The Visitor

Genesis 50:22-26

We began our journey through Genesis with the privilege of witnessing God making a place for humanity, with direction to fill the earth and exercise stewardship on earth as God’s representatives. Even the ‘punishment’ ensuing from the Babel episode, then, was a fulfilling of what God had in mind for humanity anyway. Eden was lost primarily in the heart, manifesting itself in a restlessness nothing in this world can fully relieve.

God took that restless human and turned the restlessness into a quest for a further place, a promise of land to settle, and descendants who would be as the stars in the sky. But that energy was never entirely focused on God’s direction and manifested itself in struggles fueled by concerns about pecking order.

But God just kept the promise going in ways our human judgement would never predict, or ever approve of, preferring the younger one to bear the promise, and then arranging through strange dreams to send a people-in-the-making off to another land with its own god-king, as a staging ground for its birth.

Genesis gave birth to a world, but so far Scripture has described only a gestation period for a people meant to bear the blessing of creation to the world. Now the book concludes with talk of God coming to visit his people. God’s Spirit visited the watery chaos and brought life. God will bring a new creation out of the womb of Egypt, through the waters of the Nile and the Red Sea.

The books of the Hebrew Bible are filled, as they progress, with talk of one who will yet visit Israel to take the people to a new level of life. God, as usual, did the unusual, and brought not an 'older brother' type of leader, but one despised.

It is my experience (as pastor of three different charges, interim-moderator over extended periods of numerous churches, Presbytery visitor numbers of times, member and convener of various special teams and committees, intern in a large congregation, and growing up in another, all of this over a period of four decades - well ok more counting the growing up) that the community of faith persists in acting and expecting as the people of God always seem to have acted and expected: that our faith-life should follow familiar patterns and worldly paradigms. But we’re in good company. It seems no people of God ever has got it. The disciples spent three years with Jesus and didn’t get it. So I’m not saying this to be ‘negative’ or to get us to beat ourselves up. It just points out all the more that we need to welcome God’s transforming power even as he uses us as instruments of transformation (ever really think about that word: trans-formation?)

Scripture ends as Genesis ends, with an invitation for God to visit. God has shown repeatedly that the one who fulfills his purpose will not be as we expect him/her to be.

My greatest dream for our church is that we would be happy, excited, delirious with joy to welcome in advance that over which we have absolutely no control, no say, no power except to say, raising our hands and eyes and lifting our hearts in utter expectancy, “Come, Lord Jesus.”

Prayer:
Come, Lord Jesus.

The foregoing will be the last Open Journal posting as we have known Open Journal. Open Journal will continue on an occasional basis. For my personal reading I’m going to keep on reading through the whole Bible. I will make occasional posts reflecting on fairly broad swaths of that reading (but be assured I won't copy all that Biblical text into the emailed version!)

Meanwhile, I have in formation a new internet offering that will be intended primarily as a basic online course on the Bible. You may be able to help me decide just what kind of format that will follow: Organized according to topic? Bible book at a time? I don’t know yet. Also my great hope would be to somehow draw totally unchurched people to this. One of the flaws of Open Journal in this regard is it has at times been rather academic, but then I have simply billed it as a sharing of personal study and devotional time and nothing more. I will also need to more disciplined in the timing of offerings of the thing. This new thing I would love to be a beginning of an inquiry that might lead to Alpha, or a temporary small group (on the ‘try before you buy’ principle), or even a sampling of worship. So that means also some strategy is needed for getting it ‘out there’ – to friends or family you may think of, maybe we could even put some enticing little ads in the paper.

Anyway, before ‘launch’ (aiming for Easter), I want to be very clear on the purpose, immediate goals, and ‘how’ of this. So I what I have in mind is to start it on a test-group basis with you, my Open Journal friends, and then reshape it or even rethink it with the help of your feedback, if you are willing.

So I’ll be taking a break from this form of ministry for a little season as I seek to grow this idea, but watch for the occasional posting on Exodus and beyond, with notification of same in your inbox.

Jim

It's Still Difficult

Genesis 50:15-21

Joseph has already assured his brothers that they have nothing to fear from him, that God was at work in their plans. With Jacob gone, however, they imagine the worst. Guilt does that kind of thing.

In the course of that little drama being played out before Joseph, the dream that started all this finds the other end of the arc over the whole story. The brothers throw themselves down before Joseph (recall 37:5-11).

