"God's Steadfast Love Endures Forever" (Ex 32:1-14)

“Quick to Turn Aside”:

Settling for Snacks

Impatience can make me fickle. My four-year-old nephews have taught me this. They frequently teach me things about myself, for I see in their rather transparent behavior the same motives that I often have but that I have learned to hide from myself.

Frequently near dinnertime the nephews will be hungry and clamoring for food. “How much longer?” they ask. These polite enquiries soon give way to loud demands. “I want some goldfish! I need juice! Do we have any grapes?” Dinner may only be minutes away, but such is their desire that they are willing to settle for less. They are willing to settle for snacks even when there is a feast around the corner.

In the same way, the Israelites have grown impatient. Moses has gone up the mountain to receive from God the laws that will help establish a good and ordered common life among the people. But it’s been nearly forty days now, and people are beginning to doubt that he’ll ever return. “We don’t know what’s become of him,” they’re saying (Ex 32:2).

The conventional interpretation of this passage is that the people give up on Moses and God and turn elsewhere. It seems like a clear-cut case of idolatry, right? I mean, they make a literal idol, a golden calf.

But I wonder if this interpretation isn’t a little too convenient. It makes it awfully easy to distance ourselves from the Israelites, to point fingers that protect ourselves from any similar self-accusation. After all, who among us has crafted an actual idol to worship in God’s place? But when I read more closely, I see something that strikes closer to home. After Aaron has made the golden calf, the people praise it with the same language that they praise God, “These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!” (Ex 32:4). Moments later, Aaron himself declares, “Tomorrow shall be a festival to the Lord”—using the divine name by which God revealed Godself to Moses (cf. Ex 3:14). And the next day, they worship through burnt offerings and sacrifices of well-being, rituals that God has previously prescribed as a means of drawing near to God (Ex 20:24; cf. Ex 24:3-5). All of this behavior, which resembles authentic expressions of worship, suggests that the Israelites actually think they’re still worshiping God, even if through the medium of a golden calf.

Their speech makes clear that they remember that God has delivered them from Egypt and they know their need for divine help going forward (cf. Ex 32:1). It’s just that they become impatient. Their idolatry is less about worshiping a different God and more about securing God on their own terms. They want a God who operates on their timetable, so they fast-track their worship.[1] They want a God they can see. So they make an image.

As God puts it, they are “quick to turn aside.” In their impatience, they take what they can get…which is nothing more than the work of their own hands. Like my nephews before dinner, they settle for a snack when a feast is not far around the corner.

“Change Your Mind”:
A Story of Two Changed Minds

For me, the wrinkle in today’s scripture is not the people’s behavior. That seems relatable enough. I regularly confuse God with what I want from God.

The wrinkle for me is God’s behavior. God is indignant with the people. God’s wrath burns hot against them, and God plans to consume them (Ex 32:10). Only after Moses intercedes, reminding God of God’s longstanding promise to Abraham, does God relent. “Turn from your fierce wrath,” Moses pleads. “Change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people” (Ex 32:12).

Today’s scripture is a story of two changed minds. The people change their mind in a bad way. They turn away from God. God changes God’s mind in a good way. God turns toward the people in mercy.

But how do we make sense of a God who changes God’s mind? Isn’t God immutable, unchangeable, the unmoved mover? As one prophet in the Old Testament declares, “God is not a human being…that he should change his mind” (Num 23:19). And yet the Bible is filled with stories like today’s, where God does change God’s mind. In the book of Jonah, when God sees the repentance of the Ninevites, “how they turned from their evil ways, God changed his mind about the calamity he had said he would bring upon them” (Jon 3:10). Likewise, in the New Testament, Jesus tells a parable that implicitly compares God to a judge who eventually relents to the persistence of a troubled widow and changes his mind, granting her demands (Luke 18:1-8).

The Harder Truth of God’s Mercy

Our lectionary psalm for the day declares, “[God’s] steadfast love endures forever” (Ps 106:1). In the New Testament, the writer of Hebrews similarly affirms God’s incarnate love, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and tomorrow” (Heb 13:8). This is a principle of my faith. God’s love in Christ does not change. So, my interpretation of passages like our scripture today, is not that God literally changes God’s mind. Rather these passages show us a significant turn in the evolution of a people’s faith. It is the Israelite community of faith who are changing their mind about God. It is the community of faith who are waking up to the incredible reality that their God is a God of mercy.

In the time and place that Exodus was written, it was normal to think of the gods as doling out judgments left and right. So, when I see divine vengeance in scripture—when I see God’s wrath burn hot, God doling out judgment left and right—I am inclined to think of this not as revelation but simply as the prevailing cultural perspectives of the day. It’s just the way everyone thought of God.

It is the novel element in scripture, what is different than the surrounding culture, that captures my attention. The revelation in today’s passage for the Israelites is that their God is not simply doling out judgments. The natural judgments of our actions, the consequences that we might call karma, are a hard fact of life that we must learn to accept. But an even harder truth to accept is God’s mercy. That is the good news that is so different from what the world believes. We hear from the prophet Hosea God declaring, “I will not execute my anger, for I am God and no mortal…and I will not come in wrath” (Hos 11:9). When God changes God’s mind at the end of today’s scripture, I choose to interpret that, actually, it is Israel changing their mind about God.

They realize that their God is not out to get them. And that is good news.

“We Must Help You”:
Embodying God’s Steadfast Love

This stunning revelation is given expression by another curiosity in today’s scripture. Of the three parties—God, Moses, and Israel—Moses shows us the real God. The character God in the story initially follows the trajectory that is normally assigned to the gods of that time and place. But Moses steps in and insists, like the psalmist, on God’s steadfast, unchanging love. This move is a familiar one in Jewish spirituality. The people regularly wrestle with God and remind God of God’s own promises. In effect, it is the people’s faithfulness to God’s way that gives flesh and reality to God in our world. Jesus, who was Jewish, is the supreme example of this. His faithfulness to God’s way of steadfast love made God a living, flesh-and-blood reality in our world.

