Back when I was studying organ performance as an undergraduate, my professor asked every student to purchase a tape recorder for weekly lessons and studio classes. The fact that this was a tape recorder shows my age, I realize. But, in any case, I dutifully bought the recommended high-end tape recorder and a rather expensive microphone.
Each week I would faithfully record my private lesson, as well as any performances I did in the studio class in front of my student colleagues. The purpose of these recordings was obviously to learn from them. And as my professor wisely said, the tape recorder doesn’t lie.
He certainly was correct about that. There were times when I was convinced that I had done something exquisite in a particular performance, only to discover after listening to the recording that the reality wasn’t what I thought it had been. The rubato at one moment in a piece was perfect in my mind, but virtually nonexistent as revealed on the recording. On the other hand, there were occasions when I wasn’t pleased with a performance, but after some time had lapsed, I listened to the recording to discover that my playing was better than I had thought. The advice of my professor was true: the recording never lies.
It matters, though, which recording we listen to, the one in our imaginations or the one of reality. In the Book of Numbers, we encounter God’s people in the midst of their wilderness journey, and we hear a familiar refrain. The going gets rough, and the people begin to complain, for they have been influenced by a certain recording in their imaginations. In this particular instance, the prompting for complaint arises from “the rabble,” those non-Israelites who made their way out of Egypt with the Israelites. This rabble suddenly gets a craving, and the people of Israel are then reminded of what they had before—or at least what they think they had before.
And we find God’s people in a feedback loop, playing a recording over and over again in their minds. Back in Egypt, there was tasty fish aplenty, and juicy melons, cucumbers, and leeks, as well as onion and garlic. But now, there’s only manna, which is seeming rather bland. If only we could rewind the tape and have some of that delectable food from the past.
What a relatable human emotion this is! The grass is always greener, except that in this case, it’s not in the future but in the past. The craving of one group of people becomes the catalyst for disquietude, even though this one group of people knew nothing of what God had already done for the Israelites. They knew very little of the story of the people of Israel. Moses gets caught up in all this discontent. And for a time, God himself gets angry. The situation has disintegrated into a complicated imbroglio between God and his people.
It seems like a vicious feedback loop. The complaints throughout this wilderness journey have been numerous, and at this point in the story, negativity threatens to hijack the trajectory of God’s people. The tape keeps playing over and over again, rehearsing the woes of this nomadic family and longing for a supposedly better time that was in the past.
But it is God himself who breaks the feedback loop. God stops the incessant rewinding of the tape recorder and pushes play. And in this case, as the tape moves forward, we encounter something new. The people don’t realize that they have been listening to the wrong recording.
So, when God finally commands the attention of the people, the tape recording stops and resumes playing, but it goes to a very different place. God does not respond to his children’s complaints with ceaseless anger and retribution; he responds by unleashing his spirit upon them to advance them to a new location.
When negativity spreads among the Israelites, God, in turn, spreads the spirit of prophecy. And just as such negativity proliferates like wildfire, God’s spirit counteracts the spirit of complaining as it foretells a new future of hope that empowers scores of people to speak God’s truth. And that spirit spreads so that it goes beyond the seventy chosen to receive it, and it even reaches Eldad and Medad back in the camp.
Time and again, the people of Israel had listened only to the fictional recording in their heads, the feedback loop playing over and over again. Back in Egypt things were so much better. Before this endless wilderness journey began, there was safety, comfort, and security. And the food certainly was more delicious.
But the real recording never lies. And if God’s people had been listening to the actual recording of their past, they would have heard quite a different story. Back in Egypt, they had been in bondage. They had been treated as inhuman and forced to labor under cruel circumstances. Back in Egypt, their future had seemed to hold little hope. Back in Egypt, in the eyes of their oppressors, they were no people, but now, they were God’s people, chosen for a glorious future of freedom beyond their imagining.
But the real recording of the Israelites’ past also told another truth, which the people of Israel seemed to forget. And this truth revealed a God who sent Moses to lead the people from bondage into freedom, from death into life. This truth showed that when the waters of the Red Sea threatened to be an obstacle to freedom, God parted them through Moses’ raised staff. This truth evidenced a God who constantly sent provisions when the people were in need, and who was doing it yet again, and would do it forever.
The problem was that the time lapse between the past and the present had obscured the real recording. The only recording the Israelites were listening to was a fictional one in their heads. But the real recording never lies.
And so, when Moses comes before God to complain that he has been sent to shepherd a recalcitrant and ungrateful people, God stops the feedback loop of negativity and pushes play on the real recording. God launches his beloved children into a new future.
In this future, God’s kingdom advances through a ministry shared by a whole host of people. The future God has prepared for his people surpasses the tired leitmotifs of the past to encompass possibilities for freedom and life beyond human imagining.
The Lord’s response to complaints is not to give up on the people but to bring them together. The Lord’s response to the people is not abandonment, but revelation of new insights. When the people become resistant, the Lord becomes more flexible and shows yet a new thing, imparting fresh wisdom. The Lord does not let the people stand still or become stagnant. The Lord pushes them on into a new understanding.
What are the tape recordings that play in our heads, and are they the real ones? Are they recordings that replay old grievances or traumas that provoke new fears? Are they recordings prompted by lone voices crying out in negativity or ingratitude? Are they recordings that romanticize the status quo? And was all of the past really as wonderful as we imagine?
Or can we let God pause the fictional recordings in our heads and press play on a new future that he has prepared for us? Are we willing to let his spirit rest not just on one or two of us who have been here all along but on a whole company of people, some of whom may not even be among us yet?
The truth is that the recording never lies. If we were to play the recording of our past, we might see a people broken by sin and ingratitude. We might see a past sometimes characterized by human-wrought tragedy and unchristian divisions. But the lie is that everything about this past must shape our future. The lie is that our past sins enslave us. The lie is that past trauma has to define what lies ahead. The lie is that we can never move past our resentments and grievances into a freedom of forgiveness and renewal. The lie is that God’s future for us is located in this false recording that plays only in our minds.
But if we were to let God show us the real recording of our story, we would see something new. We would see a moment in time, crystallized in a public execution on a cross, in which God pressed play on a radical transformation. We would see grudges morphed into forgiveness. We would see death turned into life. We would see reconciliation rather than division. And we would see a God of mercy who desires for our flourishing, not for our condemnation.
This is the recording of our past that will shape our future. This is the real recording that God wants us to listen to. And this is the recording that never lies.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 26, 2021