The evoking of the dream controlling the narrative also points to the resolution of the guilt question. The one who was wronged has the power to grant the forgiveness, but Joseph isn’t interested in that power; he points to God. Joseph doesn’t want to dwell on the guilt at all, nor to the dream as something to lord over them. They are all part of God’s dream, God’s plan. The question running through the whole saga is whether there will be death or there will be life. God has shown he is for life.

A kind of footnote question: But why is it all so hard? That remains a real question for those who believe in God’s plan in things, and believe they are participating in God’s vision for things, but find the way difficult to the point of utter discouragement. I would not provide an explanation; that is beyond me, and I struggle with this myself. So together we would just keep returning to what we find in God’s story. Within that story, the Joseph story is filled with pain, but there is this over-arching, controlling dream.

I would say it is still the case that without the dream, the pain would indeed be unbearable. But without the pain, the dream would run the risk of being romanticized and we would lose the capacity to connect with the world we are called to reach.

We live a dream, not a fairy tale.

Prayer:
God, let us minister to one another in the reality of this journey, trusting in the dream you share with us, which is bigger than our frustrations, worries, and way bigger than the guilt that debilitates - either ours or what we impute to others. You are able, and you make us able. Through Christ. Amen.

Tomorrow: The conclusion of our walk through Genesis, and some thoughts about what’s next.

The Shore

Genesis 50:1-14

There is something about the meeting of elements: wind, sky, land and water is probably the most common combination we are drawn to. I suppose skiiers feel the same thing in a different way. There is no doubt an insane exhilaration in being on a mountaintop.

A human meeting of elements can be just as exciting, moving – and risky. Marriage of opposites is potentially a rocky road but can work well (I like what Rick Warren says: If two people were the same one of them wouldn’t be necessary).

Israel and Egypt: apparent opposites. But consider this: How feasible would the long journey with Jacob’s body have been without the very long and thorough Egyptian embalming process? The Egyptian mourning period afforded Jacob the mourning of a king that his place in history warranted.

Does God not give us a basis for hope when there are apparently opposing elements: Jew and Arab, Christian and Muslim, straight and gay, white, yellow, brown, black – whatever? It could even be dynamic.

Prayer:
Transform our minds and hearts, Lord, to set aside any baggage of assumptions and live truly open to the working of your Holy Spirit, who gives birth to new things, new life, and new relationships. Through Christ. Amen.

I Gather

Genesis 49:29-33

I love the phrase, “Gathered to his/my people.” But there is something I find very curious here. There is probably some very simple explanation for this that some Bible scholar out there can explain for me, but how is one person “gathered”? If I’m going to my small group I don’t say I am going to be “gathered” to my friends. I would say, maybe, that we are going to be gathered. What does it mean for one person to be gathered to others? Never thought of this before, and like I suggest above maybe I’m making too much of it. Is it somehow an expression of our being made in God’s image as social beings? What do you think?

Prayer:
God, thank you for making us for friendship with you and one another. Thank you for questions you plant in our hearts that give us opportunity to grow in our understanding, and to grow together. Through Christ. Amen.

History Channel

Genesis 49:1-28

Such a mixture of destines is pronounced here. That is, until we arrive at Joseph. Then the language is reminiscent of the beginning of Genesis, especially verse 25. The power and beauty and purpose of creation (community), is brought to bear in and through God’s chosen bearer of dream and promise.

Can we see in this a form of a later community, called the church? Such a mixture of stories and characters and glorious and inglorious faithful witness and silly turfiism. And yet God chooses and causes his power of creation and recreation to be worked through us.

Prayer:
Refine this vessel, Lord. Amen.

Pattern Breaker

Genesis 48

Like love, trust is a decision, a decision we have to renew regularly under constantly changing circumstances. Each new generation must decide to trust in the promise. In our era, the general promise is that Jesus will be with us as we seek to fulfill the mission he called his own (to seek the lost) and which he passes on to us. One generation’s means of doing that may, or may not, draw on the means that have gone before; it all depends on the time. That’s all that contemporary really means: of the time you’re in. I avoid the word because it has come to have connotations of specific style, especially as it applies to worship.

But anyway, back to trust as a decision. Both the inclusion of Joseph’s sons as sons of Jacob for inclusion in the promise, and the seemingly arbitrary reversal of blessing on them by Jacob are acts of randomly applied grace. The switching of blessing is of course reminiscent of the story in which Jacob is the recipient of the ‘wrong’ choice, but this is more than an echo, in what way we can’t really say. The text itself suggests no reason for the switch and we are probably best to keep our speculative paws off. The fact we don’t know the reason may be part of the meaning. The one thing we might surmise is simply that it is a divinely directed choice.

Just when a new pattern of life would seem to be in formation, God shows that he is ready to shake things up again. Like love, trust is a decision, a decision we have to renew regularly under constantly changing circumstances.

Prayer:
Lord, thank you that you give me the means to understand what I need to understand, and confuse me in the matters that are best left to trust. Thank you for the side of this we might more readily welcome: that you want to break patterns of living that waste and destroy. Through Christ. Amen.

Grammies for Pilgrims

Genesis 47:27-31

“Home.” Say it out loud. For most of us it feels good just to say it. You could use it for a meditative chant. It’s the place you go back to. I know that’s not a positive association for many people who have suffered abuse where they should have experienced only love, but for Jacob it is a good word.

It’s worth noting that within these few verses we move from “Jacob” to “Israel.” Israel is the name Jacob was given along with the dream at Bethel. While it might not seem to us to matter what would happen with his body after he died, for him it must have been important to know that the representation of his bodily life would be going back to where heaven and earth connected, and he was given that new name that would also be the name of the people. We are maybe to see that the whole Joseph story – as romanticized as it has been – falls within the Jacob story.

Maybe his burial back home is kind of compass point for the nation in Egypt that is Israel but not yet known as such, even to themselves. Just a point to ponder: Maybe when God gives us a vision to follow he plants (buries) little compass points for us ahead of us that it’s our job to discover. We have no idea what they are no matter how much (as we need to) we plan. But we’ll know them when we find them. Following a vision is like a treasure hunt. No, that doesn’t mean when the people get back to Promised Land they’ll go dig up ol’ Jacob. It does mean his years of pilgrimage are lived by his descendants in their own down to earth, make-a-difference-in-the-world way, and God doesn’t leave us without prizes to excite us and encourage us along the way.

Prayer:
God you give us such an amazing journey. It’s so sad we get caught up in some of things we do. Keep our vision pure, and our journey focused on what you place before us. Through Christ. Amen.

The Man

Genesis 47:13-26

We abruptly leave the emotion of family reunion to see Joseph at work as shrewd (cold?) administrator. We know that this earthly business is part of the fulfillment of the dream. I talked yesterday about vision and how tough it might have been for Jacob to keep hope in the vision he had been given. Well, when you deal with vision you also necessarily deal with processes for communicating it, implementing it, and celebrating it. This is all critical if it is a vision to be shared, which it is, or there is little point in it in any context we would deal with vision. But in this case (in today’s passage), did the vision and the dream also specify how what was to be done should be done? Looking back, what Joseph interpreted to Pharaoh only said what had to be done in broad terms. Then Joseph was appointed administrator/ruler. Nothing was said about process. That was entrusted to Joseph. No detailed action plan was discussed. Now we see how it is done, in rather stark terms. So the question I’m asking is, “Was this process also what God intended, with the people giving up everything to the point of selling themselves for food? Sure, hard times call for tough measures, but as part of God’s plan could there not have some other way? And what was done with all that money? Where did they put all that livestock? What, exactly, did it mean that all those people became slaves of Pharaoh? One thing it meant was that it set the stage, an economic structure, in which we’ll find Joseph’s own people in a state of utter bondage!

The Bible generally takes a rather pessimistic view of human governance, but it doesn’t commend theocracy either. That’s even worse. You end up with war in the name of God and all that. What you generally get is the idea of government as a kind of reluctant necessity. Paul said to support government because it tends to work for order more than disorder. But there is something out of kilter with it, by nature. When Joseph acts as worldly administrator, even as part of God’s plan, I see a different Joseph than the one who wept on his father’s neck and told his brothers not to whack each other. The Book of Revelation sees commerce, the military, and government becoming more and more one, with a consolidation of power over freedom and individuality. Worldly power has a way of bringing out our need for control and influence and remaking people and things in our own image. It’s the response of some to childhood fears that they have never left behind. If you control as much as you can around you, you are helping to make sure nothing will hurt you, call you stupid, pick you last or turn you down for a date. You do the picking. You set the agendas. You arrange and rearrange everything in your environment. Anyone you work with who has legitimate authority of his or her own is a threat. You work to undermine that authority and replace it with your own constructed variety. Maybe you have this in your workplace. It’s my impression it’s mostly people like this running our world, and that’s really scary.

Prayer:
Your Word, Lord, shows Jesus calling really ordinary people to be the means, your instruments, clay in your hand, to shape a new world. Daily let me humble myself before you, be your slave, divest myself of all pride and all need for control, putty in your hands to do what you desire and only what you desire, and do it to my utmost and with whatever gifts and abilities you have given me for that purpose and that purpose alone. Through Christ. Amen.

Oasis

Genesis 47:1-12

Five selected brothers come before Pharaoh. By protocol, he begins the conversation. He starts the conversation the way zillions of conversations have started, with something like, “So what do you guys do?” We’ve heard that shepherds are looked down on, but they admit to this. Although the brothers say they have to come to live here “awhile,” the response to the request leads to the suggestion of a more settled sort of life than any family in Genesis we’ve got to know. There is even the possibility of some of them becoming his majesty’s royal ranchers.

The “awhile” theme is picked up in the moving conversation between Pharaoh and Jacob. Pharaoh asks another question. This is one many seniors love to be asked, or they even prod you to guess how old they are. Here, Pharaoh just asks it. Jacob answers in such a way as to indicate not just a length of time but the duration of a pilgrimage, a life of sojourning that he intimates has been tougher than before. Jacob, like his father and grandfather, has been living by vision and promise. As life wears on it can get harder to be sustained by it. Each blow makes you wonder if it’s real. And lately he’s had some biggies.

“It’s no fun getting old,” I often hear. Or, “The golden years aren’t what they’re cracked up to be.” Meanwhile everything you hold dear is changing, even the church, for crying out loud (maybe literally).

Others have visions that seem to be so slow in coming into view. People get disillusioned without even little victories to celebrate, against the influence of some who seem bent on handwringing and looking for problems. Celebrating victories is seen as papering over the problems. Living by vision can be really, really tough.

But now Jacob and the boys get a break from all that. Good for them. “Awhile” indicates they know that this is a not Freedom 55. But it’s a nice break from the usual sojourn.

Prayer:
Lord our shepherd, thank you for leading us to the green pastures and clear waters we need to sustain us for our sojourn. Keep us looking up so we can look forward with confidence. Through Christ the Way. Amen.

Reunited

Genesis 46

I can’t imagine what it must be like for families who are reunited after, say, a child has been abducted and comes home again after a few years; or when someone is away on purpose for a time, as with someone serving in Afghanistan. For a lot of people around here a loved one was away on the Great Lakes much of the year. Then there are people from families into which they were adopted who catch up with siblings and other relatives after most of their life, and take great delight in learning about their ‘new’ family. I have not had direct experience of any of that. Even observing it from close range can’t possibly let you truly know the depth of that experience and all the emotions along with it.

So it is totally unimaginable to me to know what was going through the hearts and heads of Joseph and Jacob as they embraced. Joseph was assumed to be dead. Now he was not only alive but was found to have become a larger than life kind of figure. But now it was just a son and father embracing and bringing their lives together again. Maybe this moment was even more intense for Joseph than for the father, knowing all along the true situation. It’s interesting that the one before whom others had appeared now is described as appearing before his father, falling on his neck and crying a long time.

Prayer:
Lord, thank you for those around us whom we utterly can trust. Provide such relationships to those who don’t have this. Transform homes where there is bitterness and distrust. Transform those who make trust in them difficult. Help us learn from and grow to be more like your Son, who traveled far from you, his Dad, for our sake. Amen.

Brothers again

Genesis 45

The speech of Judah just before this is overwhelming for Joseph. Joseph hears about his father, he hears the anguish over the loss of himself from Jacob, and the further anguish over Benjamin.

He sends out all the Egyptians. This is personal, intensely so. But we might see even a bit more in the privacy. Joseph as ruler has become thoroughly Egyptian, thoroughly the lord of the land. None of that helps him in dealing with this deeply personal matter. It has put him in the position to deal with it, but none of it counts now. This is now about the fulfilling of that controlling dream that started the saga – not to lord it over his brothers, not as ruler here - but as a brother himself under the same God. That God is the Lord of history, the Lord of the lands, and the Lord over this story. Only one who truly acknowledges the rule and grace of God could make the stunningly perceptive and grace-filled acknowledgement that starts verse 8.

The make-you-smile, familiar-to-all-of-us family plea of verse 24 is a fitting amen to the moving reconciliation that has just occurred.

Prayer:
Lord, grant me even a small measure of the perception and grace of Joseph, in order to see you at work in the things that would cause me offense. Through Christ. Amen.