The God Who Suffers (Exodus 3:1-15)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on September 3, 2017, Proper 17)

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A Man Who Has Cooled Off

Today’s story begins with a peaceful, pastoral scene.  There against the wide backdrop of wilderness Moses moseys along, his eyes resting on the flock of sheep and goats around him.

If you knew Moses from his younger days, then this relaxed, easygoing shepherd might surprise you.  A long time ago, Moses had a very different reputation.  Here’s his previous reputation as the Bible records it—just verses before today’s scripture:

Having grown up as a Hebrew orphan in the Egyptian palace, Moses one day went out and saw the slavery of his people.  Nothing out of the ordinary.  Just some Egyptian masters bullying their Hebrew slaves.  One Egyptian, however, went a bit too far.  His bullying became beating.  Moses was inflamed.  His heart burned within him.  He fixated on this one Egyptian man, and when the coast was clear, he killed him.

As it turned out, though, the coast had not been clear.  The murder became well known, and Moses fled from Egypt to the land of Midian, which is where we find him today.   By now, he has settled down.  He has made friends with a local shepherd, married this man’s daughter, and had a son.  This is no longer the man who stood up to Egyptian brutality.  This is a man who has cooled off, who has put down roots and is happy to live out his days in peace (cf. 2:11-22).

God and the Chessboard

And so here he is, ambling alongside his flock in the wilderness, when suddenly something catches his eye. 

The rest of the story is history: Moses and the burning bush.  It’s a familiar story.  I’ll assume that you know it.  I assumed that I knew it.  But I didn’t—not completely.  I thought it was simple: God tells Moses to return to Egypt to bring his people out.  I thought of it as a scene of divine recruitment, when God the employer contracts Moses to a very special job, when God the commander hands Moses a mission impossible. 

What I discovered, however, is not a distant God, a God sitting above the chessboard of our world, cool and calculating, making moves, transferring players from one square to another.  What I discovered is the opposite: a God on the chessboard.  What I discovered is a God who suffers. 

An Odd Repetition

Religion has long held fantasies of a God who is above all and all-powerful and who will fix everything in the blink of an eye.  When God tells Moses, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt…and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians,” I imagine that Moses nodded his head approvingly, thinking to himself, “Amen!”  That’s the God Moses wanted.  That’s the God we all want.  The God above who will come down in power and fix it all in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.

But as Moses finds out, that’s not quite who God is.

There’s an odd repetition in the story of the burning bush.  First, God tells Moses that God has seen the Israelites’ misery and will come down to deliver them.  At this point, Moses and we both are pretty happy.  That’s the God we want.  But God continues, saying, “I have…seen how the Egyptians oppress” the Israelites—at which point, I imagine Moses blinking, thinking, “Yeah, you just said that.”  And then God says, “So come, I will send you!”  Wait, what?

God’s tune has changed.  First, it was: I have seen their suffering, I have come down to deliver them (cf. 3:7-8).  But then the second time around, it becomes: I have seen their suffering—“so come, I will send you” (cf. 3:9-10)!

A Tale of Two Fires

Well, which is it?  Is God coming down to deliver the Israelites from Egypt, or is Moses going to bring the Israelites out of Egypt?  In a word: Yes.  Both.

God and Moses together.  Not like a tag team: God pulling one punch, Moses pulling the next.  But rather like a call and a response.  To the outside observer, only Moses will be leading the Israelites.  But he would not be leading them if he hadn’t first stumbled upon that blazing fire that called to him in the wilderness.

Speaking of fire...I can’t help but wonder if this is not really a tale of two fires.  Remember how long ago, Moses like God had seen the suffering of the Israelites?  Remember how that had inflamed him?  But the fire within his heart had long cooled, as he settled down in Midian and married and had a son.

God’s heart, however, has not cooled.  The God whom Moses encounters is a never-ending fire.  It’s a fascinating comparison.  God and Moses had shared the same fundamental observation.  Both of them witnessed the suffering of the Israelites.  But one ran away from the suffering and settled down, cooling off.  The other stayed a blazing fire. 

The key to this eternal divine combustion?  I think we hear it early on in God’s message to Moses: “I know their sufferings” (3:7).

Running Away from Suffering

“I know their sufferings.”

You’ve probably heard the question before: “Where is God when it hurts?”  If today’s story is any indication, the answer is simple: in the hurt.  “I know their sufferings.”  Where is God in our world today, our world of hurricane-flooding and systemic poverty and racial injustice?  According to today’s scripture, God’s heart beats most clearly in the hearts of the suffering. 

