Lent 2c.07                                                          March 4, 2007

When Moses first met God on Mt. Horeb,
       he learned something shockingly new.
He discovered how God responds to suffering and injustice.
The voice from the fire said,

       “I have seen the misery of my people
       . . . . I have heard their cry. . . . .
       Indeed I know their suffering
       and I have come down to deliver them.”

Most religions use God’s will
       as a defense for the way things are.
A tornado rips apart someone’s home.
Get over it. It’s God’s will.
Some people are born to wealth and comfort while others
       die in squalid poverty having no chance at life.
Doesn’t seem fair, does it? But it’s God’s will.
God is the designer of the way things are.
Whatever is is right because it’s God’s will.

But that’s not what God said to Moses, is it? God said,

       “I have seen the misery of my people . . . .
              Indeed I know their suffering
              and I have come down to deliver them.”
God is not the oppressor of the slaves.
In fact, God doesn’t like oppression one little bit.

This God is no defender of the status quo,
        no justification for things as they are.
This is a God who challenges the world to be better,
        a God who sees human misery and is moved to act mercifully,
        a God who hears the cry of sorrow and is moved to answer,
        a God who sees oppression and demands freedom.

That meeting on Mt. Horeb was a quantum leap
        in the religious imagination of humankind.
Before Moses, the gods dispensed blessings and curses
        in response to a system of cosmic bribery called sacrifices.
That aspect of religion is still around in subtler forms.
But the basic shift is right there in Exodus.
God hear his people’s cry because of compassion – not bribery.

So God wants to save Israel. Good.
But look how he does it.
He sends Moses.
Even Moses doesn’t think that’s such a good idea.
“Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh . . . ?” he asks.
God answers, “I will be with you.”

And therein lies yet another revolutionary shift
        in our understanding of how God works with us,
        how we are called to work with God.
The world’s suffering is enormous.
Recently, we talked about the magnitude
        of poverty and disease in developing nations.
But they have no monopoly on misery.
We need look no further than the person sitting next to us
        to find human need, human sorrow.
“Call no man happy until he is dead,” King Croesus said.
Every life is touched by anxiety, disappointment, despair.
Suffering is universal and oceanic.
Frail, fallible human beings cannot possibly overcome it.
So we if God wants to redeem us from suffering,
         we expect God to leap feet first into the world
         and set things right himself.

But God doesn’t do that.
If God jumps in to dominate the world,
         it becomes his puppet instead of his chid.
So God doesn’t just jump in and do it himself.

When God wants Israel liberated, he sends Moses.
When God wants anything done, he sends people.
God sends you and me to heal each other.
God never goes to the prom of human history
         without a date.

He sends us to contend against the forces
         of oppression and injustice,
         and also against the forces of loneliness and grief,
         against the forces of anxiety and despair
                  in each other’s lives.
And we say, “Who are we that we should go to Pharaoh?”

Who are we to offer comfort to the bereaved?
Who are we to try to change the self-defeating,
          turf-guarding, small-minded habits
                  of our racially divided change-resistant city?
We do not even have the resources to make a dent
          in the poverty of one tiny Haitian village.
Who are we that we should go to Pharaoh?

It’s a good question.
That’s why Moses asked it.
The depth and breadth of the world’s wrong is
          beyond our capacity to set right.

But God answers, “I will be with you.”
God cannot jump in and dominate the world
         without destroying it’s personhood.
God never goes to the prom of human history
         without a date.
But God can inspire and empower us.

Paul said,
“Glory to God whose power working in us
         can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine.”
When we answer God’s call to serve each other,
         we can do things we think are utterly beyond us.
But the good that we can do is still just a drop in the ocean
         of grace that God has in store for the creation.

When Moses was a young man, and he first discovered injustice
         as young men do, he set out to right the wrongs on his own.
He killed an Egyptian, and got run out of the country.
It didn’t work – so he went to the other extreme.
He ran away from Egypt where his people were enslaved,
         and tried to forget about them.
Just so, when we charge in with a full head of our own steam
         to fix the world, to right the wrongs,
         or solve the problems of a friend or family member,
         we usually just make things worse.
So we burn out – “compassion fatigue” we call it these days.

Both extremes miss the mark.
In the Baptismal Covenant, we don’t vow to do anything
         on our own.
It’s all “with God’s help.”
“Will you strive for peace and justice among all people . . .?”
         the Church asks.
And we answer, “I will with God’s help.”

The horror of the holocaust, the Trail of Tears,
         and the Spanish genocide of Latin America,
         cannot be undone or redeemed by us in this life.

The sufferings of abused children
         and all the lonely elderly people
         cannot be undone or redeemed in this life.
Full redemption will come when only we all meet God
         face to face in awe and wonder.
In that day, every tear will be wiped away.

Until then we do our little acts of mercy,
         a few dollars to feed the hungry,
         a card or a call to someone in crisis,
         a visit to a nursing home.

We do these seemingly small things
         as acts of wild, absurd faith
         that God is with us,
weaving our little mercies into the cosmic redemption.
Sometimes we don’t see results at all.
That’s ok. Paul says,“Faith is the assurance
         of things hoped for, but not seen.”

This is our faith:
Each act of kindness, each stand for justice
         is a God-moment like Moses going to Pharaoh.
It is a shaft of eternity
         breaking into sorrow-bound time.

We are not miracle workers, but God is.
God is working on a miracle that makes the creation
         look like tinker toys.
But he will not do it alone.
He sends us, then goes with us along the way.
                                    

                                                         Amen.