What can we say July 26? 9th after Pentecost

    Summer is whisking along… This week I’ll open with Romans, reflect on a dare that worked out well with the Rachel / Leah business, and then touch on our Gospel.

   Romans 8:26-39. If Paul had written nothing but Romans 8, we would lionize him. If he’d written nothing but this portion of Romans 8, we would extol him as one of our greatest. Better to let such a text linger in the open space of a sanctuary than to attempt much mansplaining!

   I love to imagine Paul pacing the room, blurting out his latest thoughts, the scribe scrambling to get it down on parchment, thinking “Wow, this guy is on fire today!” So much here: “We do not know how to pray as we ought,” which is an understatement. So often parishoners in crisis say they don’t know what to pray, or feel they can’t pray. I ask if they’ve done any sighing. Of course they have – and we note how Paul dares to suggest that our “sighs too deep for words” are really the Spirit praying in us. Wow – so encouraging for me as a pastor, and as a guy who sighs a lot. Preaching this requires no illustration, except the shared bonds of humanity.

   Verse 28 is a favorite, finding its way onto posters and cross-stitching – but when people think it means God is orchestrating everything in your life so you have a happy ending and all goes swimmingly well? A sign of 1^st World theology and a lucky pile of circumstance, not divine arrangement. Michael Gorman’s pointed words: “This means neither that God orders all the details of believers’ lives into a rose-garden experience, nor that God inflicts suffering. Rather, Paul proclaims that all things contribute to the final good of glorification, of conformity to Jesus.”

   Indeed: panta, “all things,” clearly refers to the sufferings of the present time (verse 18). And sunergein, “works together,” more likely connotes “assists,” or “are profitable.” John Calvin explains: “Paul does not mean that all things serve the comfort or convenience or worldly interests of believers; it is obvious that they do not. What he means is that they ‘assist our salvation.’” It’s about the assurance of a future with God, and how present sufferings can’t unravel that relationship with God and with others in the Body of Christ. Scripture does of course have the Genesis 45 and 50 belief – that God uses evil for good. But this is a far cry from God using little circumstances and happenings to make my life fun.

   People also love that “more than conquerors” (sometimes with militaristic images),which feels like winning at the game of life, with God’s powerful assistance… The verb means “hyper-conquer” (hypernikomen)! – and the context sobers up us who fantasize about being “more than conquerors”: “These words undoubtedly brought immense comfort and hope to the suffering Christians of the Roman house churches. Some probably suffered for lack of sufficient food. Others were likely victims of abuse from their masters. Still others may have endured economic reprisals for having abandoned pagan worship at their guilds, or emotional mistreatment from family members or fellow synagogue members for having confessed Jesus as Messiah” (Michael Gorman).

    On a dare, I preached on Genesis 29:15-28 a few summers ago (check it out!) – and surprised myself by how well it went. I used “In the morning, behold, it was Leah!” as a cadence / refrain throughout. By the end they were saying it out loud with me!

   It’s all about how disappointment works – in marriage, friendship, life, with the church, yourself, God even. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks noticed how Jacob’s trickery earlier in the story boomeranged on him; the medieval rabbis imagined Jacob chiding Leah: “Why did you deceive me, daughter of a deceiver? Didn’t I call out Rachel in the night, and you answered me!” Her blunt reply? “Isn’t this how your father cried out Esau, and you answered him?” There’s also the rich irony of Laban’s assertion that “this is not done in our country,” giving the younger before the firstborn – which is exactly how it does wind up happening in the strange world of the Bible.

   Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52. In v. 51 Jesus asks, “Have you understood all this?” They answer, “Yes” – but I’m a little puzzled. I’m not sure Jesus’ stories are really supposed to be translatable into some logical proposition. He told stories with vivid images because that was the way he wanted to communicate what he had to say. The vivid image is his message. It’s all mind-boggling. A tee-tiny mustard seed burgeons into a big shrub which can accommodate birds. Treasure hidden: how often do you find such a thing? What’s the nuance? The joy? The finding? That it’s hidden? That it’s precious? That sacrifice is required? The answer is Yes – and more. Pearls, and then the pearl; I love it that the Greek word for pearl is margarita – although I may not share that (or sing the Jimmy Buffet song as our anthem!).

   If I make a connection for people, it might be revisiting the unforgettable, moving ending of the film Good Will Hunting. On the advice of his therapist, Will drops his new job and his settled life and drives off to find the girl. He’s full of joy and hope – but even those he abandons are filled with joy that he’s gone.

   And then Rick Lischer, in his great book on the parables, passes along a quirky reading of the hidden treasure from a sermon he stumbled upon: “‘When Jesus was taken from the cross, they hid his body in a tomb and then sealed it lest someone find him. For 3 days, Jesus himself was the Treasure hidden in the field; for 3 days he was the seed lying dormant in the ground. He was a human parable of God’s love and power.’ It is fair to say that neither Jesus nor the author of Matthew’s Gospel intended that to be the meaning of the parable. Nevertheless, the preacher, not schooled in the church’s rich tradition of theological interpretation, has managed to speak in perfect continuity with the tradition and declare something ‘new.’”

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   Check out my newest book, The Heart of the Psalms: God's Word to the World! I've been meaning to write this one all my life, since I did my Ph.D. on the Psalms and have taught and prayed them endlessly. Abingdon also has a study guide and a video series, which groups enjoy.

What can we say August 2? 10th after Pentecost

    Let’s start with the Epistle, which clergy should ponder even if it’s not your preaching text this week, and the Gospel before my longer reflection on Jacob wrestling with… well, who was that? – which I’ll be preaching on, and I suspect you should too!

   Romans 9:1-5. Michael Gorman introduces the section, Romans 9-11, noting how theological and practical it is: “It celebrates the mystery and magnificence of God’s mercy… It is not, however, for the faint of heart. It may be best to begin where Paul ends, ‘O the depth of the riches, wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgment and how inscrutable his ways!” (11:33). Not bad to begin this sermon – or any sermon! – this way.

