BEYOND HISTORY

August 14, 2011
Pentecost 9
Genesis 45:1-15
Matthew 15:21-28

(prayer)

Last week - you may recall - if you were in this church for Sunday worship, that we read part of the story of Joseph, the second youngest son of Jacob (great-grandson of Abraham). Joseph was a favourite to his father and Jacob’s favouritism was not appreciated by Joseph’s brothers. Add to that the fact that Joseph had told them about dreams he had which indicated that one day they would all bow down to him and this went to the extreme of sibling rivalry.

When the brothers saw Joseph come strolling up to them in his fancy, multi-coloured, long sleeved coat to ‘check up’ on how well they were managing the flocks, like he was their superior, the dislike all came to the surface. They wanted him out of their lives. Some suggested out-right murder; others suggested a slightly less violent approach: letting him succumb to the elements by trapping him in a dry well pit; in the end, a travelling caravan, heading to Egypt, provided the opportunity to sell Joseph into slavery. Mission accomplished. The brothers tore up Joseph’s fancy coat, smothered it with goat’s blood and concocted a believable tale that the young favoured son of Jacob had been tragically devoured by a wild animal. This news absolutely devastated their father!

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Today, the reading from Genesis was about the eventual family reunion.

A lot happened between the slave sale and the reunion. If we could, maybe we could all go see the musical play, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat” and get the gist of the rest of the story. [I saw it first as a teenager at Victoria Composite High School – and then a number of years later at the Jubilee Auditorium, staring Donny Osmond as a bare-chested Joseph – phew!] But I’m not aware of where it might be being performed nearby right now. So...

Allow me to fill ya’ll in with a reader’s Digest version of the rest of story from Genesis between last week’s and this week’s readings.

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 Joseph was purchased as a slave by Potiphar, who was an officer of the Egyptian Pharaoh, a captain of the guard. In relatively short order Joseph proved to be a good and trustworthy servant – Potiphar made him overseer of his household and all of his wealth – essentially Joseph became Potiphar’s household CEO.

 All was as good as it gets for a slave, until the lady of the house (Potiphar’s wife) took an interest in Joseph – sexually! “Lie with me” she insisted (Gen 39:7). She was persistent, but Joseph steadfastly refused. One day, she grabbed him by the clothes and insisted “Lie with me” – when Joseph tried to get away, she ripped his clothes off. I picture Joseph struggling to cover up his nakedness. Well, William Congreve (not Wm Shakespeare as it is often mis-attributed) wrote, “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned”. It was certainly true in this case – when Potiphar came home, she accused Joseph of trying to rape her, showing off his clothes as evidence. Joseph was sent to prison.

 It was in prison that Joseph met two fellow prisoners – two servants of Pharaoh who had run afoul of the monarch. They each had had peculiar dreams that they were sure meant something, but were not sure, what. Joseph offered interpretations – in three days (Joseph said) one of them would be restored by the Pharaoh (cupbearer), the other would be hanged (baker). Three days later, history bore out that Joseph was right. The cupbearer was very grateful and promised Joseph that he would not forget this. But, as time went one, no one gave much thought to Joseph in prison.

 Two years passed and Joseph remained in jail. It was at that time that the Pharaoh had two strange dreams: (1) seven sleek and fat cows were eaten up by seven ugly and thin cows; (2) seven plump and full ears of corn were swallowed up by seven thin and sun-dried ears. A light went on for the chief cupbearer and he told Pharaoh about Joseph, who was brought out of the dungeon to interpret the dreams: there would be seven years of good, bountiful harvests followed by seven years of severe drought and famine. Joseph suggested that Pharaoh set aside 20% of the harvests from the good years to be able to withstand the bad years. Joseph was put in charge of the project, and eventually became a governor of Egypt. So good was Joseph’s management that not only was there enough food for Egypt, they had excess they could sell on the export market.

 When the drought came, it was wide spread and affected many lands, including Canaan, where Jacob’s family lived. Rumours quickly spread that Eqypt had grain to sell, so Jacob sent his ten oldest sons to go and buy (after the apparent-death of Joseph, Jacob became very protective of his youngest son, Benjamin, the only other child he had had with Rachael).

 When the sons of Israel came before the governor, they did not recognize Joseph, but he knew who they were. To keep this advantage, Joseph even spoke to them in Egyptian, through an interpreter. Perhaps he was bitter about what had happened all those years ago – Joseph accused them of not really being interested in food, but that they were spies. They protested and claimed to come from a large, honest, hardworking family in Canaan. Joseph asked the ten brothers about their family situation and learned that they had one brother who had died (Joseph) and one who was at home with their father (Benjamin). Joseph wanted revenge so he had them all thrown in prison. After three days, to test the honesty of the brothers, Joseph insisted that one of the brothers remain in an Egyptian jail while the others returned to Canaan with grain. In order to free the one still in Egypt, they were to return with the youngest son and the governor would be convinced they weren’t spies.

 So, Simeon stayed and the nine brothers went home with the grain. And then they returned to Egypt, this time with Benjamin: against Jacob’s protests!

