August 17-- Two for One Fun

Passages: Genesis 45:1-15; Psalm 133; Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32; Matthew 15:(10-20), 21-28

Last week, we looked at the early part of the Joseph story, in which the selfish and privileged boy, through a terrible reversal of his fortunes, begins his journey toward leadership. I told you that we would finish the story this week, and we will. But I also saw that this week is the Canaanite woman story in Matthew. You may not be familiar with it, but I think it is one of the most fascinating little stories in the gospels. So rather than chose between them, I’m going to do two shorter reflections on each. Sorry it is so long!

The Big Revelation

Then Joseph said to his brothers, "Come closer to me." And they came closer. He said, "I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years; and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. –Matthew 45: 4-9

If you’re familiar with the Joseph story, you’re aware that we’ve jumped over quite a bit of action since last week’s lectionary passage. After being sold into Egypt last week, the coat that symbolized all his power and privilege stripped from him, Joseph experiences a variety of ups and downs. He is put in charge of his master Potiphar’s house, only to be unjustly accused and sent to prison. Even after interpreting the dream of some officials in Pharaoh’s court, he remains forgotten. Yet his life changes again when Joseph is called upon to interpret a dream for Pharaoh. He becomes the de facto ruler of Egypt as a result, and through his grain rationing program the country has enough food to face seven years of famine… and profitably sell their excess to their less-prepared neighbors.

Now this is how Joseph’s brothers reenter the picture. After several dramatic scenes, today’s lectionary passage recounts the climactic moment in which Joseph reveals himself to his brothers. As one commentary I read points out, this is a story in which sorrow unexpectedly, impossibly turns to joy—even Joseph’s invitation for his father to “come down to me” and share in the bounty of Egypt (v. 9) echoes Jacob’s lament from last week that “I shall go down to Sheol [the underworld] to my son, mourning” (37:25). In the Joseph story, the impossible becomes possible.

Moreover, our characters have been transformed from selfish jerks into servant leaders. Judah, who sold Joseph for a tidy little profit in 37:26-27, offers himself in the place of Benjamin in 44:18-34. And Joseph, who openly bragged about his power over his brothers in the beginning of the story, now sees his power in a quite different light. Through his identification with the lowest rungs of society, he finally understands that God has given him power not for his own glorification, but “to preserve for you a remnant on earth” (v. 7). Much of Genesis, you may remember, has been about chosen people. Here, in Joseph’s final statement, it becomes clear why Joseph is chosen—so that God might feed the people of Egypt, and Canaan, and the whole world.

Could Joseph have been this kind of leader without the struggles of the past? I don’t think so. Joseph needed not only to see powerlessness, but to lose his own pretentious power in order to become the kind of leader who could give and forgive. For the experience of gaining and losing power freed him from its seductive grip—after being stripped of everything, after losing his life to his brothers and to his master, he could later act for justice without fear of loss.

As people of faith, we are a called people. That doesn’t always mean a life of prosperity and plentitude—if we listen to the biblical witness, being called by God usually means being stripped of all worldly pretensions and power. But as the Joseph story points out, it is this process of letting go that allows us to truly hear God’s call in the midst of our cluttered , self-important lives. If you take this seriously, it is kind of frightening. Yet in the kindom of God, only this path frees us to truly make a difference.

The Long-Lost, Never-Preached Story of the Canaanite Woman

Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, "Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon." But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, "Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us." He answered, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel." But she came and knelt before him, saying, "Lord, help me." He answered, "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." She said, "Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." Then Jesus answered her, "Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish." And her daughter was healed instantly. –Matthew 15:21-28

A couple of years ago, our Massachusetts Bible Society Lenten Bible study class studied the Markan version of this passage (Mark 7:24-31). I remember Don Wells telling me that no one in class would be familiar with it. Much to my surprise, he was right. It’s one of the Bible’s troubling texts, and Jesus is the key player in it.

Why do we avoid this passage? Mainly because the Jesus we like to preach about, the Jesus that loves the child and the outcast, the Jesus of abundance, is not the Jesus we see here. Rather, we see a Jesus who calls a woman and her sick child “dogs,” a Jesus who comes off as narrowly ethnocentric. Those of us who have heard this story generally take it one of two ways—either Jesus is simply testing the woman’s faith (the preferred interpretation, in my experience), or Jesus is wrong and the woman changes his mind about the matter.

At the heart of these two interpretations is the larger issue of Jesus and perfection. Was Jesus perfect? For those who embrace the “testing theory” of this story, the answer to that question is really at stake in their reading. For if Jesus wasn’t testing this woman, that means he really did change his mind—he didn’t already know the full scope of his mission. It means, in the words of theologian Sabine Van Den Eynde, that Jesus “shows in his ensuing deeds a change in his own attitude.” And the notion of Jesus changing or evolving over his human life seems unpalatable to most of us. It means he is not perfect.