The call I hear in today’s scripture is that I am meant, like Moses, like Jesus, to insist on God’s steadfast love and to give it a flesh-and-blood reality in my own life. With that in mind, I’d like to conclude with a short anecdote from the life of Etty Hillesum, a Dutch Jewish woman who followed God faithfully under the terror of the Nazi regime to her death in Auschwitz. Even as she headed toward what she knew was the end, she writes:

We must help You [God] and defend Your dwelling place inside us to the last. There are, it is true, some who, even at this last stage, are putting their vacuum cleaners and silver forks and spoons in safekeeping instead of guarding You, dear God. And there are those who want to put their bodies in safekeeping but who are nothing more now than a shelter for a thousand fears and bitter feelings. And they say, ‘I shan’t let them get me into their clutches.’ But they forget that no one is in their clutches who is in Your arms.[2]

Etty insisted on God’s steadfast love. While the world around her grew impatient and feared for its future, putting its trust in the gods of war and clamoring for judgment on the enemy, Etty trusted in the harder truth of God’s mercy. She writes almost tenderly of an encounter one day with an angry Gestapo officer:

The real import of [this] morning [was] not that a disgruntled young Gestapo officer yelled at me, but that I felt no indignation, rather a real compassion, and would have liked to ask, ‘Did you have a very unhappy childhood, has your girlfriend let you down?’ Yes, he looked harassed and driven, sullen and weak. I should have liked to start treating him there and then, for I know that pitiable young men like that are dangerous as soon as they are let loose on mankind. But all the blame must be put on the system that uses such people. What needs eradicating is the evil in man, not man himself.[3]

It is easy to hear Etty’s compassion and dismiss it as unpractical. If no one resisted the Nazis, what would have happened? I cannot answer that question. But the question that haunts me even more, is the one that Etty’s example poses: “If we do not embody God’s love, who will?” 

Prayer

Merciful God,
Whose steadfast love is forever,
When we are quick to turn aside from your way—
When we are inclined first toward judgment
And cannot see your holy image
In ourselves or others—
Grant us patience
…
Reveal to us the hard truth of your mercy
And inspire in us hope for your kingdom. 

In Christ, who declares your kingdom to be among us: Amen.

---

[1] In fact, it will be roughly nine months before the tabernacle is constructed and the people can enjoy the full richness of authentic worship.

[2] Etty Hillesum, An Interrupted Life: The Diaries of Etty Hillesum, 1941-1943 (trans. Arno Pomerans; New York: Pantheon, 1983), 151.

[3] Hillesum, An Interrupted Life, 72.

"I Am the Lord Your God" (Ex 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20)

“I Command You to Yawn”

In the The Little Prince—that short, profound children’s story that has spoken to millions of adults, that tale of a mysterious young man who shows up on earth and recounts his travels throughout the universe and the lessons he has learned—there is a funny little scene where he visits a little planet and meets a king:

“Ah! Here's a subject!” the king exclaimed when he caught sight of the little prince. 

And the little prince wondered, “How can he know who I am if he’s never seen me before?” He didn’t realize that for kings, the world is extremely simplified: All men are subjects.

“Approach the throne so I can get a better look at you,” said the king, very proud of being a king for someone at last. The little prince looked around for a place to sit down, but the planet was covered by the [king’s] magnificent ermine cloak. So he remained standing, and since he was tired, he yawned.

“It is a violation of etiquette to yawn in a king’s presence,” the monarch told him. “I forbid you to do so.” “I can’t help it,” answered the little prince, quite embarrassed. “I’ve made a long journey, and I haven’t had any sleep...” “Then I command you to yawn,” said the king. “I haven’t seen anyone yawn for years. For me, yawns are a curiosity. Come on, yawn again! It is an order.” “That intimidates me...I can’t do it now,” said the little prince, blushing deeply. “Well, well!” the king replied. “Then I...I command you to yawn sometimes and sometimes to...” He was sputtering a little, and seemed annoyed.

For the king insisted that his authority be universally respected. He would tolerate no disobedience, being an absolute monarch. But since he was a kindly man, all his commands were [meant to be] reasonable.[1]

For me, the humor of this scene has to do with the absurdity of a law that governs how a person feels. Yawns are a bodily reflex. They emerge as the result of a feeling: tiredness. They are not the kind of thing many of us can do on command. Laughter is similar. We can fake-laugh just as we can fake-yawn. But authentic laughter and authentic yawning emerge from how we’re feeling inside. And that’s something that laws just can’t touch.

Laws are meant to govern the behavior and conduct that we choose, not the involuntary reflexes of our heart and body.

Commandments?

Today’s scripture is what our world knows as the “Ten Commandments.” Growing up, I thought of the Ten Commandments in the same way that I thought of laws. They were a bunch of “thou shalt nots.” They were a disciplinarian’s list of bad behavior. Wrongful conduct. “Don’t murder. Don’t bear false witness.” They were like, “No cookies before dinner”—but much more serious.

But the Bible itself never calls them commandments. Instead, they are later referred to as the “Ten Words” (Ex 34:28; Deut 4:13), which suggests perhaps that what we’re looking at is not quite the same as laws and statutes. Sure, some of these Ten Words resemble laws that are common to all society today, laws that address governable behavior, such as “Do not murder,” and “Do not steal.” But if we look closely, some of the Ten Words actually pertain to what is in our heart, such as “Do not covet” and “Honor your father and mother.” If we take these words seriously, they begin to resemble the silly king’s demand that the little prince yawn. Are these legitimate laws? Aren’t honoring and coveting involuntary matters of the heart? Shouldn’t commandments concern governable behavior, such as, “Do not swindle your neighbor,” or, “Do everything you parents tell you to do”?

Perhaps these Ten Words are not really commandments, at least not in the sense of enforceable laws that govern behavior. Perhaps something else is going on here.

A Lover’s Pledge

Let’s pay closer attention to the way they begin, the way they are framed: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Ex 20:2). These are extremely intimate words. The “you” in them is singular. God is speaking to every Israelite, and by extension every one of us, effectively declaring God’s love.

Perhaps like me, you have been conditioned to hear “I am the Lord your God” as an almost authoritarian claim, as though God were an almighty ruler, saying, “I am your king; now obey me!” But it is equally possible to hear in these words a lover’s pledge: “I am yours!” God declares. I chose you (cf. John 15:16). I brought you of Egypt that we might live together and enjoy the fullness of life! So, please, choose life! (cf. Deut 30:15).

