Proper 19(A): Intended for Good

Genesis 50:15-21

By: The Rev. Kim Jenne

Perhaps you caught the viral video by filmmaker David Jones of David Jones Media featuring author Kimberly Jones earlier this summer. In it, Jones shares a powerful statement on the impact of racism on Black Americans, concluding with a hard truth for White people, “They are lucky Black people are looking for equality and not revenge.”

I remembered the first time I saw the video. As a cishet, college-educated White American of middle class standing, I am the female epitome of White privilege. Jones’ words were a punch in the gut. That’s it, I thought, she just nailed the primary fear of many White people (myself included), “what if we actually got what we deserved?”

In today’s assigned passage from Genesis, Joseph’s brothers might be wondering the same thing. After the death of their father Jacob they ask one another, “If Joseph bears resentment against us, he will surely pay us back for all the evil we caused him” (Gen. 50:15, trans. Robert Alter). They are not yet rid of their guilt following the sale of their brother for 20 pieces of silver in chapter 37. In the wake of their father’s death, the brothers, convinced that their ill deeds will be lorded over them, wants to renegotiate their relationship with Joseph. Of course, there has been nothing obvious to the reader to indicate that Joseph is harboring ill will against them. But is it really guilt if it’s not an obsession? Their betrayal looms large now that the “dad buffer” is gone. Sending intermediaries to feel out Joseph, they communicate their father’s deathbed instructions, calling upon Joseph to forgive the sins of his other sons. This request causes Joseph to weep.

Following the so-called last will and testament reading, Joseph’s brothers fall before him claiming to be his slaves. Their guilt and fear drips off the page.

Joseph doesn’t make much of an attempt to assuage them of it, nor should he. He responds with a mysterious rebuke, “Am I in the place of God?” (v. 19). As Walter Brueggemann describes, “Joseph is adept at sorting out which things belong to God (things like forgiveness and the birthing of children) and the things which are properly human (cf. Mk. 12:13-17).”[1] He seems to understand the limits of his authority. Or, maybe he simply understands his own emotional limits concerning his brothers. After all, forgiveness is a process, not an event. Familial hurts have lingering power.

But this isn’t a story of the brothers’ guilt. That’s not the issue to be resolved. And, perhaps for our contemporary story of sibling hurt and betrayal, White folk need to be reminded that our guilt for the sins of racism can get in the way of the real story, reconciling Black and Brown people to full equality. In Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton writes of the racial injustice of the 1960s, “In order to minimize the sense of hazard and disaster always latent in themselves, the whites have to project their fears on to some object outside themselves.”[2] Privileged people are adept at making everything about themselves. In our Genesis story, the preacher might warn their White listeners to be wary of identifying with Joseph. This might be opportunity to connect with Jacob’s other sons and to reflect on the places in which we have betrayed and wounded our fellow human siblings. We might meditate on the ways in which we have tried to speed up forgiveness or rush through apologies to move past the awkward, the hurt and the tension.

You have heard it said that “time heals.” As Henri Nouwen writes, the phrase “is not true when it means that we will eventually forget the wounds inflicted on us and be able to live on as if nothing happened. That is not really healing; it is simply ignoring reality. But when the expression “time heals” means that faithfulness in a difficult relationship can lead us to a deeper understanding of the ways we have hurt each other, then there is much truth in it. “Time heals” implies not passively waiting but actively working with our pain and trusting in the possibility of forgiveness and reconciliation.[3]

Up until now, the brothers have been preoccupied with their plan, that is, their plan to get rid of their younger brother. They were so consumed by this plan that they failed to see that there was another plan already at play. Even after their reunification with Joseph in chapter 45, they continued to obsess about their past deeds. So, Joseph reminds them of the plan unknown to all of them save God being unveiled, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives” (v. 20). And, staying true to his human authority as prime minister, Joseph reassures his family that they need not fear, he will provide for them. This he can do, but the work of removing the stain of sin is God’s and God’s alone.

While this passage concludes the book, Genesis is not an ending, it’s a beginning. The book begins with the goodness of creation and throughout the ancestral stories, God’s primary pursuit has been one of goodness. In comparison to the brothers whose purposes were for ill, God’s purposes are a constant good. For the people of today, we are called to remember that God’s good plan is at work here and now. It’s breaking through and, in some cases, it is yet to be revealed. But this good plan brings comfort, reconciliation and homecoming for the entire human family.

[1] Brueggemann, Walter. “Genesis.” Interpretation, Westminster John Knox Press, 370.

