The story of Jesus told by Luke is quite interesting on many fronts. One of which is the way the writer seems to have the exodus story in the back drop of the two volume narrative he writes. Luke begins the writing of the infancy of Jesus as a parallel story to that of Moses. In Acts 2 at Pentecost (the celebration of Sinai—the point at which the Israelites receive from God, through Moses, the Torah) the spirit of God comes down and unites speech or speaks through multiple individuals instead of just Moses. At Sinai 3000 Israelites die while at the Pentecost (50 days after the death of Jesus) 3000 trust Jesus. All of the gospel writers seem to place heavy significance on the death and resurrection of Jesus as a kind of exodus—a departure from something to something. Jesus is killed at the Passover celebration which is the night that the Israelites made their preparations to depart from Egypt. Out of slavery to covenant with this god, Yahweh, who insisted on their freedom. At one point in Luke, Jesus is said to be meeting with two figures from Israel’s past. Moses and Elijah, who had both departed or died through an odd set of circumstances, are appearing to Jesus in Luke 9 talking about Jesus’ departure, or in Greek—Jesus’ exodov.
Jesus’ departure from something to something apparently involves realities that require some advising. The leaving of one age into a new age is uncharted territory, unmarked history. Leaving is always this way. It involves trust in something beyond the system to which you have grown comfortable and reliant. It involves new ground and open roads, perhaps even a relearning of what is most important and significant.
We are constantly coming and going. That is, we are involved in annexation, appropriating new territory into the space we inhabit. This inevitably means that some territory is left behind. There is this brilliant quote that Don Miller voices in the introduction to ‘Through Painted Deserts’ that gets at this. He says essentially to leave. He pauses in the text to allow that word…
Leave
to hover for us to hear how strong and powerful is sounds, “just like you’ve always wanted to be.” Leave, because you will change—go through an annexation—and will return only to love for all new reasons. The space inside you will be shifted and people will know it through what has filled the void returns of our cultures constant salesmanship. The posture of our lives looks different when we have experienced exodus and a kind of homecoming.
