Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28
Proper 14 (19) - Year A
A promise: “I will send you to those who hate you,
who cannot speak peaceably to you.”
So Joseph responds to his call as a prophet, “Here am I”, and goes to his “brothers.” So Elijah hears as a prophet hears, in great silence, and returns to those seeking his life. So the disciples enter the chaos of the deep, of wind and wave. So the faithful strive not for heavenly stairs or power to change the past, only a word and heart for this day’s need.
This promise is repeated continually. Some hear and are renewed. Some almost hear and fear. Some do not yet hear, but are called, nonetheless.
- - - - - - -
sent ahead
we know our own
times of famine
made worse by tired feet
starved of peaceable speech
as well as of daily bread
our insides and outsides
stumble onsent ahead
without a clue
we take
what we know
and join it
with what others know
silently singing
steadfast love to actionsent ahead
into unfamiliar chaos
we battle wind and wave
until we can step aside
from our fears
until our words
turn to healing
for the nations
As found in Wrestling Year A: Connecting Sunday Readings with Lived Experience
The Joseph story helps us reflect on a hidden providence/predestination of GOD working through the power of dream. A part of this will be the refrain of “bowing down.”
A part of this hiddenness is what is not read – the dreams. Without the unspoken part it is trickier to know where to focus. What are the dreams of the people you are with and what your own?
What dreams of the future do you have. How do you envision the expansive love of G*D being manifest in our time and place? What will this look like for those who are laying public plans to bomb Iraq not dissimilar from the secret plans to bomb Hiroshima? What will this look like for those who have been injured by blockades of materials, emotional support, new thoughts, and the like? If you are not operating out of a grand dream, what direction do you have?
But back to the story we have. In the midst of immediate family tension there rides to the rescue echoes of a past family tension. Ishmael’s descendants come riding by to shift the scene within Isaac’s descendants from murder to exile.
Would that we could find the connections that will allow past hurts to be a source of present blessing. How can that happen within a church divided or a world waiting for war?
The work before us is both the recognition of and a participation in a yet hidden providence.
Specifically, what will it take for us to follow Reuben’s lead of compassion within a family all too willing to use violence first? Do we need to start a Reuben Society in regard to current war plans? Can we do that knowing that Reuben also got caught up with power issues when he slept with Bilhah (35:22)? None of us seem particularly pure. Providence certainly is tangled.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2002/august2002.html
In a pit or in a cave or just standing on a corner, there can come a sudden question about who we are and what is happening to us and around us. This can strike whether we feel chosen, called, blest, favorite or if we have experienced being left out, rejected, unlucky, second-class.
There is not much escape from such moments. If we are fortunate we have a community of trusted folks with whom we can check our sensibilities. If we are alone we are thrown on our own resources, our memories, our hopes, a whisper, an echo of a far-off hymn.
May you be given the gift of a plethora of options for such moments in your life when it feels like wandering and numbness are setting in.
May you be given the gift of a friend who notices and walks alongside.
http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2005/august2005.html
A promise: I will send you to those who hate you, who cannot speak peaceably to you.
So Joseph responds to his call as a prophet, “Here am I” and goes to his “brothers.” So Elijah hears as a prophet hears, in great silence, and returns to those seeking his life. So the disciples enter the chaos of the deep, of wind and wave. So the faithful strive not for heavenly stairs or power to change the past, only a word and heart for this day’s need.
This promise is repeated continually. Some hear and are renewed. Some almost hear and fear. Some do not yet hear, but are called, nonetheless.
Sometimes we hear and jump into the waves. Sometimes we forget in the presence of pressing need and regret our jump. Nonetheless, a repeated call is available to hear when we can clear our mind.
- - - - - - -
sent ahead
we know our own
times of famine
made worse by tired feet
starved of peaceable speech
as well as of daily bread
our insides and outsides
stumble onsent ahead
without a clue
we take
what we know
and join it
with what others know
silently singing
steadfast love to actionsent ahead
into unfamiliar chaos
we battle wind and save
until we can step aside
from our fears
until our words
turn to healing
for the nations
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html
Who knows what family storms were brewing when Joseph received his special coat. It was as dark and stormy a time as when the disciples were in the canoe without a paddle.
Seeing Joseph’s ghost coming closer the brothers decided that vengeance was the way to go to take care of such matters. Eventually Joseph went down into the pit, as deeply as Peter when down in the sea – as deeply as every one has gone down from internal or external forces.
Imagine for a moment the Midianite traders playing Jesus’ role of putting out a hand to raise someone up. Imagine again – for whom do you put out a hand to raise them up? Does the commercialization of the raising here discount it as a raising by the hand of G*D (recognized later)? What limits we put on “real” raising or “real” salvation!
When you have the time, instead of considering this story in light of Matthew’s, try considering Matthew’s story in light of this one with Peter, the best loved, being raised after looking down or back at the storms that had just taken place within the relationships just experienced in the boat-bounded expressions of fear.
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.html
Ah the joy of loving too much. Here it brings an unintended consequence of envy, jealousy, and hatred from others.
A reason given for loving too much is that it is established in old age when a new perspective on preciousness begins to set in. The run-of-the-mill births before this were just that. They happened. We won't comment on Joseph being a first son of Rachel.
At any rate, a long and colorful garment set Joseph apart from the others. How Fabulous it must have been! This was an outward and visible sign of preference by the patriarch Jacob/Israel.
An inward sign of preference by G*D is an ability to interpret dreams. This is not as noticeable, unless Joseph opens his big yap. A braggart from a trickster is quite a gene pool.
The brothers might well reason that Joseph carried recessive genes and it would be appropriate to send him packing with those other recessive gene holders - the Ishmaelites - like to like.
And so 20 pieces of silver enters the symbolic jargon of relationships. You might wonder who got the 20 pieces of silver in the recent American debt ceiling negotiations. I'm sure someone thought a deal of delayed death would be worth getting their cut on the side. One can only hope that some strange twist, to be revealed much later, after much more difficulty, will have what was intended as a win-win for the brothers and a lose-lose for Joseph and Jacob be turned around as a benefit for all (at least for a short while, until we again forget our blessings and focus on our fears).
http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2011/08/pentecost-8-year-genesis-371-4-12-28-ah.html
For mere pieces of silver do we betray. We do it consciously and unconsciously.
Consciously we pass legislation that advantage a few against the many. Consciously we sell armaments to both sides of a conflict, telling them “you and them fight” and then picking up the spoils after the gingham cat and the calico dog have torn one another to pieces.
Unconsciously we don’t attend to the polluting of ground and groundwater until it is too late and we have to declare another environmental disaster site. As long as it is profitable for someone we are willing to put everyone at risk. Unconsciously we dismiss people from our view. Native peoples are removed to reservations until we find mineral resources on the very land despised as worthless and only good for a more-or-less concentration camp. When we find worth where didn’t expect to find it, we then remove the invisible ones one step further.
Look at Ukraine, Afghanistan, Iran, Israel/Palestine, Lake Erie, Fracking earthquakes and chemical injections, exploding oil trains, spilled pipelines, institutionalized poverty, decaying infrastructure, “black sheep” in families, people declared “incompatible” with one limited category or another, and the list goes on and on.
Where have we not thrown a sister or a brother or a friend away to bolster our own position or self-image?
Where is the prayer needed to put life into a clearer perspective that allows mercy to temper our rush to judgment and forgiveness to beckon forth and resolve our fear, our prejudice, our preference for short-term gain and long-term decay?