Children of Israel
A sermon
delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson
March 30, 2014
at Gordonsville
Presbyterian Church, Gordonsville, Virginia
Genesis 37: 1-9
Ephesians 2: 11-22
Let
us pray, for a welcome mind and a loving heart
Help us to see despite our eyes
Help us to think outside of our minds
Help us to be more than our lives
For
your eyes show the way
Your
mind knows the truth
Your
being is the life.
Amen.
Jacob
settled in the land where his father had lived as an alien, the land of Canaan.
2 This is the story of the family of Jacob.
Joseph, being seventeen years old, was shepherding the flock
with his brothers; he was a helper to the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his
father’s wives; and Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. 3
Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he
was the son of his old age; and he had made him a long robe with sleeves. 4
But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his
brothers, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him.
5 Once
Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even
more. 6 He said to them, “Listen to this dream that I dreamed. 7
There we were, binding sheaves in the field. Suddenly my sheaf rose and
stood upright; then your sheaves gathered around it, and bowed down to my
sheaf.” 8 His brothers said to him, “Are you indeed to reign over
us? Are you indeed to have dominion over us?” So they hated him even more
because of his dreams and his words.
9 He had
another dream, and told it to his brothers, saying, “Look, I have had another
dream: the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” [1]
This story is one of those well
known ones. . . the favored son, the jealous brothers, selling Joseph into slavery,
and all that. It is one of the stories that when I was thinking about preaching
through the Old Testament, that was on my radar from the beginning, and that I
was excited about getting to study and preach from. And I still am excited
about it. I love this story. I love some of the language and imagery of it. I
love the coat of many colors, and how it is such a great and strange detail, too
strange to be fiction. . . and so inspiring our imaginations about just what
this coat was and what it could have looked like. . . not to mention, also
inspiring one of the best country songs of all time, Dolly Parton's, Coat of
Many Colors, her tear jerker about a poor girl's mom-made coat and how much,
though it was rags and others made fun, her mother made it and she understood
it's real meaning and value. I also love the line in this story, describing how
angry Joseph's brothers are to him that it says that they cannot speak
"peace' to him. They can't speak shalom to him. . . another great simple
and telling image, showing the real poetry of the Hebrew language. Shalom being
peace, a greeting, health, connected to God, and His power, His place, His
work, and brothers cannot speak it to each other. . . These are the elements if
you would have asked me back last fall as I was planning that I would have
spoken about. . . dwelling on the split and how dangerous jealousy and envy
are. . . how human they are. . . but how dangerous they are for us, how deadly
to our relationships.
But our journey together through
Genesis the last few months has deepened my perspective and changed my focus
for this morning. I want to talk about what sets this situation apart from the
others that we have read, and if I'm going to do that it ain't about brothers
and their squabbles because that is the standard, not the exception in Genesis.
Each set, Cain and Abel; Shem, Ham, and Japheth; Isaac and Ishmael; Jacob and
Esau; and now the sons of Jacob, the children of Israel. . . it would be a much
more revolutionary story if these children would get along rather than the
expected infighting that we have here. . . and the more I thought about it that
is the revolution, that is the amazing thing, not that Joseph's brothers sold
him into slavery, but rather that this family becomes the nation of Israel, and
not divided like all the previous generations. Because they have even more
reason to break apart than the jealousy between brothers and the selling Joseph
into slavery. . . if you look at all the previous generations and how they
become warring separate nations. . . destined to be future and all time
enemies. . . Jacob's children, the children of Israel, they have all of the
same things happen to them, and even worse.
Let's see, what can break up a
family. . . the issue between Isaac and Ishmael is that Sarah wanted Abraham to
take up with Hagar her handmaiden, and she does and then drives a wedge between
Ishmael that child, and Isaac her son. . . the rest is a long long history of
enmity and strife, some would say lasting until even this day. . . but Jacob's
family has the same problem. . . actually times two. Of Jacob's 13 children, 12
boys and one Girl, they are spread between four different mothers. Of course
there are the two wives of Jacob, the sisters, Leah and Rachel, whom he labored
seven years apiece for. . . but each of those women each have a handmaiden as
well. . . Leah's handmaiden is Zilpah, and Rachels handmaiden is Bilhah. . .
and yeah, you guessed it, they each are mother to some of the 12. If you are
keeping score. Leah is mother to Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar,
Zebulun, and the one daughter Dinah. . . her handmaiden Zilpah is the mother of
Gad and Asher. . . Rachel is the mother of Joseph, of course the favorite. . .
being the oldest of Jacob's true love, and Benjamin, in whose birth Rachel
died. . . and then finally Dan and Naphtali are the sons of Bilhah, Rachel's
maid. . . Same old story as Sarah and Hagar, just times two. . . if Ishmael and
Isaac's feud is still violently playing out in Middle Eastern politics, why did
Israel become a unified nation?
