"I Will Try Them" (Ex 16:2-15)

So Freely from So Little

Danielle Mayfield grew up wanting to be a missionary. She wanted to travel overseas to strange and wonderful lands, to save all the innocent souls who had never heard the name of Jesus. When she was seventeen, she went on a mission trip to India. Her group visited a tiny village to perform an evangelistic play. It was a drama, she says, “about the temptations of money and women and alcohol, and how Jesus has the power to overcome them.” Never mind that this village was dirt poor and had more pressing concerns.

She remembers eating dinner in the village before their play. Sitting on a swept dirt floor, she and her companions ate the rice and curry that had been carefully prepared by a scrawny old woman with only a few teeth left intact. The curry was “hot-as-hell,” she recalls, and seemed to be composed of little more than okra. Having heard that spice is often used to disguise rotting vegetables, she was thankful for the fire in her mouth. She cooled it as best she could with the tall metal cup of water, which must have been drawn from a well outside the village.

Later in the evening, after she and the team had performed their play and no one had come forward at the altar call, they climbed into their SUV and rolled out of the dusty village back to their flat in the city. On the way home, their guide and interpreter remarked in his singsong voice: “That was their one meal of the day, and they shared it with you.”[1]

There are infinite variations on this story. I’ve heard friends share similar anecdotes from their mission trips. It seems to be a common experience. Rich folks from the “developed” world are overwhelmed by the generosity of their dirt-poor hosts, who give so freely of what little they have.

Two Freedoms

These stories of precious gifts so freely given draw a striking contrast to our scripture today. It has been only one month since God delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Their freedom is fresh. No more impossible brick-laying quotas to meet. No more taunting and tormenting. For the first time in their lives, their bodies are their own.

And yet we discover here in the freshness of their physical freedom, that they are actually still enslaved. Their complaints in today’s scripture are not simply the cries of hunger. They are the cries of delusion. The Israelites long for the land of Egypt, the land of their slavery. They may be free in body, but they are not yet free in soul. They are free from constraints without, but not from constraints within, such as their own selfish impulse. I find really helpful Rabbi Jonathan Sacks’ observation that the exodus story is really a story of two freedoms. The first freedom comes in a single chapter, as God liberates the Israelites from slavery. The second freedom, however, takes over three books—over forty years in the story world, over an entire generation of Israelites. It takes a long time for the Israelites to learn what the dirt-poor hosts in India know, which is that true freedom consists not in the absence of difficult conditions but in a faith and joy that can endure any condition. Paul shows us this second freedom, this soul freedom, in his letter to the Philippians. He writes from prison, and yet his letter is filled with joy. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say, Rejoice,” writes the man who is sitting in chains, who is sitting behind bars (Phil 4:4).

The Wilderness as a Training Ground

In today’s scripture, God shares with Moses his plans to “test” the people of Israel. I prefer the alternative translation “try” instead of “test,” because the word “trials” seems to me a more accurate theological description of what we daily endure. As the Lord’s Prayer suggests, God does not “lead us” purposefully into “temptation,” or trials. Rather, trials happen, but God is with us to “deliver us” (cf. Luke 11:4). And perhaps to teach us. To help us change and grow. Paul actually talks about the wilderness trials of Israel in his letter to the Corinthians. He says we all go through wilderness trials. “No trial has overtaken you that is not common to everyone” (1 Cor 10:13). I read this to indicate that trials are not purposefully planned by God, but rather are common experiences, such as loss or need or unexpected change. Paul continues, “With the trial God will also provide a way out so that you may be able to endure it” (1 Cor 10:13). In other words, while trials are difficult, sometimes even bad or evil, they are also experiences from which God can always draw good. God may not cause them, but God can always use them to teach us soul freedom.

A few chapters earlier in Exodus, there is a little aside where God thinks to himself. What he thinks, turns out to be a big clue to the meaning of the wilderness and its trials. Here’s the verse: “When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines although that was nearer”—in other words, God did not take them directly to the Promised Land. “For God thought, ‘If the people face war, they may change their minds and return to Egypt.’ So God led the people by the roundabout way of the wilderness” (Ex 13:17-18). The Jewish philosopher Maimonides suggests that this verse shows us the true meaning of the wilderness. It is a training ground. God worries that the newly liberated Israelites are not strong in spirit. God worries that when they face adversity, they will want to return to Egypt, to relapse into old patterns of thought and behavior. So God chooses the “roundabout way of the wilderness” in order to train the Israelites through their common trials, to teach them soul freedom, to teach them how to trust in God’s provision and guidance even when conditions are difficult.

One Day at a Time

It will take the Israelites forty years to learn this soul freedom. In the meantime, we will find them complaining, again and again. Perhaps more than anything else, complaining characterizes the Israelites who wander in the wilderness. Their complaints boil down to a desire for control. But the lesson of the manna that God gives them in today’s scripture challenges this desire for control. This trial in the wilderness teaches them that they must relinquish control and trust in God one day at a time. In the wilderness, there is no stockpiling, no silos of grain like there were in Egypt. There is no rationing according to status, no honor-shame meritocracy like there was in Egypt. There is even no method to master, no intellectual know-how that secures their food. The very name, manna, means “What is this?”—which is to say, “Where did this come from? How?” Trusting in God one day at a time runs counter to everything the Israelites learned in Egypt, everything they learned from the way of empire, where goods must be accumulated, where individuals must be ranked and earn their separate living, where planning and efficiency secure the future. 

The Church in the Wilderness?

The more I think about Israel in the wilderness, I find myself pondering the church today, who is entering a wilderness of its own. For a long time—over a millennium—the church was the darling of western civilization. Just think about it in the context of our nation’s history. There used to be blue laws against business and recreational activity on Sunday, to safeguard the church’s day of worship. Oaths in the courthouse used to be performed exclusively over the Bible. Christian prayers have regularly been offered in the public sphere, everywhere from school assemblies to presidential inaugurations. National holidays have made special accommodation for Christian holy days like Christmas and Easter. The money we carry is stamped with a religious confession, “In God we trust.”

I do not mean to challenge these laws and customs. I follow Jesus and render unto Caesar—and Congress—what is theirs. What they decide is not my business. I mean only to observe that the church has long held pride of place in our world. But today it is losing ground. It is no longer the darling of our culture. The longer you’ve lived, the better you probably have a sense for this change, this loss of public favor. But it’s becoming evident to everyone now, as church attendances decrease each year, as funds dry up and buildings are closed, as church loses Sunday to sports and yoga and breweries and brunch. It really is a watershed moment in history. Many Christians are worried. Many are taking an increasingly defensive and combative posture, making plans for how they might battle with culture and win votes and reclaim what they consider to be their rights.

