Monday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time
July 17, 2023

Today’s Readings:

https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/071723.cfm

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Today, in God’s Lavish Mercy, as we continue with Matthew, we begin a nearly three-week engagement with the Book of Exodus. Our companion along the way will be Moses (and, on occasion, Charlton Heston).

The Book of Exodus, a literary masterpiece, has profoundly influenced religion and culture for over 3000 years. Finally written down about 300 years before Christ, it is a gathering of the rich oral traditions and salvation history of the Judea-Christian faith. A total of forty chapters, the Book can be divided into two key parts: the liberation from Egyptian enslavement and the formation of a new, life-giving Covenant with God.

The Book’s enduring influence can be ascribed to these two themes. They reflect the universal life cycles in all of nature and in each one of our lives. The totality of human culture as well as our individual biographies are stories of breaking forth from whatever binds us into the call and promise of fuller life.

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Today’s chapter is an introduction or bridge from the time of Joseph, (when Israel thrived in Egypt), to just before the emergence of Moses, (when Israel suffered in Egypt).

A new king, who knew nothing of Joseph, came to power in Egypt.
He said to his subjects, “Look how numerous and powerful
the people of the children of Israel are growing, more so than we ourselves!
Come, let us deal shrewdly with them to stop their increase;
otherwise, in time of war they too may join our enemies
to fight against us, and so leave our country.”

Accordingly, taskmasters were set over the children of Israel
to oppress them with forced labor.

Exodus 1:8-11

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The theme of suffering also anchors our passage from Matthew:

Jesus said to his Apostles:
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace upon the earth.
I have come to bring not peace but the sword.

Matthew 10:34

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The suffering imposed upon both “the children of Israel” and true disciples of Jesus generates from the same source – fear:

• Pharaoh is afraid of what he will lose should the growing Israelite community turn on him.
• The fear of losing one’s life in Christ inhibits the heart from true discipleship.

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As we pray and study these next few weeks with the Book of Exodus, we may be moved to consider the fears both within and around us that prevent us from growing to fuller life.

Our world is full of the fears that induce violence and retribution. Our own spirits may be restrained with the fear of what we might lose by falling deeper into a Gospel life.

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Our journey through Exodus offers us a time to consider and examine the fears we perceive. These fears may not necessarily be big spiritual impediments. They may be as simple as the fear of not being right, first, liked, included, or successful. But those very simple fears, left moldering in our hearts, are the seeds of the isolation, domination, and dissolution we see so rampant in our current culture.

Praying with Exodus, may we ask for courage to name and expose our personal and societal fears to God’s healing grace. We might begin with this thought from Paula D’Arcy:

Who would I be,
and what power would be expressed in my life,
if I were not dominated by fear?

Israel finally answered that question by coming into Covenant with God and Community with one another. The path is much the same for us in our lives.

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Poetry: Immortality by Lisel Mueller

In Sleeping Beauty’s castle
the clock strikes one hundred years
and the girl in the tower returns to the world.
So do the servants in the kitchen,
who don’t even rub their eyes.
The cook’s right hand, lifted
an exact century ago,
completes its downward arc
to the kitchen boy’s left ear;
the boy’s tensed vocal cords
finally let go
the trapped, enduring whimper,
and the fly, arrested mid-plunge
above the strawberry pie
fulfills its abiding mission
and dives into the sweet, red glaze.
As a child I had a book
with a picture of that scene.
I was too young to notice
how fear persists, and how
the anger that causes fear persists,
that its trajectory can’t be changed
or broken, only interrupted.
My attention was on the fly:
that this slight body
with its transparent wings
and life-span of one human day
still craved its particular share
of sweetness, a century later.

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Music: Fear is a Liar by Zach Williams – in this song, Williams images God as Fire, a Fire upon Whom we can cast our fears for a return of Love.