God Excruciated (Ash Wednesday)
Today Ash Wednesday falls on Valentine's Day.There is a certain appropriateness about that.
Usually Ash Wednesday is about us realising our brokenness and reaching out to God.
The problem is that our brokeness makes us incapable of finding help on our own.
It is only because God sees our brokenness and comes to us that we can "find" Him. (So actually He's the one who finds us...)
Here's some thoughts I had on Ex.2:23-25...
| During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them. (Exodus2:23-25) |
One of the human expectations of the "gods" is that "the gods do not bleed." In other words, our human expectation is that any god should not be affected by anything.
The God we believe in and that is portrayed here in Exodus is not a god like that. He is concerned for His creation. Our suffering is excruciating to Him.
Our reading for today depicts God as hearing, remembering and being concerned. Later, at the burning bush, our loving God states it even more clearly: "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians."
God takes our pain very very seriously.
He is not unmoved or aloof from our pain.
He is profoundly attentive to the extent of our pain and very determined to act on it.
The only "ex" word that I could come up with this morning was "excruciate" which means to torture or be tortured. As it turns out, this word includes the idea of crucifixion and it completes the picture for us. Our brokenness and pain is what took Jesus to the cross where He was crucified ("cruciated"). He experienced and carried the full extent of human brokenness so that we
will never be alone.
Do I hear a "Hallelujah"?
