"I Know Their Sufferings" (Ex 3:1-15)

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.

You know the story: 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 taskmasters bullying their Hebrew slaves. One Egyptian, however, went a bit too far. His bullying became beating. And Moses became 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 is history: Moses and the burning bush. It’s a familiar story. If you had asked me how it goes before I had read the scripture this week, here’s what I would have said. God tells Moses to return to Egypt to bring his people out. I thought of this moment 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 this week is that God is not at all a distant operator, 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! Do it!” 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, in verses seven and eight, 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 in verses nine and ten, saying, “I have…seen how the Egyptians oppress” the Israelites—at which point, I imagine Moses was 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 (Ex 3:7-8). But then the second time around, it becomes: I have seen their suffering—“so come, I will send you” (Ex 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 secret to this eternal divine combustion? I think we hear it early on in God’s message to Moses: “I know their sufferings” (3:7).

We and Moses Run 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 in sync with the hearts of the suffering.

Maybe a better question would be, “Where am I when it hurts?” Because when I see suffering, whether my own or others, I am often inclined to do as Moses did: to 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 a story of illness, my reflex is to respond, “I hope it gets better.” When someone shares 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 my motives, sometimes. I think that, like Moses, I am afraid of suffering. I don’t know what to do with it. So I run away from it. I mask it with platitudes and plans and wishful prognoses.

Bryan Stevenson, a public interest lawyer deeply concerned with racial injustice, makes a case that I find personally find compelling that racism and slavery never died, they just evolved: first in the form of Jim Crow laws, then in housing laws and mass incarceration and other measures that have inhibited the very folks who, when they were first granted freedom, bore a deep, deep wound, both material and emotional. Stevenson contends that the reason our nation has not found healing, is because it has never really addressed the wound. He points out that on the whole our nation does not do sorrow and suffering very well. It does business and gold medals and victory well, but it does not do sorrow and suffering very well. As a result, there remains a deep wound in our nation. The recent tragic shooting in Jacksonville is just the latest testament to this wound. To put it very simply, our nation like Moses has run away from the suffering. Whereas South Africa regularly remembers the suffering of its apartheid history as a part of its truth and reconciliation process; whereas Germany memorializes the suffering inflicted by the Nazi regime; the United States, until recently, has done very little to tell the honest truth about the theft and genocide perpetrated against the Native Americans or the enslavement and lynchings of black Americans.

God Shares the Suffering

But God does not run away from the pain. “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. That is how he healed. 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 knows the suffering. Shares it. That is how the healing begins.

Called to Know Others’ 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 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 know their suffering too, there you will find me. There, “I will be with you.”

Our nation does success well. We do fundraising dinners and charitable programs and tax-deductible donations pretty well. But I wonder if sometimes this is a way to run away from suffering. I wonder if these things are not just an escape route into Midian, into a life of contentment and happily ever after, a reflex by which we might 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. Knows it. Shares it. And if we want to find God, that’s where. We will find God in the company of a friend who grieves and needs not to be alone. We will find God in the company of a person who has endured loss and needs a ramp built or a home repaired. We will find God in the company of the gay youth who has been left burned by his family and his church. We will find God in the company of our black neighbors, many of whom suffer quietly each time they learn the news of another life lost to hate and see the response of a culture that is seemingly indifferent to their plight.

“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 not to be alone, but to have companions who know their suffering. That is how God’s healing begins.

Prayer 

God who knows our suffering,
Kindle within our hearts
The fire of your love,
Which burns with desire
For the well-being of others
…
Draw us out of isolation
To know the story of others
And to share with them
The journey of your salvation.
In Christ, who took our infirmities and bore our diseases: Amen.