But I must confess, this defensiveness feels “off” to me. I see no such defensiveness in Jesus, whose way is not force but bearing witness. I see no such defensiveness in Paul, who writes in Philippians (one of our lectionary texts today), “[God] has graciously granted you the privilege not only of trusting in Christ, but of suffering for him as well” (Phil 1:29). For Paul, the only privilege we bear is to follow Christ, even when that means hardship at the hands of a world that insists on competition instead of collaboration, vengeance instead of forgiveness, looking out for one’s own instead of taking interest in the other.

Nearly five hundred years ago, a group of Anabaptists (whom we might consider our forebears) saw something similar happening among the established church of their day, as Roman bishops made plays for power and pulled strings all over Europe in order to achieve the aims of the church. They concluded of the church: “The sheep [has taken] on a thoroughly wolfish nature.” In other words, it has never been the way of Christ to rule over others. The lamb is not a wolf. To fight for power and to wield it is already to have lost the struggle, for Christ invites us not to enforce his way on others but to celebrate it before them and invite them onto the way too.

I think the story of Israel in the wilderness might be good news for the church. It reminds us that, at its essence, the community of God never was about buildings or budgets or paid, professional clergy. These institutional trappings have more to do with the way our world likes to operate, whether in ancient Egypt and Rome or in the United States today. When God delivered the Israelites from slavery into the wilderness, God stripped them not only of their chains but also of grain silos and building projects and all the other means of security that are sought in the midst of empire. Similarly, the church is being stripped of its traditional securities: bricked buildings, filled pews, growing budgets, favors in the public sphere. Perhaps we are being invited to learn the freedom that God was teaching the Israelites, the freedom that Paul knows in prison, the freedom that the dirt-poor hosts in India showed their guests. Perhaps we are being invited to learn the simpler life of faith. Manna. One day at a time. For every person.

Prayer

Gracious God,
Who leads us on the “roundabout way” of the wilderness
That we may grow in faith—
May we know our trials,
Both as individuals and as a church,
As opportunities for change and growth
…
Teach us the trust that Jesus had,
That we may shed our wolfish ways
And rejoice in your simple provision,
One day at a time.
In Christ, of gentle and humble heart: Amen.

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[1] D. L. Mayfield, Assimilate or Go Home: Notes from a Failed Missionary on Rediscovering Faith (New York: HarperOne, 2016), 173.

Man of War or Prince of Peace? (Ex 14:19-31)

“The Lord Is a Man of War”

“Stretch out your hand over the sea, so that the water may come back upon the Egyptians” (Ex 14:26). God’s words to Moses. A death sentence for the Egyptians. The narrator explains their fate in a single sentence: “The waters returned and covered [them]; not one of them remained” (Ex 14:28). Immediately following this scene, in the next chapter of Exodus, Moses and the Israelites sing a victory song: “Horse and rider [the Lord] has thrown into the sea…The Lord is a man of war” (Ex 15:1, 3).[1]

I heard once the story of “a dedicated lay leader in an evangelical church, who in mid-life set out to read the Bible for the first time. He was first surprised, then shocked, and finally outraged by the frequency and ferocity of divinely initiated and sanctioned violence in the Old Testament. About halfway through the book of Job, he shut his Bible never to open it again and has not set foot inside a church since.”[2] Today’s scripture may not offend our sensibilities as much those other Old Testament texts in which God commands the annihilation of an entire people. After all, we generally like seeing the bad guys get their just desserts. It might feel sort of good to watch those Egyptian bullies drown from a distance. But today’s story portrays precisely the kind of God that disturbs many Christian readers. A God who is—as Moses and the Israelites put it—“a man of war.”

Christ “Is the Image of the Invisible God”

Is this “man of war” the same person we see in Jesus Christ? Paul tells us that Jesus was the very “image of the invisible God,” in whom “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col 1:15, 19). In other words, if you want to know what God looks like, look to Jesus. The Jesus who says things like, “Love your enemies, do good to those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you” (Luke 6:27-28). The Jesus who says, “Turn the other cheek” (6:28).  The Jesus who tells us (in our gospel lectionary scripture for today) to forgive one another not seven times, but seven times seventy (Matt 18:22)—which is to say, even after we lose count. If you want to know what God looks like, look to the Jesus who blesses the peacemakers and calls them “children of God,” which suggests that God is the supreme peacemaker. Look to the Jesus who did not fight back against the Roman and Jewish leaders who put him to death but proclaimed forgiveness on the cross. Look to the Jesus who did not breathe vengeance or threats against the ones who betrayed him, the ones who deserted him, and the ones who killed him; rather his first public word after the resurrection, was, “Peace” (John 20:19). Look to the Jesus whose “salvation” is prophesied to take the very form of “forgiveness” and will—so the prophecy goes—“guide our feet into the way of peace” (Luke 1:77, 79).

I could go on and on, but you get the picture. The “man of war” depicted in Exodus, who purposefully brings down the waves on all the Egyptian army, seems a far cry from the Christ whose way is forgiveness and the patient, painstaking process of peace.

There is a simple resolution to this dilemma. Even among the earliest Christians, some readers have concluded that the God of the Old Testament is different than the God of the New Testament. One is barbaric, one is loving. One is vengeful, one is forgiving. The problem with this approach is that it runs counter to Jesus’ own understanding. Jesus was a faithful reader of Jewish scripture. When he articulated his mission, he used the words of the prophets (e.g., Luke 4:18-19). When he prayed, he used the words of the Psalms (e.g., Mark 15:34; Luke 23:46). When he spoke about God, he drew from the stories of Father Abraham and Moses (e.g., Matt 8:11; 22:32; Mark 1:44; 7:10). Make no mistake, the God with whom Jesus was one, whom Jesus addressed with the intimate “Abba,” “Daddy”—that God is the God of the Old Testament.

The Bible Is a Conversation of Different Interpretations

So we’re left still with the dilemma, “How do we reconcile these different pictures of God? On the one hand, a man of war who destroys enemies. On the other hand, a crucified man who forgives them.”

A helpful starting point for me is the word “Bible.” Did you know that Bible comes from the Greek word biblia, which means “books”? The Bible is plural. It is a library rather than a single document. It is a conversation rather than a speech. In fact, it sometimes resembles a noisy debate filled with many different voices and perspectives. All of this points to a really important fact. The Bible is not God. It is inspired by God (cf. 2 Tim 3:16). It is like an ancient, sacred journal, filled with human experiences of God. What we are reading is ordinary humans like us trying to make sense of extraordinary experiences, experiences which they conclude must be divine. We are not reading science or even history (in the modern sense of that word). We are reading interpretation. And the Bible is filled with different interpretations of God.

