Cucumbers and Captivity
Fifth graders are magical people. One of my joys is teaching a Bible class to a motley crew of eleven year-olds who have grown up all over the world. Together, we dive into the overall narrative of Scripture. Their evaluations are often full of insight, curiosity, and the glorious combination of acceptance and skepticism. It turns out they have the same questions we all do; they’re just brave enough to ask immediately, right there in front of God and all these witnesses. Sometimes they notice things I have never noticed before. They make me a better student of Scripture.
Last time I taught through the metanarrative, these students were intrigued by the story of the Exodus. In particular, a detail that jumped out to them was the response of God’s people after they arrive in the wilderness. The awe and wonder and gratitude of their miraculous rescue wears off quickly. The people look around at the barren desert and immediately begin longing to return to Egypt. “After all,” they say, “we had fish, cucumbers, onions, and garlic back there.”
My fifth graders lost their ever-loving minds. Cucumbers and onions? They wanted to return to Egypt because of vegetables?!
As the story marches on - you can read it yourself in Numbers 11 - Moses says to Yahweh, “these people are your problem. I didn’t ask for this.” Yahweh responds by nearly drowning his whining people with meat. It is such a weird story.
I shared this with a friend recently, especially the part I found most delightful: watching my fifth graders respond to the complaint about cucumbers.
“Isn’t that what we all do?” my friend asked. “We look back fondly at ‘Egypt’ and forget that we were living in captivity there.”
As a follower of Jesus, I understand the Exodus story to have a few layers. On the first layer, it’s a historical account of the people of God, three thousand years ago. This layer demonstrates God’s heart for his people: he heard their groaning, remembered his covenant, saw his beloved people, and knew what they needed. (Ex. 2:24-25) He went to great lengths to deliver them. On the second layer, the Exodus serves as a pattern for spiritual rescue. Jesus is the true and better Passover lamb, the slain firstborn, and the intercessor-rescuer. He snatches his beloved ones from the jaws of slavery to sin and its final destination of death.
For now, followers of Jesus, like the people of Yahweh in Exodus through Deuteronomy, are sojourners. We’ve been rescued, and now we wander around, learning to trust him for daily sustenance, seeing him provide abundant living water and generously sweet manna. (It didn’t have to be sweet. I love him for that.) And still, sometimes, we find ourselves griping, pining after the seasons and places of captivity to sin. We had cucumbers there, after all. We got to gratify our desires, put ourselves first, do what felt right. We forget that we were shackled. We forget, in the wilderness of trust, that we are free here. We forget that our dependence is a beautiful gift. We have been rescued in order to be named: a special possession, a chosen people, a royal priesthood. We’ve been redeemed in order to know love in order to show love.
May we learn to remember what came with the cucumbers, and choose instead to set up camp wherever he takes us.