  Notice Paul’s intense sorrow and anguish over unbelief. What do I feel when I see it out there? I ignore it, or I’ve normalized it – or I get frustrated. Paul issues “an outburst of sacrificial, or cruciform love” (Gorman, noting Paul’s willingness to be cured – like Jesus was [Galatians 3:11], and to forfeit his own salvation for them!).

   Of course, Paul maybe doth protest too much: “I am not lying!” So defensive! And yet so effusive in his adulation of Israel. Anti-semites never read Romans 9: “To them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the law, the worship, the promises, the patriarchs.” Exactly. We Christians would always do well to reflect with endless gratitude and joyful solidarity with our Jewish neighbors.

   Matthew 14:13-21. Jesus’ habit – that he “withdrew to a deserted place” – is exemplary. Is he really “alone” in this “deserted place”? Hardly! Solitude is being alone – and not alone at all, the antithesis of loneliness, which can happen in a crowded, fun-loving room. Notice the crowds heard of and invaded his private, quiet space. Always the way in ministry, isn’t it?

   Notice Jesus’ “interruptibility.” This is the ministerial life, and also the ideal life of the laity, as we zigzag between the discipline of time alone with God and then being willing to be interrupted to respond to a person needing mercy. Jesus’ “compassion”: the Greek, esplangnisthe, is so evocative, meaning an inward turmoil, a twisting of the guts. Jesus really feels what he feels for the people. He’s not ordering them around or judging them; his entrails get all contorted, like a woman’s womb in labor.

   Hard not to admire his reply to the disciples informing him of the obvious – that the crowd is hungry: “You give them something to eat.” Emphasis on the you. The 5 loaves and 2 fishes were commemorated in an unforgettable mosaic in the little church on the shore of Galilee. My questions, raised in a sermon I preached on this text in Duke Chapel a few summers back (which I’d commend to you as the best I have to offer), are Wouldn’t a better miracle have been to have produced just enough for the crowd instead of all the leftovers? What did they do with the leftovers? Worship the bread (in Catholic style)? Distribute it to the poor? Why the waste? Or is it a story that shows God’s lavishness, that God really does give us more than enough – what Sam Wells calls a “superabundance”?

   At Duke I told about Dorothy Day giving away a big diamond ring to a poor person. Who says it should be sold and distributed according to the world’s calculus? Maybe God wants fabulous things for the poor as well. I’d encourage the preacher to think of moments of God’s superabundance. I told about an ordination I preached in Haiti. 

 We had a lovely service planned, a nice dinner, and appropriate gifts for the ordinand. But we got the idea of loading extra suitcases full of Oreos for the kids (and grownup kids). It was a giddy feast, unexpected, yes a bit wasteful – but God’s like that, right? {Check out my daughter's painting of one child there!}

   The leftovers simply amaze me. In my Duke Chapel sermon, I explored this at some length.  Jesus should have dazzled them with precisely the amount of food needed! Or maybe he should have been like even our churches, giving them just a smidgeon to get by, questioning them sternly regarding why they were out of food…. 

 But there is this lavishness, this bounty, this superabundance. Sam Wells has written so profoundly on this aspect of God’s nature, and what it means for us as a Church (in God’s Companions, for instance). 

   Genesis 32:22-31. Sermons on this are so – personal? Here’s one I preached a while back. It’s inspiring (and quotable!) to look to Frederick Buechner’s “The Magnificent Defeat,” which I suspect is way better in the reading than in the talking it out loud? Our text is one you just hear, stare at and then just marvel. I’m not sure there’s a lesson or a takeaway at all. It’s Wow, what an amazing night for Jacob.

   I’m tempted, as we all are, to psychologize. I dig Sara Bareilles’s song from Waitress – of a woman who’s lost her self somewhere along the way, like Jacob: “Most days I don’t recognize myself – I’m not anything I used to be… I still remember that girl: She’s imperfect but she tries, she is good but she lies, she is hard on herself, she is broken but won’t ask for help… she is lonely most of the time, she is all this mixed up and baked in a beautiful pie /Not what I asked for, sometimes life just slips in thru a backdoor, I would give it up for a chance to start over and rewrite an ending or two for that girl I knew.”

   The Bible doesn't speak of not being the person you used to be. But it gets at the heart of human existence, and is "biblical" without being in the Bible - and the song is the sort of secular song one could use in worship without needing to baptize it....

   Edgy and aggressive, yet alienated and floundering: Jacob gets jumped – or did he do the jumping? and he wrestles all night with – God? an angel? A stranger? Himself?  Preachers here can just tease and ask, no need to answer, no need to choose. 

   I may open my sermon by telling about the Father's Day night I came home alone to a dark house. Everyone in my family had to be somewhere. I was feeling a touch sorry for myself. Unlocked the door, and before I could turn on the light, I was grabbed by a screaming man who wrestled me down. Terrified, it was only when he laughed that I knew it was Love that had attacked me in the dark. It was my son, who'd parked down the street and was determined to surprise me. Was I ever...

   I wonder what sudden assaults we undergo. There is actual assault, of course... but then, the Pandemic? A sudden, unanticipated, unsought encounter with truth? What about news, like "it's malignant," or "your dad died"? - and you are face to face with horror, hope, death, life... God. Perhaps here I will bring in the subject of the loss of my dad. Moments in history: George Floyd's death said Now is finally the time to deal with it. Harvey Weinstein's ugly story said Now is finally the time to deal with it. Jesus, after all, was above everything else so very urgent in saying Now. Decide Now. Follow now.

   Brueggemann's insights intrigue. Noting how Jacob is unsure who's attacking him, Brueggemann suggests "It is like that in a nightmare; identities are not clear; nor are they constant." He then proposes that Jacob thought "this man is surely Esau." "Perhaps it is God who blesses; perhaps it is Esau who haunts; more like it is both." What he teases out is this: "We are invited to see how, in our own vexation, the struggle with siblings and confrontation with God are meshed together. At daybreak, we know this much of hard truth: when we do not love our siblings whom we see, we cannot love God whom we cannot see" - and then he glimpses in this those twin "great commandments" to love God and love neighbor. "Both meet us at night."