There are also many tragedies that
happen to this family that could have broken them up before now too, but one
time a gruesome one, may actually show their solidarity as a family, shades of
the connections of the future, maybe hard times do bring people together . . So
picture this. . . 12 sons, and 1 daughter, well actually there may be others,
but Dinah is the only daughter mentioned. . . She is one of Leah's daughters. .
. now the family travels around alot. . . mostly because their welcome in
different places is not warm because of all of Jacob's antics back when he was
living up to that name: the trickster. They didn't want to stay with Laban any
longer because he was cheating him, and they were working up the courage to
reunite with Esau, and they spent some time in Shechem. While at Shechem, one
of the Hivites, the son of the Hamor the ruler, the prince, according to the
RSV. . . lay with Dinah by force. . . he rapes her, but he supposedly loves
her, and speaks tenderly to her. . . all of this can be found in Genesis 34. .
. His soul was drawn to Dinah, it says. . . but when her brothers and her
father hear of all this they, as you can imagine, 12 brothers would be
protective of their sister, they get their revenge. It's a rough scene, they
trick them into getting circumcised, saying that they won't allow Dinah to
marry them without going through that sacred ritual. . . while they are healing
though, still in pain, the brothers kill them all, and plunder the city.
Solidarity, and family pride, maybe, but Jacob, surprizingly, is upset with
them, ever the shrewd one, he knows that they will never be forgiven by the
Canaanites and the Perizzites, and that they are now in a weakened and
precarious position, of having small numbers and few friends. . . . but she of
course was their sister?
And then more tragedy, as Rachel
when she finally has a son, Joseph, he becomes of course Israel's favorite, but
then she has another child, Benjamin. . . son of my right hand, and in child
birth she dies. . . and is buried in Bethlehem. . . her tomb is still there. Jacob
is distraught for some time, and you can imagine why he would hold on so
tightly to Joseph, and then of course Benjamin when Joseph is sold away,
seemingly dead.
If that were not enough, while they
were at Bethel, there also was an issue with Reuben, the oldest boy. . . he was
Leah's son, but he fathered a child with the handmaiden, Bilhah that was mother
to two of his brother's Dan and Naphtali. . .
So with all of these family issues
going on, the scene of today's lesson is hardly a shock. 12 boys with four
different mothers, the politics of who is a child of a wife and who is a child
of a handmaiden, the politics of which are the children of the favorite wife,
rather than the first wife, that Jacob was tricked into marrying. Jealousy over
not being sure which way the inheritance and blessing will flow, due to all of
these politics, and the family history on the subject is also doubtful at best.
All of this is going on and the coat of many colors becomes lost in the shuffle of all the other
strife. . . the brothers do as brothers seem to do in the Biblical stories,
they remove the problem. . . they sell their brother into slavery in Egypt. And
again I say that is not the surprise of the story. The surprise is that Israel,
the nation of Israel, the descendants of these boys, have a united history at
all, some how.
Every other time there is a family
squabble before this the families separate. . . the tribes become as I said
before rival nations. It happens every single time, and all of the genealogies
found in Genesis, are a testament to it. It says again and again. . . and these
were the children of Esau, forever to be known as the Edomites, and these are
the children of Ishmael, and these the descendents of Ham, or Japhet, or Shem.
. . they are always breaking apart and forming new nations, but for some reason
despite all the drama, all the turmoil, all the repetition of the same history
that has split peoples up before. . . Israel, these twelve tribes will remain
united together. It isn't an easy history. . . it includes some infighting and
disagreement. It involves slavery in Egypt, wandering in the desert, struggling
for land, uniting around a King, and then a rival King, a succession of bad
kings, consistently growing worse, into exile, into diaspora, persecution by
empire after empire from Persia, to Greece, to Rome, to Nazi Germany. . .and
somehow is still a nation, not just a state, but a recognizable people as well,
today, still beating the odds.