I would even go so far as to say, God knows our suffering better than we do ourselves!  When we see suffering, whether our own or others’, we do like Moses did: we run far away from it and settle down where things are more comfortable.  I don’t know about you, but for me it’s almost a reflex!  When someone shares with me a story of illness, my response comes out immediately, “I hope it gets better.”  When someone shares with me a story of difficulty, my mind races for solutions, “Have you asked a professional for help?  Have you considered this, that, or the other?”  There’s nothing wrong with trying to help, of course.  It’s just that I’m suspicious about our motives, sometimes.  I think we, like Moses, are afraid of suffering.  We don’t know what to do with it.  So we run away from it.  We mask it with platitudes and plans, programs and pipe dreams.

Bryan Stevenson, a public interest lawyer deeply concerned with racial injustice, claims that racism and slavery never died, they just evolved: first in the form of Jim Crow laws and then in the socioeconomic tangle that has advanced our system of mass incarceration.  Stevenson contends that the reason our nation has not found healing, is because we have never really addressed the wound.  He points out that on the whole our nation does not do sorrow and suffering very well.  We do business and gold medals and victory well, but we do not do sorrow and suffering very well.  As a result, we have still yet to address many of the racial injustices of our history.  To put it very simply, we like Moses have run away from the suffering.  Whereas South Africa regularly remembers the suffering of its apartheid history in an effort to seek truth and reconciliation; whereas Germany memorializes the suffering inflicted by the Nazi regime; we in America do very little to tell the story of the genocide of Native Americans or of the lynchings of black Americans.  We run away from the suffering. 

God Shares the Suffering

But God does not.  “I know their sufferings,” God says, which can only mean one thing.  If God really knows their suffering, that must mean God is suffering too.  God shares their suffering.  Is that not the story of Jesus?  The gospel writer of Matthew offers a fascinating observation about Jesus when he goes about healing people.  Citing a verse from Isaiah, he says that when Jesus healed people, “He took [their] infirmities and bore [their] diseases” (Matt 8:17).  In other words, he shared their suffering.  Jesus was not a magician curing people with the impersonal wave of a wand any more than God is a chess-master, high above the board, cool and calculating, moving pieces at will.

The gospel of Jesus is the same gospel that we read in today’s story.  It’s that even when we like Moses run away from the suffering of our world, God does not.  God shares the suffering.  God suffers too.

Called to Share God’s Suffering

This is good news, of course, to the suffering.  But chances are, this news alone won’t make them feel much better.  If the only thing I take away from this story, is that I should give a pat on the shoulder to people who are suffering and tell them that God is with them, before I go on my merry way, then I think I’ve missed the point.

The point isn’t simply that God suffers with the Israelites.  The point is that Moses feels called to join God, to share himself the suffering of God and the Israelites.  When God promises Moses, “I will be with you” (3:12), I think what God is really saying, is: I am with the suffering, and when you stop running away and return to share their suffering, there you will find me.  There, “I will be with you.”

We Americans do success well.  We do fundraising dinners and charitable programs and tax-deductible donations pretty well.  But I wonder if sometimes this is simply how we run away from suffering.  I wonder if these things are not just our escape route into Midian, into a life of contentment and happily ever after, a reflex by which we avoid sharing the pain of others.

The good news of today’s scripture is not that God fixes things instantaneously from on high, or that Jesus waves a wand and cures all our problems.  Those are fantasies that have long tempted religion, fantasies that bear a curious resemblance to our own methods of throwing money or quick-fix programs at a problem.  The good news is that rather than keeping a safe distance from our suffering, God enters into it.  Shares it.  And if we want to find God, that’s where.  We will find God in the memory-loss of residents at Symphony Manor.  Within the stopgap homes of refugees.  In the tears of a friend who grieves.  We will find God with the gay youth who has been left burned by his family and his church.  With the Muslim who continually endures suspicious looks and intimidation.  With the disabled who are treated impatiently as burdens.

“I know their sufferings.”  The good news is not a fix or a cure.  There are some things that have no fix or cure—not in the way that we would want.  The good news is a God who does not run away.  The good news is a God who suffers with those who suffer, and who draws us into their presence, just as God drew Moses back to the Israelites, just as Jesus draws us to the least of these.  As good as any donation or plan or program may be, what the suffering need even more than that is us.  By their side.

