A Closer Look at Manna

 For my Sunday School lesson today I decided to focus on the parting of the Red Sea and the bestowal of Manna in the wilderness. It made me look closer at Manna, how it was described, and the rules about how it was to be gathered and eaten.  

First of all, what was Manna.  There are a few different words and phrases that described it.  In Exodus 16:31 we read that "it was like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey." in Exodus 16:14 we learn that it was "a small round thing, as small as the hoar frost on the ground." We also learn in 16:21 "and when the sun waxed hot, it melted."  I have to admit that the first thing that came to my mind with this description was Dipp'n Dots.  We learn elsewhere, however, that they would "bake" it and "seeth" or boil it. So it wasn't Dipp'n Dots. For my class, I made a honey graham cracker recipe, crumbled the dough, and cooked it. It wasn't white like real manna, but the students enjoyed gathering it up from the butcher paper I had spread on the floor.

My attempt to make Manna taught me something about the message of the Manna.  I think the reference to Coriander in Exodus 16:31 refers to the size of the bits of Manna because it is followed by the phrase, "and the taste...". Here is a picture of Coriander seed.

As you can see, it is pretty small.  I think a modern American would say it is about the size of pepper corns. The Lord tells them that they are to gather one omer every morning per person(16:15) , and the chapter says that it was found on the ground (v. 14).  An omer is believed to be about two quarts. 

So think about what it would take to gather two quarts of something the size and shape of a peppercorn.  They couldn't just scoop it up, or they would get a handful of dirt mixed in with their Manna.  They would have to bend down, pick up each piece, one at a time, and put it into their container.  After that they would then have to either grind and cook it as bread or boil and eat it.

In John 6: 25-40 Jesus compares himself to Manna, the bread of life.  Several of my podcasters, and materials in the Come Follow Me manual talked about how just as the children of Israel had to gather Manna each day for physical sustenance, we have to give ourselves spiritual Manna each day to stay spiritually strong. If gathering Manna is a symbol of diligently seeking God's spirit, what do the details of Chapter 16 teach us?

First of all, we need to feed our spirits every day. We can't gather enough spiritual food on Sunday to last us through the week.  If we try to rest on yesterday's spiritual laurels, it could go rotten in our souls.  

Second, the daily spiritual experiences we seek are not necessarily large.  Spiritual health is based on many small acts of devotion, like picking up the many pieces of Manna in an omer.  These could include saying prayers, daily scripture reading,and small acts of service. Each is another seed of the bread of life. 

Third, to collect spiritual sustenance, we have to humble ourselves.  The people gathering manna had to bend over, probably to their knees, just to see the Manna in order to pick it up. It took physical effort and focus. If we don't bend over, examine closely, and focus, we are likely to end up with a metaphorical handful of dirt instead of the bread of life. 

Finally, if we do humble ourselves, gather spiritual experiences daily, and focus our lives on Christ, the Lord does send us, each day, what we need to get through the day. In the Lord's Prayer Jesus taught his disciples, "Give us this day our daily bread." He will sustain us.  Maybe we aren't eating Thanksgiving dinner every day, but we aren't starving to death either.  He is faithful and will provide. 

We get the impression from the scriptures that Manna was not only nutritious, but also delicious.  The scripture describes it like "cakes of honey" and "bread made with oil", (think doughnuts). Likewise our daily communion with God can also be a delicious part of our lives. It will sustain us and help us get through whatever wilderness we might encounter. 

Passover

The symbolism of the passover is so deep that I am sure 1000's of books and articles have been written about it. I wrote a good blog post about Genesis 7-13 in 2022. One thing I mentioned then was how the different plagues were created to show that Jehova was more powerful than the Egyptian gods, with each plague referring to a different god. One insite I got from the podcasts I listened to this week was a different way of seeing the plagues. This week Dave Hadlock on Follow Him talked about how the plagues were a dismantling of creation.  

I have talked about before how the flood at the time of Noah was an undoing of creation. It was a chance for God to reset the world with a new founder and a new covenant. That is basically what is happening in the story of the Exodus. God, through the plagues, ritualistically reverses creation so the pharaoh will free Israel and then God can re-establishes a new creation and a new covenant with the house of Israel.  Here are the parallels.

During the Creation, God orders and separates light from darkness and water from land.  He sets lights in the heavens and creates plants and animals. His final creation is man. The plagues reverse all that.  The Lord starts by cursing the Nile, the main water source.  He later causes darkness where there can be no light. He destroys crops and sends the locusts who destroy all the plants.  He also destroys the cattle. He causes hail and fire to fall from heaven (reversing the placement of lights in heaven). His final curse is the death of the firstborn. When the house of Israel is finally allowed to leave Egypt, the world the Hebrews have known has been completely destroyed, or un-created. 

