The overriding message of both of the scriptures for mass today is one of hope. Hope that the future is going to get better. Hope that things will not be like they are right now, forever. Things are going to change. The future looks much brighter with God’s guiding hand and the powerful presence of the Holy Spirit in Jesus Christ. These accounts in the scriptures today are beautiful in a down to earth sort of way. Like the Israelites and the people of Christ’s time, we do not need to be perfect human beings for God to love us. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to grow in holiness or anything, but God and Jesus both understand our humanity and they love us just the way we are right now. Holiness is a life long journey and sometimes we have set backs, but we also make progress in our ability to love.
Can you even begin to imagine the journey the Israelites embarked on in today’s scriptures from the book of Exodus? Six hundred thousand men plus their children and an assortment of other people they had acquired in their midst left Egypt in one mass Exodus. This must surely be the reason the book was named the book of Exodus and the term continues to be used to this day to describe a large group of people abruptly leaving something. By the time you add up all of the people that left Egypt as one body of people, it would come to a quarter of a million people or more. We can’t even imagine something happening like this in the modern world. God worked in powerful ways in ancient times, but there is no reason He can’t today as well. We have lost a sense of simplicity and trust in God collectively as the people of God in our modern times though. We are a little bit too self reliant sometimes.
Things do not always go perfectly when God does step up to help us though. The old testament reading says that the people did not have time to even cook break for the journey when they left Egypt. Why should we expect things to always go smoothly with us when God grants our prayers and our lives change because of it? Things eventually work themselves out and hopefully it won’t take four hundred and thirty years like it did with the Israelite people either.
It makes you wonder if Moses was the only one who was able to hear God speak though, because he escaped the brutality of slavery, abuse and hard manual labor each day. God called Moses to Mount Sinai, but Moses could hear his voice in the quiet. We should remember this because it is important with the noise, work and busyness most of us experience each day, it is hard to hear God’s voice when He does try to answer our prayers and guide us in how to do that.
The gospel readings says as much about Jesus today and we really should look to him as a model for our own lives. The gospel says “He will not wrangle or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets”. So many times, the scriptures in the old testament and the new, give accounts of God’s voice being heard in the silence. Remember the story in the book of Kings that God’s voice was not heard in the heavy wind, the crushing of rocks and mountains, the earthquakes or the fires. His voice was heard in the tiny whispering sound after all these things had ended. (1 Kings 19:11-12).
It’s kind of ironic that the next verse in the gospel says that “He will not break a bruised reed or quench a smoldering wick”. Jesus again, is just like his Father. It isn’t in great deeds performed through his own power, and might that people were healed and found hope in him. Jesus and his Father are both the most powerful forces in the universe and yet, their tenderness, gentleness and compassion is what makes them great and dear to our hearts. The crowds that followed Jesus did so because of his tender concern and compassion for them, shown in the acts he did to heal their illnesses. This is something we should remember with our own families, friends and coworkers because it is so easy to get in a power struggle with others. It isn’t through powerful assertion that people come to know love, to love us and to love God. A single moment of kindness and compassion can change a person’s life. People never forget a genuine act of kindness or compassion. It stays with them for life. What do you want to be remembered for? Your temper, irritability or your kindness? That’s something we can all probably improve on in our daily lives and relationships with others.
We can learn from our gentle Lord though. His love for people was so profoundly compassionate, tender and healing. That’s why people loved him so much during his own times and today as well.