Prayer

God who shares our suffering

And knows it better

Than we do ourselves:

Kindle within our hearts

A love that courageously

Enters into the suffering of others

And stays there,

With you.

In the name of him

Who took our infirmities and bore our diseases, Jesus Christ.

Amen.

The Real Miracle in Joseph's Story (Genesis 45:1-15)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on August 20, 2017, Proper 15)

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From Feud to Funny Story: The Great Wall of Pillows

Much of the Old Testament is about kings and foreign nations, imperial intrigue and war, which are all very fascinating but are also things that I’ve never experienced in my life.  One of the reasons I love Genesis is that it’s on my level.  It’s the story of a family.  Fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, arguments and roadtrips.  Love and loss and new life.  I can understand Genesis.

Growing up, my brother and I would occasionally have to share a bed.  It would usually be at one of those little motels.  They were all the same: white, starchy sheets and two pillows per head.  Neither my brother nor I needed the extra pillow.  So instead we put them to good use.  To ensure that neither of us encroached on the other’s space, we each contributed a pillow to what became known as The Great Wall of Pillows.  There in the middle of the bed, we built a wall.  It was a diplomatic masterpiece, guaranteeing equal space and a sleep free from flailing arms.

The Great Wall of Pillows kept the peace between us brothers.  Until one morning, when it did not.  The Great Wall protected us in the middle, but it could not protect us at the head or foot of the bed.  And that’s where the trouble happened.  One of us had gotten turned around in the middle of the night.  I don’t know how.  All I remember is my brother crying out in the morning: “Get your feet out of my face!”  To which I responded: “Get your face out of my feet!”

Parental arbitration did little to resolve the conflict.  We were fuming for minutes.  It was not until a half-hour later, when we had made our way through the motel’s cereal bar and were forced to sit at the same table, that peace returned and the feet-in-face skirmish was put behind us. 

In fact, in the days and years to follow, that incident took on an entirely different tone and meaning.  It became a joke, part of the family mythology, a tale told to kindle laughter and good cheer.

A Forgiveness That Takes Time and Tears

Today’s scripture is also a tale of brotherly conflict and reconciliation.  But here the conflict is not simply a matter of sleeping space and feet-in-face.  It is a matter of one brother whose self-important dreams are a kick in the face of the other brothers, who hit back by selling him into slavery.  And here the reconciliation is not a matter of minutes but of years.  The reunion happens not over cereal but over hugs and wordless tears.

If you remember the story, after Joseph goes to Egypt as a slave, he rises from rags to riches.  He becomes a governor of Egypt.  Then, twenty-three years after his brothers sold him into slavery, they encounter one another again.  A famine has driven the brothers down to Egypt to seek food.  They do not recognize Joseph, but he recognizes them.  He does not, however, reveal himself immediately.  Several times we are told that Joseph cannot keep from weeping and must remove himself from their company.[1]  He clearly is torn.  Part of him must want to reveal himself.  But another part resists.  Why open the lid on a painful past?  Why revisit such a hurtful history?

When he does finally reveal himself, we see that his brothers are similarly conflicted—confused.  How could this possibly be the brother they left for dead?  More importantly, how can they trust his goodwill?  The story tells us that initially they cannot even answer him, so stunned are they.  According to the storyteller, only after Joseph has wept and embraced them can they talk to him (cf. 45:14-15).

In other words, this isn’t a simple end to a brotherly squabble, the easy half-hour resolution to a sitcom drama.  Forgiveness sometimes takes a whole lot more than cereal.  In the story of Joseph, forgiveness takes time, and it takes tears.  Joseph does not simply reconcile with the brothers who left him for dead.  It takes him months to open himself up to them.  And likewise, the brothers do not simply receive his forgiveness and carry on like their offense never happened.  It takes tears and hugs to liberate them from the past.[2]

Traditionally a Tale of Divine Providence

Traditionally the story of Joseph is read as a tale of divine providence.  As Joseph himself says, “Do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life” (45:5).  In other words, you thought you were selling me, but really God was sending me.  To many readers, these words suggest the image of a divine puppeteer hidden behind the clouds, imperceptibly directing the drama toward survival.  Everything that has happened—their father’s lopsided love, Joseph’s self-important dreams, the brothers’ hate, Joseph’s slavery, his rags-to-riches glory in Egypt—all of this has been invisibly choreographed by a divine director.  God orchestrated Joseph’s roller-coaster journey so that he would end up as governor of Egypt, where he could then provide food for his famine-stricken family.  That, according to many readers, is the miracle in Joseph’s story.