As Israel leaves the ruined world behind, the Lord starts to re-create their world again. First, he separates the land from the water when he divides the Red Sea. He separates light from darkness when he establishes the Pillar of Fire to lead them by night. Later we will learn that he creates food (like the plants created in Eden) in the form of Manna, and gives them animals to eat, in the form of quail (Ex 16). He leads the people to Mount Sinai where Moses talks with the Lord. When the people are ready to meet the Lord on the Mountain, the mountain is filled with lighting and thunder (Ex 19:16-19).  The Lord is restoring the lights that had fallen from heaven. The creation has been re-established.  All that was destroyed by the plagues are back in place. This done, they are ready for a new covenant, with a new priesthood leadership, lead by Moses and Miriam, instead of Adam and Eve. We will talk in later weeks about how Israel refused the full covenant that the Lord wanted to make with them, and were given a lesser covenant.

If you look, you can see this pattern of uncreation and recreation repeated in the Old and New Testaments, the Book of Mormon and even in Church history. A few examples are the Babylonian Captivity, the events of 3rd Nephi, the coming of Christ in the meridian of time, and the restoration of the Gospel through Joseph Smith.  In each case people have strayed so far from God's path they need a really dramatic reset in order for them to get back on track. In each of these cases, look for the elements of water, light, plants, animals, and signs in the heavens. In each case there is a catastrophic failure, but then the Lord starts over with a new covenant. 

This pattern can bring us hope in our own lives.  Sometimes it seems like our own lives experience a catastrophic failure. This can be due to our own sin, or through exterior forces that make our life unravel. The scriptures show us that God is faithful.  When "un-creation" happens, if we turn to Him he can recreate our lives in ways we could not have anticipated. 

Jesus' Anointing

This week we take a break from our study of Exodus and turn to the celebration of Holy Week.  I posted about my family's traditions surrounding Holy Week a few years ago.  Today I want to focus on an occurrence that is often overlooked in the recounting of the last week of Jesus' life. To start out, I have to ask the question: what does it mean when we say Jesus the Christ?  

Both of the terms "Christ" and "Messiah" mean the same thing, "Anointed One." (Christ is Greek, and Messiah is Hebrew).  What role does anointing play in the Old Testament?  There are two kinds of people who are anointed, priests, and kings. Since Jesus qualifies as both a priest and a king then it makes sense that he would be anointed. Yet, there is no account of Jesus being formally anointed by either of religious or political leaders of the day.  There isn't even an account of Jesus being anointed by God.  

There are only two accounts of Jesus receiving an anointing, and both were performed by women.  In John 12:1-8 Mary the sister of Martha, anoints Jesus' feet shortly before Holy Week.  In Mark 14:3-9 an unnamed woman anoints Jesus' head with spikenard. Some people think of these as two separate events, and some people see them as two recountings of the same event. For this discussion I will consider them the same event.  Mary, the sister of Martha, pours a very expensive and aromatic oil on Jesus right before his crucifixion.

Why, if one of Jesus' main titles is "Anointed One," is Jesus anointed only by women?  And what is spikenard and why would a women own a very expensive alabaster container of it?  

Spikenard is a essential oil perfume made from a plant that grows in the Himalayas. It would have been expensive because it was imported from a far-away country. Why might a woman own some?  We must remember that ancient Israel, especially the cities, would have been very stinky places. There was the smell of sweaty bodies, sweaty animals, and animal dung. Jews performed a lot of ritual washings, but in the desert running water was scarce and baths were few. It would have been normal, therefore, for a woman to have purchased, or have been gifted perfume as part of her dowry to sweeten the experience of marital intimacy. 

I purchased some spikenard last time we studied the New Testament.  It has a nice smell, but quite strong.  A few drops of it would have gone a long way. The story specifically says that pouring the whole container on Jesus' head was considered a waste and the smell filled the house. 

One way to look at the scene is that Mary, by sacrificing the large container of oil was showing her great love, perhaps even romantic love, for Jesus.  She was, in essence, saying, "because of my great love for you I will never marry or love another man. I know you are going to die, so I will use all my spikenard on you at once, while I have the chance." 

If this is the case, it is a very touching and romantic scene. It makes it even more beautiful that Jesus appears first to Mary when he is resurrected.

There is, however, an even more impactful symbolic meaning to this scene. If you read through my blog titles from the last time we studied the Old Testament, you know that the idea of God as the Bridegroom, and the church as his bride permeates the whole Old Testament, and then recurs in force in the book of Revelation. I think the reason that the woman in Mark who anoints Jesus is unnamed, is because Mark (and the other gospel writers) was aware of this symbolism.  He knows that spikenard is associated with the bridal chamber.  He knows that the bride represents the church.  He is showing two important principles. 

First, that it is Jesus' death that makes him the Bridegroom. When Judas asks why Jesus allowed the waist of the expensive oil, Jesus says that she has done it in preparation for his burial (Mark 14:8). He is combining images of marriage and death on purpose. He is showing that Jesus' suffering and death is the marriage that joins us to him in an everlasting covenantal embrace. 

Second, Jesus is not established (i.e. anointed) as priest and king by worldly religious or political leaders, but by the church itself (symbolized by the woman).  In order for him to be our priest, we must be his disciples.  In order for him to be our king, we must be his subjects. It is our love and respect for him that enthrones him and makes him Lord in our lives and in our hearts.