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.
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