Love is mercy unending
Commentary
Every year at this time, younger and older lovers alike enjoy the rituals of Valentine's Day. Cards and candy, gifts and letters are sent to special people in one's life. Beyond the amorous, Valentine's Day has expanded to be a time to express one's affections for people (even pets!) who hold a special place in the heart year 'round.
Every person spends a lifetime in search for love, a love that can endure the ravages of human experience. Sometimes love is hard to find in the hard-knock world of abuse, assault, theft, and exploitive policies in business or government. Sometimes love is hard to reclaim in a betrayed relationship. Sometimes love is lost because a relationship has died due to neglect or brokenness or the literal death of the beloved.
God's Word speaks encouragingly to those who seek after love. Especially in families, love can cover a multitude of sins, as Joseph will demonstrate in our first text for today. Due to God's gift of Jesus, there is an abiding quality to love which has been infused with the power of the resurrection from the dead, because of which, love never ends. The essential character of this love is mercy.
We could make the claim that every Sunday is God's Valentine's Day to the world. On this day as people gather in places of searching, the message is proclaimed that God is love, that God loves us, and that we are to love likewise!
Genesis 45:3-11, 15
Just as it is important to set the context for Jesus' weeping, whether outside the tomb of Lazarus or inside the Garden of Gethsemane, so it is important to set the context for Joseph's weeping over the reunion of his family. How else to understand the tears without knowing the unfolding story that is bathed by them?
Of course, one needs to remember the beloved position Joseph enjoyed in the esteem of his father, Jacob, which led his brothers to sell him into slavery and then lie to the father, creating a skeleton in the closet which would jump out to scare them nearly to death years later. (This could almost be a storyline for Tales from the Crypt.) The more immediate context of Joseph's tear-stained disclosure is the famine in Canaan, which brought his brothers into Egypt searching for food. Joseph concocts a ruse (which would have made his father, the Schemer, proud) in order to see Benjamin, his full brother by their mother, Rachel, Jacob's beloved. He keeps Simeon as a pledge that the brothers will return with Benjamin, proving that they are not spies. He replaces their money for the grain in the life-filled sacks they are bringing home. All this creates consternation among the brothers and for the father. It is a well-deserved turn-about for all they have put Joseph through and all Jacob put Uncle Esau through.
The seriousness with which all this impacts the family can be seen in Jacob's dismay (Genesis 42:35f) and the pledge Reuben, and then Simeon, give to their father. Reuben is willing to sacrifice his own two sons if Simeon and Benjamin do not return to their father; Judah is willing to give up his own life, should they not protect the brothers and save the father from further grief. When they arrive in Egypt a second time, now with Benjamin, Joseph continues to play with them by setting up Benjamin as a thief (Genesis 44:1-11). The ploy works to bring his brothers before him again. The first couple times the brothers appear before Joseph, they pay him respect by bowing in obeisance (Genesis 42:6; 43:28). This time, however, they fall before him to the ground (Genesis 44:14). It appears as if the father's fears are going to come true. When Judah makes a stirring plea for the welfare of Benjamin and offers his own life in servitude in his place, Joseph sees the deep repentance in his brothers and he can no longer contain himself. It is now that he weeps!
In a little piece of heilsgeschichte, Joseph provides an understanding of all the events that included parental favoritism, sibling rivalry, betrayal, deceit, slavery, imprisonment, famine, political appointments, government policies, family distress, conniving, fear, repentance, and joy -- all under the providential hand of God. Even in the unseemly affairs of broken family relationships, God is working to bring about his seemly purposes, not only for the family, but through them also for the world. The remnant (45:7) will find its purpose in the plans of God, who can take intended harm and make it serve his intended good. Typical of so many of the cycles in Israel's history, the judgment (here rather light; confrontation toward honesty and repentance is a far cry from destruction, as in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.) is followed by restoration (see Genesis 45:16-20). Also, typical of the cycles of Israel's history, there will be renewed problems that evoke God's wrath to yield to his mercy in prototypical ways until the full purpose of heilsgeschichte is revealed in Jesus -- incarnated, crucified, resurrected, and consummated.
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
If we listen closely enough to this text, we get a sound-bite of Paul, the orator. We have already seen him in the Athenian Areopagus (Acts 9:16f) and heard his persuasive words about the identity of God in the context of pagan pluralism. Paul knows how to begin where the people are and bring them to where they need to be. He is adept at mentoring both Jew and pagan into the Christian faith, even though both are at different places in their spiritual journeys. His method is to ask the very questions the people are asking and then proceed to answer them with whatever means makes sense and connects with the seeker's life and thoughts. Romans 9:19f is a good example of this. So is our text from his Corinthian correspondence.