   Can we read a text from the perspective of a hymn? Charles Wesley, before composing “Come, O Thou Traveller Unknown,” must have spent a lot of time ruminating on this story. Estranged from his brother for decades, with a troubled marriage, Jacob is alone, anxious, on the run, evidently thrashing up against the limits of existence.

   He can’t even get a good night’s sleep. Terror of all terrors, he’s tackled by… well, it’s too dark to see. A robber? Is it Esau? An angel? God? The ambiguity is the reality for Jacob – although the implication is that God is somehow, mysteriously in the thick of this life-threatening assault. Wesley’s surprising insight is that he imagines Jacob actually inviting the perilous encounter: “Come, O thou traveler.” Come. Bring it on. Jacob never shrank from trouble, and instigated plenty of it on his own. He’s a fighter, someone who weirdly enjoys conflict. The Bible portrays a God who enjoys it as well. What an odd religion Israel and then Christianity have: we argue with God; we can do combat with the Almighty. God allows this. God welcomes this. God seems to want a relentless, ferocious openness, honesty and grappling from us.

   There may be something in here about how we think about strangers. A “traveler unknown” arrives in Jacob’s camp. Who are the strange travelers in our world? Rabbi Jonathan Sacks reads Genesis and Exodus as if God is telling the truth about the stranger to each one of us: “If you are human, so is he. If he is less than human, so are you. You must fight the hatred in your heart as I once fought the greatest ruler and the strongest empire in the ancient world on your behalf. I made you into the world’s archetypal strangers so that you would fight for the rights of strangers… Though they are not in your image, says God, they are nonetheless in Mine. There is only one reply strong enough to answer the question: Why should I not hate the stranger? Because the stranger is me.” Indeed, Wesley’s hymn presses the traveler: “Tell me if thy name is Love.” God is in the stranger. Love is in the surprise encounter in the dark. God is with Jacob – by being against him, by wrestling with him.

   Jacob doesn’t try to escape. The hymn grasps this: “With thee all night I mean to stay and wrestle till the break of day.” Does Wesley’s hymn help us see this, which might be implied in Genesis 32? Jacob has chutzpah, a cockiness that dares to fight anybody, God included. And he fights even God to something of a tie! And he isn’t merely a survivor. As always, he’s getting something to take home: “I won’t let you go unless you bless me.” He had stolen the blessing from his brother – and now he insists on blessing again. Is it a model for prayer: we grapple with God, then we grab hold of God and won’t let go until we get the blessing? Isn't Jacob the surprise winner of this nocturnal battle?

   Just as the sun begins to rise, Jacob limps away from the scene. He is wounded, marked by the encounter. There are pains that come from our battles with life and God. Sacks speaks of “honorable scars.” In Graham Greene’s novel, The End of the Affair, a woman notices what used to be a wound on her lover’s shoulder, and contemplates the advancing wrinkles in his face: “I thought of lines life had put on his face, as personal as a line of writing – I thought of a scar on his shoulder that wouldn’t have been there if once he hadn’t tried to protect another man from a falling wall.  The scar was part of his character, and I knew I wanted that scar to exist through all eternity." Jesus' scars persisted, and they still do. Jacob is scarred; he limps, his wound the badge of honor from having engaged mightily with the Almighty.

   Jesus, we might recall, had scars after Easter, scars he earned when he gave life to all of us, not blotted out by the resurrection (John 20:27). Frederick Buechner envisioned this when he preached on Jacob limping away from his contest with God: “Remember Jesus of Nazareth, staggering on broken feet out of the tomb toward the Resurrection, bearing on his body the proud insignia of the defeat which is victory, the magnificent defeat of the human soul at the hands of God.” Genesis 32 isn’t about Jesus. Or to the eyes of faith, is it? Wesley’s hymn imagines an inquiry into the name of this nocturnal stranger, guessing that it’s Love – with a capital L – and finally, and delightfully concluding, “Tis Love! Thou diedst for me.”

   I love the “I won’t let you go until you bless me.” Is this the exemplary prayer? The blessing somehow though is the struggle; the blessing somehow is the wound, causing him to limp away. Buechner understood this so well. Sort of exposes those “touched by an angel” stories as vapid; if an angel touches you, you’re wounded.

   And I love to play with Bible names. Jacob would have been the Hebrew name of Jesus’ brother James. Did they ever wrestle? What is it to engage with God, barely survive, and stagger away? No simplistic prosperity Gospel here, and please don’t then simplify or trivialize it. Watch Jacob in the shadows, and be lost in wonder.

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   Check out my newest book, The Heart of the Psalms: God's Word to the World! I've been meaning to write this one all my life, since I did my Ph.D. on the Psalms and have taught and prayed them endlessly. Abingdon also has a study guide and a video series, which groups enjoy.

What can we say August 9? 11th after Pentecost

    I think I’ll preach the Old Testament! But read below for my flirtation with the Epistle and Gospel, which have their thoughtful moments.  Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28 appeals to me, as the idea of preaching through the narrative of Joseph (Gen. 37-50) is something I want to do some day. The lectionary, though, skips immediately to chapter 45 next week and then plunges ahead into Exodus. Maybe a sermon can capture the flow of the larger story – without the sermon being a mere retelling of that story.

   And what a story! The drama, emotion, irony and vivid settings make this the Bible’s single greatest tale. The climax in chapter 45 (or is it in 50 after Jacob dies?) is stunning, undermining all our theological oversimplification. Joseph doesn’t let the brothers off, or give them another chance. He sees in how God, without causing evil, uses it for good – and the preacher dare not over-trivialize that thought either. Perilous but precious stuff.

   Just on chapter 37: Joseph, if we’re reading the Hebrew correctly, doesn’t get a “technicolor dreamcoat” (a la Andrew Lloyd Webber!) but rather a coat with long sleeves. Short sleeves were essential for day laborers in the fields, where it would be hot and brambles would get caught in longer sleeves. So Jacob is saying Joseph gets to live in the comfort and authority of the house, while the older brothers bear the sweat of hard work out of doors. As happens in the case of Cain and Abel, brother rages against brother, when brother’s real problem is with the Father (or God).

