Dai­ly Reflec­tion
July 21, 2007

Saturday of the Fif­teenth week in Ordi­nary Time
Lectionary: 394
Mem­ber of Creighton Uni­ver­si­ty Community

Today’s first read­ing recounts the moment when the Israelites were freed by the Egypt­ian Pharaoh and left the land of their slav­ery while the Gospel shares Jesus heal­ing peo­ple and ref­er­ences Isa­iah Chap­ter 42. The first read­ing focus­es on God’s deliv­er­ance of lit­er­al­ly hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple while the Gospel focus­es on how God chose one man for the deliv­er­ance of lit­er­al­ly every human being who has every lived or ever will live. Through Moses, God saved his cho­sen peo­ple from oppres­sion and led them to the land of milk and hon­ey. Through Jesus, God now saves us all from the oppres­sion of our own sin­ful­ness and from death itself to lead us into life everlasting.

As I was reflect­ing on the first read­ing, I noticed the author men­tioned that 600,000 Israelites left Egypt that night, not count­ing chil­dren and those of mixed her­itage. What would it look like today to have over 600,000 peo­ple leave their home? (Not even con­sid­er­ing the fact that esti­mates are that there were only 1 or 2 bil­lion peo­ple in the world at this time where­as now we have over 6 bil­lion.) The clos­est my imag­i­na­tion could visu­al­ize was the evac­u­a­tion of New Orleans in August 2005 for Hur­ri­cane Kat­ri­na. I hope and pray that this exo­dus of cit­i­zens will be the largest that I will ever see in my life­time. Over 450,000 cit­i­zens left New Orleans that week. How­ev­er, as mind-bog­gling large as the New Orleans dis­as­ter was, it does not com­pare in size to the exo­dus of Israel that night. We would need at least 1 and 12 the size of New Orleans to be equiv­a­lent to the exo­dus of Israel. Or, the entire pop­u­la­tion of Charleston, North Car­oli­na. Or a com­mu­ni­ty twice the size of my home­town of Oma­ha, NE. Where do you live? What pro­por­tion of your com­mu­ni­ty would rep­re­sent the Israelites that night?

This event was so large and so sig­nif­i­cant that Jews all over the world still cel­e­brate this night every year, even now, thou­sands of years lat­er. Because the pas­sion and death of Jesus occurred on the Passover, Chris­tians also mark this day every year. Will we remem­ber Kat­ri­na even 6 years from now? 60 years? What about the 600,000 civil­ians that were killed in Iraq by Octo­ber of 2006? Where will they go in the annals of his­to­ry, in the annals of our mind?

And yet, the most amaz­ing thing of all is not that God saved 600,000 peo­ple from slav­ery. It is that God cared and loved every sin­gle hair on the heads of every sin­gle one of them. God showed the Israelites just how much he loved them through the Passover and exo­dus. And, because of Jesus’ words and actions, you and I now know that God loved and delight­ed in not just each one of the Israelites, but also the Gen­tiles and the Phar­isees and the Samaritans…..and so too for each per­son hurt by Kat­ri­na. And for each and every Iraqi. And for you and me.

God did not just tell Isa­iah and Jesus, “Behold, (this is) my ser­vant whom I have cho­sen, my beloved in whom I delight.” Though Jesus heard God speak these words of him both at his bap­tism and at his trans­fig­u­ra­tion, these words were not just intend­ed for Jesus. Because of Moses, because of Isa­iah, and espe­cial­ly because of Jesus’ death and res­ur­rec­tion, we now know that God says this to each and every sin­gle one of us. Close your eyes and imag­ine God say­ing to you, “Behold! This is my ser­vant whom I have cho­sen. This is my beloved in whom I delight!”

It’s true; you are God’s beloved in whom he takes incred­i­ble delight!

Mem­ber of Creighton Uni­ver­si­ty Community

Since its incep­tion in 1997, Online Min­istries has been blessed to have myr­i­ad mem­bers of the Creighton Uni­ver­si­ty com­mu­ni­ty offer their per­son­al reflec­tions on the dai­ly scrip­ture readings.