But what good would it have been—all the twisted events of Joseph’s journey—if at the final moment he and his brothers had not reconciled?  Imagine for a moment that Joseph didn’t reveal himself, but instead simply gave his brothers food and sent them on their way.  They would have returned home to a father still grieving the mysterious loss of his son.  They would have returned home still broken themselves, restless with the guilt of the past.  And Joseph would have remained in Egypt, confused and teary-eyed.  What sort of life would that have been?

What Really Saved Their Lives?

The question I want to ask, then, is what really saved the lives of Joseph and his brothers?  Was it a hand in the sky, orchestrating events just for them?  Is that really where God’s power lies?

When Joseph says to his brothers, “Do not be distressed…because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life,” I don’t think he’s theologizing.  I think he’s forgiving.  I don’t think he’s theorizing about God and providence and omnipotence, I think he’s liberating his brothers and himself from the past. 

Normally there are deeds and there are consequences.  Normally the past determines the future.  But forgiveness disrupts the normal order of time.  Forgiveness throws a wrench inside the gears and chains of time, separating deed from consequence, crime from guilt, wrongdoing from revenge.  Forgiveness means that our story can be changed.  Forgiveness is the way our story gets edited.  You can never erase what happened, but you can cross through it and write in a new meaning.  That’s precisely what Joseph does.  Listen again to what he says: “Do not be distressed…because you sold me here”—in other words, you sold me here, but let’s cross through the original meaning of wrongdoing and guilt—“for God sent me before you to preserve life”—which is to say, let’s put a twist on the story (45:5).  I will not hold your crime against you.  Quite the opposite, I will seek instead the opportunities that it has offered, which include not only saving the famine-stricken lives of many but also reconciling with you.

What really saved the lives of Joseph and his brothers?  Was it the food Joseph provided?  That gave them biological life, for sure, but just because a heart pumps blood doesn’t mean it pumps love and life.  In my eyes, what really saved everyone’s life—the real miracle of the story—is not the fortuitous twist of events that put Joseph into power and his brothers back in his presence.   What really saved their lives is forgiveness.  It is the twist that Joseph puts on the past, which gives him and his brothers their lives back.

The Miracle That Gives the Past a New Meaning

In the case of my brother and me, forgiveness transformed a fraternal feud of feet-versus-face into a tale of laughter and good cheer.  In the case of Joseph and his brothers, forgiveness turned a hateful conflict into an opportunity for saving the lives of not only the hungry but also the heartbroken.

I wonder about today. Our nation bears many wounds wrought by a hurtful past.  These wounds cannot be undone.  But they can be healed.  The past cannot be erased, but it can be edited.  History cannot be unwritten, but it can be overwritten with a new meaning.  The power of God is not the power of an omnipotent puppeteer.  It is the power of the heart, the miracle of forgiveness, the only thing that can transform a hurtful past into a healthy future.

But here’s the difficult thing.  Who forgives whom?  Normally we would read today’s scripture and say, Okay, I need to forgive others.  Normally as Christ-followers, we think of ourselves as the agents of forgiveness.  But for myself, I wonder if this time I’m not on the other side of the fence. 

I’m not the wounded one.  I’m the one who went from strength to strength, unimpeded by poverty or a broken home or underfunded education or inadequate transportation or student loans or the prejudices of people who give grants and scholarship and jobs to people who look and talk like them.  I’m the one who has lived as if there’s no problem, the one who’s said, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace.  I’m the one who has been complicit, and by complicit, I mean not asking questions and not seeking answers; I mean wanting to turn the news off before I hear about someone else who has been hurt by a culture that has never really hurt me.  I’m not the wounded one.  I’ve been the one who wants to pretend like there’s no wound.  I’m the one who needs the miracle of forgiveness.  Only then could there be true reconciliation like there was between Joseph and his brothers, or my brother and me.

Forgiveness can overwrite a hurtful history with a new meaning.  But it must begin with the hurtful history.  How can there be forgiveness where we do not confess our sins?  In Montgomery, Alabama, which used to be one of the busiest slave ports in the US, there are 59 markers that commemorate and celebrate the Confederacy but not a single marker that acknowledges slavery.  How can there be forgiveness where we do not confess our sins?  “It took only ten years to erect a memorial to the victims of September 11,” but “to this day there is no national monument to slavery.”  How can there be forgiveness where we do not confess our sins?[3]

Forgiveness is neither simple nor easy.  Today’s scripture shows that plainly enough.  To confront the sin of the past takes time, and it takes tears.