What is it that keeps this family together?
What is it? The answer may be a clue to the rest of the story, and what keeps
people together still. The easy answer is that they are chosen by God to be a
nation, that the promise was made, the covenant is solid, that the line from
Abraham straight through is there. And I think that is the case for sure. . .
but such was the case for Isaac's and Jacob's generation, too. The promise
could have just been passed to one of the 12 sons, as it had in previous times.
That Rachel's sons were the favored ones, that Joseph or Benjamin could have become
the lone child of promise, or the first born Reuben, as tradition should have
it. . . could you imagine Moses praying to the God of Abraham, and Isaac, of
Jaccob, and of Reuben. . . but it wouldn't be Moses would it, since he was a
Levite. . . No it doesn't happen that way. All of them take their place. . .
God chooses them all. God does it but Joseph becomes the vehicle, and the
lesson of it all is important for any group of people. . . because often groups
are put to the test and often fragment throughout history, and will continue to
do so in the future, because the medicine is not easy. Joseph is a remarkable
man of God.
Quite simply put, Joseph forgives
his brothers: all of them. The roles become reversed, the weak has become
strong, the victim has the lives of his assailants in his hands, and he does
not hold the grudge. The present and the future become more important than the
past. . .and the group survives. It really becomes as simple as that. .
.forgiveness, and forgiveness is hard. . . it is of God. I think there is no
greater proof in the role of God in this story than the fact that Joseph can
forgive his brothers. That kind of perspective, that kind of love only comes
from God. . .and we can pray that we are given such grace in our own lives and
relationships. . . it is the kind of grace that shouts from the torture, from
the chastising, from the cross, "Father, forgive them they know not what
they do."
The trend of human life is to break
apart, whether it is the fragmenting of the church throughout the last 2000
years, the disintegration of Empire after Empire, the political struggles and
fragmentation we face as a culture and a country today, polarized politically,
divided ideologically, fractured into groups, identities, interests. . . or on
a smaller level. . . friendships, marriages, families, churches, cliques,
factions. . . It is likely and normal for all of these things to happen, it is
in our nature, to divide, hold grudges, and break apart. . . but the other does
happen, and when it does God is there, and when God is there, miracles happen.
. . even and most importantly the so simple miracle of forgiveness. . . so
simple, yet so powerful, so simple, yet so difficult, so simple, yet our only
hope in a world fallen into brokenness. . . such is a world of grace. It breaks
the cycle of escalation and separation. . . it allows for God's work to be
done, to happen. . . rather than ours of revenge and the justice of limited
perspective. I pray it at home here when
the winds of politics shift again, as they always do, I pray it in a Russia
holding on to a past gone, but not forgotten, fearing decline on one side, and
fearing the iron grip of a curtain pulled tight again, I pray it in
relationships at every level, and I pray that somehow in the Middle East,
forgiveness could reign, where it hasn't for so long.
I wrote a poem once, looking at this
world as an optimist would, I read it a few weeks ago, "Where I would Like
to Live." It was the one with the line about "chocolate and peanut
butter finding a taste for eachother". . . it also contained the line, "where
history is forgiven, if not forgotten". . . so simple yet so difficult, as
the pendulum of power swings back and forth wielding the guillotine's blade
again and again. . . instead of the song of revenge, we must cry. "Forgive
us our debts", and let us somehow forgive our debtors, we know not what we
do any more than they do, but instead let us forgive, for such is the way of
thy kingdom, and the way of the Kingdom when it comes to be on Earth as it is
in heaven, and it remains the only answer now, next time, and the next time the
tables are turned, when the last are first again and the first are last one
more time, when the meek inherit the Earth, can they forgive the mighty, can that lion and lamb really lie down together, all the nations and peoples
of the earth have been on both sides of oppression, and the cycle will
continue, until we all can forgive. . . hopefully we can, and end the cycle
forever, forever, and ever, may God's perfect will be done. . . Amen.
[1]The
Holy Bible : New Revised Standard Version. 1989 (Ge 37:1-9). Nashville:
Thomas Nelson Publishers.
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