[2] Merton, Thomas. Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander. Image, 25.

[3] Nouwen, Henri. Bread for the Journey: A Daybook of Wisdom and Faith. Zondervan. https://henrinouwen.org/meditation/how-time-heals/ Accessed 31 July 2020.

The Rev. Kim Jenne serves as Director of Connectional Ministries for the Missouri Conference of The United Methodist Church. Before her current appointment, Kim served as pastor of Webster Hills UMC in St. Louis. She is a die-hard St. Louis Cardinals fan, loves NASA and is sorely disappointed we aren’t already living on Mars. She considers herself an inconsistent but persistent disciple of Jesus. She is slowly learning to keep company with God on a more regular basis.

Proper 15 (A): Come Closer to Me

Genesis 45:1-15

By: The Rev. Jazzy Bostock

I love the story of Joseph. I think it’s because I’m partial to musicals – and the musical, “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” is one of my favorites. Whatever the reason for my initial love of this story, there are always lessons to learn from it. In the story of Joseph, there are themes of betrayal, family dysfunction, oppression, rising from the ashes, and, perhaps most unlikely of all, forgiveness and reconciliation.

In the portion assigned for today, we meet Joseph close to the end of his story. After having been brutally betrayed and sold into slavery by his brothers, he is taken captive to Egypt. After a period of imprisonment, he rises into one of the top-ranking officials in Egypt because of his ability to interpret dreams for the Pharaoh. His brothers, meanwhile, have fallen on hard times – there is a famine in the land—and their only hope is to go to Egypt and beg for mercy and assistance. Joseph recognizes them, but they don’t recognize him. In our reading, Joseph makes some admirable choices: first, to reveal who he is to his brothers; and second, to treat them with love and kindness, despite the cruel ways they treated him.

As I read through this passage, the part that stood out to me was when Joseph says, “Come closer to me”. In those four words, I think we see the beginning of reconciliation. “Come closer to me” is an invitation, a digging in, a pulling near. How often are we bold enough to ask those who have wronged us to come closer? Our human instinct is surely to pull away – to retreat, reject, and distance. And yet, here we have a man who has endured unimaginable hardship at the hands of his own brothers, and when faced with an opportunity to retaliate, he chooses instead to reconcile.

None of us, I hope, have been through the particular kind of excruciating betrayal that Joseph went through. And yet many of us have been hurt – by those we love and by those we don’t know very well. So often, in that hurt, we recoil; we retreat into our shells. This reaction is completely normal. It comes from a place of self-protection, and fear of being further hurt. But when we do that, the distance in the relationship widens. When Joseph is confronted by his brothers, instead of recoiling, he pulls in to close the gap in the relationship.

What would it look like, I wonder, to invite people who have wronged us to come closer to us? There are, of course, situations when reconciliation and “coming closer” are not possible—such as when doing so may put us or those whom we love in danger. Indeed, sometimes the wrongs other people cause are deeply personal and painful. But often, particularly in our current political climate, we harbor resentment towards others because they don’t believe the same things we do. We harbor resentment because of who someone chose to vote for, or what they believe in. The algorithms on social media make it so easy to let space creep in between us – to widen the chasm, instead of closing it.

One of my favorite prophecies in Isaiah says that those who offer their food to the hungry and work for liberation will be called the repairers of the breach. In our world, we live in the breach. Far more seems to separate us than unite us – and all of us are caught up in a web of distance, confident that the only way to treat others who are different from us is to create chasms between us, judging one another by our own standards.

But our world needs repairers of the breach. We need people to call, “come closer to me” after there has been a hurt, or a wrong. Joseph looks at his brothers who have wronged him – but who are now starving, and hungry – and he calls them in closer. As Christians, our call is to have the courage to do the same – to call in those who are hungry, those who are on the margins, those who have faced oppression. We are to call in those who think differently, those who voted differently, those from different racial and economic vantage points.

I love this story of Joseph because of the model it gives of what it might look like to live, reconciled. I pray that we all might learn to say and to live the words, “Come closer to me.”

The Rev. Jazzy Bostock is a kanaka mail woman, who loves walking barefoot, the warmth of sunshine, and planting seeds in her garden. She serves as a curate at St Peter’s Episcopal Church in Honolulu, Hawaii and is in her second year of priesthood. Serving God’s people is a joy and a privilege, and she laughs along the journey daily.