   Fascinating that, within a single family, we have class division. I wonder if, in my sermon, I might help people think about dashed dreams (especially during this coronavirus season?) - but not just for us but for the marginalized? I may have a soprano sing "I Dreamed a Dream" (from Les Miserables) - and try to ruminate on crushed dreams among us and others. I also noted, watching John Lewis's funeral, that James Lawson quoted Langston Hughes's great dream poem: "I dream a world where man / No other man will scorn, where love will bless the earth / and peace its paths adorn / I dream a world where all / will know sweet freedom's way, where greed no longer saps the soul / nor avarice blights our day. A world I dream where black or white, whatever race you be, will share the bounties of the earth / and every man is free, where wretchedness will hang its head / and joy, like a pearl, attends the needs of all mankind / Of such I dream, my world!" It's not a stretch! Joseph's dream, at the end of the day, was about securing enough for everybody, food for the entire world.

   Jonathan Sacks notices how Reuben fairly quickly tries to intervene, but fails – calling him “the Hamlet of Genesis,” someone with good intentions he never completes, or they backfire; at the critical moment, he never comes through.

   We have little hints in this opening scene of the story of how God superintends things. God is, as Sacks puts it, “already monitoring the sequence of events, arranging the necessary strategic interventions to ensure that the outcome will be as planned.” All this is concealed, not obvious at all – and so I wonder how the preacher opens up to listeners the idea that we are sort of “co-authors of our lives,” free to act, yet with God’s involvement, a far cry from the silly “God is in control” mantra people love.

   I love it that the Bible seems utterly lacking in sweet, happy families. So much dysfunction – helpful to me, as a guy from an utterly dysfunctional family. Tolstoy’s opening to Anna Karenina is poignant: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” It’s a bit tongue in check. Every family has its unhappiness. A pastoral challenge is to help people not to glibly say such saccharine things about family. During the Covid-19 crisis, how many people said “Oh, how cool to get more time with family!” – in earshot of the woman whose belittling husband now stays home instead of giving her the respite of leaving for work, or the divorcee who felt her loneliness more agonizingly. Don’t do this in preaching, ever! – and help people to learn how to talk with one another about family. Bible families oddly enough show us the way.

   How haunting was it for Jacob to be deceived, deceiver that he was, and to see the younger lording it over his outdoorsy older brothers, having done so himself - successfully but then at a steep cost to himself. Marilynne Robinson names the atmosphere movingly, suggesting that Jacob "would live out long years among sons who were burdened with secrecy and guilt, always suspecting them, his divinely promised descendants, of a crime he might detest them for..." Had Joseph's brothers done away with him? "A question too terrible to be asked, a confession too terrible to be made, and Jacob growing old in this silence."

   Romans 10:5-15. "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!" My surgically repaired foot is ugly as sin. Of course, Paul is seeing the beauty in the proclaimer, who's been sent, actually going, walking, getting to the people to share.

   I love this: in Abraham Verghese's wonderful The Covenant of Water, Philipose tells Elsie, "I have a notebook on feet. Feet reveal character. You could be a king or bishop and adorn your hands with jewels. But feet are your unadorned self, regardless of who you proclaim yourself to be."

   Ugly feet have their beauty, if they’ve trudged courageously. In Soldier of the Great War, Mark Helprin tells of a wily World War I veteran who tries to share his wisdom with a young man who quickly grows weary as they walk along the road: “You may be tall, handsome, intelligent and gifted; but if you have feet of despair you might as well shine shoes on the Via del Corso; feet of despair are too tender, can’t fight back. Under prolonged assault they come apart and bleed to death; they become infected and swollen in half an hour. On the other hand are feet of invincibility. Feet of invincibility are ugly, but they last forever - building defenses where they are attacked, turning color, reproportioning and repositioning themselves until they look like bulldogs.”

   Michael Gorman calls the string of scriptural citations here “somewhat confusing.” Verse 9 gets isolated: “If you just confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved,” as if that’s a formula for a revival. Paul is leaning in to his Jewish relatives and friends who just don’t buy into Jesus. Complicates things – and then do we really want to name that anyone who utters “Jesus is Lord,” and intellectually accepts that Jesus was raised are saved? – and that’s it?

   What about the woman I counseled with who swore to me she’d never believe in Jesus because her daddy, who most certainly did as a Bible teacher and deacon in his church, sexually abused her through her teenage years? He’s saved and she isn’t? Or those who have only heard about Jesus from boring, vapid, judgmental people? They’re not saved but the dullards are? I don’t think it’s a problem to ask such questions in the pulpit. No need to answer them. Just let them linger.

   Matthew 14:22-33. A tough text unless you do the You have to get out of the boat to walk on water thing. My skeptical head just spins over such a story, that feels more parable than fact – although who knows? I prefer realities – like the sensational archaeological discovery of “the Jesus boat,” a real fishing boat dating to the time of Jesus, a boat he most assuredly saw and maybe stepped into, helps me feel my way into the reality of first century life on Galilee.

   Did this Jesus walk on water? And Peter too, acting very Bruce Almighty-like? – but only briefly. Peter, whose name means “rock,” sank like a stone. As we would expect. And Jesus fusses at him! Seems like he should give him credit for taking even a few steps – on water.

   There’s a Buddhist story of a disciple who walked on water, or sank depending on whether he focused on the Buddha. Easy story to spiritualize. We can even sing “Precious Lord, take my hand.” But I’m probably not the only guy in the room who will just shrug and say Gosh, not sure this really happened. The Gospel writers had to know skeptics as well. Maybe one or two were themselves skeptics. But they let the story stand – maybe to throw cold water on skeptics like me and invite me to suspend me for a few minutes and tread onto such a story that, if it happened or not, most clearly is about faith, and really about how utterly amazing and God-like Jesus really was and is.

