Sweeter Than Honey

Reading the Word

From Exodus: "The house of Israel called it manna; it was like coriander seed, white, and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey. 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."'... The people of Israel ate the manna forty years, until they came to a settled land; they ate the manna, until they came to the border of the land of Canaan."

From Psalm 119: "Oh, how I love your law! It is my meditation all day long. Your commandment makes me wiser than my enemies, for it is always with me... How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth! Through your precepts I get understanding; therefore I hate every false way."

From Romans: "I commend to you our sister Phoebe, a deacon of the church at Cenchreae, so that you may welcome her in the Lord as is fitting for the saints... Greet Prisca and Aquila, who work with me in Christ Jesus... Greet Mary, who has worked very hard among you... Greet Andronicus and Junia, my relatives who were in prison with me; they are prominent among the apostles, and they were in Christ before I was."

Reflection

The wilderness was forty years long.

That is not a season. That is a lifetime. An entire generation born, raised, and buried between Egypt and Canaan. And for every one of those years, the food was the same. Coriander seed, white, tasting like honey. Not exciting. Not varied. Not what you would choose from a menu. But enough. Day by day by day, the manna came with the morning dew, and the people gathered it, and it sustained them.

Exodus tells us that Moses preserved an omer in a jar, placed before the covenant. This was not for practical use. It was memory made edible. The jar said: when your children ask what we ate in the wilderness, show them. Let them see. Let them taste, in their imagination, the food that God provided when there was nothing else.

Psalm 119 makes the connection explicit. The law, the commandment, the precepts; these are not dry words on a page. They are sweeter than honey to the mouth. The psalmist meditates on them all day long because they are sustenance. In a world of enemies and false ways, the word of God is the daily bread that makes wisdom possible. Not wisdom as intellectual achievement, but wisdom as survival. The wisdom to know what is false and what is true, what kills and what gives life.

And then Romans 16, the end of Paul's great letter, where he sends greetings to the church in Rome. This passage is extraordinary for the sheer number of women Paul names, and the prominence he gives them. Phoebe, a deacon of the church; the Greek word is diakonos, the same word used for ministry throughout the New Testament. She is a patron, a leader, a protector of the letter Paul has written. Prisca and Aquila, always named together, the couple who risked their necks for Paul. Mary, who worked very hard. And Junia, "prominent among the apostles," a woman, named as an apostle, recognized by Paul as someone who suffered for the gospel before he even believed.

For the Christian faith, this is crucial. The church that carried the jar of manna and the word of God was never a church of male dominance. From the beginning, women were deacons, apostles, patrons, and co-workers. The daily sustenance of the gospel was prepared and served by the whole community, not half of it. And the sweetness of the word is that it frees us from every false way, including the false way of patriarchy that has silenced the very voices Paul celebrated.

What holds these texts together is the long, daily work of formation. The manna came every morning. The law was meditation all day long. The church in Rome was built by patient, daily labor over years. Teaching, risking, welcoming, and hard work. There are no shortcuts to holiness. There is only the daily gathering, the daily chewing, the daily sweetness that forms a people capable of entering the land.

The jar before the ark is still there. The word is still sweet. The deacons and apostles are still working. And the wilderness, however long it feels, is sustained by what comes every morning.

Prayer

O God, you fed us in the wilderness with bread from heaven, sweeter than honey.

We confess that we tire of the daily manna. We want a feast. We want to arrive. We want the promised land now.

But your word is our daily bread. Your commandment is our wisdom. Your precepts are the sweetness that makes the long journey bearable.

We thank you for Phoebe, for Junia, for Mary, for every woman you called as deacon, apostle, and co-worker. Forgive us for the false way that silenced the voices you raised up.

Teach us to gather the manna each morning. Teach us to meditate on your word all day long. Make us a people formed by daily grace, not by dramatic miracles, but by the quiet sweetness of your faithful presence. Amen.

For Today

What is your daily manna? The simple, repetitive grace that sustains you? How can you make space for the sweetness of God's word today? And who in your community is doing the hard work that others overlook? How can you honor them?

Blessing

May your wilderness be sustained by what falls with the morning dew. May the word be sweeter than honey on your tongue. And may you know that the jar of memory, the women of the church, and the daily bread of God are all still here, forming you for the land of promise.