Proper 11(A): If the Lord Tarries and the Creek Don’t Rise

Genesis 28:10-19a

By: The Rev. Dr. Hannah Adams Ingram

2020 is not the year that we lost control. 2020 is the year that we lost the illusion that we were in control in the first place. The comforting habits we had formed were disrupted. The plans we had made were gone. While this felt new, like we had just now been tossed into a sea of uncertainty, the truth is that the plans we made were always conditional; the daily norms were always just for today and maybe until something changed again.

I’m reminded of the colloquialisms of my elders in the faith: “If the Lord tarries…” or “God-willing and the creek don’t rise.” I’ve wondered before if this strand of my forbears’ faith was rooted in pessimism or whether it was realism—after all, the old country Baptists that trained me up as a child had seen some things. They had seen sickness, war, and poverty up close and personal. Not only did the Bible tell them God was going to return someday, triumphant over these big worldly sins, but they had seen death enough to know on a deeper level than naive optimistic Hannah that no day, no moment was guaranteed. If the Lord tarries… maybe we’ll have that big party or event or vacation. Or maybe there won’t be any tarrying and our plans will go out the window.

In 2020, a new generation of folks are learning that plans and habits are conditional, and this is disorienting. This disorientation has real effects on our mental and emotional health. Lest you think I’m glorifying the Christian version of non-attachment that puts an asterisk on every single hope for earthly joy, I’m actually very concerned that living life in a constant state of perceived threat takes a toll on a person. My own family lineage has anxiety interwoven with the Baptist faith—both passed on to us through generations of the faithful who were God-fearing and world-fearing simultaneously.

What I see in the texts for this week, then, is assurances to an anxious people about who God is. To Jacob, God said, “I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac.” God goes on to say to Jacob in his dream, “Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”^[1] When Jacob awoke, he exclaimed, “”Surely the LORD is in this place–and I did not know it!”

God is in this place. God is with us, wherever we go. This theme continues in the 139th Psalm: “Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.” In a time that seems uncertain because of pandemic and unemployment and persistent racism, God insists on God’s presence, and the psalmist testifies that there are no limits to this presence. I am particularly struck by the line, “If I make my bed in Sheol” as it implies my own agency in the building of the bed in the place of death, and yet, still God is there. Because there are various human contributions to the pains and sufferings that are being felt on a global scale, this assurance that God does not abandon us even when we’ve made our own bed in Sheol is specifically reassuring. I do not know what 2021 brings, but I know that here in this moment, as bad as it is or as anxious as I am, God is here.

Even the other psalm, Psalm 86, praises God as “merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness,” which is another message of hope in the face of human-exacerbated crisis. I often imagine God as the parent who cares for all people (Wisdom of Solomon 12:13) but possessing more wisdom and perspective than we have in our youth. And so, this image I have for God as parent is compassionate for the mistakes we make along the way even while pushing and teaching us to do better. Likewise, the Romans text names us as children of God who call out to God as Abba, a term of parental endearment.

Where can the beloved toddler go where their parent will not be with them? What could the child do to cause the holy parent to abandon them? Our plans are on shifting sand, and even our human relationships with parents sometimes fail us, but God does not. Whether the Lord tarries or not, God does it with us, side-by-side. That is good news in 2020.

The Rev. Dr. Hannah Adams Ingram serves as the Director of Religious Life and Chaplain of Franklin College in Franklin, Indiana. She grew up in non-denominational evangelical land and is now an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ. She earned a BA from Anderson University, a Master of Theological Studies at Emory University’s Candler School of Theology, and a PhD in Religion and Psychological Studies from the University of Denver and Iliff School of Theology. Her areas of interest include education, practical theology, and escaping overthinking by baking, crafting, and watching TV.

^[1] Right now, my spirit is stirred by these assurances of who God is, but a different part of me wants to preach a sermon called, “The Father Dreams, Too,” since often it’s Joseph who is considered the dreamer and interpreter of dreams. Jacob’s got some big dreams himself though, both this week and in a couple weeks depending on how you interpret his wrestling with an angel.

Proper 10(A): No “Us” Versus “Them”

Genesis 25:19-34

By: Colin Cushman

This passage involving Jacob and Esau, and the birthright traded for pottage, is one of the famous stories of the Genesis tradition. However, while this is quite familiar passage for those of us steeped in the Bible, there are definitely parts of it that we pay attention to and parts that we gloss over. I would like to poke around those murky areas to see what they can teach us, specifically about our relationship with the Other.