Julian of Norwich, a Christ-follower from the thirteenth century whose writings are among the earliest we have of a woman writing in English, had a suspicion that failing to perceive God’s love is what hinders many of us in life, even us who follow Christ. She writes, “Some of us believe that God is all-mighty and may do everything, and that he is all-wisdom and can do everything, but [believing] that he is all-love and wishes to do everything, there we fail. And it this ignorance which most hinders God’s lovers, as I see it.”[2]

A Choice I Make Again and Again

When I look at the Ten Words as the invitation of a God who loves me, who delivers me out of Egypt, which is to say, out of every attachment that deprives me of life, I begin to see not a disciplinarian’s list of no-nos but rather a gateway into a new way of life. I know about life in Egypt. I know the gods they worship. I know what it is to chase after control, prestige, and wealth, and how these things ultimately do not satisfy. It is like drinking salt-water to quench my thirst. These things just inflame the thirst, even as they set me in competition with others and make the world into a tournament of winners and losers. Egypt is full of strife. But these Ten Words offer a glimpse into another world, what I think Jesus was calling “the kingdom of God.” And this new world, the kingdom of God, begins with what’s inside my heart, with my attitude and my feelings.

I have a friend from college who would always say, “Happiness is a choice,” and for a long time I thought she was crazy. Happiness is a feeling, I thought, and feelings just happen. They come and go. I can’t control them.

But I have come to appreciate that, while I cannot control my feelings, I can trust and choose a way of life that is bigger than my feelings, that transcends them and can even help to reorient them. The first four “words” (in today’s Ten Words) invite a spiritual reorientation: (1) no other gods, (2) no idols, (3) no empty use of God’s name, (4) and a day of rest. In other words, it is the divine Lover pleading, “Please stop chasing.” Idolatry is not just making a statue and bowing down to it. It is any fixation, any attachment, that takes my eyes off the divine Lover, that makes me think I can do it on my own, that if I just have this, or achieve that, or win this person’s attention, I will be secure and happy. Spoiler alert: it does not make me happy. Choosing to chase after idols is choosing unhappiness.

But I can also choose to trust that God has made to me the irrevocable pledge, “I am yours!” I can choose to trust that life is not a reward I achieve on my own but is rather a gift received through relationship with God and others and through Sabbath rest. And while it is true that these choices do not magically, instantly make me happy, that I cannot upon command “be happy” any more than I can yawn or laugh,  it is also true that these choices are the way out of Egypt. They reorient my heart. They lead me toward a happy, fulfilling life. My experience has born this out. When I am chasing life, I am unhappy. When I am receiving life right where I am, accepting that I am God’s beloved and that relationships are a gift to be cherished, then I am headed somewhere good. Happiness is not magic. It is the choice I must make, again and again, to trust that God loves me and cares for me.

Prayer

All-loving God,
You call us yours
And lead us out of Egypt:
When we seek life
Somewhere else—
Away from your presence beside us—
Help us to hear you pleading, again,
“I am yours”
…
May we choose your love,
Again and again,
And know the happiness of your salvation.
In Christ, who calls us friends: Amen.

---

[1] The Little Prince.

[2] Julian of Norwich, Showings, chp. 73.

"Be of the Same Mind" (Ex 17:1-7)

A Messy Business

My sister-in-law, Erin, tells the story of when her parents’ church, which had started as just a handful of families, began to grow. They were meeting in a small sanctuary at the time. But the prospect of a growing children’s program had them planning for the future. For five years, they saved up money for an education wing.

Finally, they had enough. It felt like a hurdle had been cleared. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief and looked forward to what the future had in store. And then…there was a church business meeting. Erin remembers it well. It began at 6 o’clock. On the agenda were several final decisions concerning the new building. Once these decisions had been made, ground could be broken and construction could begin. People showed up in a celebratory mood, anticipating the beginning of a new chapter.

Four hours later, the mood was anything but celebratory. What had backed the meeting up? Toilets…as it were. How tall should they be? Youth-sized? It was the education wing after all. But a small contingent in the business meeting asked, “What about years down the road? What if we have no children and the education wing is used only by adults? We need adult-sized toilets. We can bring stools and potty seats for the kids.” The quarreling over toilets roiled on for hours. At ten o’clock, Erin and her mom left. It was a school night. The meeting continued. Eventually a fragile peace was reached. There would be one adult toilet in the education wing. The rest would be youth-sized.

…Church business can get messy, can’t it?

Quarreling

The thing is, it was a necessary conversation inasmuch as toilets are a necessity, a legitimate need. Where the meeting got clogged, perhaps, was in the murky, subterranean competition of egos. What backed things up, perhaps, was a fundamental distrust or disregard. There was a failure to listen and an overriding impulse to insist on one’s own way.

What happened with the Israelites at Rephidim was not so different. Today’s scripture begins by pointing out that they have a legitimate need. “They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink” (Ex 17:1). The people are thirsty, so they go to Moses with a request, “Give us water to drink” (Ex 17:2). In my mind, this request is just as legitimate as their need. Their thirst—legitimate. Their request—legitimate.

The trouble lies in the manner of their request. It’s not the substance of their request that is the problem, but how they express it. “The people quarreled with Moses” (Ex 17:2). The Hebrew word here, riv,  is the same word used for making a formal complaint and bringing suit against another person. It implies distrust. Accusation. Listen to how the people take their very real and valid experience, namely thirst, and allege that it was Moses’ intention all along: “Why did you bring us out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and livestock with thirst?” (Ex 17:3). They are thirsty, no doubt. That is a valid and pressing concern. But their request maligns Moses and spreads skepticism. It is as though they cannot accept a difficult reality. Their thirst is an unacceptable problem, and it must be blamed on someone. Their bitterness poisons not only their relationship with Moses but their faith as well. Listen to how they doubt Moses’ assurance that God is with them. They cry out, “Is the Lord [really] among us or not?” (Ex 17:7).

United They Stand

One of the supreme ironies of Israel’s wilderness experience is that the biggest threat to their survival is not without but within. The very next story—which has a legendary feel to it, as though it has been retold time and again around fires and has grown into this wonderfully illustrative tale—this next story shows that the key to life in the wilderness is unity. Or in everyday language, teamwork. Amalek and his forces attack the Israelites. As long as Moses is able to raise his hands, Israel prevails. But Moses begins to tire, which leaves the battle hanging in the balance. What swings it in Israel’s favor is simple: collaboration. Aaron and Hur each hold up one of his hands, and eventually Israel triumphs.

Aaron and Hur’s collaborative spirit draw a meaningful contrast with the Israelites’ quarreling. By putting these stories back to back, the storyteller seems to be making a point: “United, Israel will stand. But if they are quarreling, and everyone does only what’s right in their own eyes, they will fall.”

Not Thinking the Same Thing,
but Thinking the Same Way

Elsewhere in today’s lectionary, Paul gives the church in Philippi some advice that seems relevant to the Israelites’ plight, “Be of the same mind” (Phil 2:1). Now, at first glance, this counsel seems awfully idealistic. Is Paul urging uniformity? Is his idea of unity that the church all thinks the same thing?

I don’t think so. I think he’s advising them not to think the same thing, but rather to think the same way. He continues: “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” This is high-minded language to say something really simple: “Listen to one another.” To listen means to be poor in spirit, to recognize that the perspective and voice of another person is a gift that enriches life. When Paul says, “Be of the same mind,” he’s actually saying, “Think the same way…think first of others. Listen.”

These words are spiritual dynamite, if we pause to think about it. Paul is suggesting that what makes us followers of Christ is not that we all think the same thing, that we all share the same beliefs, or that we all sign off on the same creed. Rather, we think the same way. Faith is not so much about the substance of our thoughts as it is about the spirit by which we live. It is less of a noun and more of an adverb that defines all our actions. It is less of a what and more of how.

Listen to how Paul concludes: “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself…” (Phil 2:6-8). What distinguishes the mind of Christ is this extraordinary self-emptying. He could have claimed equality with God, he could have lorded it over everyone. But if anyone was bending the knee, it was him. He didn’t come with a program or a platform. He didn’t come to conquer, whether by sword or popular vote. He came with self-giving love that gives pride of place to the other. Christ listened. Repeatedly in the gospels, Jesus is interrupted or suddenly confronted by an intrusion. And repeatedly, he listens—and in so doing gets to the heart of the matter. He looks not to his own interests, but to the interests of others.

Willing to Sit Down with Everyone

Today is World Communion Sunday. Our scripture is a fitting text. On the one hand, it shows us a God who indeed meets our need, a God who provides water in the wilderness as surely as Christ fills us with love at this table. On the other hand, it shows us our humanity, our difficulty accepting our very real needs and our tendency instead to distrust and blame others. Community can be messy. Just ask my sister-in-law’s home church.

The good news, though, which Paul points us toward, is that we don’t actually have to agree on everything. Trying to all think the same thing is getting ahead of ourselves. It’s trying to take ten steps, when we only need to take one. The mind of Christ is simpler. It is to be poor in spirit, to treasure the other. It is to listen. To look not to our own interests, but for just a moment to look first to the interests of others.

I think I’ve shared it before but a question that really gives me pause is this: Is it better to be right in the wrong spirit or wrong in the right spirit? I think the mind Christ is more about a way than a what, that it has more to do with the spirit in which we live than with the particular beliefs, programs, agendas that we espouse. What scandalized Jesus’ contemporaries more than anything was not his theology but his behavior. Have you seen the people he hangs out with? The people he eats with? The people he listens to? Tax collectors and sinners. Nonbelievers and enemy centurions. That is the mind of Christ that Paul invites us to share. Catholic theologian John Shea gets to the heart of it with a quip that captures the hope of this World Communion Sunday: “The heavenly banquet table is open to everyone who is willing to sit down with everyone.”

Amen. May we follow Christ in this way.

Prayer

Compassionate God,
Who gathers us around a common table,
Who knows our very real and legitimate need,
Our hunger and our thirst—
Teach us how to be content
When there is not agreement
…
Teach us the mind of Christ:
How to be poor in spirit,
How to treasure others,
How to trust you are among us.
In Christ, who eats with tax collectors and sinners: Amen.

"I Will Try Them" (Ex 16:2-15)

So Freely from So Little

Danielle Mayfield grew up wanting to be a missionary. She wanted to travel overseas to strange and wonderful lands, to save all the innocent souls who had never heard the name of Jesus. When she was seventeen, she went on a mission trip to India. Her group visited a tiny village to perform an evangelistic play. It was a drama, she says, “about the temptations of money and women and alcohol, and how Jesus has the power to overcome them.” Never mind that this village was dirt poor and had more pressing concerns.

She remembers eating dinner in the village before their play. Sitting on a swept dirt floor, she and her companions ate the rice and curry that had been carefully prepared by a scrawny old woman with only a few teeth left intact. The curry was “hot-as-hell,” she recalls, and seemed to be composed of little more than okra. Having heard that spice is often used to disguise rotting vegetables, she was thankful for the fire in her mouth. She cooled it as best she could with the tall metal cup of water, which must have been drawn from a well outside the village.

Later in the evening, after she and the team had performed their play and no one had come forward at the altar call, they climbed into their SUV and rolled out of the dusty village back to their flat in the city. On the way home, their guide and interpreter remarked in his singsong voice: “That was their one meal of the day, and they shared it with you.”[1]

There are infinite variations on this story. I’ve heard friends share similar anecdotes from their mission trips. It seems to be a common experience. Rich folks from the “developed” world are overwhelmed by the generosity of their dirt-poor hosts, who give so freely of what little they have.

Two Freedoms

These stories of precious gifts so freely given draw a striking contrast to our scripture today. It has been only one month since God delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Their freedom is fresh. No more impossible brick-laying quotas to meet. No more taunting and tormenting. For the first time in their lives, their bodies are their own.

