(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on September 3, 2017, Proper 17)
A Man Who Has Cooled Off
Today’s story begins with a
peaceful, pastoral scene. There
against the wide backdrop of wilderness Moses moseys along, his eyes resting on
the flock of sheep and goats around him.
If you knew Moses from his
younger days, then this relaxed, easygoing shepherd might surprise you. A long time ago, Moses had a very
different reputation. Here’s his
previous reputation as the Bible records it—just verses before today’s
scripture:
Having grown up as a Hebrew
orphan in the Egyptian palace, Moses one day went out and saw the slavery of
his people. Nothing out of the
ordinary. Just some Egyptian
masters bullying their Hebrew slaves.
One Egyptian, however, went a bit too far. His bullying became beating. Moses was inflamed.
His heart burned within him.
He fixated on this one Egyptian man, and when the coast was clear, he
killed him.
As it turned out, though, the
coast had not been clear. The
murder became well known, and Moses fled from Egypt to the land of Midian,
which is where we find him today.
By now, he has settled down.
He has made friends with a local shepherd, married this man’s daughter,
and had a son. This is no longer
the man who stood up to Egyptian brutality. This is a man who has cooled off, who has put down roots and
is happy to live out his days in peace (cf. 2:11-22).
God and the Chessboard
And so here he is, ambling
alongside his flock in the wilderness, when suddenly something catches his
eye.
The rest of the story is history:
Moses and the burning bush. It’s a
familiar story. I’ll assume that
you know it. I assumed that I knew it. But I didn’t—not completely. I thought it was simple: God tells Moses to return to Egypt
to bring his people out. I thought
of it as a scene of divine recruitment, when God the employer contracts Moses
to a very special job, when God the commander hands Moses a mission
impossible.
What I discovered, however, is
not a distant God, a God sitting above the chessboard of our world, cool and calculating,
making moves, transferring players from one square to another. What I discovered is the opposite: a
God on the chessboard. What I discovered is a God who suffers.
An Odd Repetition
Religion has long held fantasies
of a God who is above all and all-powerful and who will fix everything in the
blink of an eye. When God tells
Moses, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt…and I have
come down to deliver them from the Egyptians,” I imagine that Moses nodded his
head approvingly, thinking to himself, “Amen!” That’s the God Moses wanted. That’s the God we all want. The God above who will come down in power and fix it all in
two shakes of a lamb’s tail.
But as Moses finds out, that’s
not quite who God is.
There’s an odd repetition in the
story of the burning bush. First,
God tells Moses that God has seen the Israelites’ misery and will come down to
deliver them. At this point, Moses
and we both are pretty happy.
That’s the God we want. But
God continues, saying, “I have…seen how the Egyptians oppress” the
Israelites—at which point, I imagine Moses blinking, thinking, “Yeah, you just
said that.” And then God says, “So
come, I will send you!” Wait, what?
God’s tune has
changed. First, it was: I have
seen their suffering, I have come
down to deliver them (cf. 3:7-8).
But then the second time around, it becomes: I have seen their
suffering—“so come, I will send you”
(cf. 3:9-10)!
A Tale of Two Fires
Well, which is it? Is God coming down to deliver the
Israelites from Egypt, or is Moses going to bring the Israelites out of
Egypt? In a word: Yes. Both.
God and Moses together. Not like a tag team: God pulling one
punch, Moses pulling the next. But
rather like a call and a response.
To the outside observer, only Moses will be leading the Israelites. But he would not be leading them if he
hadn’t first stumbled upon that blazing fire that called to him in the
wilderness.
Speaking of fire...I can’t help
but wonder if this is not really a tale of two
fires. Remember how long ago,
Moses like God had seen the suffering of the Israelites? Remember how that had inflamed
him? But the fire within his heart
had long cooled, as he settled down in Midian and married and had a son.
God’s heart, however, has not
cooled. The God whom Moses
encounters is a never-ending fire.
It’s a fascinating comparison.
God and Moses had shared the same fundamental observation. Both of them witnessed the suffering of
the Israelites. But one ran away
from the suffering and settled down, cooling off. The other stayed a blazing fire.
The key to this eternal divine
combustion? I think we hear it
early on in God’s message to Moses: “I know
their sufferings” (3:7).
Running Away from Suffering
“I know their sufferings.”
You’ve probably heard the
question before: “Where is God when it hurts?” If today’s story is any indication, the answer is simple: in the hurt. “I know their
sufferings.” Where is God in our
world today, our world of hurricane-flooding and systemic poverty and racial
injustice? According to today’s
scripture, God’s heart beats most clearly in the hearts of the suffering.
