Preaching Notes
Pentecost 10.A.2014
Last Installment: Old Testament Track
Learning about Faith from the First Families
Genesis 45:1-15
This is the final week in the series, “Learning About Faith from the First Families.” And as promised last week, in spite of the difficulty of the journey, the series will end on a promising note.
Once again I want to share the insights into the Joseph narrative provided by Dr. Brian Sigmon at the United Methodist Publishing House (Contact Dr. Sigmon at , or write to him c/o The United Methodist Publishing House, 201 Eighth Avenue South, PO Box 801, Nashville, TN 37202):
The Joseph story is often read as an easy narrative of forgiveness, as if Joseph is ready and willing to forgive his brothers as soon as he encountersthem in Genesis 42 after more than twenty years of slavery and imprisonment in Egypt. This, of course, creates a puzzle about Joseph’s actions in the ensuing chapters. Joseph toys with his brothers in Genesis 42-44: he accuses them of being spies, sends them back to retrieve Benjamin, and eventually frames Benjamin for theft and threatens to enslave him.If we think Joseph is a model of eager forgiveness, his actions in these chapters make little sense.
Instead, the text suggests that Joseph's road to forgiveness is long and hard, and he only arrives there after much soul-searching and wrestling with thoughts of anger and revenge. It is no coincidence that Joseph cries several times and behaves erratically throughout Genesis 42-45, where otherwise he shows himself to be a model of self-control. In interacting with his brothers after so many years, Joseph deals with powerful emotions that he struggles to contain.
Joseph's forgiveness, offered in Gen 45:1-15, eventually comes about as a result of three factors. First, he is able to re-narrate his past experience, and that of his family, with insight into how God has worked behind the scenes to bring good out of evil (verses 5-8). It is this insight—God has brought about good—that enables Joseph to repay good for evil himself. Second, Joseph focuses on the future rather than on the past. Though he gives an account of the past, his own actions and attitudes are directed toward the future. He states how he will provide for his family and act graciously towards them, bringing them to Egypt so they can all be together (verses 9-13).
The third and final factor is Joseph’s recognition of a change within his brothers. Joseph's forgiveness comes in response to Judah's speech in Genesis 44:18-35, where Judah offers to become a slave in Benjamin's place. In doing so, he exemplifies that the brothers have changed. By threatening to enslave Benjamin (and send the brothers home with their money returned to their grain sacks), Joseph has effectively re-created the scene where the brothers sold him into slavery. He has a chance to see whether the brothers will repeat their crime with Benjamin, the other younger sibling whom their father now favors (see Genesis 45:27-29). This time, the brothers choose another path, as Judah's speech makes clear. Rather than abandon his brother, Judah offers to substitute himself so Benjamin can go free. The brothers have changed, and Joseph can no longer treat them as the bad men who sold him and even considered killing him so many years before. At the climax of the Joseph narrative, Joseph responds differently as well, offering words of reconciliation.
Even after all this, however, there are still hints of lingering estrangement. Joseph’s brothers hold onto the fear that Joseph will still take revenge after Jacob dies (Genesis 50:15-21). Jacob’s sons are not perfect, and stories of family conflict continue to come up among their descendants. And yet, Joseph and his brothers achieve a measure of reconciliation that has eluded the families before them. There is hope at the end of the story, despite the lack of perfection. The message at the end of Genesis seems to be "Hope for the future lies within this chosen family, imperfect though they may be." It really does set the stage for Exodus, where the family becomes the people of Israel and a new vision of salvation begins to take place.
There are several points from Dr. Sigmon’s analysis that I want to highlight:
1. “Joseph's road to forgiveness is long and hard, and that he only arrives there after much soul-searching and wrestling with thoughts of anger and revenge.”
People love to say, “Oh, just forgive and forget,” as if it were that easy. This story reminds us that forgiveness is hard work, much harder than simply pushing the wrong to the back of our minds and trying not to think about it ever again. Ultimately, the “cut the person off forever” strategy doesn’t work anyway, because we don’t really forget. The memories eat away at our souls and keep us from being at peace with ourselves and with others who come into our lives.
2. Joseph’s ability to forgive comes as the result of two intentional actions on his part: the re-telling of his own story in a more positive light, which enables him to see God’s loving hand and providence in spite of the painful things that have happened to him; and his ability to stop dwelling on the past and focus on what lies ahead.