And yet we discover here in the freshness of their physical freedom, that they are actually still enslaved. Their complaints in today’s scripture are not simply the cries of hunger. They are the cries of delusion. The Israelites long for the land of Egypt, the land of their slavery. They may be free in body, but they are not yet free in soul. They are free from constraints without, but not from constraints within, such as their own selfish impulse. I find really helpful Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ observation that the exodus story is really a story of two freedoms. The first freedom comes in a single chapter, as God liberates the Israelites from slavery. The second freedom, however, takes over three books—over forty years in the story world, over an entire generation of Israelites. It takes a long time for the Israelites to learn what the dirt-poor hosts in India know, which is that true freedom consists not in the absence of difficult conditions but in a faith and joy that can endure any condition. Paul shows us this second freedom, this soul freedom, in his letter to the Philippians. He writes from prison, and yet his letter is filled with joy. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say, Rejoice,” writes the man who is sitting in chains, who is sitting behind bars (Phil 4:4).

The Wilderness as a Training Ground

In today’s scripture, God shares with Moses his plans to “test” the people of Israel. I prefer the alternative translation “try” instead of “test,” because the word “trials” seems to me a more accurate theological description of what we daily endure. As the Lord’s Prayer suggests, God does not “lead us” purposefully into “temptation,” or trials. Rather, trials happen, but God is with us to “deliver us” (cf. Luke 11:4). And perhaps to teach us. To help us change and grow. Paul actually talks about the wilderness trials of Israel in his letter to the Corinthians. He says we all go through wilderness trials. “No trial has overtaken you that is not common to everyone” (1 Cor 10:13). I read this to indicate that trials are not purposefully planned by God, but rather are common experiences, such as loss or need or unexpected change. Paul continues, “With the trial God will also provide a way out so that you may be able to endure it” (1 Cor 10:13). In other words, while trials are difficult, sometimes even bad or evil, they are also experiences from which God can always draw good. God may not cause them, but God can always use them to teach us soul freedom.

A few chapters earlier in Exodus, there is a little aside where God thinks to himself. What he thinks, turns out to be a big clue to the meaning of the wilderness and its trials. Here’s the verse: “When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines although that was nearer”—in other words, God did not take them directly to the Promised Land. “For God thought, ‘If the people face war, they may change their minds and return to Egypt.’ So God led the people by the roundabout way of the wilderness” (Ex 13:17-18). The Jewish philosopher Maimonides suggests that this verse shows us the true meaning of the wilderness. It is a training ground. God worries that the newly liberated Israelites are not strong in spirit. God worries that when they face adversity, they will want to return to Egypt, to relapse into old patterns of thought and behavior. So God chooses the “roundabout way of the wilderness” in order to train the Israelites through their common trials, to teach them soul freedom, to teach them how to trust in God’s provision and guidance even when conditions are difficult.

One Day at a Time

It will take the Israelites forty years to learn this soul freedom. In the meantime, we will find them complaining, again and again. Perhaps more than anything else, complaining characterizes the Israelites who wander in the wilderness. Their complaints boil down to a desire for control. But the lesson of the manna that God gives them in today’s scripture challenges this desire for control. This trial in the wilderness teaches them that they must relinquish control and trust in God one day at a time. In the wilderness, there is no stockpiling, no silos of grain like there were in Egypt. There is no rationing according to status, no honor-shame meritocracy like there was in Egypt. There is even no method to master, no intellectual know-how that secures their food. The very name, manna, means “What is this?”—which is to say, “Where did this come from? How?” Trusting in God one day at a time runs counter to everything the Israelites learned in Egypt, everything they learned from the way of empire, where goods must be accumulated, where individuals must be ranked and earn their separate living, where planning and efficiency secure the future. 

The Church in the Wilderness?

The more I think about Israel in the wilderness, I find myself pondering the church today, who is entering a wilderness of its own. For a long time—over a millennium—the church was the darling of western civilization. Just think about it in the context of our nation’s history. There used to be blue laws against business and recreational activity on Sunday, to safeguard the church’s day of worship. Oaths in the courthouse used to be performed exclusively over the Bible. Christian prayers have regularly been offered in the public sphere, everywhere from school assemblies to presidential inaugurations. National holidays have made special accommodation for Christian holy days like Christmas and Easter. The money we carry is stamped with a religious confession, “In God we trust.”

I do not mean to challenge these laws and customs. I follow Jesus and render unto Caesar—and Congress—what is theirs. What they decide is not my business. I mean only to observe that the church has long held pride of place in our world. But today it is losing ground. It is no longer the darling of our culture. The longer you’ve lived, the better you probably have a sense for this change, this loss of public favor. But it’s becoming evident to everyone now, as church attendances decrease each year, as funds dry up and buildings are closed, as church loses Sunday to sports and yoga and breweries and brunch. It really is a watershed moment in history. Many Christians are worried. Many are taking an increasingly defensive and combative posture, making plans for how they might battle with culture and win votes and reclaim what they consider to be their rights.

But I must confess, this defensiveness feels “off” to me. I see no such defensiveness in Jesus, whose way is not force but bearing witness. I see no such defensiveness in Paul, who writes in Philippians (one of our lectionary texts today), “[God] has graciously granted you the privilege not only of trusting in Christ, but of suffering for him as well” (Phil 1:29). For Paul, the only privilege we bear is to follow Christ, even when that means hardship at the hands of a world that insists on competition instead of collaboration, vengeance instead of forgiveness, looking out for one’s own instead of taking interest in the other.

Nearly five hundred years ago, a group of Anabaptists (whom we might consider our forebears) saw something similar happening among the established church of their day, as Roman bishops made plays for power and pulled strings all over Europe in order to achieve the aims of the church. They concluded of the church: “The sheep [has taken] on a thoroughly wolfish nature.” In other words, it has never been the way of Christ to rule over others. The lamb is not a wolf. To fight for power and to wield it is already to have lost the struggle, for Christ invites us not to enforce his way on others but to celebrate it before them and invite them onto the way too.