I would even go so far as to say,
God knows our suffering better than
we do ourselves! When we see
suffering, whether our own or others’, we do like Moses did: we run far away
from it and settle down where things are more comfortable. I don’t know about you, but for me it’s
almost a reflex! When someone
shares with me a story of illness, my response comes out immediately, “I hope
it gets better.” When someone
shares with me a story of difficulty, my mind races for solutions, “Have you
asked a professional for help?
Have you considered this, that, or the other?” There’s nothing wrong with trying to help, of course. It’s just that I’m suspicious about our
motives, sometimes. I think we,
like Moses, are afraid of suffering.
We don’t know what to do with it.
So we run away from it. We
mask it with platitudes and plans, programs and pipe dreams.
Bryan Stevenson, a public interest
lawyer deeply concerned with racial injustice, claims that racism and slavery
never died, they just evolved: first in the form of Jim Crow laws and then in
the socioeconomic tangle that has advanced our system of mass
incarceration. Stevenson contends that
the reason our nation has not found healing, is because we have never really
addressed the wound. He points out
that on the whole our nation does not do sorrow and suffering very well. We do business and gold medals and
victory well, but we do not do sorrow and suffering very well. As a result, we have still yet to
address many of the racial injustices of our history. To put it very simply, we like Moses have run away from the
suffering. Whereas South Africa
regularly remembers the suffering of its apartheid history in an effort to seek
truth and reconciliation; whereas Germany memorializes the suffering inflicted
by the Nazi regime; we in America do very little to tell the story of the
genocide of Native Americans or of the lynchings of black Americans. We run away from the suffering.
God Shares the Suffering
But God does not. “I know
their sufferings,” God says, which can only mean one thing. If God really knows their suffering,
that must mean God is suffering too.
God shares their suffering.
Is that not the story of Jesus?
The gospel writer of Matthew offers a fascinating observation about
Jesus when he goes about healing people.
Citing a verse from Isaiah, he says that when Jesus healed people, “He
took [their] infirmities and bore [their] diseases” (Matt 8:17). In other words, he shared their
suffering. Jesus was not a
magician curing people with the impersonal wave of a wand any more than God is
a chess-master, high above the board, cool and calculating, moving pieces at
will.
The gospel of Jesus is the same
gospel that we read in today’s story.
It’s that even when we like
Moses run away from the suffering of our world, God does not. God shares the suffering. God suffers too.
Called to Share God’s Suffering
This is good news, of course, to
the suffering. But chances are,
this news alone won’t make them feel much better. If the only thing I take away from this story, is that I
should give a pat on the shoulder to people who are suffering and tell them
that God is with them, before I go on my merry way, then I think I’ve missed
the point.
The point isn’t simply that God
suffers with the Israelites. The
point is that Moses feels called to join God, to share himself the suffering of
God and the Israelites. When God
promises Moses, “I will be with you” (3:12), I think what God is really saying,
is: I am with the suffering, and when you stop running away and return to share
their suffering, there you will find me.
There, “I will be with you.”
We Americans do success
well. We do fundraising dinners
and charitable programs and tax-deductible donations pretty well. But I wonder if sometimes this is
simply how we run away from suffering.
I wonder if these things are not just our escape route into Midian, into
a life of contentment and happily ever after, a reflex by which we avoid
sharing the pain of others.
The good news
of today’s scripture is not that God fixes things instantaneously from on high,
or that Jesus waves a wand and cures all our problems. Those are fantasies that have long
tempted religion, fantasies that bear a curious resemblance to our own methods
of throwing money or quick-fix programs at a problem. The good news is that rather than keeping a safe distance
from our suffering, God enters into it.
Shares it. And if we want
to find God, that’s where. We will
find God in the memory-loss of residents at Symphony Manor. Within the stopgap homes of
refugees. In the tears of a friend
who grieves. We will find God with
the gay youth who has been left burned by his family and his church. With the Muslim who continually endures
suspicious looks and intimidation.
With the disabled who are treated impatiently as burdens.
“I know their sufferings.” The good news is not a fix or a
cure. There are some things that
have no fix or cure—not in the way that we would want. The good news is a God who does not run
away. The good news is a God who
suffers with those who suffer, and who draws us into their presence, just as
God drew Moses back to the Israelites, just as Jesus draws us to the least of
these. As good as any donation or
plan or program may be, what the suffering need even more than that is us. By their side.
Prayer
God who shares our suffering
And knows it better
Than we do ourselves:
Kindle within our hearts
A love that courageously
Enters into the suffering of
others
And stays there,
With you.
In the name of him
Who took our infirmities and bore
our diseases, Jesus Christ.
Amen.
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