Week 16 Monday (Year 1)

Readings: Exodus 14:5-18; Psalm 15; Matthew 12:38-42

What are we to do with this warrior-God who finds his glory in destroying armies? As the Egyptians repent of having let them go, the Hebrews show that their 'triumphant escape' is not so triumphant after all. At the first threat they too repent and say 'better the slavery we knew than the uncertain future into which this Moses is leading us'. They are not convinced either about the reliability of this warrior-God.

Perhaps we can draw a lesson already: do we prefer the dependencies and limitations we know to the promises of a future freedom not yet experienced? What would it take to carry us from those dependencies and limitations, enable us to persevere through the uncertain in-between times, and sustain our hope of being brought into a land of freedom and new life?

The warrior-God has his power to offer as a basis for trust and hope. If he is on our side, who can be against us? Certainly not the poor Egyptians whose defeat we still celebrate every Easter. What we really need, however, is not a God who knows power and can act from there but a God who knows powerlessness and can still act from there. God's providence is bringing the Church in many parts of the world to the point where it needs to realise this - not wealth, power, status but poverty, weakness, insignificance ... what can yet be done from there, perhaps more authentically?

This is the sign Jesus offers in the gospel reading, Matthew's version of the sign of Jonah. It is not the sign of a new manifestation of military might. It is the sign - ridiculous and absurd! - of a man trapped in the belly of a sea-monster for three days and three nights. It is the sign - ridiculous and absurd! - of a man hanging dead on a cross. So the Son of Man will be buried in the heart of the earth: conquered, defeated, not just weakened but rendered utterly powerless.

To rise form there is not a stronger exercise of any power known to humanity. It is the revelation of a power beyond our experience and comprehension. Our warrior-God, our hero, is not mighty in the way the warrior-God of the Exodus is described. In fact he is more like the Egyptians than the Hebrews in the crucial moment of their defeat. But he is greater than Solomon and Jonah, greater than Moses and David. His power is not just the most powerful of the powers we know, it overcomes all the kinds of power we know. His kingdom is not just one of a different kind to the ones we know, it is not of this world at all.

How are we to learn how to interpret this sign so as to live by it? How are we to embrace powerlessness in order to enter the new world Jesus creates? How are we to make the love of God, that new reality Jesus breathes into the world, to be the basis for all our relationships? We glimpse it now and then, the power of God's love, but we need his help if we are to trust it at every step. If we are to persevere through the times of uncertainty and doubt. If we are to leave the comfort of known slavery behind and venture out towards the promised land of freedom and new life.