October 5, 2025

Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus

“What is it? "

Sermon by Rev. Trip Porch

October 5, 2025                                                                                                                                 Based on Exodus 16:1-18 

Last week, we did some a word study with Hebrew, looking at the Hebrew word for God’s name which is something akin to breath. There’s another Hebrew word at the heart of this story today as well that shapes our interpretation. “What is it?” You might ask… and I would reply… “Yes, exactly.”

When the Israelites saw the fine, flaky substance that appeared on the ground at dawn, they looked at one another and asked, “Man hu?” ...“What is this?” 
That question becomes the name of their food, the mysterious substance that will sustain them every day in the wilderness: manna.

It’s a word that carries questions and uncertainty. It's not the food they were used to.. They didn’t recognize it. It wasn’t what they had known or what they’d asked for, Just something strange on the ground that they weren’t even sure they could eat. And yet, that “what is this?” became the very thing that they needed to sustain them. For forty years, that question “Man-hu?” became their answer “Mann-a”

The Israelites had been enslaved in Egypt for more than four hundred years. Now, at last, they were free. They sang songs of victory and danced on the shores of the Red Sea. But freedom quickly came with new questions: Where will we go now? What will we eat? Will we survive this desert?

The joy of liberation gave way to anxiety and complaint. “It would have been better to die in Egypt, than to starve out here in the wilderness.” they said. They were groaning and complaining and giving way to nostalgia. Thinking their days in slavery were actually their golden years, misremembering that their stew pots were overflowing and their bellies were forever full-on bread. It’s interesting isn't it, how desperation can glorify even the most awful of circumstances?

 
And just like last week, God hears the groaning and complaining of God’s people. God recognizes their desperation and hunger that’s when God said to Moses, “I am going to send food… everyday you’ll find quail to eat and even when there are no quail to be found, I’m going to rain down bread from heaven for you.”

 
An answer from heaven. Provision for everyone hungry in the wilderness. But there was a catch: they could only collect enough for each day. They couldn’t store it because it would rot. So, They had to trust that there would be enough tomorrow, that God would provide for them each day.

 
Of course that’s still one of the hardest parts for us. We don’t just want provisions for today, we want certainty and security for the next week, the next year. But this story teaches us that God’s grace is often daily bread: enough for this moment, this step, this sunrise. It’s not a warehouse of supplies. It’s a rhythm we must learn of daily trusting God that we will find enough.
Here’s what strikes me though…  God doesn’t give them bread that looks like any bread they’ve ever seen before. That’s why they all begin to ask… “What is this?!” God gives them something entirely new, something beyond their imagination. It doesn’t match their nostalgia for the “good old days.” It isn’t glamorous. But it is enough.

The artist who created our bulletin cover defines manna like this: “any grace that happens in our lives that is completely off our radar screen, whether given or received.”
It might be something as small as the person ahead of you paying for your coffee. Or it might be something as profound, he says, like the story of a south African woman who attended the trial of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to forgive the officer who murdered her family. And then to ask the judge to require that he visit her twice a month so she could be a mother to him.
This isn’t how you’d expect someone to respond to the person who took away everything dear to her. What is it that compels a human being to show grace like that? What is it that moves someone to forgive, to love, to give freely when nothing is deserved? Man hu. What is this? 
That is manna. That is grace. That is the mystery of God’s provision showing up right where we didn’t expect it.

Morning by morning, there it is. Enough for each household. Enough for each person. Enough for to survive another day of this journey of life.

God’s provision doesn’t always look like what we expect. In fact, sometimes it looks so strange we almost miss it. Sometimes God’s gifts come in the form of new ways of being community, new practices of faith, new partnerships we didn’t see coming. Sometimes it comes in the small, ordinary mercies, a neighbor’s kindness, a meal shared, the resilience of creation itself. Sometimes it comes in ways that make us say, “What is this?” before we recognize, “Ah. This is manna. This is god’s provision on this journey”

Friends, our world is in the wilderness. These are unprecedented days: politically, socially, environmentally, spiritually. We hunger for security and stability. We long for a roadmap. And yet maybe, just maybe, God is already providing sustenance we don’t yet recognize.

And Church, what if the things that are meant to sustain us now and things we have never experienced before are? What if it’s not meant to be a nostalgic something from our past that allows us to endure, but something new God is placing in our lives today? What if the very things that seem small, strange, or insufficient are the bread that will sustain us? What if grace is already raining down in forms we haven’t yet named? What if the Spirit is teaching us to trust — not in the abundance of our storage barns, but in the daily rhythm of God’s mercy?
We long for certainty. We hunger for security. But maybe God is inviting us instead to trust. To step into each day with open hands, ready to gather what God provides, even if we can’t name it at first. To live not on yesterday’s bread, but on today’s manna.

“What is this?” That question is not a sign of failure. It is the beginning of faith. It’s the wonder that opens us to God’s surprising provision.

The good news of this passage is clear: in the wilderness, God does not abandon us. God meets us with what we need, even when we don’t recognize it at first. Even when it looks strange. Even when it makes us scratch our heads.

The manna story is not just about survival; it’s about learning to trust. Learning that God is with us in the in-between. Learning that God can make a way where there is no way.
So when we look around at our world (fractured, exhausted, hungry) and ask, “What is this?” … maybe that is exactly where God’s new thing is breaking in.
Beloved, we don’t yet know what the Promised Land will look like. We don’t yet know what the church of tomorrow will be. We don’t yet know what sustenance God is placing before us today. But we can trust this, each day we will wake up and find that what God provides us,  will be enough.
So let us keep our eyes open. Let us gather the strange, unexpected gifts that show up like dew in the morning. Let us learn to trust that God is with us in this wilderness.
And when we find ourselves whispering, “What is this?”
May we discover that the answer is: This is manna. This is God’s bread of Grace and life, given for us, today.
Thanks be to God, Amen.