A Merciful God in the Old Testament

Consider these two consecutive sentences from today’s scripture. “Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great work that the LORD did against the Egyptians” (Ex 14:30-31). The first sentence is fact, more or less. The Israelites saw Egyptians who had died. But the second sentence is interpretation. Israel interprets the dead Egyptians as “the great work that the Lord did against the Egyptians” (Ex 14:31). But elsewhere in the Old Testament, judgment is interpreted less as the damage wrought by a warrior God and more as a natural consequence of hurtful behavior. The wisdom tradition in the Old Testament, for instance, talks about judgment in terms that are comparable to karma. Listen to these verses: “The nations have sunk in the pit that they made; in the net that they hid has their own foot been caught” (Ps 9:15). “Whoever sows injustice will reap calamity” (Prov 22:8). From this sort of perspective, Egypt’s demise is a natural consequence of their unjust ways.

The larger point to make here is that Old Testament does not present us with a unified portrait of God. (Neither does the New Testament for that matter. There’s arguably more divine violence in Revelation alone than in all the Old Testament, if you consider that over a third of the human population dies in its pages; cf. Rev 9:18.)

Because many people commonly assume that the God of the Old Testament is vengeful and violent, a plain and simple “man of war,” I would like to highlight just a few of the places in the Old Testament that present a very different portrait of God. Perhaps it is best to begin with what might be called the creed of the Old Testament, a description of God’s character that is repeated so often in the Old Testament that some scholars think it was a statement of confession. You’re probably familiar with it. God is “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love” (e.g., Ex 34:6; Num 14:18; Neh 9:17; Ps 86:15; Ps 103:8; 145:8; Joel 2:13; Jon 4:2; Nah 1:3). Surely it is this merciful God whom Jesus has in mind, when he tells his followers, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36). We find this merciful God all over the Old Testament, if we pay close attention. Listen to Micah, “Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over…transgression…[who] does not retain his anger forever, because he delights in showing clemency? You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea” (Mic 7:18-19). Fellow prophet Hosea gives voice to this merciful God: “I will not execute my fierce anger…for I am God and not a man…and I will not come in wrath” (Hos 11:9). Or in the Psalms, we find again and again that God’s forgiveness is always on offer, if we but turn toward God: “I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not hide my iniquity…and you forgave the guilt of my sin” (Ps 32:5).

It must have been this more merciful portrait of God that inspired Rabbi Yochanan in the third century to reinterpret Israel’s passage out of Egypt. A great Jewish teacher in his time, Rabbi Yochanan seems to have been disturbed by the suggestion of a violent warrior God in the Exodus story. He fills in some of the gaps to the story in a way that seeks to rehabilitate God’s character. He writes that as the Israelites left Egypt, the angels began to sing for joy, but God stopped them, saying, “The work of my hands, the Egyptians, are drowning at sea, and you wish to sing songs?” (Megillah 10b).

The Criterion of Christ

It is not my place to judge how others interpret scripture. I really appreciate the Romans text in today’s lectionary, where Paul reminds the church in Rome not to quarrel over interpretation and not to judge those who interpret differently, because God welcomes all who interpret in good faith, and they should do so too (Rom 14:1-12). I only want to share how I have come to interpret some of the Bible’s more difficult passages, to show that our tradition (both Christian and Jewish) is not nearly as narrow and rigid as some might suppose. There are many different interpretations of God’s character within scripture itself as well as without.

How I interpret the difficult passages in the Old Testament (and New Testament) that represent God as violent and vengeful, is simple. I interpret them by the criterion of Jesus Christ, whom I believe is the “image of God,” in whom “the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Col 1:15, 19). And I believe that the God whom I see in Jesus, “the prince of peace,” is all over the Old Testament. (We might do well to remember that that title comes from the Old Testament, from Isaiah 9:6.)  When I read a story like today’s story, I would heartily affirm its central message: “Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the Egyptians” (Ex 14:30). But according to the criterion of Christ, God saves not through violence but through forgiveness and peace. In my interpretation, Israel’s salvation comes when by Moses’ leadership they awaken to God’s love for them, and they believe they are worthy of freedom, and by God’s grace and a series of unusual events that undermine the power of Pharaoh and Egypt, they walk free.

And I’m with Rabbi Yochanan here. As they leave and the Egyptians are drowned in the sea, God is conflicted. God feels joyful, of course, for the Israelites’ freedom. But also heart-broken for the Egyptians, who are God’s children too.

Prayer

God who is merciful and gracious,
Slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love—
Our experiences are many and diverse,
But they all point to you
And your salvation.
May we be mindful today
Of the ways you have saved us,
And also of the ways that we need saving still.
…
And may we find hope for the future
In scripture’s witness to all the ways
Your salvation has reached us in the past.
In Christ, our savior: Amen.

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[1] The NRSV abridges the literal “man of war” into “warrior.”

[2] C. S. Cowles, “A Response to Eugene H. Merrill,” in Show Them No Mercy: Four Views on God and Canaanite Genocide, by C. S. Cowles et al. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2003), 97.

What We Remember (Ex 12:1-15)

The Most Important Memory

On eve of the Israelites’ emancipation from slavery in Egypt, God gives Moses and Aaron some final instructions regarding the grand escape. Every family shall sacrifice a lamb and put its blood on the doorposts and eat it hurriedly with sandals on and bags packed. But God’s instructions are not only an escape plan now. They are also instructions for eternity. God tells the Israelites, “Remember this day” (cf. Ex 12:14). “Mark it on your calendar. In fact, make it the beginning of your calendar, the first month of the year. Make it the founding event, the most important memory, go through its motions every single year” (cf. Ex 12:2). “Celebrate it ‘til the end of time” (cf. Ex 12:14).

Fast-forward over a thousand years from Moses to Jesus, and the Israelites are still remembering that Passover day. Jesus and his disciples go to Jerusalem to remember it. For them, Passover is not an idle memory, a pleasant recollection. It is a living memory, a memory that is true again and again. As the Israelites suffered in Egypt, so Jesus will suffer on the cross. As the Israelites were delivered, so Jesus will be resurrected. Over a thousand years later, it is still true. God is the liberator, the life-giver.

Today, three thousand years after Moses, the Jewish faith still celebrates the Passover. For them too, it is a living memory, a memory that they have lived over and over again. As their ancestors suffered in Egypt, they too have suffered: persecution in ancient Rome, organized massacres in Russia and Eastern Europe, the Holocaust. And as their ancestors found freedom from Egypt, they continue to find life too. How else would they have survived these atrocities? It is still true for them. God is the liberator, the life-giver.