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   Check out my newest book, The Heart of the Psalms: God's Word to the World! I've been meaning to write this one all my life, since I did my Ph.D. on the Psalms and have taught and prayed them endlessly. Abingdon also has a study guide and a video series, which groups enjoy.

What can we say August 16? 12th after Pentecost

       I cannot imagine why a preacher would forego the Old Testament lection for this Sunday – ever, but especially now, given the severe splintering we’re experiencing in society, and in the church. Still, Jesus and the Canaanite woman is a rich text as well (see below).

    Genesis 45 is the theological high water mark of the Old Testament, and is a peer of even the best the New Testament has to offer.  Reconciliation should be the fixed point in all our thinking, imagination, labor, and prayers. 

   No biblical story narrates the grief, time, joy and miracle of reconciliation as powerfully as the drama of Joseph.  The emotional intensity of the climax in chapter 45 is intense, and you have to let it be intense, and feel it in your bones; let the story take your breath away or they won’t feel it either.  The Egyptians overheard Joseph’s sobbing in the next room; people in the pews had best hear it in the sanctuary.  The weeping and embracing are just astonishing, and so beautiful – and I can’t help at some point racing ahead to the riveting moment when Joseph is reunited with his father; “he fell on his neck, and wept on his neck a long time” (Gen. 46:29).

     You can’t just plop down in chapter 45 either; the backstory matters.  Without over-explicating every detail, the preacher has to pick up where the story begins, in chapter 37, with a pathetically dysfunctional family, Joseph’s dream that was from God but felt like sham arrogance, the brothers’ cruel dispatching of him and then the wretched way they shattered their father’s heart, Joseph’s rise, and then fall, and then rise in Egypt.  Don’t assume people know the story, but then don’t expend twelve minutes retelling it either.  Urge your people to read it at home, promising it’s better than House of Cards or Game of Thrones.

       Here’s an interesting detail from the Hebrew: of all his sons, Jacob loved Joseph best – because his deepest affection was for his mother Rachel, not the other mothers of his other boys.  And so, Jacob dressed this son, not in an “amazing technicolor dreamcoat” (as in the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical - which is such silliness compared to his other work!), but (as the Hebrew puts it) in “long sleeves.” The other brothers wore short sleeves, meaning their labor was in the fields, in the heat, where briars would get tangled in long sleeves. Joseph was established in the house with those long sleeves, in a position of comfort and power over the brothers.  It was that long-sleeved garment of privilege denied them that they bloodied and handed to their father.

   Marilynne Robinson has reflected so profoundly on the backstory - those years between when they did what they did to Joseph and the rediscovery. How did Jacob live with those ten sons? He never asked if they had done away with Joseph – “a question too terrible to be asked, a confession too terrible to be made, and Jacob growing old in this silence.” And, with them, did Jacob shiver when he recalled being himself a horribly flawed sibling? “Since the presumed death of Joseph, Jacob would have noticed a grim bond among them that excluded him. And he would not have been able to put aside the bitter knowledge that sons can deceive their fathers. Alone as he had been with his guilt as he stood absurdly disguised, lying to blind old Isaac, he might find a semblance of it in the tense caution of their dealings with him.” And isn’t Robinson right about Jacob’s reunion with Joseph? “But the days of many years have been full of dread and loss and grief and suspicion, and no ending can be happy enough to change this.” Boom. Brilliant.

     To focus on chapter 45 I wouldn’t spend too much time on Joseph’s character – which isn’t really the point.  He has considerable brilliance, and a moral compass we do not see often in our days.  But that would be to moralize a theologically robust story.  The shock of God’s way comes when the famine compelled the brothers to go down to Egypt, the breadbasket of the world. In a stunning plot twist, it was Joseph from whom they had to ask for food. He would give them far, far more. Naturally they didn’t recognize him; but he recognized them. After dallying with them a bit, he dismissed his entourage from the room, let loose long pent-up emotions, gathered himself, dried his tears, and revealed his secret: “I am Joseph, your brother.”

     When I preach on this, I let the emotion drip, I leave time for it to flow around the room and into the souls of people.  His next words?  “Is my father alive?”  Again, in a pre-cell-phone era, he did not know, and hoped against hope; the brothers, who had despised father and brother, had to feel the gut-wrenchingness of his question.  Mind you, the Bible doesn’t tell us how they felt!  So we have space to find our own emotions from our own life stories in there somewhere – without reading in so much you don’t hear Joseph’s story any longer.  The brothers had to be stricken with shock, horror, guilt, trepidation, remorse.

     But how did Joseph deal with those who had treated him and his father so cruelly? His words must have taken light years to sink in: “Do not be distressed; don’t be angry with yourselves because you sold me here. For God sent me here to preserve life” (Gen 45:5). Even after the glorious reunion with his father, and then even after Jacob’s death, Joseph said the most remarkable thing: “Do not be afraid. You meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, so that many people should be kept alive” (Gen 50:20). Joseph forgave; he cast their common, broken life into the hands of God’s larger intentions. Testimony to God’s miracle – in the big story, but then also in Joseph’s gentle disposition.  Who is capable of what he just said to them?

     Notice the brothers weren’t given a “second chance,” another crack at getting it right. They never got it right; they never made up for what they had done. God did not depend on any attitude change among the brothers. God quite simply used the evil they perpetrated and transformed it into good.

     Not that God caused them to do evil: God did not make them sell their brother or break their father’s heart. But God gathered up their misdeeds, the broken will of God, and pieced it all together for God’s good purpose. Joseph’s leadership was defined by seeing, understanding, and then articulating this. He brought healing to the fractured family, and food to a hungry world – or rather, his leading was God’s imperceivable, mysterious use of his life, and then his awed witness to it.  It’s so important to get this nuance: in my Will of God book, I carefully distinguish that God uses evil but doesn’t cause it; and we need to say God uses every evil for good.  Some evils are just evil, and it eviscerates and trivializes the suffering to try sunnily to claim God brings some good from it.

