October 15, 2006 Sermon

Bricks and Straw
Exodus 5

We must find the strength to move forward through all the defeats of life. As that great philosopher, Dory, the fish from the movie, Finding Nemo, tells us, “Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming, swimming swimming. What do we do? We swim, swim, swim.” You may laugh. You may wonder why a preacher would bother to quote a cartoon character, and an air-headed character at that. Yet pressing forward despite all is critical. We gotta just keep swimming.

Where can we find the strength to keep swimming? An entire industry has sprouted up to offer us—for a price—the magic pill, the quick, easy program to change our lives for the better. But it’s all a lie. Another movie character exposes this: Richard Hoover, the father in the film, Little Miss Sunshine. Richard desperately believes anybody can become a winner. He has even developed his very own Nine Steps to Success program. He has written a book. He holds motivation seminars. Sadly, Richard has not become a winner. Nobody will publish his book. Only a few sad people attend his seminars. His marriage hangs by a thread. His son despises him. His father, a drug addict, disrespects him.

Nine steps to success do not work. Motivational programs do not work. Pills can do wondrous things, when prescribed by doctors. But pills alone do not keep us swimming in the face of defeat. Only one thing can give us the power to move forward no matter what life throws in our way. That one thing is trusting God. Trust God. Keep swimming.

Events have moved forward in Exodus. We last visited with Moses beside the burning bush, where God called him to lead his fellow Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt . He has obeyed, going back to Egypt and pleading with Pharaoh to let Israel go home. As we read in Exodus 5, Moses and his brother Aaron get nowhere with their petition. They claim that the Lord has ordered their release. Pharaoh says he does not know this god. Enraged by their demands, he orders that they must continue making exactly as many bricks as before, but now they must find their own straw to put into the mix. This in a land that produces a terribly limited amount of hay, and all of that along the thin ribbon of the Nile River valley.

My wife Linda and I spent the summer of 1980 at a church center on a working ranch in the high desert of northern New Mexico . I got to help (in a very small way) a crew there build an adobe house. The workers took clay from an arroyo beside the work site and mixed it with water from the livestock tank. They sprinkled in straw from the alfalfa field at the irrigated center of the ranch. Finally, they forced a grid made of 1x4 lumber down into the mix. A couple of weeks later they tapped the boards with mallets, grabbed it at its corners, and lifted. Sitting on the ground were dozens of bricks. The total cost to the ranch was for the lumber.

The workers stacked those bricks in the same offset pattern my brick house uses, using a gloopy adobe mix without the straw added in for mortar. Finally, they stirred up a stiffer mix and slapped it on the surface, giving them the smooth look you may know as adobe. That house had timber rafters, whole logs of lodge pole pine a crew had gone up into the mountains back of the ranch to cut. It had river stone floors with adobe mortar used as grouting to hold them in place. It was a beautiful building. I used to sneak in there in the afternoons to read a book in the cool.

Watching the construction of that adobe house had a romantic feel for me. It was fun. I would show up when the mood hit me and help for a couple of hours. I learned a lot. The workers were grateful for my help. But when I got bored or had to do something else, I just wandered away. The Hebrews of Exodus had no such freedom. They were slaves. They worked all day, every day in brutal heat. They built houses, public buildings, temples not for their God, possibly even pyramids. They farmed. They shepherded flocks. And when their new leader demands their release, Pharaoh responds by making their lives even harder.

We know how it feels suddenly to have to keep making the same number of bricks—and to have to go find the straw to do it. The pressure to increase productivity has made our work lives more stressful. Many of our families have chosen to live at a very fast pace, making productivity and stress important factors even in our homes. We work as hard and fast as we can. But along comes a new and terrible challenge: make your bricks and find your straw. Keep getting it all done even when you get sick. Keep paying the bills even when you get downsized. Keep your chin up even when nobody chooses you—chooses you as a playmate, or to be on the team, or to have a romantic attachment.

We are not slaves. Yet we understand how it feels to be enslaved by demands and performance requirements. We know how it feels to have to keep swimming even when it hurts, even when we feel like one more stroke might kill us. How do we keep going?

The message of Exodus is that God has not forgotten us. The message of the whole Bible is that when we believe in Jesus Christ we become God’s people. And as the Apostle Paul told the Corinthians, all things work for good for those who love the Lord. Our problem is to keep moving, keep believing, keep swimming even when we feel like we’re drowning. How can we do that?

Moses had faults. Doubt does not appear to have been one of them. He boldly did what God told him to do. Of course, he had personally seen and heard the Lord. Few of us do. Few of us witness miracles like the ones Moses saw God perform. Few of us get the kind of explicit instructions God gave Moses. We must fall back on what we have seen and heard. Thank God, it is enough.

We see God working through the church. We see God bring healing to marriages. We see God bring a sense of belonging to lonely people. We see God direct the lives of young people. We see God answer prayers. We have watched God empower us to build this building even when the world (in the form of bankers and denominational officials) would not “qualify” us. We may not have seen God burning but not consuming a bush, as Moses did. We may not have heard the actual voice of God’s Spirit, as Moses did. But we see God at work in this church.

We can choose to try to keep swimming without trusting God. But that would be like trying to build a house with bricks that have no straw. Adobe bricks without straw mixed into them crumble. That straw, flimsy as it is, acts like the steel reinforcing bars put into concrete dams and bridges. The straw holds it together. When we try to build our lives without trusting God we build without straw. We build lives that can crumble.

Trust God. Keep swimming. Build your life with the solid bricks made of faith. We have people in this church who keep moving forward, trusting God, through seemingly endless and serious diseases. They inspire me. We have young people in this church who keep moving forward, trusting God, through the bitter disappointment of never getting chosen to play on a team, or sing a role in a musical, or to go to the “right” college. They inspire me. We have people in this church who keep moving forward, trusting God, through their dissatisfaction with our congregation’s performance on certain things. I am profoundly grateful to them and they inspire me.
Let the swimmers among us inspire us all. We can keep moving forward no matter how heavy our burdens become. Trust God. Keep swimming. Let us pray.