In fact, if you consider that the Lord’s Supper is a Passover meal, we also celebrate the memory. We celebrate it every week—or perhaps even more often: “Whenever [we] eat this bread or drink this cup,” Paul says (1 Cor 11:26). Just as the Passover was originally ordained as the beginning of the calendar, the memory that would define time and life itself, so the Lord’s Supper begins our every week, reminding us that though the times may change, this memory will be true again and again: God is the liberator, the life-giver.

The Lord Still Dies

Every week, at the very end of the Lord’s Supper, we quote scripture: “For as often as [we] eat this bread and drink the cup, [we] proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor 11:26). That conclusion has long puzzled me and left me feeling a bit empty. Why do we only remember the Lord’s death?  Why not his resurrection?  Why not new life?

Here’s my theory. It’s because the Lord still dies. It’s because there is still suffering in this world. There are still many Egypts, many Pharaohs, many chains in this world. We proclaim the Lord’s death not because we’re pessimists or doomsayers, but because we are rigorously honest and we are praying and hoping for more liberation, for a fuller resurrection. Our memory of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection is not an idle recollection, a pleasant reminiscence. This memory is a defiant act of faith, a commitment to a different world—what Jesus called the kingdom of God.

Every week, we remember the Lord’s death so that we might be faithful to the work of the kingdom. When we hear about the folks who have lost their homes and their land to wildfires and floods, we remember the Lord’s death. When we hear about another school shooting, we remember the Lord’s death. When we hear about a community targeted with violence because of their difference—Asian, Jewish, Latino—we remember the Lord’s death. When we hear about another life lost to addiction, we remember the Lord’s death. When we hear about the utter poverty of factory workers and the dangerous conditions they daily endure, we remember the Lord’s death.

Johann Baptist Metz, a German theologian who has spent his life wrestling with the memory of the Holocaust, calls the memory of Christ “the dangerous memory of suffering.”  It is a dangerous memory because it sees in the face of every suffering person the face of Christ, and it will not rest until they do. It is a dangerous memory because it defies the injustice of the world and commits to a different way, the way of Christ.

Not Just Back Then, but Now

For the rest of the sermon, I would like to share with you some personal reflections. Here I am going to take a page from Paul’s book, and preface what follows with a reminder: “This is me speaking, not the Lord” (cf. 1 Cor 7:12; 2 Cor 11:17). So, take what rings true, and leave the rest. (That goes for all my sermons, of course.)

When the Israelites celebrate the Passover or when we celebrate the Last Supper, what we’re really celebrating is not an event shrouded in the mists of history. What we’re really celebrating is a God who liberates, who gives life. Not just back then but now. What we’re proclaiming is that as sure as the week has seven days, or the year 365, suffering and oppression do not have the last word. God is always present, always redeeming.

If that’s true, then where are the liberation stories of recent generations? There’s one in particular that is meaningful to me as a native of Richmond, and I would like to share it with you today. April 3, 1865, is often cited as the day that Richmond fell, and with it the Confederate States of America. That is certainly how I was taught to remember the day. But as I read through the story of that day now, I cannot help but hear echoes of an older memory.

One woman living in Richmond at the time remembers that day as a day of darkness: “We covered our faces and cried aloud,” she writes. “All through the house was the sound of sobbing. It was the house of mourning, the house of death.”[1] Such words could easily have been written of the Egyptian houses on that dark night of the Passover (cf. Ex 12:30).

But Reverend Garland H. White, a former slave who was serving as a chaplain in the Union Army, describes a very different scene: “A vast multitude assembled on Broad Street, and I…proclaimed for the first time in that city freedom to all mankind. After which the doors of all the slave pens were thrown open, and thousands came out shouting and praising God.”[2] Another chaplain writes also of divine deliverance, “We brought…heaven-born liberty. The slaves seemed to think that the day of jubilee had fully come. How they danced, shouted…shook our hands…laughed all over, and thanked God…!”[3] And then in a passage that recalls the divine command to remember the Passover forever (12:14), he writes, “It is a day never to be forgotten by us till days shall be no more.”[4]

Indeed, forty years later, on April 3, 1905, Richmond hosted the Emancipation Day Parade, commemorating the day that many slaves in Richmond and across the south were actually liberated. Thousands gathered for the festivities and celebrated with a procession through the city streets that ended up at the Broad Street Baseball Park. (If there are any history buffs among you, I’d be curious to learn where that was exactly.)

Emancipation Day Parade, Richmond, Virginia, April 3, 1905[5]

 

A Passover in Richmond 

As a native of Richmond, I was taught to remember April 3, 1865, as the fall of this city and the fall of the Confederacy. But as a follower of Christ, I am invited to remember the God who liberates, who gives life. Which means I am invited to remember April 3, 1865, as a day of divine deliverance, a holy Passover. A heavy day and a day of great cost, yes, as it seems to have been for Egypt thousands of years ago, but a day when the God the liberator, God the life-giver, passed over the city—this city!—bringing freedom to thousands.

I am honored to call Richmond home, if for no other reason than that here happened a Passover. And this memory, which is but one of many in the long line of memories going all the way back to Egypt, a host of memories which ring most loud and most true in the Last Supper of Christ—this memory is for me a defiant act of faith, a commitment to a different world. It means remembering the Lord’s death in the subjugation and suffering of those today who still share the struggles that those slaves did: educational barriers, labor inequalities, presumptions of guilt and dangerousness—and perhaps more than anything else, the unjust inheritance of shame. This memory means believing that God the liberator and life-giver is against that suffering still, that Jesus Christ is in that suffering still, and that his love will raise new life from a history of hurt. It means that while many dismiss or minimalize the suffering of others, I remember the death of my Lord, who is still dying in so many places. I try hard to see the face of Christ in the anger, the sadness, the resignation of others, and I defiantly trust that this is not how the story ends. Not for the Israelites. Not for Jesus. In God’s calendar, this is just the beginning.

Prayer

Lord Christ,
Whose death is a dangerous memory
That protests the suffering of the world
…
May the memories
Of Passover and the Table and April 3
Inspire us to celebrate
The God who liberates and gives life,
And to share in God’s liberation
By living in the way of your love,
Which is stronger than death.
Amen.

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[1] A Virginia Girl in the Civil War (ed. Myrta Lockett Avery; New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1903), 362.

[2] A Grand Army of Black Men: Letters from African-American Soldiers in the Union Army, 1861-1865 (ed. Edwin S. Redkey; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 175-176.

[3] The Military and Civil History of Connecticut during the War of 1861-65 (eds. W. A. Croffut and John M. Morris; New York: Ledyard Bill, 1868), 791. These are the words of Henry Swift DeForest.