From the very beginning of this passage, we see that we are talking about how groups of people relate. Notice, for example, verse 20. Twice within the course of one sentence, the author here reiterates that Rebekah, a major matriarch of The Chosen People, is a foreigner. She’s an immigrant who married into the family. We cannot tell the story of our sacred history without including the story of immigration and inter-racial marriage. The passage insists that we must recognize the role of the foreigner in making us who we are today. Adopting this perspective then opens up a significant theme in our passage: foreigners and relationships between peoples.

Take, for example, the oracle given by God in verse 23. God makes it clear that this story is not just an anecdote about two individual people. It about nations and their relationship with one another. We are talking about groups of people and how they interact with one another.

And what group of people are we talking about? Well, obviously Jacob is Israel (as his later name change makes clear). In verse 30, we learn, in a rather ungainly construction, that Esau here really is referring to Edom (the neighbor to ancient Israel). So the author tells us that there are two people groups: Israel and Edom. Except, in reality, there might not be. The thing is, as we learn more and more about the region from archaeology, we are learning that, as a matter of fact, Israelites and Edomites were not all that different from one another. As much as the powers that be wanted a clear-cut, nonporous line demarcating who is really an Edomite or an Israelite, in reality, there were a bunch of different families and tribes, all of whom were operating more or less independently, and they may or may not have wanted to be lumped into that label of “Edomite” or “Israelite.”

The story serves an etiological function: it explains why things are the way they are. What is the situation that it is explaining? It’s not immediately clear. Were the “modern day” (at the time of writing) serving under Israel? Did Israel see them as inferior to themselves? If so, this story would give justification for this ethnocentric view.

Interestingly, though, scholars think that the name and nation “Edom” did not actually originate from Esau, as claimed here, but was pre-existent. However, right around the time that this story was being written down, the nation of Edom was consolidating and becoming an actual nation, so it was very important for the Israelites to clarify who was and wasn’t actually an Israelite. Thus, we have a story that is actively and intentionally involved in the process of boundary-defining and community-constructing, specifically designed to explain who “we” are and why we’re better than “them.”

Even if this story is telling about the inferiority of the Edomites, though, it certainly does not appear to be the standard criticism leveled against Esau. He seems much less of an evil person who rejects all that is of value, and more of a bumbling, idiotic drama queen who makes stupid decisions.

Take for example this anecdote with the food in verses 29-34. Esau comes home from the field hungry. Presumably, dinner would be served soon enough—he belongs to a rich enough family. However, this is not good enough for him. In a fit of melodrama, he claims that he is starving to death. Jacob seizes on his hyperbolic state to con his brother out of a massive amount of money and the spiritual blessings due to the favored child.

Esau came in starving. He saw a pot of red food. What would he have assumed other than that this was a rich, protein-filled meat stew? What other foods are red? But instead of at least getting a fancy meal for his birthright, he learned too late that it’s simply red lentils.

And yet it doesn’t particularly seem to matter to him! Examine verse 34. The writing style is much different. We’re just given a rapid-fire list of actions, as if Esau were rushing through them as fast as possible. He doesn’t even understand the import of what he just did. He doesn’t have regrets. He’s just hungry and will do whatever he needs to satiate that hunger.

We learn that Esau is not good at weighing options and that Jacob is a con man. And yet, somehow, out of all of this, we are apparently supposed to choose Jacob (=Israel) as the good guy, whereas Esau (=Edom) is deserving of our wrath. (That is certainly what the Hebrew prophets choose, as they direct a disproportionate measure of God’s wrath toward Edom.) Even this anecdote, which is supposed to be another brick in the pedestal elevating Israel as the superior nation, fails to do so and simply muddies the ethical water.

These kinds of stories are the kinds of tales that groups throughout the ages have told to prop up one group above another. These stories function to try to create firmer and firmer boundaries between the self and the Other. They try to erase the existing similarities, which muddy the boundaries between “in” and “out.”

In our current historical moment, in which we experiencing the blossoming of xenophobia and nationalism, it is worthwhile noting that, even in the sacred stories we create about “us”—who we are, where we came from, why things are the way they are—these stories are inextricably linked to the presence of “them.” As much as we try to define ourselves as a self-contained entity, the inherent interconnected nature of the very identities that we are constructing betrays our project. As many non-western folks throughout the ages have insisted (against the values held sacred by western individualism), we are inextricably bound together in a network of mutuality (to paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr.). No matter how much we think that ”we” as a people are better than “them,” we can never lose sight of the fact that our very nature is intertwined with theirs.

Colin Cushman currently is the camp director at Camp Indianola in the Seattle area. He has previously worked as a pastor at local churches. He loves teaching the Bible and helping people to find meaning from even the most obscure parts of the Bible.