I think the story of Israel in the wilderness might be good news for the church. It reminds us that, at its essence, the community of God never was about buildings or budgets or paid, professional clergy. These institutional trappings have more to do with the way our world likes to operate, whether in ancient Egypt and Rome or in the United States today. When God delivered the Israelites from slavery into the wilderness, God stripped them not only of their chains but also of grain silos and building projects and all the other means of security that are sought in the midst of empire. Similarly, the church is being stripped of its traditional securities: bricked buildings, filled pews, growing budgets, favors in the public sphere. Perhaps we are being invited to learn the freedom that God was teaching the Israelites, the freedom that Paul knows in prison, the freedom that the dirt-poor hosts in India showed their guests. Perhaps we are being invited to learn the simpler life of faith. Manna. One day at a time. For every person.

Prayer

Gracious God,
Who leads us on the “roundabout way” of the wilderness
That we may grow in faith—
May we know our trials,
Both as individuals and as a church,
As opportunities for change and growth
…
Teach us the trust that Jesus had,
That we may shed our wolfish ways
And rejoice in your simple provision,
One day at a time.
In Christ, of gentle and humble heart: Amen.

---

[1] D. L. Mayfield, Assimilate or Go Home: Notes from a Failed Missionary on Rediscovering Faith (New York: HarperOne, 2016), 173.

Man of War or Prince of Peace? (Ex 14:19-31)

“The Lord Is a Man of War”

“Stretch out your hand over the sea, so that the water may come back upon the Egyptians” (Ex 14:26). God’s words to Moses. A death sentence for the Egyptians. The narrator explains their fate in a single sentence: “The waters returned and covered [them]; not one of them remained” (Ex 14:28). Immediately following this scene, in the next chapter of Exodus, Moses and the Israelites sing a victory song: “Horse and rider [the Lord] has thrown into the sea…The Lord is a man of war” (Ex 15:1, 3).[1]

I heard once the story of “a dedicated lay leader in an evangelical church, who in mid-life set out to read the Bible for the first time. He was first surprised, then shocked, and finally outraged by the frequency and ferocity of divinely initiated and sanctioned violence in the Old Testament. About halfway through the book of Job, he shut his Bible never to open it again and has not set foot inside a church since.”[2] Today’s scripture may not offend our sensibilities as much those other Old Testament texts in which God commands the annihilation of an entire people. After all, we generally like seeing the bad guys get their just desserts. It might feel sort of good to watch those Egyptian bullies drown from a distance. But today’s story portrays precisely the kind of God that disturbs many Christian readers. A God who is—as Moses and the Israelites put it—“a man of war.”

Christ “Is the Image of the Invisible God”

Is this “man of war” the same person we see in Jesus Christ? Paul tells us that Jesus was the very “image of the invisible God,” in whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col 1:15, 19). In other words, if you want to know what God looks like, look to Jesus. The Jesus who says things like, “Love your enemies, do good to those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:27-28). The Jesus who says, “Turn the other cheek” (6:28).  The Jesus who tells us (in our gospel lectionary scripture for today) to forgive one another not seven times, but seven times seventy (Matt 18:22)—which is to say, even after we lose count. If you want to know what God looks like, look to the Jesus who blesses the peacemakers and calls them “children of God,” which suggests that God is the supreme peacemaker. Look to the Jesus who did not fight back against the Roman and Jewish leaders who put him to death but proclaimed forgiveness on the cross. Look to the Jesus who did not breathe vengeance or threats against the ones who betrayed him, the ones who deserted him, and the ones who killed him; rather his first public word after the resurrection, was, “Peace” (John 20:19). Look to the Jesus whose “salvation” is prophesied to take the very form of “forgiveness” and will—so the prophecy goes—“guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:77, 79).

I could go on and on, but you get the picture. The “man of war” depicted in Exodus, who purposefully brings down the waves on all the Egyptian army, seems a far cry from the Christ whose way is forgiveness and the patient, painstaking process of peace.

There is a simple resolution to this dilemma. Even among the earliest Christians, some readers have concluded that the God of the Old Testament is different than the God of the New Testament. One is barbaric, one is loving. One is vengeful, one is forgiving. The problem with this approach is that it runs counter to Jesus’ own understanding. Jesus was a faithful reader of Jewish scripture. When he articulated his mission, he used the words of the prophets (e.g., Luke 4:18-19). When he prayed, he used the words of the Psalms (e.g., Mark 15:34; Luke 23:46). When he spoke about God, he drew from the stories of Father Abraham and Moses (e.g., Matt 8:11; 22:32; Mark 1:44; 7:10). Make no mistake, the God with whom Jesus was one, whom Jesus addressed with the intimate “Abba,” “Daddy”—that God is the God of the Old Testament.

The Bible Is a Conversation of Different Interpretations

So we’re left still with the dilemma, “How do we reconcile these different pictures of God? On the one hand, a man of war who destroys enemies. On the other hand, a crucified man who forgives them.”

A helpful starting point for me is the word “Bible.” Did you know that Bible comes from the Greek word biblia, which means “books”? The Bible is plural. It is a library rather than a single document. It is a conversation rather than a speech. In fact, it sometimes resembles a noisy debate filled with many different voices and perspectives. All of this points to a really important fact. The Bible is not God. It is inspired by God (cf. 2 Tim 3:16). It is like an ancient, sacred journal, filled with human experiences of God. What we are reading is ordinary humans like us trying to make sense of extraordinary experiences, experiences which they conclude must be divine. We are not reading science or even history (in the modern sense of that word). We are reading interpretation. And the Bible is filled with different interpretations of God.

A Merciful God in the Old Testament

Consider these two consecutive sentences from today’s scripture. “Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great work that the LORD did against the Egyptians” (Ex 14:30-31). The first sentence is fact, more or less. The Israelites saw Egyptians who had died. But the second sentence is interpretation. Israel interprets the dead Egyptians as “the great work that the Lord did against the Egyptians” (Ex 14:31). But elsewhere in the Old Testament, judgment is interpreted less as the damage wrought by a warrior God and more as a natural consequence of hurtful behavior. The wisdom tradition in the Old Testament, for instance, talks about judgment in terms that are comparable to karma. Listen to these verses: “The nations have sunk in the pit that they made; in the net that they hid has their own foot been caught” (Ps 9:15). “Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity” (Prov 22:8). From this sort of perspective, Egypt’s demise is a natural consequence of their unjust ways.