[4] The Military and Civil History of Connecticut, 792.

[5] James Branch Cabell Library, Special Collections and Archives. 

"I Know Their Sufferings" (Ex 3:1-15)

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.

You know the story: 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 taskmasters bullying their Hebrew slaves. One Egyptian, however, went a bit too far. His bullying became beating. And Moses became 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 is history: Moses and the burning bush. It’s a familiar story. If you had asked me how it goes before I had read the scripture this week, here’s what I would have said. God tells Moses to return to Egypt to bring his people out. I thought of this moment 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 this week is that God is not at all a distant operator, 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! Do it!” 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, in verses seven and eight, 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 in verses nine and ten, saying, “I have…seen how the Egyptians oppress” the Israelites—at which point, I imagine Moses was 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 (Ex 3:7-8). But then the second time around, it becomes: I have seen their suffering—“so come, I will send you” (Ex 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 secret to this eternal divine combustion? I think we hear it early on in God’s message to Moses: “I know their sufferings” (3:7).

We and Moses Run 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 in sync with the hearts of the suffering.

Maybe a better question would be, “Where am I when it hurts?” Because when I see suffering, whether my own or others, I am often inclined to do as Moses did: to 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 a story of illness, my reflex is to respond, “I hope it gets better.” When someone shares 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 my motives, sometimes. I think that, like Moses, I am afraid of suffering. I don’t know what to do with it. So I run away from it. I mask it with platitudes and plans and wishful prognoses.

Bryan Stevenson, a public interest lawyer deeply concerned with racial injustice, makes a case that I find personally find compelling that racism and slavery never died, they just evolved: first in the form of Jim Crow laws, then in housing laws and mass incarceration and other measures that have inhibited the very folks who, when they were first granted freedom, bore a deep, deep wound, both material and emotional. Stevenson contends that the reason our nation has not found healing, is because it has never really addressed the wound. He points out that on the whole our nation does not do sorrow and suffering very well. It does business and gold medals and victory well, but it does not do sorrow and suffering very well. As a result, there remains a deep wound in our nation. The recent tragic shooting in Jacksonville is just the latest testament to this wound. To put it very simply, our nation like Moses has run away from the suffering. Whereas South Africa regularly remembers the suffering of its apartheid history as a part of its truth and reconciliation process; whereas Germany memorializes the suffering inflicted by the Nazi regime; the United States, until recently, has done very little to tell the honest truth about the theft and genocide perpetrated against the Native Americans or the enslavement and lynchings of black Americans.

God Shares the Suffering

But God does not run away from the pain. “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. That is how he healed. 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 knows the suffering. Shares it. That is how the healing begins.

Called to Know Others’ 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 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 know their suffering too, there you will find me. There, “I will be with you.”

Our nation does success well. We do fundraising dinners and charitable programs and tax-deductible donations pretty well. But I wonder if sometimes this is a way to run away from suffering. I wonder if these things are not just an escape route into Midian, into a life of contentment and happily ever after, a reflex by which we might 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. Knows it. Shares it. And if we want to find God, that’s where. We will find God in the company of a friend who grieves and needs not to be alone. We will find God in the company of a person who has endured loss and needs a ramp built or a home repaired. We will find God in the company of the gay youth who has been left burned by his family and his church. We will find God in the company of our black neighbors, many of whom suffer quietly each time they learn the news of another life lost to hate and see the response of a culture that is seemingly indifferent to their plight.

“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 not to be alone, but to have companions who know their suffering. That is how God’s healing begins.

Prayer 

God who knows our suffering,
Kindle within our hearts
The fire of your love,
Which burns with desire
For the well-being of others
…
Draw us out of isolation
To know the story of others
And to share with them
The journey of your salvation.
In Christ, who took our infirmities and bore our diseases: Amen.  

Called like the Midwives (Ex 1:8-21)

Fear 

I was ordained on September 11, 2011. Less than a month later, I was in an airport on my way to England to begin my PhD. I remember that near the gate to my plane, there were several men with long beards who were prostrating themselves repeatedly in prayer. At the time, the news media were showing similar images whenever they talked about the prospect of terrorism. So, as I watched these men pray, I felt a vague fear creep into my heart. I am a little embarrassed to admit it. But I understand now that I was being shaped by forces beyond my comprehension. As Paul says, we wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with unseen powers and principalities (Eph 6:12).

One of those chief powers and principalities is fear. And the fear that I felt was not entirely of my own making. It came from the images that were shown in the media repeatedly, the warnings that were proclaimed repeatedly, the slander that was so commonly and casually lobbed in the direction of Islam and its practitioners.

Fear has a canny knack for resisting the truth. To begin, fear keeps its distance. I never thought to approach those men and ask them about their faith. I imagine now we could have had a fascinating conversation. But I kept my distance. Sort of like Pharaoh, in today’s scripture, “who did not know Joseph” (Ex 1:8). Fear does not take the time to get to know the other person. It keeps its distance.

And because it keeps its distance, it is easier to distort the other person. We talk about our “worst fears,” but the truth is that every fear is a “worst” fear. Every fear catastrophizes and envisions the worst. Yes, those men prostrating themselves in the airport could have been terrorists. But it was infinitely more likely that they were faithful seekers of God. Likewise, Pharaoh absurdly claims that the Hebrew people are more numerous than the Egyptians and may one day pose a military threat. The irony of Pharaoh’s distorted fear is that these Hebrew people are the opposite of a threat. Not long before, it was a Hebrew man who saved the land. Joseph foresaw a great famine and ensured there would be a sufficient food supply for all the people. But Pharaoh could not see this, because fear imagines the absolute worst.

And because fear imagines the absolute worst, it demands absolute control. We all know how airports have changed in the last couple of decades. Pharaoh took things a few steps further and enslaved the people whom he feared. The Egyptians, we’re told, were “ruthless in all the tasks they imposed on them” and “made their lives bitter” (Ex 1:13-14).

Fear distances, distorts, and demands absolute control.

As it happens, in England I would share a flat with a business PhD student named Reza, a practicing Muslim from Iran, and I would meet many more Muslims who were scraping out a new life in England despite daily being misunderstood and mistreated. If fear distances, distorts, and demands control, then I have found that relationship does the opposite. As I became closer to Reza, as I got to know him firsthand, the distortions and demands of fear slowly evaporated. I learned how we share the same hopes and fears. I learned how our faith in God has much more in common than I may have guessed, how it nourishes us and invites us to live in the way of love. Now the sight of a person prostrating themselves is more of an inspiration than a threat. I see a person submitting to God rather than a terrorist preparing for war.

