August 17, 2014; Genesis 45:1-15

Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all those who stood by him, and he cried out, “Send everyone away from me.” So no one stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?” But his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence. 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. Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to me, do not delay. You shall settle in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children, as well as your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. I will provide for you there—since there are five more years of famine to come—so that you and your household, and all that you have, will not come to poverty.’ And now your eyes and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my own mouth that speaks to you. You must tell my father how greatly I am honored in Egypt, and all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here.” 

Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, while Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him. 

***

If life were fair, if life were even, it wouldn’t look like this. It would look a little more like Ferguson, Missouri, a place of deception and secrets, and fighting an eye for an eye. If life were fair, if life were even, it would look a little more like one race car driver hitting another and then the other hitting the first, road rage at merely faster speeds. If life were fair, if life were even, it would look a little more like a victim’s family watching lethal injection for their loved one’s murderer. If life were fair, if life were even, it would look a little more like a political race when one insult is returned by another. If life were fair, if life were even, even, it would look a little more like getting even.

If life were fair, if life were even, it would look a lot more like Joseph returning blow for blow, conspiring to kill his brothers, as they did him, throwing them in a pit as they did him, selling them into slavery as they did him, and telling their father, with evidence of a bloody coat of many colors, that yet another son had died, as they him. If life were even it might look a little more like this, a little more fair. It wouldn’t look like this, like Joseph turning the other cheek, conspiring to save his brothers from famine - unlike they did him, pulling them out of the pit of poverty - unlike they did him, lavishing them with gifts - when they stripped him, and asking first, if their father is alive, the opposite of what they him. 

Some may say, that Joseph gives his brother’s so much, simply because he has been given so much, that Joseph is making things even, but even doesn’t look like this, it is a much sadder story of counting out rights and wrongs, and this is a story of righting wrongs, Joseph righting his brothers’ wrongs, and I think when one has been a Joseph, there is a deep desire not to get even, not even to make things fair, but instead to make things better, in hopes that life might one day be good.

It is the desire of an abuse victim that the perpetrator realizes their wrongs and is somehow able to change, and that in telling the story, the victim hopes the system also begins to change. It is the desire of a divorcee when all they hope is for healing and happiness for the other and themselves, and that the their challenges like addiction and enabling, and mental illness would some day be healed for all who struggle. It is the loved ones and community of Sandy Hook recently creating the strongest gun control laws in the country.  It is thousands of children fleeing gangs and drug violence in central America and lining up at our border rather than joining in to fight. It is Luke, having traveled to Israel and Palestine and though feeling strongly against Israel, reaching out with questions and openness to his closest, respected Jewish friend. It is the old woman in apartheid South Africa having watched Mr. Van der Broek come into her home and brutally murder her son and husband, stand in the courtroom during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings and say, “"My husband and son were my only family. I want, therefore, for Mr. Van der Broek to become my son. I would like for him to come twice a month to the ghetto and spend a day with me so that I can pour out on him whatever love I still have remaining within me." It is Joseph, a victim of violence and systems of abuse, recognizing that, “God sent me before you to preserve life, to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors.” 

Joseph is a survivor, and to survive is to respond beyond one’s victimhood, to have seen life anew, and respond with the hope of life preserved. Joseph has seen what it is to survive. He was not killed when his brothers first conspired, has was pulled out of a deadly pit, freed from jail, and made ruler over all the Land of Egypt. I wonder if the families of Sandy Hook walked by a playground and heard the exuberant cacophony and found themselves smiling, and knowing that life was what mattered. I imagine the elderly woman of apartheid sitting at table with son’s murderer who was now her murderous son, and finding ways the one reminded her of the other, and knowing life was indeed preserved. In my own life, after a time of victimhood, I remember being surprised by the sound of my own laughter, and that seeds I planted actually grew into flowers and fruit, and I began to feel again what it was to be alive, and to survive, and I knew getting even was no longer the point, and I didn’t want life to be fair. I wanted life to be full of laughter, and flowers, and fruit, living was the point. God had given me life, and life again. Over and over God gave Joseph life and life again. And when you been touched so deep by the pain of life, and by the gift of life, you realize that there is more than fair, there is more than even. That life can look like this, like Joseph and his brothers, survivors of a life preserved.

August 3, 2014, Genesis 32:21–31

Genesis 32:21–31 Sermon

So the present passed on ahead of him; and he himself spent that night in the camp. The same night he got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children, and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had.
Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him.
Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.”
But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.”
So he said to him, “What is your name?”
And he said, “Jacob.”
Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.”
Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.”
But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?”
And there he blessed him.

So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.