   Joseph's refusal to enact his power reveals indirectly the heart of God. Marilynne Robinson once more: PIf human beings are to be granted individuality, agency, freedom, meaningful existence as human beings, then God must practice almost limitless restraint,” and then that, “to refrain, to put side power, is godlike." Philippians 2 anyone? She continues: God “can change and not change,” and “immutability is not an inevitable consequence of His nature, as if options were denied Him by philosophical consistency.”

     Leadership expert Ron Heifetz speaks of the need for leaders who climb up into the “balcony” and see larger patterns in the workplace.  Joseph was caught up far higher than the balcony; he was granted a view from heaven itself.  Claus Westermann (in his Genesis 37-50 commentary) wisely noticed that God did not merely use the evil of the brothers; God could have done that without the brothers ever meeting up with Joseph. No, “God’s plan is to bring the evil devised by the brothers to good in such a way that there can be forgiveness.”

     So many threads to follow.  Reconciliation takes time, a long time.  Reconciliation isn’t forgive and forget; it’s genuine healing – for everybody involved.  Joseph needed the healing as much as the brothers and their father did.  The beneficiaries of this reconciliation?  Not just this family, but people who had never known them!

     If ever a text shouted to the preacher “Trust me!” it is this one.  You don’t need to make it relevant; it’s more relevant than anything you can devise.  You don’t have to make it interesting or funny; it’s the greatest story ever told.

     I might touch on “Joseph could control himself no longer.”  We are control freaks – but the healing comes when we yield control and let the emotions roll.  The emotion isn’t Oh, I feel God! but rather, Wow, God is releasing, and healing my emotions!  Think of the joy when the hobbits are reunited in Rivendell after the ring is destroyed at Mordor (The Return of the King); J.R.R. Tolkien told a friend that when he wrote this scene, his tears kept smearing the ink.  He never saw the video of course, but Peter Jackson handled this so well.

     Or the scene in Good Will Hunting where Sean embraces Will and keeps repeating, “It’s not your fault, it’s not your fault.”  Very Genesis 45ish.  Of course, the climactic scene of all climactic scenes is the cross (“You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good”) – or is it the resurrection? Or that breakfast reunion by Galilee (John 21)?

   Matthew 15:21-28. The story of the Canaanite woman (Syro-Phoenician in Mark!) is a doozy - all the more reason to preach on it! Floyd Filson, in his 1960 commentary on Matthew, suggested that he winked at her when he spoke these words, implying insider status for this one. Or was it a clever ploy on Jesus’ part to evoke deeper faith in her, or those watching? I'm pretty sure I prefer the notion of Jesus growing into a fuller ministry, realizing through this woman's chutzpah that he has more boundaries to cross - than thinking Jesus is omniscient and a winker!

   Sarah Ruden’s new translation (The  Gospels) quite rightly renders kunarion as “little doggies,” instead of “dog.” Try it. Better. More pitiful, more dismissive. Dogs, we might recall, did not enjoy warm relationships with humans back in Bible times. 

   Morna Hooker, noting how Jesus confined his attention to the Jews, suggested that “the Gentile woman requests a cure outside the context of Jesus’ call to Israel; she seems to be asking for a cure which is detached from the in-breaking of God’s kingdom, merely taking advantage of the opportunity provided by the presence of a miracle worker. This is perhaps the reason for Jesus’ stern answer; his healings are part of something greater and cannot be torn out of that context.”

   Joel Marcus is mindful of the history of bad blood between Tyrians and Galileans – and how the farm produce of Galilee so often wound up in Tyre, while the peasants in Galilee went hungry. So Jesus’ words make a bit of compassionate sense. Or should we suggest, as many have, that Jesus had a growing moment, a learning experience, a maturation in himself? Mistakenly, he turned her away – and her persistence cracked open a bit of hardness in Jesus’ Jewishness to leave space for a desperate Gentile? Depending on the height of your view of Jesus’ humanity, this may or may not work.

   Martin Luther examined this text and thought of the ways Christians are to persist in trusting God, even when God seems to turn his back on them. They must learn to see the ‘yes’ hidden in his ‘no.’  Much wisdom here – although the preacher dare not resort to trifling ideas such as those articulated in Garth Brooks’s crooning “Unanswered Prayers.”

   The woman’s persistence has recently been likened to the persistence of women right insisting on their place in the church. “Nevertheless, She Persisted” became a popular slogan, t-shirt and hashtag this year. Persistence of all kinds is a biblical thing, falsifying the absurd notion of God’s will being associated with “the door was open.” Many open doors we most surely should not walk through. And many closed and bolted doors should be knocked down.

   I am fond of Sheila Nelson-McJilton’s probing sermon, “Crumbs” – cited in Leonora Tubbs Tisdale’s great book, Prophetic Preaching. “Crumbs. That’s all they are looking for. Crumbs. Not the whole life. Not even a slice. Just crumbs. You and I want the whole loaf…” – and then she speaks of our wealth, access, all the poor lack. But then she presses further: “Crumbs. They want more than crumbs because deep in their souls, they know they deserve more. And yet they often do not know who to ask or how to ask…”

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   Check out my newest book, The Heart of the Psalms: God's Word to the World! I've been meaning to write this one all my life, since I did my Ph.D. on the Psalms and have taught and prayed them endlessly. Abingdon also has a study guide and a video series, which groups enjoy.

What can we say August 23? 13th after Pentecost

    How to choose among these 3 stunning texts? I may touch on the Old Testament and Epistle, saving this chunk of the Gospel for next week, when Matthew 16 arrives at its real climax. Before exploring the so very preachable and vivid drama of Exodus, let’s set the context by rambling around our Epistle.

   Romans 12:1-8. Conformity? or Transformation? Michael Gorman deploys some thoughtful phrasings of what’s going on in this fabulous text. Given the Gospel laid out in Romans 1-11, Paul now explains the reflex in us of God’s mercy: it’s a “believing allegiance,” a “resurrectional cruciformity.” Cruciform, but joyful.

