The Third Sunday in Lent

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

In today's reading from Exodus, we hear for the very first time that God is with us; that God is concerned about and involved in the life God has created. This is the first time we hear the promise of God to be “with you.” This promise is at the heart of our relationship with God. That God is with us and will be with us always and ever, now and forever. That is why we remind ourselves before we pray; The Lord be with you. And also with you. Then Let us pray.

You heard the words spoken to Moses, and through Moses to all of Israel, “I have seen the misery of my people; I have heard their cry. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them.”

God tells Moses that all he needs to do is to look at their history together. God was with Abraham. God was with Isaac. God was with Jacob. All of history testifies to the presence of God with God’s people. Now Moses and we are assured anew that God is not only a God of history, but God of the present and the future, too.

The nature of God is compassion, being with – in ways that involve intimacy and vulnerability born out of love. That is the na­ture of God, that is the nature of the divine relationship with the human creation, that is the nature of the Incarnation, that is the nature of discipleship – being with.

My friend David Jones tells how “Late one night in April of 1968, Newark, NJ, was in flames. Martin Luther King, Jr., had been murdered and there was rage in the streets. In the midst of it all a little girl was in her bed trying to go to sleep, but the noises out­side here home — shouts, flashing lights, gunfire, po­lice cars fire engines — kept her awake. She was afraid and she was crying. ‘Hush, child, God is with you,’ her mother called from the bedroom across the hall. The frightened little girl answered in her small voice, ‘I know he is, Mama, but could you come and get into bed with me? I need someone who has skin.’”

The second point made by the lessons is that after we have been brought into relationship with God, we are sent by God back to God’s people. Moses was not allowed to stay by the burning bush. The immediate response of this chosen one, this Moses, was to deny his ability and worthiness to go for God. Moses objected no less than 5 times. But God reassured this reluctant ser­vant by promising him that he will be with him in all times.

The parable of the fig tree has been called the parable of the sec­ond chance. The gardener asks that the tree be given another year to bear fruit. We always live in the hope and mercy of God who keeps giving us second chances to rise from the difficulties of our lives to rebuild and reform our lives. God’s love knows no limit, no condition, no finality.

There are many people who look at the world today and see the suffering that life and human beings inflict on themselves and on other human beings. One person is Bill Countryman, a teacher, believes that we are in a “time of trial.” We pray in the modern language translation of the Lord's Prayer, “Our Father in heaven...Save us from the time of trial. Deliver us from evil.” We are in the midst of a trial in the sense of seeing what we are made of.

What is the nature and substance of our faith? How is it being lived out? Is it of God? It doesn't make any difference how we got into the time of trial, but as Jesus was tried in the desert and on Calvary, so are we tried and tested. And as Jesus tells us in the gospel lesson, our souls hang in the balance.

If our response is one of compassion, then the works of God will be revealed in the trial. Our souls will be safe. God's people will be comforted in their spirits, and hopefully healed in body, if they need to be; and we will live in a reconciled community of faith, witness, and ministry that is in the image of the loving, compassion­ate, powerful presence of God in the here-and-now.

Paul Brand is a world renowned surgeon who devoted much of his life to reconstructing clawed fingers, twisted hands, and de­formed feet at a leprosy hospital in India. One Christmas he was guest of honor at a party in the dormitory where the lepers lived while they waited for surgery. After a long day in the operating room, Dr. Brand came to the party and was immediately asked to speak. Exhausted and empty of ideas, he breathed a prayer for the winds of God’s spirit to speak through him. As he rose he was struck by the sight of the lepers’ hands ­– some half-hidden in concealment, most grotesque in their disfigurement.

“How I would love,” he began, “to have had the chance to meet Jesus and study his hands! But, knowing what he was like, I can almost picture them … The car­penter’s hands rough, tough, gnarled; the healer’s hands sensitive, com­passionate; the crucified hands marred, even clawed. And then there were his resurrected hands … Why did he want to keep the wounds of his humanity? I think he carried the marks of his suffering to be forever with us.”

Silently, one by one, the people lifted their hands high. They were the same stumps, scars and claws as before. Yet they were not the same. No one now tried to conceal them, for they had ac­quired a new dignity — the dignity of Christ.

The task of the church is to image/imagine the world whole, the community whole, each other whole, the kingdom of God in the here-and-now of this life, this world, whole.

When we live in the compassion of God, when we live out the com­passion of God, then God's will is done on earth as it is in heaven. When Jesus teaches, he almost always says "The kingdom of heaven is like...the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, like a pearl; like a full fishnet.” The kingdom of heaven is like – you and me, whenever we soothe, feed, build, clothe, advocate for, pray for, be with. Whenever we become indignant on behalf of the poor and suffering; whenever we bring resources to help make the world more just; whenever we hear someone's cry and go to them to be with them.

We stand on holy ground, we live on holy ground, in the presence of the Living God who has “seen the misery of the people; has heard their cry; who knows their sufferings, and has come to deliver them.” and who sends us to be his compassionate, empowering presence in the world; and who will come to judge us, not on our rate of suc­cess, but on our faithfulness. This is the God who calls us.