Mark Heyer, the father of the young woman whose life was taken by a white supremacist, recently spoke about forgiveness.  He had tears in his eyes.  He had a long, slow future in his eyes. “I hope all this stuff that’s come out,” he said, “isn’t twisted into something negative but there comes a positive change in people’s hearts, in their thinking, in their understanding of their neighbor.”[4]  I hope so too.  I hope that forgiveness can cross through the hurt of history and write in a new meaning.  It is the only hope we have for the future.  What has happened—last weekend, these last five hundred years—cannot be undone.  But it can be healed.

Prayer

Christ,

Whose power is not of the fist

But of the heart,

Whose forgiveness

Writes a new story:

Humble us

To walk the long, tearful path

Of forgiveness,

With those we have wounded

And those who have wounded us.

We trust that new life

Can come from anywhere,

Even a cross,

Even a grave.

Amen.

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[1] Gen 42:24; 43:30; 45:1-2.

[2] In fact, it takes years too.  After their father dies, they become frightened again that Joseph will turn on them.  Joseph must repeat his forgiveness (cf. 50:15-21).

[3] This analysis comes from D. L. Mayfield’s excellent essay, “Facing Our Legacy of Lynching,” http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2017/september/legacy-lynching-america-christians-repentance.html, accessed August 19, 2017.

[4] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/charlottesville-protests-latest-heather-heyer-father-mark-forgives-james-fields-killing-his-daughter-a7894996.html, accessed August 16, 2017.

Why Reuben Doubted (Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on August 13, 2017, Proper 14)

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Jacob’s Lopsided Love

Genesis could just have as well have been titled “Family Feud.”  Nearly every one of its stories features conflict on the home front—between husband and wife, mother and maidservant, one brother and another.

Today’s episode finds us moving from one generation to another.  The last several weeks we followed the story of Jacob as he struggled first with his brother and then with his father-in-law.  Today we meet Jacob’s sons, among whom the next conflict brews.  There’s responsible Reuben, the firstborn, who has the oldest brother’s sense of duty.  There’s Judah, the mischievous and mercenary middle child, always asking what’s in it for him.  And then there’s Joseph.  The baby.  The child of Jacob’s beloved wife Rachel.  Daddy’s favorite.

A curious fact about the father Jacob: he “loves” more than any other character in Genesis.  First he loves his wife Rachel more than his wife Leah.  Now he loves Joseph more than any of his other sons (37:3-4).  This, I believe, is the key that unlocks today’s story.  There is much that the narrator leaves unsaid.  But if we consider Jacob’s lopsided love, his favoritism, much becomes clear.

First, it explains Joseph, who comes off a little like a “spoiled” child in today’s story.  For not only does his father favor him; he knows it.  He tattles on his brothers.  And then to add insult to injury, he tells them about his dreams in which they are bowing down to him.  Joseph flaunts his favor.  It is no real surprise when we hear that the brothers “hate” him and cannot find a good word to say to him.

Not only does Jacob’s lopsided love help to explain Joseph and how his brothers feel about him.  It also helps to explain how brothers like Reuben and Judah feel about themselves.  For they are not sons of Rachel, Jacob’s beloved wife.  Not only do they grow up less loved than Joseph.  They also see that their mother is less loved than Joseph’s mother, Rachel.  How could they not feel like second-class sons?  Their dad prefers their brother Joseph to them, and he prefers Joseph’s mother to theirs.  It is only natural that Joseph should feel superior, and they resentfully inferior.

Reuben Runs Off Script

Let’s fast-forward, then, to the drama in today’s episode.  Joseph’s brothers are pasturing their father’s flock.  Where is Joseph?  Not under the hot sun with them.  Already we can imagine their anger.

Jacob eventually suggests to Joseph that he go check on his brothers in the field.  He won’t stay and work, of course.  He’ll just bring back a report.  And by now we can guess as well as the brothers what kind of report this tattletale bring back. 

So Joseph wanders out after his brothers.  While he is still at a distance, his brothers start talking.  “Here comes the dreamer.  How about we put an end his dreams?” (cf. 37:19-20).

They begin scheming.  But it’s not long before the oldest—responsible Reuben—butts in.  The storyteller says that when Reuben heard all that his brothers were saying, “he delivered [Joseph] out of their hands” (37:21).  Now if the story ended there, we would simply assume that Joseph was saved.  That’s what it means to be delivered, right? 

