Suffering
Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and spacious land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. Now go, I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” He said, “I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”
Exodus 3:7-12
DEVOTION
Steven Spielberg’s movie Schindler’s List, which premiered on December 15, 1993, is based on a true story. The movie is about Oskar Schindler, portrayed by Liam Neeson, who was a German businessman in Poland during World War II. As a businessman, Schindler saw an opportunity to make money from the Nazis’ war machine. Schindler started a company to make cookware and utensils, using bribes to win military contracts. By staffing his plant with Jews from the Krakow’s ghetto, Schindler had a dependable unpaid labor force.
However, in 1942, all of Krakow’s Jews were assigned to the Plaszow Forced Labor Camp, which was overseen by the Commandant Rudolf Hoss, played by the German actor Hans-Michael Rehberg, who was an embittered alcoholic. The Commandant occasionally shoot prisoners from his balcony. This is also when Schindler saw many of his Jewish employees being taken to the gas chambers. It is now that he suddenly realizes he is unwittingly contributing to their deaths. It is at this point in the movie that Schindler develops a conscience. He realizes that his factory, which now manufactures ammunition, is the only thing preventing his Jewish workers from being shipped to the death camps. Soon, Schindler demands more workers and starts bribing Nazi leaders to keep Jews on his employee lists and out of the death camps.
By the time the camp is liberated by the allies, Schindler has lost his entire fortune. He had used all his money on bribes and employing workers he did not need in order to save 1,100 Jews from death in the gas chambers.
On May 8, 1945, Germany surrendered and the war came to an end. On this day, Schindler gathered all of his workers together on the factory floor and shared the good news. He then asked the Jews not to seek revenge for what had been done to them, and called for a moment of silence in memory of those who had died. He also encouraged the members of the SS who were present to go home peacefully and without further bloodshed.
When the war was over Schindlerjuden, which means “Schindler Jews,” as those Jews who were on the work list that spared their lives, called themselves, gave Schindler a ring engraved with this verse from the Talmud, “Whoever saves one life saves the world entire.” Schindler died in Hildesheim in Germany October 9, 1974. He was buried in Jerusalem, saying, “My children are here.”
Steven Spielberg in his movie provided a visual representation of evil. Spielberg filmed the movie in black-and-white, which Spielberg considered a representation of the Holocaust. Spielberg said, “The Holocaust was life without light. For me the symbol of life is color. That’s why a film about the Holocaust has to be in black-and-white.”
What most people, who have seen the movie best remember, is the little girl in the red coat. She appeared twice in the movie. While the film is shot in black-and-white, the red coat is the only object seen in color. In the scene when the Krakow ghetto was being liquidated, Schindler’s attention affixed upon this one girl wearing a red coat. The next time the red coat appears, Schindler sees the child is lying on a cart transporting bodies to the crematorium.
Schindler suddenly realized his own contribution to the Holocaust. This was when Schindler realized the evil of the Nazi regime, and began his plans to save the lives of his Jewish workers. Film critics refer to the girl in the red coat as a “marker” used by Spielberg to denote the transformation of Oskar Schindler’s change of conscience.
Spielberg said the scene of the little girl in the red coat was intended to symbolize how members of the highest levels of government in the United States knew the Holocaust was occurring, yet did nothing to stop it. Spielberg said, “It was as obvious as a little girl wearing a red coat, walking down the street, and yet nothing was done to bomb the German rail lines. Nothing was being done to slow down the annihilation of European Jewry. So, that was my message in letting that scene be in color.”
The little girl in the red coat also represented something more – much more. The numbers of those executed, in the millions, are just that to us, just numbers. We shake our heads in disbelief but the number is so large that those individuals who cumulatively make up the millions are just a blur to us. When we focus on one person – one little girl in a red coat – then suddenly it all becomes so very too real for us.
The girl in the red coat depicted in the film was Roma Ligocka. Ligocka was known among those in the ghetto for her red coat. Unlike Spielberg’s child, Ligocka survived the Holocaust and wrote an autobiography titled The Girl in the Red Coat: A Memoir.
“What will it take for us to recognize the little girl in the red coat?”
Suffering surrounds us as it did for the Hebrews under the tyrannical rule of Pharaoh. As we read the story, like the movie Schindler’s List, the number of Hebrews involved is beyond our comprehension, thus causing us to become distanced from the story. Though when the account of the little girl in the red coat became a part of the Exodus story, suddenly the story becomes real to us.
Then, moving one step further, Roma Ligocka was the girl wearing the red coat who survived to write her autobiography, has helped us understand suffering.
I must ask, are you able to frame the suffering of the masses as the suffering of a single human being? I must ask, are you able to liberate that single individual who is a member of collective individuals?
Moses understood the suffering of the Hebrews who were subjugated by the oppressive reign of the Egyptians.
I am sure that this really became a stark reality for him when he encountered God at the burring bush. Standing there, absent of sandals, for it was holy ground, God called Moses to respond to the Hebrews suffering. Most of us have read the story enough to outline the multiple excuses that Moses gave as to why he was not qualified to carry forth God’s mission of liberation. God, patiently, and perhaps impatiently, listened, agreeing that Moses really was not the best choice. But then, no one would really have been the best choice. This is why God declared that he would spiritually accompany Moses with the words of self-declaration: “I AM WHO I AM.”
All of us who are reading the devotion this morning has accepted the call to be a servant of God. We have all had our own burning bush experience in our own very personal and special way. And we have all confessed before God our limitations and hesitations. This is why, as God anointed Moses, we accept the power of the Holy Spirit to grant wisdom to guide us.
As we think about our scripture reading this morning, perhaps the words of Joe Biden, delivered during his presidential nomination acceptance speech at the 2020 Democratic Presidential Convention held at the Wisconsin Center in Milwaukee, will raise our awareness of suffering and motivate us to alleviate the hardships of others. Biden, who lost his first wife Nelia and his 13-month-old daughter Naomi in a car accident on their way to buy a Christmas tree, and then later his adult son Beau to brain cancer, can help us understand suffering and tragedy. Joe Biden said, “I know how it feels to lose someone you love. I know that deep black hole that opens up in your chest. That you feel your whole being is sucked into it. I know how mean and cruel and unfair life can be sometimes.”