 Joseph wasn’t done with his revenge. He let Simeon out of jail and invited all of the brothers to feast with him. During dinner, he had one of his servants hide a valuable cup in Benjamin’s bag. As they were searched at the end of the night, the apparent theft was discovered and Benjamin is arrested for the theft. Brother Judah spoke for the family about how this would destroy their father to lose Benjamin too – “How can I go back to my father if the boy is not with me? I fear to see the suffering that would come upon my father!” (Gen 44:34). Learning that Jacob was still alive seems to have softened Joseph’s heart. That brings us to the passage we read today from chapter forty-five!

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Joseph made everyone else leave the room, and he revealed himself to his brothers. He was moved to tears of joy. And he moved beyond the history of rivalry and deceit, and saw himself as part of a family again. He knew that there were still five more years of famine to come and that if the family re-located to Egypt, he could look after them. And so the family of Jacob left Canaan and the family (and eventually the ‘people’) of Israel lived well in Egypt because of Joseph! Generations of Israelites made Egypt their home from that time on. The book of Exodus begins with the group having grown so large within Egypt that a future Pharaoh (who knew nothing about the story of Joseph) was concerned about these people. That’s the start of the story of Moses.

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Matthew’s gospel tells us that Jesus left the area around the Sea of Galilee and went to the coast of the Mediterranean, near the Lebanese towns of Sidon and Tyre. This was foreign territory for Jesus – the population there was mostly non-jewish. There were some Hebrews and Samaritans there – descendants of the northern kingdom of Israel that controlled the region 300 years earlier, but were wiped out by the Assyrian Empire: it seems that it was these remnant people Jesus had come to find and teach along the coast.

As we heard this morning, a Canaanite (non-jewish) woman from the area had heard about Jesus’ skills as a healer and asked him to help her daughter. In the language of the first century, the girl was ‘tormented by a demon’. In our age, she would likely be diagnosed as suffering from some form of mental illness. In any age, clearly the girl was not herself, and even here along the Lebanese coast, people had heard about the things Jesus had done. ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David.’ Son of David: she acknowledges that Jesus is Hebrew; she acknowledges their differences.

What does Jesus do? He ignores here. He pretends that he doesn’t even see or hear her. She persists, even beginning to shout for Jesus to help. And he just ignores her. Eventually, it is Jesus’ disciples who get fed up and beg Jesus to just tell her to leave. So, what does Jesus do? He tells her to leave. She is not Hebrew and he only helps Hebrews: ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’

 Were Jesus’ abilities in such short supply that he had to conserve what he had to make sure that he could help his own people?

 Was Jesus concerned about the time he had available? Would he short-change Israel if he wasted time with gentiles?

 Did Jesus simply see people of other nations as less worthy than his own people?

One of these has to be the reason why Jesus would insist that he was ‘sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’

If only Jesus had stopped with those words, we might be able to hope that it was one of the first two reasons (limited time and power to heal) but he went further and showed us that his reasoning was one of superiority. ‘It’s not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ In his nationalistic zeal, Jesus (our Jesus, the compassionate one, the prince of peace), called this woman and her people ‘dogs’ and wanted nothing more than to shoo her away: “get away from here!” she didn’t warrant his attention, nor any healing he might be able to offer.

‘Yes Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the master’s table.’

Something must have clicked in Jesus’ mind at that point – he had been preaching a radical inclusiveness within Galilee and Judah, openly eating with tax collectors, sinners and other outcasts – why was this so different?

In this passage in Matthew 15 (also in Mark 7), we are witnessing an evolution of thought in Jesus – he changes his mind. He started that trip to Tyre and Sidon as a nationalist zealot willing to see some people and cultures as unworthy of his message and ministry and he returned with a sense of universal inclusivity. Jesus was able to get beyond the history of compartmentalized compassion. Jesus’ healing of the Canaanite woman’s daughter marks a shifting point in Jesus’ ministry and it dramatically affected the direction the followers of Jesus would take this mission in the decades that followed Jesus’ death and resurrection. We are inheritors of this change of mind which Jesus had on the Lebanese coast. And we are richer for it!

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Learning history is a deeply valuable endeavour. In the church it is essential, we do this with our understanding of Biblical history, but even more generally, we can be more well-rounded people if we seek to understand the details that have brought us to this point in history.

Not everything that has come before us if positive – I suggest that, in a way, understanding the negative aspects of history is perhaps the most valuable part of this. You all know this to be true – societies need to evolve in progressive ways to improve on times of injustice of the past; and on a personal level, we do well to understand what hasn’t worked well for us, so that we can try to make our futures better.

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The past is set and unchangeable. The best we can do is understand what has happened. And there are typically two ways to seek this understanding:

1. ORIGINAL CONTEXT - We can put ourselves in the shoes of the people from that time – what did they know, how did they think, what affected their worldview.