According to some ancient rabbis, this is the pivotal moment in the story.  They read this sentence very literally—Reuben delivered Joseph out of their hands—and then point out the obvious contradiction.  Reuben did not deliver Joseph.  Sure, he keeps him from death, but he does not save him from the mercenary machinations of Judah.  Joseph ends up sold into slavery.  So what’s happened?  Why does the story mislead us, telling us Reuben “delivered” Joseph?

The rabbis suggest a delightful solution.  It’s not the story that has made a mistake.  It is Reuben.  God called Reuben to deliver Joseph.  Responsible Reuben intended to deliver Joseph.  But at the moment of truth, Reuben ran off script.  He did not deliver Joseph.  Why?  He doubted himself.  The rabbis lament his hesitation: “If Reuben had only known,” they say, “that the Holy One…would write of him, ‘And Reuben heard and delivered him out of their hands,’ he would have picked Joseph up on his shoulders and carried him back to his father.”[1]  In other words, if Reuben had known that God believed in him, was counting on him, had gone so far as to write his deed in the book of life—if he had known this, he would have indeed delivered Joseph.

The Difference It Makes When Someone Believes in You

Why did Reuben doubt himself?  The story does not tell us.  But do you remember what we observed earlier?  That so much of today’s story is explained by Jacob’s lopsided love for his wife Rachel and his son Joseph? 

Maybe Reuben doubts himself and hesitates at the crucial moment because he lacks his father’s love and affirmation. 

It’s remarkable what a difference it makes when someone loves you and believes in you.  I’ve noticed this in the smallest of things, like the way I become less and less self-conscious in public if I’m with a good friend, or the way I played my best soccer when I had a coach who believed in me.  Perhaps you’ve had similar experiences.  When someone believes in us, it makes a big difference.

The tragedy of today’s story, then, happens not only when Joseph gets sold into slavery.  It happens much earlier, when Reuben grows up without the full love and affirmation of his father.  It is a tragedy that comes full circle, when responsible Reuben knows the good thing to do but does not do it.

What Reuben Did Not Know, We Do Know

If only Reuben had known, the rabbis say.  If only he had known that God believed in him, had so far as written down his deed in the story, then he would have done it.

The difference between Reuben and us, is that we do know God believes in us.  Even if we have lacked the love of our father or our mother, we trust that we have an even deeper love.  There is a beautiful line in the Psalms: “Though my father and mother abandon me, the Lord will take me in” (Ps 27:10).[2]  And in today’s gospel, we see that Christ has more faith in us than we have in ourselves, that if only our faith matched his we would walk strong amid the storm.

It is a tragedy when like Reuben we live without the love and affirmation of others, and especially when that means we doubt ourselves in pivotal moments.  It is a tragedy when it is written of us one thing, but we do another.

But our stories are not finished.  We are not tragedies.  The good news of Christ is that God loves us and affirms our goodness, that where our earthly fathers and mothers might fail, our heavenly one does not.  What a difference it makes when someone believes in us.  When the one who brought the universe to life, believes in us.  When the one who is writing our story, believes in us. 

What Is Being Written of Us Right Now?

I wonder: what is being written of us today?  Where are we like Reuben hovering between intention and deed?

The events that happened at Charlottesville have me hovering right now.  I find myself asking: how should I respond to such violence, such racism, such a wound in our nation?  I must begin in my own heart.  I say I am not a white supremacist.  But I live in a world where white is supreme.  And I have enjoyed the privileges of whiteness.  I have inherited a world that grants me advantages and denies them to others, that looks unsuspectingly on me and suspiciously on others, that believes in me but not in others.  Today’s scripture asks me: What will I do about it?  Maybe I will doubt and dilly-dally, like Reuben, feeling that something should be done but not doing anything.

But why doubt when God loves us, when God believes in us, when God is writing down our deeds right now?  Maybe God is not writing something as heroic as Reuben delivering Joseph and carrying him home on his shoulders.  Maybe God is writing down smaller things like more welcoming eye contact with folks whom we would normally avoid, more conversations with strangers, more listening.  Maybe God is writing down some uncomfortable realizations.  Some uncomfortable changes.

Whatever God is writing of us, know this. What held Reuben back, no longer holds sway.  We are loved.  May we live like it.