There are wrongs that are hard to forgive, and sometimes it is difficult to find any sign of goodness lingering inside the horror. I think of the terrible story of the three women from Cleveland who were kidnapped and held hostage for more than ten years until they were finally able to escape. Is it even possible for them to find a way to re-tell that story in such a way that they can see glimpses of God’s loving hand at work in a horrific situation? Maybe something can be found in the child that was born into these tragic circumstances, into whom all three women poured their love and care. We have to believe that love is stronger than hate, and that the existence of love can bring hope out of even the most heinous of crimes.
3. Intrinsic to Joseph’s ability to forgive his brothers is his being convinced that they have truly changed their ways. It is harder to forgive, I guess, if we think the person we are trying to forgive has not learned from his or her mistakes and feels no remorse for their wrongdoing. Reconciliation is a two-way street.
4. Joseph may have forgiven, but no one has forgotten. Remembering seems to be an important part of the process. Maybe we have to remember the wrongs in order to fully heal them. Forgive and forget really doesn’t seem to work, as things are never really forgotten; they are just passed down to someone else to deal with.
We need to remember Israel’s story, including its stories of betrayal, lying, cheating, vengeance, unfaithfulness, and everything else it includes because they serve as reminders that God’s love for us is steadfast even though we are fallen, imperfect beings.
I think this is an incredible word of hope that comes with the conclusion of the story of Joseph and his brothers and, indeed, the conclusion of the lectionary readings from the book of Genesis. I have to admit that as I was going along, reading the stories of the first families and wrestling with the repeated offenses, lack of resolution, and ongoing struggles between family members that never get fully reconciled, I was starting to wonder what the faith of our forebears really was! It has been an eye-opening experience for me to work through these texts honestly, not looking to sugar-coat the stories contained there or ignore the hard issues they raise about the nature of faith.
So I am grateful to Joseph for reconciling with his brothers in the end, and I am grateful to Dr. Brian Sigmon for helping me to see this old, old story with new eyes: eyes of hope and eyes of renewed faith.
Hope for the future lies within this chosen family, and within every one of us, imperfect though we all may be. Thanks be to God for that good news!
Epistle Track: Last Installment
Discipleship 101 with the Romans
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
As my colleague notes, verses 16-21, which fall between the assigned verses for today’s Epistle reading, should be included because they make clear the point that Paul is making:
God has not rejected the chosen people Israel and God will always protect and care for them. Though they have stumbled mightily, and whole branches have been lopped off in the pruning process, still God has a place reserved for them.
In fact, their stumbling and God’s pruning has made room for the Gentiles to be grafted in to God’s chosen family. And for this, as my comments on the Matthew passage below demonstrate, we should all be truly grateful.
The bottom line, as the text above has shown, all off us, Jews and Gentiles alike, have “sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” We are all compromised. We are all disobedient.
The good news is that it is by the grace of God alone that any one of us is restored to wholeness and made acceptable and holy in God’s sight. It is by the grace of God alone that any of us can be born again, made new, given a do-over.
Looking back over the past six weeks as we have considered Paul’s teachings on discipleship to the church in Rome, and how some of his teachings seem to parallel the path to recovery in twelve step programs, perhaps one observation we might make is that disciples of Jesus Christ are continually “in recovery.”
Baptism marks the starting point of our recovery program. But being marked as disciples is the beginning of a lifetime of learning how to put aside our human inclinations and practice the ways of Christian Discipleship.
We nurture ourselves by learning and practicing spiritual disciplines, including works of piety (means of grace) such as prayer, searching the scriptures, fasting, and regularly celebrating the sacrament of Holy Communion. We also nurture ourselves by learning and practicing works of mercy, such as helping the poor, visiting the imprisoned, promoting social justice, studying the words of saints who have gone before us, and teaching and practicing good health (for more information see
Wesley believed, just as they do in twelve step groups, that successful discipleship meant intentionally working every day on our Christian practice, holding one another accountable, and always striving towards reaching the goal of perfect love.
We all make mistakes in our journey. We stumble for various reasons, and we may even require occasional pruning in order to be our most fruitful selves. But the one thing we can always count on is that no matter how much we stumble and fall, God who is faithful will never forsake us. God always makes provisions for God’s people, and that means us too!
This fundamental belief is the hardest thing of all for most people to accept. It is the thing that John Wesley struggled with right up until his conversion of the heart on Aldersgate Road. It is difficult, but it is critical to growing as disciples. Helping our members to come to a place where we can truly proclaim, “God love me, EVEN ME, sinner though I am!” is the most important thing we can do as preachers.
