Exodus – The Story
Nicholas Poussin: The Crossing of the Red Sea
This oft-cited Book tells us the story each of us lives. It is the story of our own exodus from this world into the next. It is the telling of our state of captivity, our journey, our covenant with our Creator, and our building of a dwelling where this God abides.
God arrives in the form of a man to set all of us free. The Call is universal in that every human being is offered the healing work of the saver, yet even in his own town this offer is rejected by the people who are closest to him – his friends and neighbors in Nazareth. This saver makes his own journey to Jerusalem, enters into and abides to the terms of his own covenant with his Creator, tears down and rebuilds God’s dwelling place on earth. This new dwelling place is himself in the form of his Mystical Body.
Each of us arrives in the world as captive. Each of us is free to make the journey to our new state of being – into freedom. Each of us is offered the same covenant which this God-saver entered. Each of us is free to build our own new dwelling place for God. This new dwelling place is created by our essence, our intention and our behavior here on earth. Our thoughts and actions – our consciousness and our bodies – form the structure of our dwelling place – and it is in this sacred place that God abides, this God of Love – if we are open and vulnerable to the potential of this exodus story.
Through this miracle story we becomes the daughters and sons of this saving God. For there is nothing impossible with this God.
Leonardo da Vinci: The Last Supper
The Exodus story was familiar to the first apostles who held it as part of their own Jewish story. When doubt begins to nibble at our ears and around the edges of our hearts about the reality of this narrative, all we need do is to think about the passionate manner in which the early women and men followers of the saver-lover-God stepped into their own Exodus. When we read of how they risked everything – wealth, social standing, even life – to witness to this story we can know for certainty that this saver-lover, Christ, was born a human being, lived and breathed among them . . . and lives and breathes among us still.
This is the Gospel story. It is our own story. It is the story of how a people in captivity are freed, how they journey into unknown territory in the company of their saver, how they solemnly vow to keep to the terms of their covenant agreement, and how they build the new dwelling place of God in their souls. We are also invited to be these people . . . if only we respond to the universal call of this saver-lover God through our words and through our actions . . . and finally through our hearts.
What a blessed people are we. What a joyful noise we ought to make.
October 11 & 12, 2008.
Images from: https://mosaicmagazine.com/response/2015/03/biblical-criticism-hasnt-negated-the-exodus/ and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Supper_(Leonardo_da_Vinci)