Prayer

God who has more faith in us

Than we do in ourselves,

Who affirms our good intentions,

Who goes so far as to write them down

In the story of our life:

Reach out to us

Where doubt drags us beneath;

Give us faith

To turn good intention into good deed.

In Christ, who encourages us. 

Amen.

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[1] Vayikra Rabbah 34:8.

[2] Much of this homily—the portrait of Reuben’s character and the pastoral invitation to reflect upon where our love comes from—reflects the interpretation of Reuben offered by Jonathan Sacks in his chapter “The Tragedy of Reuben” in Genesis: The Book of Beginnings (Covenant & Conversation Series; New Milford, CT: Maggid, 2009), ebook loc. 4142- 4273.

The Blessing of God Is in Our Defeat (Genesis 32:22-31)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on August 6, 2017, Proper 13)

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Is Blessing Happiness?

Today concludes our journey with Jacob.  We began four weeks ago.  Jacob was wrestling then.  Even before he was born.

Today he is wrestling still.  Not much has changed.

But today, everything is changed.  Today Jacob receives God’s blessing.

What is God’s blessing?  That is the question we have been asking this last four weeks.

According to Jacob, blessing is whatever you’re able to get your hands on.  Blessing means taking what’s there for the taking.  Blessing means success: power, prestige, wealth.  So far, Jacob has had a lot of success.  He has been able to get his hands on his brother’s birthright, his father’s blessing, his father-in-law’s daughters, and much of his father-in-law’s fortune.  Jacob has done alright for himself.  I would say he’s probably happy.

Happiness.  That’s about as much of a blessing as anyone could ask for, right?

The Dark Side to Jacob’s Happiness

Perhaps.  But in Jacob’s “happiness” we also see a dark side.  The dark side to getting what you want is struggle.  Not only the struggle to get ahead, but also the struggle to stay ahead.  The struggle not to lose what you’ve won.

In the verses that immediately precede today’s story, we are told that Jacob is “greatly afraid and distressed” (32:7).  Why?  His brother Esau is coming to meet him.  With four hundred men by his side.  To Jacob, this is dark news.  All that he has won could soon become lost.  The struggle never ends.

At the beginning of today’s scripture, night has fallen.  Jacob sends his family and all that he has across the river ahead of him.  It seems a rather odd move.  Why doesn’t he join them?  Perhaps he is a coward and simply wants a shield between him and his brother.  But more likely, I think, he’s in a reflective mood. 

They say that before you die, your entire life flashes before you.  Perhaps sensing the end, Jacob wants to stand back for a moment, separate, alone, to try to drink it all in: to look across the river upon the sum total of his life, all that he has won, all that is his.  Perhaps he is trying to claim the happiness that he has been struggling for his whole life.  Perhaps he is trying to feel it.  Because perhaps right now all his success feels strangely hollow.  And so he stands back and gazes upon all that is his, and he tries to savor it.  He tries to convince himself that this is happiness—he has been happy, hasn’t he?

“Like a Drowning Man”

And it’s in the pitch black of that moment, when Jacob’s happiness feels hauntingly hollow, that a shadow seizes him and throws him into the dust of the earth.  Dislodged from his lonely thoughts, Jacob does what he has always done.  He wrestles.  He and the stranger tumble about the ground, seizing at each other’s heels, holding fast to whatever can be grabbed, never letting go.

Jacob exerts every last ounce of energy and appears to be gaining the upper hand.  But then as the night nears its end, Jacob suddenly feels his hip put out of joint.  How did that happen?  The stranger merely touched it.  It is almost as though the stranger had been waiting to touch his hip just so, as though he had been waiting until Jacob had given everything, so that when he was overcome, he would know that he was truly and completely overcome.  With his hip thrown out, the tide has turned.  Jacob still hangs on—only now he grabs the stranger “not [out] of violence but [out] of need, like…a drowning man.”[1]

As the dark of night gives way to the hazy glow of morning, the stranger speaks for the first time.  “Let me go, for morning is upon us.”  But Jacob holds on for dear life.  “Not until you bless me,” he gasps.  So the stranger asks his name, and Jacob tells him.  Then while the two remain in an embrace that looks less and less like fighting and more and more like friendship, the stranger proclaims: “No longer will you be called Jacob, but Israel” (32:28).