The larger point to make here is that Old Testament does not present us with a unified portrait of God. (Neither does the New Testament for that matter. There’s arguably more divine violence in Revelation alone than in all the Old Testament, if you consider that over a third of the human population dies in its pages; cf. Rev 9:18.)

Because many people commonly assume that the God of the Old Testament is vengeful and violent, a plain and simple “man of war,” I would like to highlight just a few of the places in the Old Testament that present a very different portrait of God. Perhaps it is best to begin with what might be called the creed of the Old Testament, a description of God’s character that is repeated so often in the Old Testament that some scholars think it was a statement of confession. You’re probably familiar with it. God is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (e.g., Ex 34:6; Num 14:18; Neh 9:17; Ps 86:15; Ps 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jon 4:2; Nah 1:3). Surely it is this merciful God whom Jesus has in mind, when he tells his followers, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). We find this merciful God all over the Old Testament, if we pay close attention. Listen to Micah, “Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over…transgression…[who] does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in showing clemency? You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Mic 7:18-19). Fellow prophet Hosea gives voice to this merciful God: “I will not execute my fierce anger…for I am God and not a man…and I will not come in wrath” (Hos 11:9). Or in the Psalms, we find again and again that God’s forgiveness is always on offer, if we but turn toward God: “I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity…and you forgave the guilt of my sin” (Ps 32:5).

It must have been this more merciful portrait of God that inspired Rabbi Yochanan in the third century to reinterpret Israel’s passage out of Egypt. A great Jewish teacher in his time, Rabbi Yochanan seems to have been disturbed by the suggestion of a violent warrior God in the Exodus story. He fills in some of the gaps to the story in a way that seeks to rehabilitate God’s character. He writes that as the Israelites left Egypt, the angels began to sing for joy, but God stopped them, saying, “The work of my hands, the Egyptians, are drowning at sea, and you wish to sing songs?” (Megillah 10b).

The Criterion of Christ

It is not my place to judge how others interpret scripture. I really appreciate the Romans text in today’s lectionary, where Paul reminds the church in Rome not to quarrel over interpretation and not to judge those who interpret differently, because God welcomes all who interpret in good faith, and they should do so too (Rom 14:1-12). I only want to share how I have come to interpret some of the Bible’s more difficult passages, to show that our tradition (both Christian and Jewish) is not nearly as narrow and rigid as some might suppose. There are many different interpretations of God’s character within scripture itself as well as without.

How I interpret the difficult passages in the Old Testament (and New Testament) that represent God as violent and vengeful, is simple. I interpret them by the criterion of Jesus Christ, whom I believe is the “image of God,” in whom “the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col 1:15, 19). And I believe that the God whom I see in Jesus, “the prince of peace,” is all over the Old Testament. (We might do well to remember that that title comes from the Old Testament, from Isaiah 9:6.)  When I read a story like today’s story, I would heartily affirm its central message: “Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians” (Ex 14:30). But according to the criterion of Christ, God saves not through violence but through forgiveness and peace. In my interpretation, Israel’s salvation comes when by Moses’ leadership they awaken to God’s love for them, and they believe they are worthy of freedom, and by God’s grace and a series of unusual events that undermine the power of Pharaoh and Egypt, they walk free.

And I’m with Rabbi Yochanan here. As they leave and the Egyptians are drowned in the sea, God is conflicted. God feels joyful, of course, for the Israelites’ freedom. But also heart-broken for the Egyptians, who are God’s children too.

Prayer

God who is merciful and gracious,
Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love—
Our experiences are many and diverse,
But they all point to you
And your salvation.
May we be mindful today
Of the ways you have saved us,
And also of the ways that we need saving still.
…
And may we find hope for the future
In scripture’s witness to all the ways
Your salvation has reached us in the past.
In Christ, our savior: Amen.

---

[1] The NRSV abridges the literal “man of war” into “warrior.”

[2] C. S. Cowles, “A Response to Eugene H. Merrill,” in Show Them No Mercy: Four Views on God and Canaanite Genocide, by C. S. Cowles et al. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 97.

What We Remember (Ex 12:1-15)

The Most Important Memory

On eve of the Israelites’ emancipation from slavery in Egypt, God gives Moses and Aaron some final instructions regarding the grand escape. Every family shall sacrifice a lamb and put its blood on the doorposts and eat it hurriedly with sandals on and bags packed. But God’s instructions are not only an escape plan now. They are also instructions for eternity. God tells the Israelites, “Remember this day” (cf. Ex 12:14). “Mark it on your calendar. In fact, make it the beginning of your calendar, the first month of the year. Make it the founding event, the most important memory, go through its motions every single year” (cf. Ex 12:2). “Celebrate it ‘til the end of time” (cf. Ex 12:14).

Fast-forward over a thousand years from Moses to Jesus, and the Israelites are still remembering that Passover day. Jesus and his disciples go to Jerusalem to remember it. For them, Passover is not an idle memory, a pleasant recollection. It is a living memory, a memory that is true again and again. As the Israelites suffered in Egypt, so Jesus will suffer on the cross. As the Israelites were delivered, so Jesus will be resurrected. Over a thousand years later, it is still true. God is the liberator, the life-giver.

Today, three thousand years after Moses, the Jewish faith still celebrates the Passover. For them too, it is a living memory, a memory that they have lived over and over again. As their ancestors suffered in Egypt, they too have suffered: persecution in ancient Rome, organized massacres in Russia and Eastern Europe, the Holocaust. And as their ancestors found freedom from Egypt, they continue to find life too. How else would they have survived these atrocities? It is still true for them. God is the liberator, the life-giver.

In fact, if you consider that the Lord’s Supper is a Passover meal, we also celebrate the memory. We celebrate it every week—or perhaps even more often: “Whenever [we] eat this bread or drink this cup,” Paul says (1 Cor 11:26). Just as the Passover was originally ordained as the beginning of the calendar, the memory that would define time and life itself, so the Lord’s Supper begins our every week, reminding us that though the times may change, this memory will be true again and again: God is the liberator, the life-giver.

The Lord Still Dies

Every week, at the very end of the Lord’s Supper, we quote scripture: “For as often as [we] eat this bread and drink the cup, [we] proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26). That conclusion has long puzzled me and left me feeling a bit empty. Why do we only remember the Lord’s death?  Why not his resurrection?  Why not new life?

