Numbers 11:1-15
February 25, 2007
Many people know B.B. King for his television commercials about a diabetes-monitoring device. In my opinion, King is the one of the finest blues musician in the world today. The Blues, as a musical art form, has its roots back in the fields of the southern plantations as slaves sang about the oppression and hardship of their lives.
According to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, “The Blues” is a reference to having a fit of “the blue devils,” or overwhelming depression or sadness. In fact, for the next few weeks, I will probably use “the Blues” and “depression” interchangeably.
The Blues as a musical genre’ was originally heavily influenced by traditional rhythms and styles of West Africa. They speak of personal woes in the midst of the harsh realities of life. Just a few of the great blues artists we know include Muddy Waters, B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, and Tracy Chapman. In the genre’ of blues-rock, we know Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, and Led Zeppelin. The “Texas rock-blues” style includes artists such as Stevie Ray Vaughn and ZZ Top.
The blues, as a musical art form, are a way to give voice to our feelings of hopelessness, depression, and the overriding sadness that comes when expectations go unfulfilled and dreams are not realized. The blues is what happens when high expectations are sometimes dashed on the rocks of real life.
I thought that we would spend the season of Lent looking at a few biblical characters that certainly knew how to sing the blues out of their own experience and in their own language. These are people who felt the weight of the world on their shoulders, and the depression that sometimes came from feeling like they were alone, with no one to help them.
I believe that one of the most dangerous notions in the church today is that if we have faith in Jesus, then there should be no reason for us to feel depressed. If we trust Jesus with our whole hearts, then we may be tempted to believe that there is no reason to sing the blues. The reality is much different however. We have all felt depressed at times. There is nothing that I know of that would lead us to believe that those who sing the blues are less faithful or committed than others.
We need to get some things up on the table right off. First of all, for some, depression can be a medical condition when brain chemistry goes awry. The positive aspect of this is that it sort of takes the stigma off of the depressed person. We tend to look askance at people with psychological difficulties, but if we can explain it by an imbalance in natural chemistry, that tends to remove the shame. Modern psychotherapy and drug therapies can to wonders to lift the veil of depression and restore a person to health. Those techniques are gifts from God and we should never be ashamed or afraid of them.
But our bodies are more than just a mass of chemistry. There is a spiritual side to these issues as well. Depression affects our spirit. It may separate us from God by leading us to believe that God doesn’t care, isn’t involved, and doesn’t want us to be well. If depression leads us to believe that God has abandoned us; that is indeed a spiritual issue. If we become disillusioned or disappointed in God, we have embarked on a spiritual question.
I think that for the next few weeks, we will be able to discover some very important themes for survival from some biblical saints. We will walk with them as they sing their own versions of “the blues,” and in the process, find some insights for those times when we sing them as well.
We took our first real family vacation back in 1987. Our oldest kid had just finished Kindergarten and the two youngest were still in diapers. But we were young and almost fearless. So we packed up the station wagon with enough supplies to equip a wagon train and headed off to the Rocky Mountains.
Earlier that summer, I had taken a youth group out to Estes Park, Colorado for the National Christian Youth Conference. On that trip, our old school bus blew an engine in Denver. I had to call a friend from seminary who was serving First United Methodist Church in Lakewood and ask her if her church could sleep eighteen teenagers and 5 adults for a few days. A Denver police officer ferried us from our stalled bus to the church in his squad car…four at a time.
We borrowed their church bus to finish our trip to Estes Park. While driving it, I hit a kid on a bike (thankfully, he wasn’t hurt) and ran into a tree in Rocky Mountain National Park, demolishing the driver’s side rear view mirror. I never thought that I would ever say this, but that trip was so much easier than our family trip.
Things went fine for the first four or five days of the family’s trip. The problems started when it began to rain…and rain…and rain…and rain. We were camping in a tent with three small children. After the second night of rain, we started spending money we didn’t have and stayed in motels for the rest of the vacation.
Now Moses took a road trip with a whole nation, about 600,000 people give or take! That just boggles the mind. Imagine being in charge of that many people. Imagine being the leader of all of those people and their 600,000 different ideas about the way things should be run. Imagine having to contend with 600,000 different opinions and 600,000 people who thought they could do the job better than Moses. I always say that being a leader of a local congregation is like herding cats. Leading the wandering Children of Israel was no different. Can we find it in our hearts to give Moses a little sympathy?
It was Moses who had gone to the Pharaoh and said, “Let my people go” when the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt. It was Moses who warned Pharaoh that he and the nation of Egypt would suffer plagues unimaginable unless the Israelites were allowed to leave. Finally, the Pharaoh capitulated and allowed the slaves to go free. But soon after that, he changed his mind and sent his armies after the fleeing Israelites.