Jacob Wrestles Now with Something Else

In the Old Testament, names contain entire stories.  Do you remember the story of Ishmael and Hagar?  Put their names together—Ishmael Hagar—and you get “God hears” “the outsider,” which is, in fact, the truth of Ishmael and Hagar’s own story.  The name Jacob means something like wrestler.[2]  The name Israel means something like wrestler, too.[3]  In other words, Jacob’s new name is not a great departure from his old name.   But there is one tiny difference, and it makes all the difference.  It’s the “El” in “Israel.”  “El” means God.  In the past, Jacob wrestled with the world: his brother, his father, his father-in-law, all in an effort to get ahead, to get what they had.  But now the terms of conflict have been reversed.  No longer does Jacob wrestle with the world.  Now he wrestles with God.

From “Jacob” to “Israel.”  The names tell the story.  The stranger seems to be saying, “In the past, you, Jacob, held onto the heels of others.  Now you will hold onto God.  You will not let go, and neither will God.  Now…let go of the heels you have been grasping at so that you can hold onto God.”[4]

And sure enough, when Jacob meets Esau the next day, he lets go of his heel: he gives him many of his possessions and also a blessing.  Which blessing?  The Bible does not specify.  But I’d like to think that what Jacob gave Esau was the birthright and blessing that he had taken earlier from Esau.  Power, prestige, wealth—whatever happiness can be found in these things—this is no longer what Jacob is grabbing after.  Now he is wrestling with something else.

Wrestling with God, Hoping to Lose

The Greek writer Nikos Kazantzakis recalls from his early years a visit to an old monastery.  There he spoke with an old monk, Father Makarios. 

He asked the monk, “Do you still wrestle with the devil?”

“Not any longer, my child,” Father Makarios replied.  “I have grown old now, and he has grown old with me.  He doesn’t have the strength….  [Now] I wrestle with God.”

“With God!” Nikos exclaimed in astonishment.  “And you hope to win?”

“I hope to lose, my child,” the monk said.  “[But] my bones…continue to resist.”[5]

Our Defeat Is Love’s Victory

The good news of God’s blessing can also be difficult news.  Because it means losing.  And losing is something we resist.

Do you remember when Jacob first got an inkling of God’s blessing?  It also happened at night.  It grabbed him in the one moment when he was not grabbing, in the one moment when he had made himself vulnerable.  Vulnerable to sleep.  Vulnerable to a dream.  God’s blessing was not something he could seize.  It was only something that could seize him when he was not in control.  But when Jacob woke the next morning, the dream slowly faded and he returned to his heel-grabbing ways.

The second time that God’s blessing grabs Jacob at night, though, Jacob is changed.  This time, Jacob emerges from the night a new man.  No longer does he return to wrestling with the world, struggling, taking what’s for the taking. 

Now he knows that his real struggle is with God.  And now he knows that the real blessing is in his own defeat.  When our egos are defeated, when our self-seeking will is broken—when we forgive instead of indulging our selfish desire for payback, when we welcome someone who upsets our routine, when we give to the point of self-sacrifice, whenever we lose our life for the sake of others—then God wins.  And although this experience may feel at first like a fight, like a wrestling match, like a cross…we will discover if we hold on long enough that we are held in the arms of love, the arms of blessing, the arms of God.

When we win, it’s only ever with small things and the victories themselves make us small.  But when we are defeated by the undying grip of love, then we are made anew in the blessing of God.[6]

Jacob emerged from the dark night with a limp.  Jesus emerged from the dark tomb with scars to show.  From what darkness are you emerging?  From what fight with God?  What is your blessing?  Maybe it doesn’t feel like a blessing.  Maybe it feels like a deep wound.  Maybe you’ll limp for the rest of your life. 

But if our fight is with God, then let us hold on.  And like Jacob, we might find that those fearsome arms holding us are in fact the arms of love, whose victory is our defeat.

Prayer

Beloved Opponent,

Who demands of us everything,

Before giving us everything—

Lead us from the struggles of this world

To the struggle with you,

Where we are defeated

And where your love emerges victorious,

With blessing for all.

In the name of him whose glory is the cross, Jesus Christ. 

Amen.

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[1] Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2007), 7.  Much of this sermon reflects the interpretation offered by Buechner in his sermon, “The Magnificent Defeat.”

[2] More literally, “he grabs at heels.”

[3] More literally, “he contends with God,” or “God contends.”

[4] Adapted from the story’s retelling in Jonathan Sacks, Genesis: The Book of Beginnings (Covenant & Conversation Series; New Milford, CT: Maggid, 2009), ebook loc. 3872.

[5] Conversation from Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco (trans. Peter Bien; New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965), 222-223.

[6] Inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s “The Man Watching.”