But what is perfection, anyway? Why would we have a problem with a Jesus who learns and grows through his ministry from the people to whom he ministers? What are the consequences if we believe that being perfect means never changing our minds when we receive new insight or information? Can we ever grow into servant leadership (see Joseph above) if we believe that perfection and change are mutually exclusive, that we can't learn from outcast, female foreigners like the Canaanite woman?

If we say that Jesus did learn from the Canaanite woman, the only person in Matthew’s gospel to whom he attributes great faith (v. 28), then we suggest that perfection is not a pre-packaged little instruction manual that we must follow precisely in order to be saved. That, as we know, is the kind of legalism Jesus critiqued in his ministry. Rather, perhaps Jesus’ ‘perfection’ is an openness to growth, to learning, and to honest encounter with the other. Perhaps by learning from the Canaanite woman, Jesus redefines what it means to be perfect. Rather than being supra-human, Jesus’ path of perfection leads us to fuller, richer humanity—the humanity which God truly intends for creation.

July 27-- God For Us

Passages: Genesis 29:15-28, Psalm 105:1-11, 45b, Romans 8:26-39, Matthew 13:31-33, 42-52

Hello, those of you eagerly awaiting another segment of the Massachusetts Bible Society lectionary blog! As a newcomer to this blog, but not to MBS, I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself before getting to the actual text for this week’s lectionary. I’m Kelsey Rice Bogdan, third year student at Harvard Divinity School and 2006-2007 MBS seminarian. I had the pleasure of working with MBS the year before Joe came on board, in the Society’s pre-blogging days. I was an avid blogger before the student life ate up all my time, though, so I’m excited to be back in the blogosphere. I also look forward to setting aside some time each week with you all to pause and reflect on a little snapshot of Scripture from the Revised Common Lectionary. I hope it will be a time for all of us to consider, be challenged, and grow together.

What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? ... Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” --Romans 8:31, 35-39

Have you ever wondered why John Calvin, the great Protestant Reformer of the 16^th century, ever made such a big deal about the idea that God chose some people for salvation and others for destruction? After all, it isn’t such a warm, fuzzy doctrine, and a good chunk of Christians (even Presbyterians like me, who claim their religious heritage from Calvin’s teachings) don’t really buy into it today. But Calvin was very emphatic on the point, and today’s lectionary passage is a perfect example of why.

In Romans 8:26-39, being God’s “predestined” (v. 29) suggests that God is with you, God will take care of you, nothing can come between you and God. In Calvin’s day, it was a comforting thought to reflect that, though the French authorities might threaten to kill you for your faith, God would vindicate you in the end because you were a beloved, chosen child. In Paul’s own first century context, it must have been likewise reassuring to think that despite all the vulnerabilities that come from being poor (as the majority of those living under the Roman Empire were at the time) and a follower of a strange new Jewish sect, God was on your side. It is no coincidence that, whether they agree with Calvin’s take on who or what is “predestined” in this passage, Christians through time and space have clung to it to claim God’s stake in their cause.

And therein lies the danger, the key element that can make Paul’s words both a clarion call for justice and the all-too-easy weapon of the oppressor: God is for us. Too many times we gloss over this phrase in verse 31 and just assume that if God is “for us,” that means someone—the devil, that particularly nasty co-worker, corporate America, Iran—is against us. We then go on to scan the rest of the passage with a smile on our face, knowing that we can be assured that God will make us “more than conquerors” over all those people we’ve brought into our reading of the text.

When I look again at Romans 8:31 and 35-39, though, an important character is missing from our little scenario: all the people who are against us, all the people we are supposedly going to conquer. The Holy One who created all of us, who embraces all of us as a mother embraces the sometimes squirmy child, is ultimately for all of us. Jesus, who reached out to Mary Magdalene and Nicodemus, Matthew the tax collector and Martha the busy housewife, doesn’t have to pick and choose who to love. When we think of God as a God of abundance, rather than through our own frame of scarce, coveted resources, who indeed is excluded from God’s overflowing love to stand against us?

Perhaps this is why, through Christ, we can be more than conquerors. Through Christ, the text suggests, we can transcend the lens of limit and lack through which we see others. We can go beyond winners and losers, beyond the notion that my gain is your loss. That’s not to deny the brokenness that exists in the world—in verses 35 and 36, Paul acknowledges the realities of persecution, hunger, and war, some of which humans and human systems cause. But none of those things can alter the fact that the God who appeared among us did so because that God is for each and every one of us.

In the gospel Paul presents here, no one—no individual, group, or society—can lay claim to God’s special favor over another. For just as Jesus embraces all of creation in this troubled world, we are called to embrace all those who we might view as standing against us. What would it mean to look at the enemy, even one that perpetuates injustices we rightfully oppose, as someone whom God is ultimately for? Maybe that means revising our belief that an enemy is someone to be vanquished, conquered, bent to our will. Maybe that means seeing our opponents as God sees them—broken, flawed creatures like us, desperately in need of transformative love.