FROM MARAH TO ELIM

​If you feel, as I do, that we’ve been put through the wringer with the elections, we can all be forgiven for thinking that. Coming atop the pandemic, economic hardship, and racial strife, all of the negative politicking – including the tragic riot at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 – has left America a divided nation. Sadly, even families have been split asunder thanks to politics.
 
Every day, we’re bombarded by distressing reports in the news and subjected to the endless vitriol on social media. Some of us may have been wearing our political convictions on our sleeves – or more accurately on our Facebook accounts – with passion equal to (or, God forbid, greater than!) that with which we share our faith. Whether elated or enraged over the election outcome, we are somehow left feeling embittered with circumstances and with others who don’t share our political leanings.
 
The Water of Bitterness
 
As one who sucked at math, I shall nonetheless attempt an equation:
 
                             Pandemic + prejudice + politics + pride = bitterness
 
I’m reminded of a place called Marah in the Desert of Shur, at which the Israelites found themselves shortly after their miraculous crossing of the Red Sea:
 
“When they came to Marah, they could not drink its water because it was bitter. (That is why the place is called Marah.) So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, ‘What are we to drink?’ Then Moses cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a piece of wood. He threw it into the water, and the water became fit to drink. There the LORD issued a ruling and instruction for them and put them to the test. He said, ‘If you listen carefully to the LORD your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, who heals you.’ Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs and seventy palm trees, and they camped there near the water.” —Exodus 15:23-27
 
As the Israelites discovered to their chagrin, the water at Marah was unfit for consumption because it was bitter. (Marah is Hebrew for “bitter”.) In the same way, our embittered state has arisen because the political water we’ve imbibed, the political air we’ve inhaled, has been poisoned by negativity and divisiveness. What we consume is what we spit out. We are what we drink or eat!
 
Naturally, churches and Christian ministries have not been immune to the impact of national politics. With colleagues on both sides of the political spectrum – not very different really from the 12 disciples, with Matthew the Rome-appointed tax collector on one side and Simon the diehard nationalist on the other – there is a real danger that frustration and unhappiness caused by our political differences, if left unresolved, could fester to the point where they could tear us apart.
 
The author of Hebrews puts it this way: “Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many” (Hebrews 12:14-15). Bitterness attacks and contaminates the very attributes that enable us to see God – peace, grace, holiness. Instead of being special and holy instruments that are useful to the Master and prepared to do any good work (2 Timothy 2:21), we risk becoming useless branches that bear either no fruit or worse, bitter fruit.
 
The God Who Heals
 
“Moses cried out to the LORD…” (v. 25). To overcome our season of bitterness, so too must we cry out to God to sweeten the water and make it drinkable. From this situation comes an amazing revelation about God’s identity and mission: “… I am the LORD, who heals you” (v. 26). I’m struck by the fact that God used this episode – bitter water, not medical illness or physical injury – to reveal Himself as Israel’s (and our) Jehovah Rophe (or Rapha or Rophecha), the God who heals! The bitterness fueled by the dire state of America’s politics can be healed and restored by our God who is more than able.
 
The LORD showed Moses a piece of wood, which served as a water purification tablet of sorts (v. 25). The piece of wood reminds me of the wooden cross on which our Lord Jesus was crucified. It is by the death and resurrection of Christ on that tree that the ministry of reconciliation was rendered possible by God, and which He assigned us (2 Corinthians 5:17-21). Healing, restoration, and reconciliation have all been made possible by Jesus’s sacrifice at Calvary.
 
The Lord Who Sends
 
“Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs and seventy palm trees, and they camped there near the water” (v. 27). After all this had taken place, the Israelites made it to Elim, a desert oasis fed by springs and full of palms. Springs furnish the cool waters that hydrate the parched throats of travelers from their long desert trek, while palm trees offer shade and relief from the desert heat. Elim was a place that provided much needed respite and restoration to the Israelites after their encounter with bitterness, as it were.
 
May I suggest Elim also represents a calling to a once embittered people to be agents and ministers of healing, restoration, and reconciliation? I’m not into numerology but I find the mention of 12 springs and 70 palm trees intriguing. Here I’m reminded of the 12 disciples and the 72 – or, as Eastern Christian traditions like to put it, “the Seventy[-two] apostles” – whom Jesus sent out. With the 12, Matthew notes that Jesus “gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness” (Matthew 10:1). As for the 70 (or 72), Luke notes that these were sent by Jesus two by two “ahead of him to every town and place where he was about to go” (Luke 10:1). Not only were they to do what the 12 were sent to do, they also acted as forerunners of the Lord Jesus, who carry with them their Christ-given authority to heal and to restore souls mired in bitterness and brokenness, and to bring about reconciliation with God and with one another.
 
The Color Purple
 
In the Methodist Church in Singapore of which Trina and I were a part, the practice of using liturgical colors was conscientiously observed. Purple is the color of both penitence and royalty used during the preparatory seasons of Advent and Lent. It’s been said that when we mix red and blue, we get purple. When the political “red” and “blue” sides of our community resolve to mix together in love for one another, we collectively (purple) bow down in penitence before Jesus and worship Him as our Lord and King! In fact, our love for one another is what reveals to a wary and wearily embittered world that Jesus is King: “A new command I give you: Love one another,” said Jesus to His disciples. “As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another” (John 13:34-35).
 
Do we find ourselves stuck in Marah, embittered by all the poisoned water we’ve been drinking – from a firehose, it seems? Healing and restoration begin at home – at our local churches and ministries. If Matthew the taxman and Simon the hitman – some historians, fairly or otherwise, have referred to the extremist arm of the Zealots as the “Sicarii” – had each other’s backs and loved and laid down their lives for one another, then so too must we.
 
Time for us to get the heck out of Dodge – out of Marah, that is – and proceed to Elim!