The “Fear of the Lord”

If unchecked, fear grows. It cannot be satisfied. Thus the king of Egypt is not content to keep the Hebrews enslaved. Instead he pursues a policy of infanticide, demanding the all Hebrew baby boys be killed. So he calls the midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, who may be Hebrew or Egyptian—the text itself is ambiguous, accommodating not only the translation “Hebrew midwives” but also “midwives to the Hebrews.” The ambiguity of the midwives’ ethnicity is significant because it suggests that their faithfulness to God transcends nationality or religion. Faithfulness to God is not an exclusive property of a flag or a confession, of Christians, Jews, or Muslims. It is a matter of the heart, where one truly prostrates oneself and submits to God.

What’s fascinating in our story today is that the midwives’ faithfulness to God is described by the same word that characterizes Pharaoh and the Egyptians: fear. “The midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live” (Ex 1:17). Clearly the midwives’ fear is different than Pharaoh’s. They do not keep a distance from the baby boys but rather find themselves inextricably attached to them, bound to protect their lives. There is no distortion of reality or demand for control, but rather an open-handed acceptance and honor for the life that is emerging among the Hebrew people.

The expression “fear of the Lord” is common in the Old Testament. Fear in this case refers less to danger and more to awe, less to struggle and more to obedience. There is still, to be sure, an overwhelming sense of one’s own smallness and lack of control. The only difference in this fear—and it makes all the difference in the world—is that it does not resist life but reveres life. To get a sense for what “fear of the Lord” means, we might consider the lofty passages of life, like marriage or a new birth, like leaving home or a loved one’s death, moments that overwhelm us with a sense that life is so much more meaningful and mysterious than the little plans and programs we’ve designed to contain it, moments that mark a loss of what we know and a sense of wonder about the possibilities for new life. The “fear of the Lord” can be frightening, but it also fixes us in an unassailable faith.

To give a trivial example from my recent past…I remember driving home from Portsmouth with two silent, frightened kittens in the cat carrier beside me. I drove more cautiously than usual, feeling that I was carrying the most precious cargo. When I got home and set the kittens up in the safe confines of a bathroom, I watched them with tender eyes as they explored their new surroundings. When I left the house, I would lock the door and wish that I could lock it still more. Completely irrational, of course, but the “fear of the Lord” is a matter of the heart, not the mind. It is sensing the fragile preciousness of life and feeling bound to serve. I would imagine this experience I’m describing is but a drop in the ocean of what mothers and fathers feel toward a newborn or what committed partners feel in times of great suffering or joy.

We all know the “fear of the Lord.” The challenge is to acknowledge this experience, to allow this feeling, to let it break our hearts open, to live faithfully from its wisdom. It is a challenge because it requires us to relinquish control. The “fear of the Lord” means the risk of life rather than the security of the same. The midwives risked everything for those Hebrew children. A loving parent may risk everything for their child. Jesus risked everything. And this, we’re told, is the fullness of life.

Of Empires and Midwives

I mentioned earlier my fear in the airport twelve years ago. At the time, there was much suspicion about Islam. I wonder what fears dominate our world today. I say this as an observation, not as a judgment: I believe we live in the world’s greatest empire. Just as Egypt was the world’s greatest empire at the time. And empires fear what threatens their control. I am particularly mindful today of the unhoused population and immigrants and individuals involved in drug and gang activity. It is so easy to let these groups become political objects of debate, which is to say, situations that I stand apart from and try to control. It is easy to live in fear and to distance myself from the people involved, to imagine the worst, and to demand measures of security.

Now, I don’t know that I am called like the midwives to become the savior of these populations. That strikes me as a legendary, larger-than-life feature of today’s story. But I do believe that I am called like the midwives to live in the “the fear of the Lord,” which means not to be inhibited by culturally manufactured fears, not to let my heart be hardened these little fears, but rather to see the individuals in these groups as the infinitely precious children of God that they are, to let my heart be broken open by them. Here, I find guidance in the example of the Jesuit priest Greg Boyle, whose work in gang-intervention and rehabilitation has led him to serve these three populations. He never tires of pointing out that the problem is not what it seems on the surface, whether that’s houses for the unhoused or the violence of gangs. The problem is a lack of kinship. The problem is that these individuals are living with the trauma of unspeakable wounds from unthinkably early ages—whether it’s abandonment or abuse or addiction. Tragically, the world’s fear keeps them isolated and wounded, and the fear becomes its own sort of self-fulfilling prophecy, as they live into the only, desperate roles that have been given to them.

My experience in England with my housemate Reza and the story of the midwives in Egypt both point me to the abundant life that is found beyond the small cultural fears that distance, distort, and demand control. The good news of the “fear of the Lord” is that there is so much more to life than the security of the same. If I can relinquish control and open myself up to the preciousness of God in all things, life will be an adventure well worth the risk.

Prayer

God of life,
Who is smitten with us
And smitten with strangers—
Thank you for those moments
When we have felt your awe and reverence
For the preciousness of life.
Help us in those other moments,
Moments of fear,
When we are tempted instead
To distance, distort, and demand control
…
May we, like the midwives,
Know the courage and joy of the risk
Of sharing life with others.
In Christ, who came to us while we were far off: Amen.

Just a Name? (Genesis 45:1-15)

Divine Disappearing Act

Have you ever wondered, “Why doesn’t God show up in my life the way that God seems to show up in the Bible?” Some religious traditions have developed explanations for God’s apparent absence in the modern world, suggesting, for example, that we live in an age when God has hidden himself but all will be resolved when Jesus comes back in unmistakable power and glory.

But I think the Bible is wise to our experience. I think, like us, the writers of the Bible wrestled with the question, “Where is God?” In fact, the book of Genesis itself can be read as an eloquent response to this question. Some commentators have pointed out that if you read Genesis carefully from start to finish, paying attention to the character of God, what you get is a gradual disappearing act.

Think about it for a moment. The story begins with only one character, God. God does everything, creating land and sky, vegetation and creatures, and of course, Adam and Eve. At first, God is a constant presence in this new creation, strolling through the garden where Adam and Eve live, disciplining Adam and Eve and then their son Cain, intervening with a flood when humanity has degenerated into violence, scattering humanity at Babel and giving them different languages. God is the main player in the first act.

