“Moses said, ‘This is what the Lord has commanded. Let an omer of it be kept throughout your generations in order that they may see the food with which I fed you in the wilderness when I brought you out of the land of Egypt.’ And Moses said to Aaron, “Take a jar, and put an omer of manna in it, and place it before the Lord, to be kept throughout your generations. Just as the Lord commanded Moses, so Aaron placed it before the covenant, for safekeeping.” Exodus 16:32-34
From family reunion T-shirts to Mardi Gras beads and hospital bracelets, we hold souvenirs that mark time and experiences in our lives.
They tell stories of some places we have been to and through, places that brought us into a deeper awareness that we were alive. Souvenirs stir memories. They recall sounds and scents. They help to keep us honest when we stop going places, act like we have never been anywhere, or have ever shown up in the world any other way. As often as we gather souvenirs for our safekeeping, we also provide them to others as a way of letting them know they were thought of on your journey to a particular place. When we have the pleasure of aging and details of years past take a bit more energy to remember correctly, souvenirs grow in value.
In this Exodus text, we look in on conversations between God and Moses and then Moses and Aaron. Instructions were given about keeping a souvenir from their struggle and sharing it with generations to come. According to the text, God thought it important that the Israelites not forget what they had gone through, seen, and overcome to be free. Unlike the cable news, God’s focus was not on Pharaoh, but on the evidence that Pharaoh was not God. Putting manna in a jar was an act of encapsulating embodied faith and embodied power.
No less than those who ran for their freedom in the Exodus story, our people are not new to the wilderness that awaits a community fleeing an oppressor. Our people are not new to racist tropes and supremacist hallucinations from those who resent the unrelenting brilliance of the African Diaspora. In fact, our people are not new to tariffs and the attempted erasure of our history. We have accumulated a few souvenirs over the last 499 years since Africans first arrived in 1526 to the Spanish colony we now know as South Carolina.
In every area of essential human need (housing, food, healthcare, transportation, financing, etc.), we have paid more and received less. Calling things history can sometimes lead folk to believe all history was a long time ago, but Jim Crow, Black Codes, poll tax and redlining were realities for our relatives until 1965. We have both provocative and lovely souvenirs to remind us that we rise under pressure. While books are being banned and websites are being scrubbed, it is time we put our manna in a jar to share with our children and children’s children.
This season, let us create a new economy that will start in our community. Let us do more teaching than preaching. Let us put our truths in writing. Let us fill our churches with libraries.
Let us remember we are phenoms and pharaohs are not God.
