so, we begin to sound a lot like the serpent in the garden of Eden.  “Did God really say, ‘you must not eat from any tree in the garden?’”  “Did God really say…?” go ahead and fill in the blank.

It’s true … sometimes cravings or desires can be a good thing.  Like craving to worship God.  Or the desire to be able to spend more time with ones family.  But when our cravings start to tell us that we know better than God and that we should be taking different a path than the one that He laid out for us … that’s where the problem comes in.  That’s when we start to say, “Did God really say…?”

One day a father and his young son went out for a hike through the woods.  It had poured rain for days prior to their hike so the ground was quite muddy.  So muddy in fact that the father had to quite literally pull his son out of the mud.  This didn’t bother the boy.  And in fact whenever he saw what he thought to be a “good” patch of mud he would head straight towards it.  

Over and over again this seemed to happen.  The boy would step into these large patches of mud and get stuck and then his father would have to grab him around the waist and pull him out.  And each time after his father had pulled him out, his father would tell him not to do it again.  And then they would continue on hike.

Jesus does the same for us.  Each time that we find ourselves stuck in sin, He grabs us around the waste and He pulls us out… again.  And He washes us clean with His very blood which He shed on the cross for you and me.

We have an active responsibility though … to be truly sorry for our sins and to try not to commit them again.  

Is there anything that we can do to be forgiven of our sins? … no. That’s entirely God and through His mercy and grace that we are forgiven.

Will sin continue to temp us?... yes.  But God will always be there.  He’ll always be there to grab us around the waste and pull us back out again, wash us off, and put us back on the right path.

And it is in His most precious name that we pray.

-Amen