But in the next act, featuring Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Sarah, Rebekah, and Rachel, things change. When God calls Abraham to leave his home and bless all the world, God is effectively deputizing him, entrusting him with God’s own work. From here on out, humans will become more prominent characters, their personalities more developed, their responsibility for outcomes more pronounced. Conversely, God will diminish as a character. We can trace God’s diminishing involvement through each generation. With Abraham, God is an occasional conversation partner. They talk to each other from time to time, even argue with each other. With Isaac, God makes a couple appearances, but there is no sustained back-and-forth dialogue. With Jacob, God visits only in dreams and in the night. In fact, the iconic scene in which Jacob wrestles with God at night symbolizes a turning point; its evocative imagery of God’s hands on Jacob suggest that this wrestling match is in fact a laying on of hands, a bequeathal of responsibility. God is handing over the reins.

For in the final act of Genesis, the story of Joseph, God is no longer a player on the scene who does things,[1] but only an object of human characters’ speech. To put this another way, we don’t see God as an actor on the stage anymore. We only hear God-talk from the human characters. God has migrated from being an actor to being only a name on the lips of human characters. In today’s scripture, God is just a name on Joseph’s lips. He declares to his brothers, “You sold me here…[But] it was not you who sent me here, but God” (Gen 45:5, 8). Earlier in the story, when the brothers have left Egypt for the first time and find the money that Joseph has secretly placed in their sacks, God is just a name on their lips. Fearing that their sin has caught up with them and that they will be punished for stealing, they exclaim, “What is this God has done to us?” (Gen 42:28). Later, when Judah stands before Joseph and owns up to the brothers’ wrongdoing, God is just a name on his lips. He says, “God has found the guilt of your servants” (Gen 44:16).

In this final act of Genesis, we arrive in a world that resembles our own, a world where God is not walking about in plain sight but is only talked about. In a way, Joseph’s story validates my experience and helps me to be honest. Joseph’s story invites me to ask in all seriousness, Is God here? If so, how?

Words

As children we may have learned, “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” But of course our experience has taught us the exact opposite. Words have incredible power. A child who is bullied regularly by his peers, or a child who is constantly shamed by her parents, knows that words can reach deeper than any stick or stone and can cripple the soul. Conversely, words have the power to build up. A child who is bathed in words of encouragement and admiration, or a child who frequently hears the language of gratitude and hope, knows deep down that they do not face the world alone but in the company and help of loved ones.

In fact, it is our faith that words are the most powerful thing in the world. After all, they are how God creates the world, according to Genesis. God is the word, according to the gospel  of John. It really is a paradox. Words cannot touch us, yet they move us. Words cannot be seen, yet they reveal the most important things. A mystic might say both that words can’t change a darned thing, and also that they’re the only thing that can really change the world. In one sense, they’re powerless. And yet they reach into the heart, which is the most powerful place of all, which is where all true change happens.

From Cause to Call

Readers have commonly interpreted the Joseph story as an illustration of God’s masterful design. Although God is not present as a character on the stage, they discern God’s fingerprints all over the story. They read the story as an illustration of providence. God knew that there would be a famine in all the land, and he had to get Joseph into position as the Pharaoh’s second-in-command, where he could plan for the famine. So God began pulling all the strings. Joseph’s brothers’ selling him into slavery? That was God. Potiphar’s wife’s accusing him and getting him thrown into prison? That was God. And so on. But I must be honest. This kind of interpretation makes me uncomfortable because it risks absolving the characters of any responsibility. I don’t believe it is ever God’s will for brothers to hate one another. I don’t believe it is ever God’s will that people plot evil against one another.

Personally, I don’t see God as a divine puppeteer in the Joseph story. All I see is God as a name on the lips of the characters. Just a word. And yet this is precisely where I see God’s incredible power. God’s name is not “just” a name. (If we remembered the power of words, we would never say something is “just” a word.) God’s name is a word filled with stories, memories, dreams, a word that contains within it an uncontainable power, which is love. It is precisely through God’s name that I see hearts changed. When Joseph’s brothers exclaim, “What is this God has done to us?” (Gen 42:28), and when Judah declares, “God has found the guilt of your servants” (Gen 44:16), they are effectively expressing confession and repentance. God’s name infiltrates their hearts and haunts them and nudges them to take responsibility for the wrongdoing of their past. Likewise, when Joseph announces, “You sold me here…[But] it was not you who sent me here, but God” (Gen 45:5, 8), he is effectively proclaiming his forgiveness and making possible the redemption of a tragic story. God’s name inhabits Joseph and stirs him to let go of resentment and to reconcile. God’s name is the most powerful and decisive element in the story. Think about it for a moment. Even if God had been acting all along as a puppeteer, subtly moving characters to and fro, ultimately bringing Joseph and his brothers to this very moment, it would mean nothing if Joseph was not moved to forgiveness. Joseph could have held on to his resentment and not revealed his identity. He could have sent his brothers packing without provisions for the famine. The most critical moment in the story is a spiritual moment, a moment that can’t be captured on a camera because it happens in the heart. God’s name moves Joseph to see the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation and redemption.

As a discrete character in the Joseph story, God does nothing. Yet everything good that happens, happens in God’s name. In God’s name are all the decisive moments of the story: the brothers’ confession and repentance, Joseph’s forgiveness and reconciliation, and the redemption of a tragic history. I don’t know about you, but I grew up thinking about God as the cause of things. Today’s story invites me to think instead of God as the call in things. The name of God is a call in our hearts. It is up to us, the faithful, to give flesh to God’s call.

Prayer 

Impending God,
Whose love will not leave us alone,
But is ever seeking to become a reality—
We see in Joseph’s story your invisible power,
Which moves people to be honest, to forgive, to reconcile,
To bring good from evil.
Therefore we entrust to you the difficulties of our lives
…
May your name be sweet to us,
Your call be what moves us,
And your story be our salvation.
In Christ, the Word made flesh: Amen.

---

[1] There are handful of references to the presence and blessing of the Lord in Genesis 39 (vv. 2, 5, 21, 23), but in contrast to previous divine interventions God does not speak to the human characters or engage them in a distinct, tangible manner.

"Great Power to Redeem" (Gen 37:1-4, 12-28)

Jacob’s Favoritism

Today’s scripture tells one of the most celebrated stories of the Old Testament. It has featured in many diverse settings, from Sunday School to Broadway. Most people refer to it as the story of Joseph and his coat of many colors. I remember as a child in Sunday School grabbing a handful of crayons and carefully coloring in the numerous stripes on Joseph’s special coat. Joseph is indeed the hero of the story, the special one whose dreams ultimately help to redeem a tragic situation.

