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.

August 10-- True Leadership

Passages: Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28; Psalm 105:1-6, 16-22, 45b; Romans 10:5-15; Matthew 14:22-33

Of all the great stories of the Hebrew Scriptures—some inspiring, some troubling, some just plain bizarre (Lot and his daughters, anyone?)— the Joseph story ranks up there as one of my all-time favorites. One reason for this stems from the fact that my little sister sang in our high school production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat… which means I saw the musical six times in two weeks. Although I am therefore forever cursed to read the story with a chorus line singing, “Go, go, go Jo!” in my head, it also means that I know the story pretty well.

More importantly, though, I’ve always liked the Joseph story because, as Madeleine L’Engle put it in Sold into Egypt, it “is the journey of a spoiled and selfish young man finally becoming, through betrayal, anger, abandonment, unfairness, and pain, a full and complex human being” (15). Joseph’s tale strikes me as a paradigmatic story of growing up and, through that process, growing into leadership. Many throughout history have been born into leadership, whether or not they actually made good leaders. Great leaders, on the other hand, are those shaped and molded by adversity, those who have experienced being the abandoned and dispossessed. Great leaders are the ones who, in spite of it all, ground their call in something wider and deeper than their circumstances. Ultimately, this is the story of Joseph.

The lectionary gives us two pieces of the Joseph narrative in the next two weeks, this section in chapter 37 and then the climax of the story in chapter 45. So I’m going to bear with the “Go, go, go Jo!” on auto-repeat in my head and stick with this story for a bit. For this week, we’ll look at Joseph in the beginning of his tale.

Chapter 37 signals a change in tone from much of the Abraham/Issac/Jacob sequence, which really focuses on Israel’s chosenness—God promises to make of the descendents of Abraham a great nation. With the beginning of the Joseph story, God’s overt presence recedes into the background. But the theme of being chosen is still there. This time the human parent, Jacob, chooses Joseph over his other eleven sons. Not, we find out, a good way to promote familial harmony.

The symbol of Joseph’s privilege is the infamous “coat of many colors” Jacob makes for Joseph, which is more accurately translated as a “a long robe with sleeves” (Gen. 37:3)—it doesn’t give nearly as much scope for the imagination, but in either case the point is that this robe wouldn’t make it easy for Joseph to get down and dirty tending flocks. It sends a clear message that Joseph, apparently through no merit of his own, has been born into power and privilege. He’s the ancient equivalent of a trust-fund baby, of a Paris Hilton.

Now if you, like me, find yourself filled with annoyance at the mention of Paris Hilton’s name, you might be able to tap into some of the animosity Joseph’s brothers felt toward him. For naïve Joseph used his power primarily to perpetuate his own privileged lifestyle. As verse 2 tells us, Joseph was a snitch. Worse, he was a snitch on the children of Bilhah and Zilpah—because their mothers were the slaves of Rachel and Leah respectively, they were Jacob’s least favored children (cf. Genesis 33:1-2, where Jacob places them on the front lines for an anticipated attack). Very easy targets, then, if you want to make yourself look good. Thus the first four verses of this chapter tell us some very important things about this young inheritor of privilege—he is chosen simply by birth, he has power over others, and he abuses that power to his own gain. It sounds like a template for any number of leaders throughout history, and for several in the corridors of power today.

But as the text later tells us, God has also chosen Joseph. In reading the lectionary passage again this time, I was struck by Joseph’s words to his father when told to go find his brothers: “Here I am” (v. 13). Joseph’s response echoes the words of the prophets when they were called by God, including Samuel (1 Samuel 3:2-10) and Isaiah (Isaiah 6:8). And indeed, this episode of being sent marks the beginning of Joseph’s call as a leader. Joseph accepts the task, without a clue of the difficulties that lie ahead.

Finally, we come to that climatic scene, in which Joseph’s world of privilege turns upside down. His brothers ambush him and throw him into a pit, eventually selling him to some slave-trading Ishmaelites. God seems to have intentionally called Joseph down a path on which he will be degraded and dehumanized, a path on which he will become the most vulnerable on the social ladder. Yet it is through this path of marginalization that Joseph ultimately blossoms into the leader of Egypt.

In our own world, privilege and power surround us. We were born into some of it—perhaps through the wealth of our parents, or the color of our skin, or the nationality stamped on our passport. But Joseph’s story seems to suggest that when God calls us, it often means the loss of some power we take for granted. When Joseph said, “Here I am,” the result was the loss of all the comfort, all the power, he had enjoyed throughout his life. We, too, by answering Christ’s call, risk losing the luxuries those around us claim that we need to be complete in life.

Yet as Christ says, in losing one life we find another (Matthew 16:25). And in losing everything, Joseph begins to follow his call as a leader for others.