The Egyptian army cornered the Israelites at the Red Sea. Moses lifted up his hands over the sea and the water divided so that they could cross on dry ground. As the Egyptian army followed, their chariots became mired in the mud and the sea closed, completely destroying them.
From there, Moses led them down into the Sinai to the Mountain of God, where they would end up camping for about a year. At a time when the people should have been celebrating their freedom and honoring Moses as the great leader that he was, they began grumbling. They were hungry, they were thirsty, they were afraid, they thought that they had been better off back in Egypt, and they expected to die in the desert. There were over a half-million people on the “Back to Egypt Committee” who made Moses’ life miserable.
From about the nineteenth chapter of Exodus through the book of Leviticus and up to the tenth chapter of Numbers, we find them camped out at Mount Sinai. God spent a whole year transmitting to the people guidelines for daily living. And then they set off on the rest of their journey toward the Promised Land; a journey which would indicate how well they had accepted those guidelines, and how well they could live under real world conditions.
And they started complaining...again. It got to the point that when Moses said, “turn left” they turned right. When he said, “stand up” they sat down. When he said that the sky was blue, they disagreed. Moses was fed up and wasn’t going to take it any more.
It finally got to the point that Moses just couldn’t stand it. He had done his best. He had led the people through all sorts of trials and dangers. He was always looking out for their well-being. He was always aware of their needs. Time and time again, he interceded with God on their behalf. He prayed for them. He walked with them. He suffered with them. He dreamed with them. He hurt with and for them. And all they could do was complain when their piddly little needs were not being met.
So Moses complained to God. Why on earth did you do this to me, he asked. Who are these people that I have to shepherd them through the desert? I didn’t ask for this job, you just dumped it on me. You are the one who created them and who should be doing all of the heavy lifting. If this is how your are going to treat me, then just kill me. I can’t take it anymore, just kill me. I’ve had enough. You would be doing me a huge favor if you would just end my life, right here and now.
In his prayer to God, we can see the symptoms of Moses’ depression. We can tell why he was singing the blues. We hear first hand what was bothering him.
If this prayer to God wasn’t a case of Moses singing the blues, I don’t know what is. But at least he took a positive first step. He went to God in prayer. And he was honest. He poured out his heart to God. Honest prayer releases the tension in the relationship so that he was able to hear God respond.
God responded to the prayer of Moses. Immediately following the verses we read this morning, God told Moses to appoint seventy elders from the people. God said he would spread his Spirit on these men and they would then be able to take some of the load off of Moses. They would be able to help with some of the problems. Moses wouldn’t have to carry everything on his shoulders alone.
Here is the key point for this message this morning. One of the most important things to know when you are in the midst of the blues or a bout of depression is never face it alone. You’ve got to have friends. You’ve got to reach out to other people. You’ve got to have others near you with whom you can be honest, and from whom you can expect honesty in return.
Everybody gets depressed from time to time. Everybody sings the blues on occasion. Everyone has days when you just want to go away and hide. It is really easy, in the midst of those feelings, to shut yourself off from others you so desperately need.
Moses knew this. Early in the Exodus, his father in law had told Moses that he needed to delegate authority in order to share the work load. Moses did that and found it to be helpful advice. But then he seemed to have forgotten the lesson until reminded of it by God himself.
You all remember the blinding snowstorm we had a couple of weeks ago. Visibility was near zero. That is how it is sometimes when we get so caught up in our troubles that we can’t see the way forward.
When we are feeling the blues, the easiest thing in the world is to shut ourselves off, climb into bed, and pull the covers over our head. That is what Moses wanted. But through the intervention of his friends, he was able to regain his strength and emerge once again as the leader the people needed.
Howard Thurman, who died in 1981, was an ordained Baptist preacher. He was Dean of the Chapel at Howard University in Washington D.C. from 1932-44 and the first African-American Dean of the Chapel at Boston University. When I was doing my graduate study at Ashland Theological Seminary, the unofficial motto became these words from Thurman. He said, “Don’t do what the world needs. Do what keeps you alive; for what the world needs is you, alive.”
In those periods when you are singing the blues, you have to know that there are two things you cannot do without. First of all, you cannot do without an honest relationship with God, to whom you can take your deepest needs, thoughts, and even doubts. Secondly, you can’t make it without friends to walk the path with you, to help lighten your load, to be a sounding board for your ideas, to listen, not to judge, but just to love.
You gotta have God. You gotta have friends. It worked for Moses. I think it will work for you.