Manna from Heaven: The Spiritual Upside to Complaining

Manna from heaven

Today’s reflection is by Bondings 2.0 contributor Michaelangelo Allocca.

Today’s liturgical readings for the 18th Sunday of Ordinary Time are available here.

If you’ve read any of my scripture reflections on this blog, you will likely not be shocked that I have taught a course called “Humor and Spirituality” multiple times; nobody who actually knows me personally is surprised at all. It should also not be surprising that today’s first reading generally comes up in my course.

We hear about God providing manna in the wilderness. The humor is not in the miraculous feeding (although the nightly mass quail hunt does provide some comic visuals), but in what provokes it. The story opens with ‘the whole community grumbling against Moses and Aaron,’ understandable for a forty-year-long schlep across unknown territory – just picture any long car trip with kids.

The comic element is in both the style and the content of the complaining. The basic complaint – “we’re hungry” – is understandable, but pay careful attention to how it is delivered:

“Would that we had died at the LORD’s hand in the land of Egypt, as we sat by our fleshpots and ate our fill of bread! But you had to lead us into this desert to make the whole community die of famine!”

Note how the classic tantrum-language “I wish I were dead” opening heightens the unreasonableness of the complaint. Then observe the contrast they are making: “YOU had to drag us out here to starve, instead of leaving us contentedly stuffing our faces in Egypt!!!”

It is a bit hard to imagine any of these grumblers saying this with a straight face. The entire exodus begins because God hears and responds to the cries of the Israelites, begging to be freed from the sore oppression they have been suffering for many years in slavery. The woeful suffering described, the sighing and moaning for divine rescue, bears no resemblance to the cushy ease and all-you-can-eat ribeye steak dinners they seem to be nostalgic for in their current grumbling.

Needless to say, God again hears their cries and responds with relief – perhaps sounding a bit grumpy Himself: “I will now rain down bread from heaven” has overtones of “They want food? I’ll give them food, all right …”

The gospels obviously show God’s response continuing in the person of Jesus – most obviously, in last weekend’s gospel story about Jesus miraculously feeding thousands.

But as we see in today’s paired readings, the same incredibly short memory syndrome of God’s people continues. The gospel story begins with the crowd chasing Jesus across the Sea of Galilee after he disappeared following the previous episode (John 6:1-15, last Sunday’s Gospel) when he multiplied the loaves and fishes. This action clearly demonstrates their faith in Jesus and their desire to follow him – and yet, a few verses into the conversation, when Jesus asks them to believe in him, they reply “What sign can you do, that we may see and believe in you?” (Cue Jesus: Face-palm!)

These are the very people, all 5,000 + of them, that were just fed, by Jesus, with the equivalent of an eight-piece bucket from the Colonel. And, this is why they followed him to the other side of the sea. The irony gets even better, because the moment they ask for a sign, they draw the obvious comparison for what sign they want: “Our ancestors ate manna in the desert, as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” Surely one person in this crowd, recalling their ancestors being fed miraculously in the wilderness, would have noticed: a) the same thing had just happened to them; and b) they were reliving their ancestors’ absurdly selective memory, as well.

As easy as it is to chuckle at the foibles of God’s people in scripture – while, I hope, recognizing them as our own foibles – I actually find the chuckling spiritually helpful: I am pretty sure that scriptural humor is there to remind us that it is a necessary, healthy, and God-given trait.

As a gay Catholic, I find the spirituality of a healthy sense of humor perhaps even more essential than my hetero siblings might, and I also learn something ironic from these texts: complaining, within reason, can be a spiritually positive thing. When we look past the amusing cluelessness of the people in today’s stories, we also see that God rescued the Israelites because he heard them crying out. Their dissatisfaction with their present life in Egypt caused them to ask God for a better future, and the answer was “Yes.” Abundantly. Similarly, the people who follow Jesus want something more than their current status quo, and they may not get an answer that makes immediate sense, but they get His attention and compassion.

We in the Catholic LGBTQ+ community also need to find some better response than resignation or despair to being seen as less than complete, or unworthy, members by many in our Church. The children of Israel cried out for relief, and they were heard. The followers of Jesus kept following, no matter how confused they sometimes were, and were always met with the compassion of the One they sought.

These stories and others like them help me to find both the humor and the patience necessary to believe, as my forebears did, that my grumbling will also be heard and answered. “Ask, and you shall receive” we are told. The tone of voice for the asking, however, wasn’t specified.

—Michaelangelo Allocca, New Ways Ministry, August 4, 2024