As you close out this series, how can you help your member to truly accept God’s love and acceptance of them, and God’s promise to reserve a place for them no matter what they do?
Gospel Track: Jesus and the Disciples in the Mission Field
Matthew 15: (10-20) 21-28
Sometimes it is good for us to remember just how it is that Christianity came to be passed down to us Gentiles—that is, to us, to you and me. Because sometimes we find ourselves forgetting that we're the lucky ones. After all, Jesus was a Jew, that is, he was born Jewish, raised Jewish, and sent by God to be the Messiah to the Jewish people. And for the most part, Jesus' feet never tread on any soil other than Jewish soil. One of the rare exceptions to this generalization is found in this story of Jesus' journey to Tyre and Sidon. Tyre and Sidon are in the land of Canaan, which is located just north of Nazareth, north of where Jesus grew up, and north of where he began his ministry. The Canaanite woman who came begging after Jesus in this story represents you and me and all of the other Gentiles who came to call themselves followers of Jesus, that is, Christians. So the story raises some questions for us.
- How is it that this came to be?
- How did Jesus come to be in Canaan?
- How did he happen upon this woman, this pioneer in faith, this spiritual predecessor of all of us Gentile Christians?
Matthew says, or at least he strongly implies, that it was because the Jewish leaders, the priests, teachers, and writers rejected Jesus and what he had to say. Jesus' own people, the Jews, for the most part had rejected him all along. That is, the people in power in the Jewish community rejected him. The common Jewish people didn't reject him, but the people in positions of influence did. These people challenged what he taught and how he acted. They questioned him, drilled him, picked at him, took his words out of context, and generally let him know that what he said and did and who he was were not up to snuff.
All these little rejections piled up and up until finally, after he had gone to his own home town and been rejected outright, and then John the Baptist had been beheaded, it was after that when Jesus's conflict with the Jewish leaders began to get really out of control. So the next time the Scribes and the Pharisees threw out one of their challenges, he threw one right back at them. They said, "Why do you and your disobey the ancient Jewish traditions?" Jesus shot back with, "And why do you disobey the commandments of God?" (See Matthew 15:1-3) Then Jesus really gave them a piece of his mind with a parable aimed straight at them, calling them hypocrites, false teachers, and blind guides (Matthew 15:10-20).
It was after all this that Jesus went away from his own country and went to Tyre and Sidon, that is, north into the land of the Gentiles, where that spiritual mother of all of us Gentiles, the Canaanite woman, came running up to him begging, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon!"
Well, Jesus, feeling hurt and angry and rejected already at first didn't even respond to her. But Jesus's silence apparently wasn't enough for his disciples, because they began to urge him on to really put her in her place.
"Send her away!" they said, "She is bothering us with all of her crying and begging."
Jesus didn't send her away, but he did respond to her then with the cold, hard truth of the matter. He said, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel."
But this Gentile women would not give up. She came and knelt before him. "Lord, please, help me," she said.
Jesus' next response, of course, has long been disturbing to Christians who want to see Jesus only as God, and not see his human side. Jesus said, "It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs."
Now, if you take this as a wise, cool, measured response of Jesus as Messiah, speaking for God, then you have to admit that God and Jesus's opinion of us Gentiles must be pretty darn low. But maybe Jesus' response wasn't cool and measured and wise. Maybe, at this particular low point in his life, Jesus wasn't speaking only for God. Maybe too much had just piled up and he lost his temper a little bit. Maybe when Jesus had been harassed and pushed to his limits by his Jewish brothers, and had found precious little time to grieve the loss of his cousin John, and so had fled his own country to find a little relief, this Gentile woman simply became the straw that broke the camel's back.
We've all had experiences like that—times when we've lost our patience and snapped unnecessarily at someone. I’m sure you can think of a story of your own to tell; I can think of many!
The point I’m trying to make here is, Jesus wasn't only the Son of God. He was also the Son of Man.
That is to say, he was also a person, flesh and blood, just like you and me. And the story of his encounter with the Canaanite woman is, among other things, a story of his being pushed to his limits, because he and his disciples were sick at heart, and the Canaanite woman wouldn't leave them alone, and she kept on and on, begging and crying after them.
They had tried to get away from people when they were in Nazareth, but everybody had followed and Jesus ended up having to serve supper to 5000 people. Jesus then sent his disciples back across the lake and had found a few minutes alone on the mountain to pray, but as soon as he came down from the mountain he was back at the work of healing and saving in the form of rescuing his own disciples from the stormy sea and trying to teach them to have a little faith in him.