But today I want to step back from focusing on Joseph and focus instead on Jacob and his family. Because that is how the storyteller himself introduces the story: “This is the story of the family of Jacob” (37:2). Now, readers have commonly interpreted the conflict in today’s story to revolve around Jacob’s favoritism, and I wouldn’t exactly challenge that. We learn early on that Jacob loves Joseph more than his other children, because Joseph is the child of his old age (37:3)—and, we might suppose, because Joseph is the son of his beloved late wife, Rachel. We learn that Joseph may be a bit of a spoiled brat, or at the very least an ignorant child with his head in the clouds. He tattles on his brothers (37:2). He not only has grandiose dreams of his family bowing down to him, but he also shares these dreams with his brothers. No wonder they resent him and cannot “speak peaceably to him” (37:4). Yet Joseph seems unconcerned. I imagine it is because his father’s love makes him feel special. Precious. Untouchable. A parent’s love is powerful indeed. If his father is for him, who can be against him?

The Love That Is Present Is a Good Thing

Should we fault Jacob for loving Joseph? Is that really the problem in the story? Here, I think a bit of nuance is helpful. The problem with favoritism is not the love that is present, but the love that is missing. To be clear, then, with the first part of that proposition: the love that is present is a good thing. The way that Jacob treats Joseph, making him to feel special and cherished, reminds me a little bit of God’s address to Jesus and to all of us: “You are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased” (cf. Mark 1:11). Jesus hears this right before he endures the wilderness for forty days, and it grounds him and sustains him for that experience. Likewise, I believe that Jacob’s love for Joseph is what strengthens him for the ordeal he will face. He will be thrown in a pit and sold as a slave. He will be falsely accused and imprisoned. He will live for twenty years in a foreign land separated from his family, some of whom are responsible for his tragic fate.

The traditional interpretation, of course, applauds Joseph for his faith in God, his reliance on God in the interpretation of dreams, and I wouldn’t want to dismiss his faith for one minute. But what I would want to suggest is that Joseph’s faith doesn’t come from nowhere. Faith is difficult when God’s love is only an idea for us, only an abstract concept, and not an enfleshed reality that we can feel or touch. Have you ever been in a difficult or lonely spot, and a well-intentioned friend reassures you that God loves you, but it rings a little hollow? You may think to yourself, “Well, that’s great, but what difference does it make? I’m still in this spot.” If you’ve had this experience—good! Your honesty gives expression to a central tenet of our faith, which is that God’s love means so much more when it takes on flesh and touches us. That’s why the incarnation is such a big deal. For us followers of Christ, God’s love is not just an idea. God’s love is meant to take on flesh in our world and walk alongside us, suffer alongside us, speak comfort to us, laugh with us, touch us with healing and hope.

What I mean to say is, I think Joseph’s faith in God is not a coincidence. It doesn’t come out of nowhere, as though he’s just a biblical hero who is specially gifted with more faith than most of us. I think Joseph’s faith in God, rather, is deeply rooted and nourished in the special love that he has known from his father, Jacob. He has heard what Jesus heard on the banks of the Jordan, “You are my beloved son; with you I am well pleased.” When he is in the pit, when he is in prison, when he is living as a stranger in a strange land, he is not defined by these conditions but rather by the love that he has known, that tells him he is special and of infinite worth.

I am reminded of one of the psalms of ascent, which begins, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord” (Ps 130:1). Joseph spends a great deal of his time in the depths and undoubtedly calls on God from there. The same psalm concludes, “With the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem” (Ps 130:7). And indeed, in the life of Joseph, God’s steadfast love expressed through Jacob will demonstrate great power to redeem, as Joseph does not give up but trusts, year after year, that good can come from evil.

The Love That Is Lacking

Jacob’s love for Joseph is not the problem in the story. The problem in the story is that Jacob’s love is lacking for his other sons. And here’s why that’s a problem. It is more difficult for them to know God, because it is more difficult for them to feel God’s love, because God’s love for them is just an idea, not the flesh-and-blood reality that their brother Joseph knows. Genesis is filled with juicy tidbits about how each of them acts out in unhealthy ways—and I think the reason for their waywardness is found in today’s scripture. They do not know that they are loved and precious. You’ve probably heard the wisdom, “Hurt people hurt people.” That saying helps to explain the behavior we see among Jacob’s other, less loved sons. The eldest son, Reuben, becomes intimate with one of his father’s wives (35:22). The next two sons, Levi and Simeon, are filled with such anger that they essentially massacre an entire town (Gen 34). Judah simply departs from home to live with a woman of the land (Gen 38). Lust, anger, disenchantment. Jacob’s less loved sons live in a very different world than their brother Joseph.

The Sun and the Clouds

Their experience reminds me of a story I heard once. A woman in recovery from addiction shared how she’d grown up in a home wrecked by trauma. Her single mother, who provided for her, was always angry and bitter, sometimes even violent. When the woman left home, she became estranged from her mother. Much later in life, she learned that her mother’s health was declining and that she had also been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She knew her mom had no one else in her life, and so she decided to come back into her life. Trembling with fear, the woman walked into a nursing home to see her mom for the first time in decades. Her experience was surreal. On the one hand, her mom clearly recognized her. Her eyes lit up. She spoke with energy. On the other hand, she made very little sense. But what surprised the woman more than anything, was the tone of her mother’s voice. Her nonsense was in the conversational lilt of someone who was happy. The woman broke into tears as she described what she felt for the first time in her life. Her mom’s love for her. She concluded that it had been there all along—as the sun is always there, even when it is obscured by clouds. It’s just that her mother had had a lot of clouds in her life. I wonder if the same could be said for Jacob. His love for his other sons was always there. It’s just that there were a lot of clouds in the way, a lot of hurts and hangups that obstructed Jacob’s love for them.

Jacob’s favoritism is a real paradox. It contains both the conflict of the story and its resolution. The conflict is that the less loved sons, the hurt sons, act out in a very hurtful way. The resolution is that the loved son, Joseph, trusts in God’s love and helps to bring good from evil. The good news of Jacob’s family is the same good news of the woman in recovery. God’s love may be blocked, but it never stops. The sun is always there, even when it is obscured by clouds. What does that mean for me today or you? I’m not certain. If anything, Jacob’s story reveals the complexity of our experiences, how we may be dealing with different weather, sunny, cloudy, rainy. Joseph felt the sun on his face. His brothers saw a sky full of clouds. I suppose the invitation remains the same in any case—namely to trust that whatever the weather, God’s love is steadfast (like the sun) and has the power to redeem. Whatever our various problems, the resolution is the same. It is God’s love given flesh that brings good out of evil.

Prayer

God who is unseen
And yet in all things,
Sometimes we feel the radiance of your love,
And so faith is simple.
Sometimes there are clouds,
And it is not easy.
…
We cry out from the depths of our heart,
Be with us, as you were with Joseph,
That your tangible love would redeem,
And would bring good from what is not good.
In Christ, who leads the way: Amen.