2. CURRENT CONTEXT - We can look back on history based on what we know and believe now.

These can yield very different kinds of understanding. We may look back and judge some past era to be a negative time of history, but when we exclude our modern viewpoints from the equation, we might understand why the history is what it was.

When I am doing Bible study, I always try to look at the context of the passage in both of these ways – what did this mean to the people of the time and what might it mean for me now?

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Joseph could not change the history of the conflicts between him and his family. But there came a point where he chose to no longer play the game of revenge – he moved beyond this history and sought a reconciliation. He very much wanted to reconnect to his father and to do that he had to make peace with his brothers. And the future history of Israel from that point on was drastically affected.

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Jesus could not change the history that lead to his prejudice against non-hebrews. But in that conversation with that determined Canaanite mother, Jesus broke the momentum of that history – he moved his ministry in a new direction, beyond where that history might have otherwise taken him. Take a close look at both the gospel of Mark after chapter 7 and Matthew after chapter 15 – from that point on, you won’t find any more of these kind of Jewish-only attitudes. And you will see Jesus doing a lot more teaching in gentile territories.

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Spirituality, our own faithful experience, is an ever-evolving state of mind. We see the circle widening all of the time. Look at the progression in the book of Acts. When Jesus is resurrected and ascends away from his followers entrusting them to share his gospel, the primary group is mostly made up of Galilean Jews. On Pentecost, Jews from all over the known world were caught up in the Spirit and the group expanded greatly, thousands of people at a time. The 12 disciple of Jesus (the original eleven and Matthias who was chosen to replace Judas) took on the responsibility for ensuring that the vulnerable in their group were cared for (widows, orphans). As the group grew this became an impossible task. We can imply from the text that, given the inability to help everyone, the disciples gave preferential treatment to the Galilean and Judean widows. There were complaints from people from more disbursed communities (the Diaspora). And so the circle widened – seven new leaders from these Diaspora followers of Jesus were chosen to work alongside The Twelve.

Later, one of these new leaders, Phillip, was travelling and met a man from Ethiopia, who had not been born Jewish, but was a convert to Judaism. Phillip could think of no logical reason why this man could not be baptised as a follower of Jesus. And so the circle widened again. What began as a jewish-born Galilean movement, expanded to Judah and then to the Diaspora and now to converts to Judaism.

With the advent of the Apostle Paul, the church made another dramatic widening of the circle – even non-jews could find a place within the early church. And Paul argued hard against those who tried to insist that these people should convert to Judaism first – but there was not to be only one path to become a follower of Jesus.

No doubt, that each time these inclusive widenings happened, there were people within the movement that felt that things were going too far – that the compassion and welcome of the church needed to be limited. Transitions of this kind are hard. And over the centuries, it has lead to splits and denominational conflicts within Christianity.

And yet, maybe we can be emboldened by the fact that Jesus made of these hard transitions himself. I doubt that he was universally supported in his decision; but it was the right and just thing to do (the Canaanite mother had convinced him of that) so Jesus had to move beyond that history of exclusion.

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I got an email this week from our United Church conference office in Edmonton, asking us to watch for potential emails from “The Byzantine Catholic Patriarchate” – denouncing and cursing the United Church of Canada because of our inclusiveness of people of all sexual orientations. The UC has a history of inclusive widening.

Was it completely popular when the United Church of Canada decided to ordain women in the 1930s? No, but it was the good and just thing to do. Were the eventual adjustments to how we speak to and about each other to make our words less patriarchal and sexist made with ease in the 1970s and 80s as we were challenged to use more inclusive language. No, but it was the good and right thing to do.

Was it completely popular for our denomination to make it clear that we would not bar someone from formal ministry because they were gay in the late 1980s? Definitely not, but it was the good and just thing to do.

Within our own congregation, were we all of one mind (five and a half years ago) when the majority of people at the meeting voted to treat same-sex couples who wanted to get married the same way we do with opposite-sex couples? No we weren’t, but when I officiated at John and Josh’s wedding this summer, I knew it was the good and right thing to do. It wasn’t all that different – love and commitment IS love and commitment.

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Getting beyond history can be a daunting task. And it is not something we should ever do without honest thought and care.

Joseph would not have been faulted for disowning the family who had disowned him, but he desired the best of what he remembered and made the hard choice to reconcile.

Jesus was perfectly in line with the traditions of his faith when he put his efforts on his own people. But a suffering child is a suffering child, so he made the hard choice to break with tradition.

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Each of us likely has some history that is holding us back; some past event or attitude that doesn’t seem to fit. And yet there is resistance (even within ourselves) to moving beyond that history and into a new future of hope and promise, because we are comfortable with where we are, even it is not where we know we should be.

What we also have is a faith history of evolving experiences of the Spirit. It is okay to venture out on a new path, trusting (as both Joseph and Jesus did) that God would still be with us. That is the constant – that is the rock, the foundation that binds all of this variety – the faithfulness of God.

Thanks be to God. Let us pray:

Wise and loving God, journey with us in the life-giving process of reconciliation. Fill us with patience and courage to find the good and right path. In Jesus’ name, Amen.



**offering**