What are we going to be for?
A sermon preached at Holy Trinity Cathedral, Quebec City (September 20, 2026)
Texts: Ex 16:2-15; Ps 105:1-6, 37-45; Phil 1:21-30; Mt 20:1-16
Complain. Complain. Complain.
“The whole congregation of the Israelites complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.” (Exodus 16:2)
Our reading this morning from the book of Exodus has a very prominent feature. Over the course of this short passage, it uses the word "complain" seven times. Clearly, the text is trying to focus our attention on something.
Now, on the surface, these complaints seem to be directed towards Moses and Aaron’s leadership. We don’t have to speculate on how Moses and Aaron might have felt about this; Moses is pretty clear when he defensively redirects these complaints, saying:
“For what are we, that you complain against us?” (Exodus 16:7b)
It is not ultimately Moses and Aaron that are the real subjects of the complaints here, Moses suggests; it was God. And it was.
It was God who saw the people toiling under the leadership of Pharaoh. It was God who heard the congregation of Israel’s complaints. And it was God who, through Moses and Aaron’s leadership, led the congregation out of Egypt and into freedom.
But freedom is not only the absence of oppression—that is only freedom from. God’s freedom is a freedom for: a freedom for peace, a freedom for justice, a freedom for the common good, a freedom that calls us to be a people not merely against something, but for something. Freedom here is not something we have; it’s something we practice. Freedom requires virtues, freedom requires traits of character that allow us to enact our agency in the world in positive ways.
Complaining is not one of those traits. But complaining can become a character trait the more we practice it. In other words, complaining can become a vice, and if we are not careful, we can begin to see the world through the lens of complaint, through the lens of dissatisfaction, through the sense of not enough.
As the Canadian theologian Mary Jo Leddy argues, there is a self-destructive logic at play here that goes something like this: I don’t have enough. I am not enough. This, she argues, powers the imperial spirituality of dissatisfaction, which in turn drives our current political and economic systems—built as they are on the sense that we do not have enough, that we are not enough.
Economic expansionism and ethno-nationalism are just two “isms” that express imperial spiritual visions cultivated by this sense of not having enough, of not being enough. It’s a spirituality that is hard to walk away from—oh yes, we can walk away from Egypt, but can we walk away without taking Pharaoh with us?
Now, in the congregation of Israel’s defense, while their life in Egypt was grinding, it was also predictable. The people knew what was going to happen next. Sometimes a bad situation that is predictable can still feel more comfortable than a better situation that is unpredictable—better the devil you know. And in the congregation of Israel’s case, they didn’t know where their food was going to come from next. They lacked knowledge about and control over their resources, and that is a hard place to be. So they reverted to what they had always done under Pharaoh: they complained. And God heard their complaint, and I think God heard it with compassion and grace.
God responded to their complaint. But I think God responded in the most hilarious way. God gave them quail and God gave them manna to eat, but only for a day. God gave them good food, but God only gave them enough. They could not stockpile it; they could not control it. They could only receive it as a gift and learn to be thankful. And in so doing, in the middle of the wilderness, God opened up a school of virtue for the congregation of Israel—a school of gratitude to banish the complaints of Pharaoh behind them.
And we see the results of this schooling in our Psalm this morning, of which we sang only an excerpt. It is a song of thanksgiving for God’s gifts: for the gifts of the quail and the gifts of manna, for the gifts of all the marvelous deeds God did to lead God’s people out of slavery and into freedom. And in singing it, they practiced their freedom:
“So he led forth his people with gladness, his chosen with shouts of joy.” (Psalm 105:43)
Leading with gladness and leading with joy; being a people bound together through gladness and through joy. These are the character traits of a people who have been schooled in the virtue of gratitude by their time in the wilderness with manna and quail—with learning to trust that God will provide for them, with learning to live with enough.
As the Anglican ethicist Oliver O’Donovan, has argued, following St. Augustine, true political community is formed by people sharing common objects of love, and I think that is true. But I want to add here that we cannot love what we have not recognized, we cannot love what we have not celebrated, we cannot love what we have not received with thanks.
True political community, true freedom—positive freedom—requires practice, requires virtue, requires being for something.
As a people and as persons, what are we going to be for? As a people and as persons, what are we going to be for in a world that is set against?
My friends, we live in a world filled with all kinds of “isms,” all kinds of imperial spiritualities that threaten to capture our hearts and minds, that threaten to subjugate us to a successive line of Pharaohs whose rule thrives through complaint.
Let us practice together a different way of relating—a way of life defined not by a sense of scarcity, but by a trust in God’s provision. Let us not grumble, but sing—sing with gladness and with joy, for through Christ Jesus, we are a people bound together through grace and thanksgiving.
Sources
Leddy, Mary Jo. Radical Gratitude. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 2002.
O’Donovan, Oliver. Common Objects of Love : Moral Reflection and the Shaping of Community : The 2001 Stob Lectures. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub., 2002.