   Gorman suggests chapters 12 onward are “like a Christian Holiness Code,” the New Testament’s version of Leviticus 17-26. Indeed: sacrifices were commanded under the Old Covenant. Paul repurposes that image and language here, taking our bodies and minds as our sacrifices, a fulltime worship that “does not occur only in specific places or at specific times; it is, rather, the liturgy of life.”

   I think of the story of Clarence Jordan’s daughter Jan coming home from school in tears, explaining to her dad that a boy named Bob Speck was picking on her, pushing her and throwing her books on the floor – harassment due to Jordan’s radical Christian community, Koinonia. Jordan responded to her: “I’m going to ask Jesus to excuse me from being a Christian for about 15 minutes and beat the hell out of Bob Speck.” Jan answered: “You can’t be excused for 15 minutes.”

   This text figured – sort of – in my college days. My roommate’s girlfriend cross-stitched J.B. Phillips’s rendering of this passage and hung it on our wall – perhaps fantasizing it would help us behave: “Don’t let the world around you squeeze you into its own mould, but let God re-mould your minds from within.” Or as we may know it, “Do not be conformed, but be transformed.”

   N.T. Wright (in his New Interpreter’s Bible commentary) says “The opening 2 verses of this section are as dense as any passage in Paul.”  Agreed.  Read slowly.  Preach a whole series on the thing.  I won’t attempt every detail, but here are a few that leave me thunderstruck and appear to be fertile preaching ground.

   The “Therefore” is huge!  Paul assumes you’ve just been listening to somebody read out loud chapters 1-11 – so remind yourself about grace, faith, the Spirit, baptism. Paul seems to be shifting from faith to action – an unfortunate “seems,” as Christians forever focus on belief and then forget to get to ethics, simultaneously forgetting they are one and the same. N.T. Wright again: “Belief and behavior are inextricably woven. They are the breath and blood of Christian living, the twin signs of life.” 

   Two things: even fine church people are great conformists – to the culture, to parental expectation, to the confines of political ideology; Christian parents hope their children will “fit in,” and fret when they don’t. Paul says “Don’t fit in!” Who said “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd”?

   Paul trashes conformity, replacing it with “Be transformed.” The grammar startles me: this metamorphousthe (like metamorphosis!) is a passive imperative. Imperatives usually say Go do this. But the passive imperative is Go have this done to yourself, just let this happen in you. Clearly a power outside ourselves – the Spirit! – does this work on and in us. And the verbs here are plural! Y’all be transformed. It’s not mere individuals but the community, together.

   I dig C.E.B. Cranfield’s remark (in his fabulous ITT commentary on Romans): “There is only one possibility open to us – to resist this process of being continually moulded and fashioned according to the pattern of this present age with its conventions and standards of values.  The good news is we are no longer helpless victims of tyrannizing forces, but we are able to resist this pressure which comes both from without and from within, because God’s merciful action in Christ has provided the basis of resistance.”

   Back to speaking of plurals: Paul declares we do all this “by the mercies of God.” Not mercy, but mercies – a plural captured in the hymn “Great is thy Faithfulness.” I need plenty myself.

   Notice also for your people that worship for Paul isn’t sitting in a pew singing hymns and reciting litanies. It’s something you do with your body. We all worship something, some things, with our bodies. How stunning is this? You can please God, or not, with your body. It’s the “temple of the Spirit” (1 Cor. 6:19). Gorman calls it “death and difference.” It’s a new way of perceiving, a new way of doing everything in, with, and about our bodies. Martin Luther King, Jr. invited us to be “transformed nonconformists.”

   But then I wonder if conformity is itself transformative - if we are conforming to Christ, or to great saints in the life of the Church.

   Need an illustration of all this? Look no further than today’s lectionary…

   Exodus 1:8-2:10 dovetails three dramatic moments that are precisely what Paul was talking about: the vicious infliction of harsh servitude on Israel, the devious midwives countering, and then the birth and rescue of Moses, the rescuer.

   Tourists gawk at the pyramids as wonders of the world. Like most others, they came to be on the backs of slave labor, blood, sweat and tears. American culture is mired in debates now about monuments to the beneficiaries of slave labor. And Walter Brueggemann, in his lovely book Sabbath as Resistance, unearths how our culture clings to Egyptian ways: endless work, more and more production, money flowing upward toward the top. The coronavirus crisis underlines how we are lost without it. I love Brueggemann’s phrasing: “It is not accidental that the best graphic portrayal of this arrangement is a pyramid, the supreme construction of Pharaoh’s system.”

   And who’s the most anxious one in such a system? The guy at the top! “He dealt shrewdly with them,” a line to make you laugh out loud. Less straw, killing the male work force? Paranoia, self-destructive – but just as surely destructive of others. I think I will name, again, the way our idolatry of our day, political ideology, vaunts itself as the way, truth and life, but is finally only self-destructive. That's bipartisan...

   How deftly the narrator, like using a zoom lens, moves from the megapicture of Egypt, its vastness, and sprawling construction projects, to two small women, Shiphrah (meaning “beautiful”) and Puah (“fragrant flower”). Religious parents should name their daughters for them. They “fear God,” but they also have considerable spunk, sass, courage. History’s first civil disobedients! Thoreau reminded the world that “I was just obeying orders!” is no defense. Church people need to get over their blind attachments to what superficially seems to be patriotism or goodness. God’s great heroes through history have blatantly disobeyed the law, starting with Peter (“We must obey God rather than men,” Acts 5), continuing through history to the Civil Rights movement; the examples are endless, although the preacher never disses listeners. An art, not a science for sure.

   The Bible disses empire, but in clever, sneaky ways. Why didn’t Shiphrah and Puah kill the babies? “The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; they are so strong they give birth before the midwives can get there.” True? A little fib? Doesn’t matter. They were heroic. Instead of blaming and feeling impotent in the face of massive powers, they did what they could.

   The heroic is always like that. Church doesn’t speak often enough of courage. Examples abound. John Irving, in Cider House Rules, uses Charles’ Dickens’s great line from David Copperfield to great effect: “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” Dr. Larch is reading on through the book to orphans from David Copperfield, inspiring them to be just this: heroes of their own lives.

   Or Aunt May’s wise counsel to Peter Parker/Spiderman: “Everybody loves a hero. People line up for them. Years later, they’ll tell how they stood in the rain for hours just to get a glimpse of the one who taught them to hold on a second longer. I believe there’s a hero in all of us…that keeps us honest…gives us strength…makes us noble…and finally allows us to die with pride, even though sometimes we have to be steady and give up the thing we want the most – even our dreams.”

   Heroes? Small people changing the world? Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat. Albert Schweitzer, giving up a lucrative career to plunge into Lamparene. Jochebed defied Pharaoh by hiding her son. Even Pharaoh’s daughter! Rameses II, greatest of the pharaohs (and it’s no accident that this was precisely when God showed who’s really God!) had 59 daughters! This one knowingly took a Hebrew boy who was to be killed into her home.

   There’s so much in Exodus 2! Moses is a “good” child; the Hebrew, tov, is the same as what God pronounced over each day of creation in Genesis 1. How on earth would one keep a child quiet for so long?  Right now, moms (parents generally) are weary and near despair, trying to work from home while also teaching - and then think of the marginalized families and their even greater despair! The preacher names these realities, even if there are no evident fixes. What is God asking of the Church in such a time?

   When Moses's mother can no longer manage, in a moment wrought with poignant sorrow and yet unquenchable hope, she places him in a basket and just sends him down the Nile. The word for basket, tevah, is used only one other time in Scripture: Noah’s ark! Like Noah’s ark, this tevah had no rudder or sail, floating randomly – and yet was God’s hand in it somehow? The preacher might wish to say Yes! But it’s better just to let the question linger – which is how our people experience there lives. Think Forrest Gump: “I don't know if Momma was right or if, if it's Lieutenant Dan. I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floatin' around accidental-like on a breeze, but I think maybe it's both. Maybe both is happenin' at the same time.”

   And then the Pharaoh's daughter: how much courage did it take for her to welcome a slave child into the palace? Kelley Nikondeha, in her thoughtful book Defiant: What the Women of Exodus Teach Us About Freedom, sees her as a beneficiary of a closed system of complicity. When she bathed, she was "attempting to purge the filth of empire. Something in her broke under the water's surface." She leverages her privilege (this is God's call to us!) to save a child washed ashore. Nikondeha then ponders such moments in our day.

   My mind rushed to Pope Francis. For his first trip away from Rome after his consecration, he chose Lampedusa, and island in the Mediterranean where hundreds of immigrant bodies had washed ashore. He had an altar made from the wrecked boats of migrants, and spoke of the place as symbolic of "the locked door between the worlds of affluence and poverty." His sermon strove to "awaken the consciences of those who have forgotten how to weep over the plight of the poor."

   And then Matthew 16:13-20. In the plot of the Synoptics, the clear turning point in the saga is this very moment. Until then (as I learned from W.H. Vanstone’s old and profound book, The Stature of Waiting), Jesus is in control, a dynamic actor striding across the stage of history, working miracles, dazzling the crowds. Now he has ventured to the border, in the far north, to Caesarea Philippi, which in those days was a warren of pagan temples; check out the artist’s rendition of what it would have looked like, imperial altars all affixed to the ancient cave dedicated to the nature god, Pan. After this haunting conversation in such a place, Jesus turns his face toward Jerusalem. No more miracles really. Increasingly he is passive; he is “handed over.” He is acted upon.

   Vanstone muses on what this alone might mean for us. as we think life’s plot should be toward increasing control, independence – and we loathe any turn toward dependence. I had a close friend with colon cancer.  A few years back, on the week I was preparing to preach on this text, he told me with immense sorrow, “Today they handed me over to hospice.” We shudder; we pity – but Jesus invites us to respect and relish this backwards plot to our lives, for it was the plot of his life.  Jesus was amazing in his first weeks of ministry. But the real glory came when he let himself be betrayed, beaten, tried unjustly, when he “never said a-mumblin’ word,” when he refused to come down from the cross or strike his enemies dead but instead forgave them. Even his resurrection was passive:  he didn’t bolt from the tomb and knock the guards aside; God raised him.

   Jesus’ identity is debated, among those who know him best. Who do people say Jesus is today? Political ideologue? White guy? Liberal prophet? My personal assistant? The answers are many, and downright embarrassing. Peter gets the right answer, but doesn’t grasp what that identity implies. I love the irony in Jesus’ rebuke: “Get behind me.” That’s precisely where disciples are supposed to be – for it is from behind that we follow! Jesus is heroic, but not a Spiderman kind of heroic. He'll show the heroic, if Peter will be stick around.

   Matthew alone then supplies the much-abused conversation about the keys, and Peter as the rock on which the church would be built. Without dissing Roman Catholicism, we can name the way the church perverted all of this into a power grab, and still does. To us are entrusted “keys,” but those keys are our gentle pastoral authority to listen, love, guide, demonstrate mercy and hope. Martin Luther spent a lot of time pondering these keys. We ordained peeps are responsible for order and discipline. Peter is entirely foolhardy, as are all of us who dare to wield the keys and be the church. We simply stick behind Jesus, a little bit embarrassed over how dumb we can be, and count on his mercy, his mercies plural, and journey with him to the holy city not to assume power but to lose everything.

   Of course, Stanley Hauerwas is right about Peter-as-Rock: “That so much has been written about this passage betrays the responsibility that Jesus has given Peter. Peter’s task if not to call attention to himself, but to witness to the Messiah.” And thinking Peter-as-rock: if you make it to Rome some day, don’t miss the Scavi – the excavations under the crypt of St. Peter’s, where they found a necropolis from the time of Jesus and Peter, and where they firmly and convincingly believe Peter was actually buried. A huge WOW in this place.

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   Check out my newest book, The Heart of the Psalms: God's Word to the World! I've been meaning to write this one all my life, since I did my Ph.D. on the Psalms and have taught and prayed them endlessly. Abingdon also has a study guide and a video series, which groups enjoy.