Three times miraculous manna

If you have over two million people in a desert, and that is what the Bible implies for Exodus (600,000 men without women and children), you have over two million people marching through the deserts and wilderness and you have a big problem. Every single day you need for them over two metric tons of food (based on the humanitarian daily rations).

            Biblical authors recognized this hurdle and offered a neat solution. All those people received manna, miraculous food dropped by God directly from heaven (almost like those humanitarian daily rations). They received it for all the forty years of their wilderness wandering.

            After the Bible was written, rabbis familiar with the Sinai climate and geography realized that there was another problem. After all those forty years and two million people, there should had been a mountain of waste, about 30,000 tons. Although desert climate would perfectly preserve it, the waste was not there, it was missing.

            They came up with a lovely and elegant solution. Manna was miraculous food and ergo it miraculously did not leave any waste. That explained provisions and missing waste but a rabble-rouser might ask, “what about human physiology?” How could anyone, besides carnivorous Texans and Wisconsin cheeseheads (I know I know those are stereotypes), deal with no residue diet for forty years? It might be an utter torture! No wonder the Israelites were so ill disposed and grumpy all their sojourns in wilderness. Unless, of course, they were provided with miraculous plasma coated gastrointestinal tracts.

            Enough of this fundamentalistic silliness! Exodus is not to be taken literally, but it can still be taken seriously. Exodus is a saga (In a similar manner as Odyssey or Anabasis) and it is a thrilling and formative legend. Within it, manna, that miraculous food from heaven, is a parable, a powerful and important parable.

            Join us this Sunday as we explicate this parable and rejoice in divine loving care, and divine will for all the hungry.

Picture from our Deacons' Thursday Meal Program during pandemic.