***

There are nights where all one can do is wait for the morning. There are nights where all one can do is wait for the morning. Where the desire for sleep wrestles with the desires of the day to come. Where sunset and sunrise are merely bookends to shottey dreams that attempt to narrate the day to come, nightmares parsing out the future, hoping to foreshadow some life changing event. When was the last night all you could do was wait for the morning? Was it seeing that former family member, past lover, future in-laws, old best friend, someone for whom your relationship has changed and may change again? Was it something which altered your life course, a interview, a hard conversation, a diagnosis, a text from a significant other, a test, a first day of school or work, a plane to land, a distance to travel, a place to visit, and for some reason, the meeting can’t happen until the morning. Yet, despite the hours you’ve been given it becomes a night where all you can do is wait for the morning. What was the last morning for which you waited and for what were you waiting?

For my single friends and I, a common conversation is about waiting for phone calls or lack there ofs. There have been evenings where we have waited for tentative plans with crushes to materialize into set times and places, and we have either waited and watched the clock pass bedtime, and then midnight, knowing we were not going to receive the agreed upon call, or the phone would ring belatedly and make us feel like an after thought either way. Other times, when the clock has past the respectful calling hour, we have ourselves made the call only to wonder if it would have come otherwise at all. And so sleep becomes illusive with the wonder of silence, and what we should or should not have done or said, or what we did do or say, or what in the world is going on with the other person that we have no clue about. Its a wrestling match with the unnamed.

Jacob is in this sleepless wrestling match. As a child he came out striving, grabbing at his twin brother Esau’s heal. He later stole Esau’s inheritance and then their father’s blessing from Esau. Now years later Jacob must meet Esau again and win Esau’s favor. This older twin brother who has always been stronger then he, and is now more powerful than he, and certainly has every right to be angry with Jacob, is just across the river, waiting until the morning when the two of them will meet. In the days prior Jacob has sent extravagant gifts of wealth across the river and just before sunset, he has sent his wives, his maids, and his children to cross the ford of the Jakkob, in hopes of appeasing his brother, in hopes that amends are made before the morning. Jacob has essentially sent a blubbering voicemail and trying to pretend things are normal text, and hasn’t hasn't heard anything back. Maybe, Jacob has written his will and said his goodbyes before he goes into break of dawn surgery. He has studied his books and his notes for his test. He has been to a counselor or called a friend to figure out what he should say, but now it is the point where there is nothing he can do but wait and wait alone with the unnamed.

Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. I wonder if Jacob wondered about tricking his brother out of his inheritance and this took the man to the ground. I wonder if he thought about stealing his brother’s blessing and climbed on top of the man. I wonder if he regretted the wrongs of his youth that had lasted into adulthood, and pinned the man to the ground. This tossing and turning, stomach down, head on pillow, covers on and off, memory and old memory, new scenario and alternate scenario, over and over, is the wrestling of life. No matter if we win, we are struck on the hip socket and it is put out of joint simply because life is a wrestling. There is pain, there is guilt, there is hurt, there is surgery, and tests, and interviews, and hard conversations, and silence, and relationships that were and are no longer, and meetings that have to happen after long periods of time, or meetings that will never happen again, or make or break it phone calls to come, and wrestling matches with the unnamed. We don’t go through life without a scratch. If we are honest, there are times when we are put out of joint and that remains with us. Yet, hopefully we still find the blessing in winning against the unnamed, the blessing that we can be named.

You can come through surgery and never know why you became ill, and you may not make it through the same as you went in, but what is the point of merely being a man with a limp when you can be called Israel. You can go on a date or be stood up and not ever really be able to pinpoint why exactly it worked or didn’t, but what is the point of limping around when alone you won a wrestling match with that which was wronger than yourself. You can pass a test, or an interview, after failing others, and still not know why you were chosen for this career path, but know that you wrestled until the morning came. In the light of morning Jacob saw that there was more to life then the wrestling match, more to life then the wrestling match with the man, and more to life than the wrestling match with his brother. There were still blessing to come.

Jacob, true to form, did not let go without a blessing. Jacob held onto the man, even as day breaking. The man says, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.”
But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.”
So the man said to him, “What is your name?”
And he said, “Jacob.”
Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed.”
Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.”
But the man said, “Why is it that you ask my name?”
And there he blessed him.

This morning, after a much delayed flight, and good, but utterly exhausting vacation, I left my friend Marci’s house just as the day was breaking. All night I had thought of many things, of a sermon too tired to be written though I certainly tried, of my friends and I waiting for crushes to call, of the friends I needed to call, and the scenarios and memories in my own life which needed attention and revision. My list of should’ofs and shouldnt’ofs, and need tos. I listened again to my sermon podcasts as the flats of Boise stretched behind me into the pink sunrise, and soon my podcasts were over and I pressed play on my CD wondering what was in the disk drive. Then the music of blessing poured out from the unnamed and one of my favorite summer albums began to play and I rolled open the sunroof. The shadows of my imagination which had once held the nightmares of all that today would bring, were illuminated amber on the slowly rising and twisting hills. And I knew that no matter what today brought, that I had been blessed, blessed with the clarity that came from a life of wrestling, and the gift that comes from a unnamed God of blessing.

So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip.