Dwell not on former things;
Ponder not the past.
Look, I’m doing a new thing.
It’s already sprouting up;
do you not see it?
(Isaiah 43:18-19a)
I confess I do not yet see it, the new thing sprouting up. Perhaps it is still too early. Perhaps the past is too much with us, with me. Perhaps I’m still looking back, at what’s been lost, not forward to what will come. Perhaps.
The voice of the scripture above is that of the unknown prophet of the exile who speaks hope in the pages of Isaiah. The setting seems to be Babylon in the 6th century BCE, in the time between the wreckage of the ancient Israelite kingdom and the new ways to be the people of God that would emerge at the end of the 6thcentury and beyond.
Just before the scripture quoted above, the prophet evokes the language of Exodus 15, the liberation of the people. In an iconic scene, they stand, trapped, between the sea and the pursuing army of the pharaoh:
Thus says Yhwh, who laid out a way
in the sea,
a path in the mighty waters,
who lured them out, chariot
and horse,
army and auxiliaries together.
They lie down; they will not
rise again.
Extinguished, like a wick they flame
out. (Isaiah 43:16-17)
Having evoked that moment of panic and miracle, the prophet directs them to the new situation. They stand now not on the edge of sea, with its suggestion in that culture of primordial chaos, but on the edge of a desert. Speaking again in the voice of the Lord, the prophecy continues:
Now I will set a path in the
wilderness,
provide streams in the desert.
(Isaiah 43:19b)
We find ourselves, many of us who have been part of the Christian Reformed Church, in just such a place. The Babylonians have struck. The denomination has been plundered. The vessels of the temple have been hauled away. Or, are about to be. We stand on the edge of the desert, and we wonder, what’s next?
What I hear echoing through all this are the words of the prophet: “Don’t get hung up on the past; don’t waste your time pondering the past. See, the Lord is doing something new; it’s already sprouting up; don’t you see it.”
As I did above, I confess again that I don’t see it. Not yet. I’m not well positioned to see it. I am a retired pastor on the far edge of the country, remote in every way from those who will be making decisions going forward. I can only dream.
I dream of progressive congregations connecting in new ways. We need an umbrella organization, an alliance of progressive Reformed congregations. In this, perhaps new conservative groups like the Alliance of Reformed Churches can help show us the way. There are practical matters to be attended to. Clergy matters, for example: pensions, insurance, credentialling, and support. Organizational matters: negotiating the considerable difficulties of untangling from the CRC and reconstituting congregations in the new ecclesiastical world in which we find ourselves. Ministry matters: how to support missions, campus ministries, and justice work, how to be the church in the world.
But more than these practical matters, we need to provide a place for congregations to land. Not just progressive congregations, but congregations in the middle, congregations that include people with a wide variety of opinions about divisive matters but who wish to stay together, for whom the unity of the congregation is paramount. There are many of these.
Make no mistake. Those who are controlling the agenda in the CRC will try to drive their wedge into such congregations. They have already made it difficult if not impossible for office holders in the church who dissent from the draconian actions of Synods 2022-24 to remain in the denomination. They have instructed the Office of the General Secretary to address the question of membership requirements, to be reported in 2025. Will members as well as office holders in the future be required to sign a pledge that they embrace the synod’s views on human sexuality? And will the synod in the future begin to roll back the right of women in the denomination to serve as elders and deacons and pastors? I suspect they will. And if those things happen, where will such congregations go? Who will support them?
For these and more reasons we need a way for congregations to come together, an alliance of progressive churches. But the dream must include not only congregations but a network of support for people who have been affected by recent denominational decisions in the CRC. Or people who are about to be affected by these decisions. I’m thinking here not only of clergy, many of whom find their jobs at stake, but for people who loved the CRC they know and who now feel that the church has been snatched away from them. I hear from many of these people. They ask, “Where will I go?” “What will I do?”
For those asking such questions, we need not only to provide places for them to go where they can find fellowship but a deep and rich conversation, a conversation about what it means to own the Reformed tradition in our time. For many people questions have been piling up about the way the faith has been framed in the CRC and similar churches. They sense something terribly wrong about a church that claims grace but seems to practice law, a church that speaks of love but fosters hate, a church that offers prayers in the name of Jesus but seems at times never to have met him. They sense that the good things in the Reformed tradition have been swallowed up in a miasma of ugly things. They long to learn the faith anew.
Make no mistake. This is not a longing for Christianity-lite. It’s not smorgasbord Christianity they seek, taking a little from here and a little from there, whatever their hearts desire. This longing is a longing to know the faith deeply, to come to grips with the long tradition stretching back to the apostles. This is not a desire to run away from the Bible but into it more deeply so that the Bible in the way the church has always seen speaks divine grace, not law.
What’s required is a way for people to join a theological conversation in which deep difference on many things is brought together with deep faith, so that we can talk, and in our talk own each other as fellow followers of Jesus determined to be faithful disciples in the world in which we find ourselves.
Above all we need a faith that liberates us from what “Christianity” has come to mean in our culture, where it has too often come to stand for all that opposes humanness. As Marilynne Robinson says in several places in her book on Genesis (Reading Genesis; see my review here), it’s God who stands alone saying of his “incorrigible” (her word) human race: no, I will not destroy them; I love them still. Prodigal God, besotted with his creation.
Perhaps if we preached that, if we held that up, if we built that sort of love into our ecclesiastical systems, perhaps if we practiced that, worshiped in that way, the world around us would notice, and churches that have emptying out would once again fill up in praise of such a God.
So I dream. How about you?
Clay
21 responses to “WHAT’S NEXT: WISPS OF A DREAM”
Clear and compassionate. And conservative in the best sense, as you express it in these striking sentences– ” This longing is a longing to know the faith deeply, to come to grips with the long tradition stretching back to the apostles. This is not a desire to run away from the Bible but into it more deeply so that the Bible in the way the church has always seen speaks divine grace, not law.” Amen and amen!
I dream, as well. Anything that takes me away from the nightmare created by pious hierarchy is a blessing. Dream on!
Yes, we need to dream our way out of this nightmare. With God, all things are possible.
Dear Clay, I love this wisp.
The networks we have seen develop in the past few years have become cheesy denominations. They want to be modern, and yet still want to do much of the shared work of churches that a denomination handles.
The other main option, in my opinion, is modernizing an existing 400 year old denomination from within.
What am I as a member to do now, confess to our Council that I am against the new decrees? Looking at Article 59 of Church Order.
My dream is that the “new thing” is a church that takes Jesus’ teachings seriously; an evangelical (gospel-centered) church that is not synonymous with the Republican Party; a church of women and men who willingly bear crosses; a church that understands the Triumphal Entry is an entry on a donkey, not a horse; a church that is not seeking power but looking to serve the poor, the vulnerable, the week. I actually think that is possible if we are unshackled from the abusive use of the confessions that has sadly been too much a part of our story.
Thank you Clay, As a missionary family in Nigeria, Sierra Leone and St. Cloud MN we did not worship the Bible, any creeds or confessions. We worshipped Jesus and a lot of our neighbors thought that was a good idea. Some churches even started where none had been before and did the same.
Thank you so much, Clay. I too do not see clearly the denomination that will arise out of the ashes but I am hopeful. We may need a temporary safe landing place from which we can explore options (RCA, PCUSA) with more due diligence. Perhaps an association of New Reformed Churches looking for a more permanent home. Can we withhold funds from the CRCNA ministry fund whie still contributing to the Agencies like Thrive, etc? Will the Better Together funds won from Lily become available to financially support the 28, 40, or 60 (or more) churches that are ready to disaffiliate? Can the affirming churches begin to openly welcome and nurture the LGBTQ+ Christians that have been wounded by the CRCNA?
Dreaming and praying. Thank you for this, Clay
I just finished reading G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man. I don’t have the scholarship to follow everything he said, but I really appreciated the summary chapter where he refers to the low points in church history. The church has seemingly died several times over, in various ways, when all historical logic would have relegated Christianity to the dustheap of history. But beyond all expectation, the church has always miraculously risen again, in the face of seemingly overwhelming obstacles — physical, philosophical, cultural, political, and theological obstacles. The Body of Christ is alive, just as Jesus himself was alive and is alive. Sometimes it takes more than three days to witness the resurrection, but for sure it is coming. Taking the long view and the broad view, I am not surprised by what is happening in the CRC, just interested to see what else God has in store for those of us who are in Christ.
Thank you for your wise words, Clay.
The dream, for progressive and affirming people in the denomination, must also include caring for the queer people in your congregations. They are there, even if not very visible or even out to their families or themselves. And they are hurt most.
Leslie, you are right that congregations should care for queer people. I thought about this as I wrote the piece. Would some future alliance or denomination require that congregations be open and affirming? Not just permit but require? And, if so, would that be the right thing to do, given the present circumstances? I don’t think that there are easy answers to these questions. The position I took–invite congregations in the middle into any new fellowship–comes from the belief that there are many of these congregations and that they are on a journey. They are taking the journey at a slow pace because there are many among them who cannot move faster. I stand with that, but I’m aware that it may be seen as a failure to truly welcome those who have been excluded.
I’ve been waiting for someone else to sing this tune. Thanks for stepping up Clay.
I found a link to a church that likes to celebrate gay pride:
https://www.rca.org/
They are down to 60k members so you may want to help them out.
We too have to lead with humility and curiosity around the Word of God; recognizing that we do not know all the answers (and wow — aren’t our creeds and confessions actually first derived from that … not the other way around?) — progressives can make the same mistakes as conservatives; I heard it said recently (kelly corrigan hosting esther perrel) that “certainty is the enemy of change and change equals growth”… and if we are less certain we can remain curious. Change only happens with curiosity. We have had a lot of certainty to deal with here in the CRC. Let’s hope this new thing can lean curiously with humility. Seems there’s been a lot less humility happening these days too.
Thanks for the whispers of hope, Clay. I too envision a supportive affiliation of churches that share resources and reforming theology, but without the authoritarian structures of a denomination.
Indeed, God’s love is the only hope for the Church. It’s strange to me that so many see that love as unwilling to make behavioral requirements that humans do not naturally assent to!
JESUS IN JOSEPH / JEALOUS BROTHERS AND ME
Posted onApril 20 by Agent X
A Sunday Sermon for Last Church
Today we come to the table of the Lord to eat his body and drink his blood. This is the most sacred part of our worship, the most intimate moment we have with Jesus as a church. Eating his body and drinking his blood, as he describes in John 6, is a repulsive idea. When I was a kid, it made me think of Count Dracula.
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Funny, maybe. Funny to a kid. But to seriously contemplate eating someone’s flesh is a terrible thing. In 1972, the Uraguayan rugby team survived a plane crash in the Andes by means of such morbid contemplation. For them, and for those of us who find ourselves mortified by their story, it was no laughing matter; it was a somber thing if ever there was one, something to be ashamed of instead. The report of their cannibalism caused a backlash until the survivors revealed they had rationalized it based on their faith and practice of Eucharist.
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The rugby team represents an extreme outlier case of Christian experience. By far, most of us never had that experience and never will. Over the course of my life worship in our tradition attempted to be just as somber but nowhere near as morbid. I never heard a minister officiate the table and remark on the cannibalistic aspect of our worship. On the contrary, I heard many lessons about “discerning the body” and “eating in an unworthy manner.”
This is a concept the church learns in the letter of First Corinthians. We want to take care not to eat judgment on ourselves, and this normally (in my experience) was treated as a matter of proper introspection. I grew up in a church tradition where the observance of communion was a silent practice. The whole church would sit in almost complete silence passing trays of cracker and grape juice back and forth and eating a tiny pinch and sipping a tiny drip. This was reverence, as I understood it.
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In that moment of silence, it is presumed each member partaking would quietly and reverently humble themselves and contemplate the cross of Christ. If your mind wondered away a moment, I suppose that would mean you were eating in an unworthy manner. Heaven help you not get distracted by a buzzing fly! You didn’t want to eat judgment!
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To be frank, I think when I was young, I observed communion more in fear of eternal damnation than in either reverence or joy. It all seemed so important, but I didn’t really know why.
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I would try to visualize Jesus hanging on a Roman cross forgiving my sin. But I’m not sure I always maintained this inner reverence. I thank God it passed quickly, because as an American teenager with a Walkman and MTV, my attention to such formal introspection had a short shelf life. I wasn’t distracted by a fly nearly so much as a pretty girl.
Once I was grown and studied Bible in the academy, I came to a different view of that most holy moment. “Discerning the body” is not some effort at navel gazing, not really. Rather, and this idea totally upends all the silence and the tiny portions, St. Paul would have us discerning the body depicting a meal we share with others, one in which we wait to eat until even the poor and lowly are seated with us.
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St. Paul has such a potent idea that the church be unified! Discerning the body so as not to eat and drink judgment means we take care to share this moment with lowly people among us, that we come together as ONE. Sadly, that is an aspect we were totally corrupting unwittingly all along as a congregation. It was not the distraction of a fly or a girl for one individual to worry about, but a concern we all share as ONE.
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That’s an important concept we don’t generally talk about even to this day. Perhaps it is one we should literally discuss as we sit around a real table and break real bread as we shatter the silence in conversation and song.
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The Heart of Jesus and the Table of Apocalypse
But today I want to take you into Jesus’s heart as you eat this meal at this table. I want to reveal Jesus to you in the bread and wine. This is yet another aspect of communion observance. There is a meditation involved, but it’s not so much your navel in focus as it is Jesus’s heart. Yes, as a group, an assembly daring to become ONE in prayer at table, we can have a heart-to-heart meeting with Jesus. I want you to see him afresh and to hear him anew. I want you to feel what he feels when you come to this table, and that is a notion I never heard anyone preach before.
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How can we know the mind of God? How can we know the heart of Christ?
We can listen to him tell his story.
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We are not the first to get this meal all messed up. What exactly are the proper table manners at THIS TABLE? In order to ask such a question, we must get a proper perspective, and a proper perspective comes into view when first we talk about Adam and Eve at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That sends us all the way back to the beginning of creation, to the Garden of Eden.
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Go there with me now.
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In the garden, God loves his creation. He loves his creatures and places the man and the woman within a good creation. We know this because as Genesis 1 describes it, God creates a little more each day for six days, rests on the seventh, and hold’s Judgment Day court at the end of each day finding the creation to be good. This goodness continues reverberating and coursing through creation as a harmonious peace we call shalom.
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God’s creative love is immense! The proper loving response to this love is simple. It’s not hard to understand at all. Any gullible, naked farmer can do it, and so can we.
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There is one single rule this man and woman simply must obey, and it is truly an easy rule. They can eat from any tree in the garden, including the tree of life, but the one tree in the middle of the garden, the one God designates as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, that tree they are prohibited from eating. If they eat of that tree, they will die, and shalom is no longer pulsating through creation.
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Ain’t that something?
You can literally count the rules on one finger! The consequences, though, well… you can’t count them in a lifetime.
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For our purpose today, we note mainly how the world is ordered (or disordered) with a meal! The man and the woman go around the garden cultivating and ruling over all creation with a dominion given by God and everything is good. The world is at peace. They are like high priests in a ceremonial worship where their tending of flowers, even their nakedness, and in fact even their mere breath, bring glory to God! And at the center of all that worship and honor is a meal with one simple rule.
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The breaking of this one simple rule has had dire consequences ever since. We can sum up those consequences in the word “death.” Every muder, every unwanted pregnancy, every war, cancer, heart attack, and wrinkled up, old age that kills us and every thorn, thistle, weed, or pain, sweat of the brow, fear and curse ever known to mankind sprouted from the moment this meal was not eaten in a worthy manner. Adam and Eve ate judgment on themselves and all their children.
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That is the story at the start of all stories in creation. It is the way the Bible as a whole, it is the way the book of Genesis begins.
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Today, Christians treat Genesis as some sort of theological mine from which to dig up refutations against Charles Darwin and to explain away dinosaur bones. Let us not reduce such an important story to these ancillary matters. Let us find world order and redemption instead.
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In the beginning was a meal. A meal and a tree of life. We find this tree of life returning again at the end of Revelation, the end of our Christian Bible. I would argue, we find it again all through scripture, actually, but that would be an argument for another day. At the moment, I ask you to consider the other end of Genesis, the epic story of Joseph, son of Jacob, a sweeping epic that consumes the last thirteen chapters of the book.
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I ask you to notice how along the way to Joe’s story, things in creation have grown worse, not better. Adam and Eve are no sooner expelled from the garden and their two sons have a jealous dispute about how to worship God, and Cain kills his brother Abel! Within just six generations of sons, Lamech arises, pronouncing curses and claiming he will order the world by killing people who wound him. The shalom seems to be slipping further and further out of reach as death comes to rule over the humans.
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But also notice that our loving God comes to restore and repair his broken relationship with creation. He gives Adam and Eve yet another son, and through his generations raises up Noah, a man through whom he judges the world, mankind, and starts it all over again. This love of God remains even though at turn after turn, his redemption is thwarted.
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After destroying creation and starting again, God promises not to use that method of redemption ever again. Eventually, he calls Abram (soon to be called Abraham) and his wife to bear his promises of redemption. God will be with these people and rehabilitate them and through them bring his redemptive shalom back into the world.
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As we find our bearings in this story of the world, there are two things we need to say to help us make sense of it (actually many, but two for our purpose today): 1) The Bible tells the story first and foremost of God. God is the hero. So even when we read about Abraham or Jacob or Joseph or David or St. Paul, the real hero is not the little boy who kills the giant, but God who guides his stone. And 2) All the problems of our world began with improper eating arrangements. Theologically, at root, our problem is table manners. We got into our mess with a meal – our forebears ate judgment on us – and we get out of this mess as we learn proper table manners.
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We have already noted how the whole Bible is bookended (framed) with the meal at the tree of life, and now we notice how all of Genesis is framed in a salvation meal too.
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The drama of God calling and loving Abraham and his children goes through numerous twists and turns. God makes everlasting covenant-promises to Abe, promises of salvation, of land, and descendants. And God stretches Abe’s faith to the breaking point along the way. Abe and his wife stumble, and he makes a baby with the servant girl, a scandal if ever there was one! But God insists, even this will not thwart his purposes with Abe. When Abe finally gets his promised son, God calls him to sacrifice this gift on the altar, and Abe obeys, which puts this covenant trust in great jeopardy. But God stays Abe’s hand at the last moment.
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But then that boy grows up and has two sons, and like Cain and Abel before them, these two descendants descend into murderous strife. Jacob, whose name means “Liar/Deceiver” manages to appease his brother and avoid murder eventually, but the threat is there and is very real. But along the way, we find God’s promises and love must contend with very deceitful and manipulative people.
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But as the saga unfolds, we are drawn deeper and deeper into the hearts and minds of this family, and as readers we can identify and even share their experience. We see ourselves in them as we find God in them too. Their story becomes our story. And the story follows Jacob and his sons specifically.
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We see Jacob fall in love with Rachel, and like any good love song on the radio, we find ourselves sympathizing. We tap our toe and feel the rhythm of this love song as it twists through the manipulations of Uncle Laban who wants to marry off his older daughter too. So far, it’s all highly understandable, even though it deals with a distant culture from long ago. Leah needs a husband too, and Jacob may as well be hers.
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Ah… but the way Laban deals with this is simply treacherous! Jacob has bound himself to promises he must now keep, and this leads to years and years of sacrifice so that he can love Rachel, but that love now bears the baggage of loving Leah too. And Leah, poor Leah! Who doesn’t feel her pain? Leah, like her daddy (like Jacob too, for that matter) knows how to manipulate people, and taking a page from Abe’s story, she offers her servant girl to Jacob in order to make a baby!
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This is NOT planned parenthood! This is unplanned chaos! The roots of intergenerational jealousy sink deep in the soil of this deceitful garden, as Jacob, his two wives, and their two servant girls make a family, eventually consisting of twelve sons! These twelve sons from Jacob, the LIar, are the patriarchs of Israel! Their drunken debauchery is the spring from which God must work out our salvation!
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And along comes Joseph, eventually, who is Jacob’s favorite son, born in his old age of his true love, Rachel. Rachel, that maiden he met at the well that day long ago and stole his heart! Joe is the son Rachel bears him, and so it’s only natural that Jake loves Joe most.
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And Joe, it turns out, is a tattletale, Daddy’s pet, he gets the fancy sport coat and all the favor. But that’s not all. Joe, also is an arrogant little punk with big dreams of grandeur, and he enjoys spouting off at dinner with the family how some day, when he grows up, all these brothers will come and bow low to him.
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The brothers hate him. They HATE him!
If he were your little brother, you’d hate him too.
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This is a familiar pattern by now. The brotherly jealousy and hate and murder plots have been humming all through Genesis since Cain and Abel. What is God, our hero, going to do with and through this?
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What Joe’s brothers mean for evil, God uses for good.
And this brings us back to table manners.
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Well, not immediately, first we must watch Joe descend into a pit. It’s a grave of sorts. The brothers contemplate murder, but they ultimately relent. Yet, they lie! They jacob to Jacob about this causing their father to think the lad is dead, and then they must face the rest of their days maintaining this morbid lie. Meanwhile, Joe, the dreamer, descends into slavery and a dungeon which for years on end feels like enduring a living death.
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There can be no doubt, Joe’s dreams are crushed, pulverized, and shattered over and over and over again as at each stage of his humiliation, his dreams of grandeur slip further and further out of reach. And if we recall at every step how God is the hero redeeming creation and making promises all through this saga, we should see how the impossibility of redemption is increasingly divine! Only God can do this. But in the narrative tension we must ask: How???
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Where is God in this mess? It can be hard to tell! But the bigger the problem, the more powerful the God who redeems it! Yet, at turn after turn, he keeps working with the least, the humblest, the weakest, and most unlikely people so that he does not share the glory with them but receives the praise due him in proper table manners.
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I know by saying that way, it seems a little out of kilter, but look again. Look carefully with eyes of faith. “Those forgiven much, love much,” says Jesus to Simon eons later. And that little insight helps guide our understanding of what happens here in Genesis.
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Joe is buried under the weight of a foreign empire, completely unknown by Pharaoh. He is buried under the weight of his brothers’ lie, and Jacob believes he is long dead.
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The Bible does not feature this part of the story, but we can presume Jacob mourns Joe’s passing, and every year at the anniversary, he weeps. Every holiday festival when the family comes together, there is an empty seat where the arrogant dreamer sat. The seat is no longer filled with arrogant dreams, but with the lie the brothers are now forced, in order to keep up appearances, they must now maintain. Oh, what a burden they have created for themselves and their father!
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For all we can tell, the brothers are pretty good guys except for this one lie which is no little lie at all. There is no record of them repeatedly treating anyone else like this. They in fact seem completely honest about their dealings when we meet them again later, but they are now burdened with this old lie they still maintain. This one lie disintegrates them, and they have no integrity.
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Meanwhile, God has arranged for a cupbearer and baker to go to jail with Joe. A cupbearer and baker. This isn’t the keeper of the royal flock or the captain of the guard. No. The cupbearer and baker! Think about that. These men work at the royal table! And not only that. They aren’t merely the wait staff, this is the guy who serves the wine and the guy who bakes the bread! These are the servants of Eucharist! In that cup and in that oven are the blood and body of Christ!
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And these guys who covertly bear witness to Christ and to God’s movement far beneath the drama and far behind the scenes backstage join Joe in his imperial pit where that old dreamer listens to, and interprets, their dreams – the dreams of bread and wine! And Joe interprets their dreams quite successfully in what we Christians might think of as almost a prediction of death, burial, and resurrection! For the baker will die, but the cupbearer will be restored. And that is exactly what happens.
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Oh, how the plot thickens! It’s exciting, when you really think about it!
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But we must be patient, and Joe especially must be, for despite one convict’s request of another, (“Hey, man, when you get out, can you do me a solid?”), the cupbearer seems to blow Joe off. That is… until… Pharaoh has a nightmare that troubles him so much, he calls all his wise men to come and interpret it for him. But they can’t.
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Now, when the king calls all his servants to a special session, they take him deadly serious. It doesn’t matter what the issue is, they come running for these special sessions. Normally, convening a special session of congress gets things done, but this is a truly unique problem, and none of Pharaoh’s best advisors can help. This one stumps them all. And this never happens. It never happened before!
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It’s while the court is in a dither on this matter that finally, finally, finally the cupbearer either remembers or finally gets the gumption to speak up on Joe’s behalf. But I would have you notice that by speaking up this way, the cupbearer must confess his own criminal record! Everyone in this story is humiliated in one way or another, and this cupbearer is no exception.
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“Do you remember that time, O King, when you threw me in prison a while back? … ahem… well… I met a guy in the dungeon who interpreted dreams, and he nailed it. His dream interpretations accurately predicted the future of both me and the baker. If you want help with your nightmare, you should consider talking to Joe.”
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St. Paul tells the Philippians that Jesus did not grasp at his deity, but humbled himself taking on the form of a slave, and even more humiliating himself to the point of death, death on a cross, but God raised him up, up and up so that his name was above every name, and at the name of Jesus every tongue would confess and every knee bend.
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And with only the smallest of exceptions, we see God do that with Joe here. Joe plays the Jesus card all the way back in Genesis! Joe seems to have been grasping at greatness back in the beginning, but he was humbled and took the form of a slave and a convict, a forgotten (even dead) convict, but now, at long last, God raises him up, and he interprets Pharaoh’s dream, and then at his presence every knee bends as all the stars and hay bales bow to his!
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And the dream, the nightmare, is explained as a starving world. God’s good creation will be plunged into famine and starvation for seven years. But first there will be a time of plenty, and if a wise gardner were to wisely prepare in advance for this coming disaster, he could feed the world. And Pharaoh senses in his bones that this lad understands, so he appoints the lad to be in charge of this worldwide rescue operation of all of creation!
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Yes, Genesis opens with a meal that brings on disaster and closes with a meal of salvation!
Simply divine.
Don’t you think?
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And we’ve already seen Jesus Christ seething beneath the surface at at least two points along the way, not to mention all the others! Cain and Abel are sinners, but we see Jesus in Abel, as he dies in a jealous murder between brothers, and Pilate knows the Jews hand him over due to envy! (Mark 15:10).
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Esau sells his birthright and is cheated out of his blessing by his baby brother who is a liar, and yet we see Jesus in this liar taking a bride and bearing God’s promises. (What does this say about you and me? Can the world see Jesus in us?)
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The whole world comes to Joseph and bows low, just like he’d dreamed long ago, though the dream comes true like Joe never could have expected. And Joe is stripped of all his arrogance, pride, and dreams long before they come true. So, when Pharaoh calls him up out of that grave – ahem – lyons den – ahem – dungeon, Joe wastes no words or time taking credit for himself, but points solely to God, the real hero of this story.
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And through Joe (or Jesus in Joe), the whole world finds food for life. Life is preserved for every living soul through this man God raises up. And word of this gets out around the world reaching Jacob who sends his sons to get some food so that they might live too.
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Wow!
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And upon meeting Joe, after so many years and so much has changed, the brothers do not recognize Joe in his royal garb, and they bow to him, and the dream comes true! But that old dream is, in the urgency of the situation, merely the poetic justice part. The urgent business of feeding and reconciliation is at hand. And Joe recognizes the brothers though they do not recognize him!
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These brothers wronged Joe. He knows it; they know it. They have been burdened with this lie all this time, both Joe and the brothers, each in their own way. But in the meantime, Joe takes special interest in THESE men. He singles them out to share a meal! They have the work of reconciliation at hand. Redemption doesn’t merely feed the world some calories, it reconciles brotherly hate.
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But Joe does not immediately reveal himself to them. He wants to do some heart-to-heart business with these brothers, and this happens at the table! They must learn proper table manners, theologically speaking. Yet, as they eat, and as the brothers still as yet do not see Joe for who he really is, Joe is overcome with emotion and must retreat to weep!
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Can you feel that?
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That, brothers (and sisters) is the heart of Christ, and as we eat in an unworthy manner, not recognizing him and the movement of God in our lives, this is what Jesus is doing with us. He steps back to weep as his love for us is overwhelming even to him.
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We show up at his table that he has prepared in the presence of his enemies (us), and he loves us in our wayward lies. He steps out to weep.
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Isn’t that remarkable? God weeping over us? There’s a number of emotions tied up in all that, but love is the overwhelming thing here. And God/Jesus weeps sometimes when his love is so moved. We tend to think of God as more detached, more high and mighty and judgmental, even if graceful. But God has feelings too.
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Jesus weeps at the tomb of Lazarus too. It’s the shortest verse in the Bible! (Easy memory verse, if you are into that sort of thing.) But it begs the question: Why? Why does Jesus cry over Lazarus? We all know he is gonna raise him back to life! So why weep? Why not just raise him up?
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Love.
Love takes the time to cry. It’s a heart thang.
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And Joseph washes his face and returns to the table. He proceeds to deal with his treacherous brothers in such a way to work out their demons, to force them to face their lie and talk about it. They don’t recognize their brother is alive and well, that they have now bowed low to him already, yet their old dealings with him come home to roost as they eat this meal with him! The irony is divine!
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The brothers leave the table on mission to get Rachel’s other son and bring him for Joe to lay eyes on, and ultimately to retrieve their father Jake too, and bring him into Joe’s courts as well. Eventually, Joe reveals himself at the table! and we are instantly reminded of those disciples at Emmaus in Luke 24.
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I’m telling you about Genesis today so that when you come to the Lord’s Table and celebrate Eucharist, you will meet Jesus for a heart-to-heart visit. Our reading of Genesis facilitates a new reverence for this table. The world is ordered through our communion observance. And the story of Joseph feeding his brothers who bow low to him at long last reveals to us our position with Jesus as we face our lies and find him weeping over our betrayals.
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Let us surrender our lies to him. Let us find new, deeper trust in God and his salvation as we share this meal. Let us talk about this story and get excited as the plot thickens! Let us look deeper than we are accustomed for the movement of God in the world and in our brothers and sisters joining us in the drama of table manners. The tree of life bears such fruit, and we want to eat it. The joy of the Lord is our strength. The joy of the Lord is hosting his children around his table and singing the songs together of apocalypse and eternity.
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Let us take some TIME, and SHARE this meal, not simply a pinch of cracker and a thimble of grape juice, but real time and a real meal shared with the heart of Jesus today in a worthy manner so that we eat and drink salvation on ourselves. Let’s not reduce this meal to navel gazing and silence, but let’s eat!
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Can I get and Amen?
Good.
Let’s eat.
[…] Some have said Synod 2024 represents a “new direction.” Its decisions have been described as “reckless, arbitrary, and unimaginable in any other age.” One writer characterized it as, “The Babylonians have struck.” […]