Here’s my theory. It’s because the Lord still dies. It’s because there is still suffering in this world. There are still many Egypts, many Pharaohs, many chains in this world. We proclaim the Lord’s death not because we’re pessimists or doomsayers, but because we are rigorously honest and we are praying and hoping for more liberation, for a fuller resurrection. Our memory of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection is not an idle recollection, a pleasant reminiscence. This memory is a defiant act of faith, a commitment to a different world—what Jesus called the kingdom of God.

Every week, we remember the Lord’s death so that we might be faithful to the work of the kingdom. When we hear about the folks who have lost their homes and their land to wildfires and floods, we remember the Lord’s death. When we hear about another school shooting, we remember the Lord’s death. When we hear about a community targeted with violence because of their difference—Asian, Jewish, Latino—we remember the Lord’s death. When we hear about another life lost to addiction, we remember the Lord’s death. When we hear about the utter poverty of factory workers and the dangerous conditions they daily endure, we remember the Lord’s death.

Johann Baptist Metz, a German theologian who has spent his life wrestling with the memory of the Holocaust, calls the memory of Christ “the dangerous memory of suffering.”  It is a dangerous memory because it sees in the face of every suffering person the face of Christ, and it will not rest until they do. It is a dangerous memory because it defies the injustice of the world and commits to a different way, the way of Christ.

Not Just Back Then, but Now

For the rest of the sermon, I would like to share with you some personal reflections. Here I am going to take a page from Paul’s book, and preface what follows with a reminder: “This is me speaking, not the Lord” (cf. 1 Cor 7:12; 2 Cor 11:17). So, take what rings true, and leave the rest. (That goes for all my sermons, of course.)

When the Israelites celebrate the Passover or when we celebrate the Last Supper, what we’re really celebrating is not an event shrouded in the mists of history. What we’re really celebrating is a God who liberates, who gives life. Not just back then but now. What we’re proclaiming is that as sure as the week has seven days, or the year 365, suffering and oppression do not have the last word. God is always present, always redeeming.

If that’s true, then where are the liberation stories of recent generations? There’s one in particular that is meaningful to me as a native of Richmond, and I would like to share it with you today. April 3, 1865, is often cited as the day that Richmond fell, and with it the Confederate States of America. That is certainly how I was taught to remember the day. But as I read through the story of that day now, I cannot help but hear echoes of an older memory.

One woman living in Richmond at the time remembers that day as a day of darkness: “We covered our faces and cried aloud,” she writes. “All through the house was the sound of sobbing. It was the house of mourning, the house of death.”[1] Such words could easily have been written of the Egyptian houses on that dark night of the Passover (cf. Ex 12:30).

But Reverend Garland H. White, a former slave who was serving as a chaplain in the Union Army, describes a very different scene: “A vast multitude assembled on Broad Street, and I…proclaimed for the first time in that city freedom to all mankind. After which the doors of all the slave pens were thrown open, and thousands came out shouting and praising God.”[2] Another chaplain writes also of divine deliverance, “We brought…heaven-born liberty. The slaves seemed to think that the day of jubilee had fully come. How they danced, shouted…shook our hands…laughed all over, and thanked God…!”[3] And then in a passage that recalls the divine command to remember the Passover forever (12:14), he writes, “It is a day never to be forgotten by us till days shall be no more.”[4]

Indeed, forty years later, on April 3, 1905, Richmond hosted the Emancipation Day Parade, commemorating the day that many slaves in Richmond and across the south were actually liberated. Thousands gathered for the festivities and celebrated with a procession through the city streets that ended up at the Broad Street Baseball Park. (If there are any history buffs among you, I’d be curious to learn where that was exactly.)

Emancipation Day Parade, Richmond, Virginia, April 3, 1905[5]

 

A Passover in Richmond 

As a native of Richmond, I was taught to remember April 3, 1865, as the fall of this city and the fall of the Confederacy. But as a follower of Christ, I am invited to remember the God who liberates, who gives life. Which means I am invited to remember April 3, 1865, as a day of divine deliverance, a holy Passover. A heavy day and a day of great cost, yes, as it seems to have been for Egypt thousands of years ago, but a day when the God the liberator, God the life-giver, passed over the city—this city!—bringing freedom to thousands.

I am honored to call Richmond home, if for no other reason than that here happened a Passover. And this memory, which is but one of many in the long line of memories going all the way back to Egypt, a host of memories which ring most loud and most true in the Last Supper of Christ—this memory is for me a defiant act of faith, a commitment to a different world. It means remembering the Lord’s death in the subjugation and suffering of those today who still share the struggles that those slaves did: educational barriers, labor inequalities, presumptions of guilt and dangerousness—and perhaps more than anything else, the unjust inheritance of shame. This memory means believing that God the liberator and life-giver is against that suffering still, that Jesus Christ is in that suffering still, and that his love will raise new life from a history of hurt. It means that while many dismiss or minimalize the suffering of others, I remember the death of my Lord, who is still dying in so many places. I try hard to see the face of Christ in the anger, the sadness, the resignation of others, and I defiantly trust that this is not how the story ends. Not for the Israelites. Not for Jesus. In God’s calendar, this is just the beginning.

Prayer

Lord Christ,
Whose death is a dangerous memory
That protests the suffering of the world
…
May the memories
Of Passover and the Table and April 3
Inspire us to celebrate
The God who liberates and gives life,
And to share in God’s liberation
By living in the way of your love,
Which is stronger than death.
Amen.

---

[1] A Virginia Girl in the Civil War (ed. Myrta Lockett Avery; New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1903), 362.

[2] A Grand Army of Black Men: Letters from African-American Soldiers in the Union Army, 1861-1865 (ed. Edwin S. Redkey; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 175-176.

[3] The Military and Civil History of Connecticut during the War of 1861-65 (eds. W. A. Croffut and John M. Morris; New York: Ledyard Bill, 1868), 791. These are the words of Henry Swift DeForest.

[4] The Military and Civil History of Connecticut, 792.

[5] James Branch Cabell Library, Special Collections and Archives. 

"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.