The ostensible question is: What is the nature of the resurrected body? Now, this is a question that is asked only by those who actually believe in the "resurrection of the body and the life everlasting." Remember that the Sadducees denied the reality of the resurrection. Josephus reports the Sadducees concluding that "the soul perishes along with the body" (Jewish Antiquities 18.16). Greeks proposed some different views, that, although they spoke of something after death, were not anything like the Christian claim of the resurrection of the body. Platonist could speak of the soul living beyond death in a disembodied way. This, of course, is a different notion than a more vintage Greek outlook, as expressed by Homer, where at best a soul in Hades leads a wispy existence -- this soul which is not the real person, which still remains in the ground, devoid of life. In consort with this goyum strain, there were those within the tradition of Judaism that sounded rather platonic in their perspective, claiming that there was a kind of disembodied immortality. Amidst all this, there was a voice in later Judaism that talked boldly of the resurrection of the dead, pointing to such texts at Daniel 12, 2 Maccabees, and the Mishnah. Here, as in the Christian message, resurrection is understood as the reversal of death. Life everlasting is not just a different spiritual state beyond death. It is the reclaiming of the body that has been destroyed. It is the casting off of the mantel of death. It is the raising of that which had been laid down. So, the question becomes, what kind of body is raised? When those who have died are raised, "with what kind of body do they come?" (15:35).
It is to such a varied audience in Corinth, crossroads of trade in the Greek/Roman/Jewish world, that Paul addresses his remarks about the resurrected body. He uses an analogy that at the same time speaks of continuity and striking contrast. The seed that is planted in the ground contains all that the plant becomes. However, one could not recognize the plant in the seed, because there is a genuine newness about the plant that emerges. So it is with the body of the resurrection. It comes from the very seed that was laid in the ground at the time of death; but what comes from it is phenomenally unique. "God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body" (15:38).
Unfortunately, the text is edited in the lectionary. It must have been a principle forgotten, that the goal of preaching is to elucidate that which is difficult to comprehend, to make clear that which is unclear. Granted, these next couple verses (15:39-41) can certainly sound unclear. Yet, these verses lay the ground work for honoring each "body" in life and in death, appreciating the difference and recognizing the glory of God manifested in each. At a time when our new president has just been installed and Cabinet appointments are being considered and new assignments will be given to different folks, distinctions are naturally made about the influential and the powerful. How equalizing to hear that regardless of the different luster of celestial bodies, they are all ordained by God. Every body has its place and God personally chooses which is what and what is where. This is very comforting and encouraging for anyone who is questioning his or her timely and enduring significance in the universe.
For Paul, the answer to the question about the nature of the resurrected body is given in Jesus, "the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep" (1 Corinthians 15:20). Paul contrasts our "lowly body" with "his glorious body" (referring to the resurrected and ascended Lord who is coming again; Philippians 3:21). As difficult as it is to talk about these things of which we really have only cursory knowledge, Paul does go on to speak of "the image of the man of heaven" which is imperishable (15:49). When we are raised, we shall share in this nature. It will change us, for sure, just like the glorious full-headed stalk of wheat has been radically changed from the naked seed that was inserted into the earth to die unto itself.
Although Paul uses some of the language of Greek thought, namely the language of immortality (1 Corinthians 15:54), he remains consistent with his Jewish heritage which does not view the world -- or worlds! -- in platonic terms. Rather, Paul has a sense of the real historical processes that bear fruit into eternity by the hand of God and by the grace of God and by the power of God. (For a helpful review of all these things, see Krister Stendahl's book Immortality and Resurrection: Death in the Western World -- Two Conflicting Currents of Thought.)
Luke 6:27-38
Luke's short, summary version of Jesus' teachings, sometimes referred to as the Sermon on the Plain viz. Matthew's longer Sermon on the Mount, defines love in terms of mercy. This is accentuated by the fact that, whereas in Matthew 7:12, the Golden Rule is explicated within the context of doing good to others who also know how to do good, in Luke 6:31 the Golden Rule is placed in the context of a response to those who are behaving badly. In other words, "When others abuse and misuse you, do not respond in kind, but, rather, show mercy and treat them as you would have wished to be treated in the first place."
This is not an easy word to accept. Jesus bends the ear of those within range by saying, "But I say to you that hear...." There is a subtle jibe here, that is poignantly expressed in the German rendition of Mark 4:9 in DIE BIBEL in heutigem Deutsch: "Wer horen kann, soll gut zuhoren," loosely rendered, "If you can hear this, then pay close attention." Jesus goes on, then, to describe a radical discipleship that for love's sake treats the enemy better than the enemy behaves. The nature of mercy is that it does not return evil for evil; it does not give back what a person may indeed deserve. Paul heard this message loudly and clearly and repeats it to his Christian friends in Thessalonica, when he writes, "See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all" (1 Thessalonians 5:15); and again, this time to his Roman audience, "Repay no one evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all ... Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (Romans 12:17, 21). The mean, the ungrateful, the selfish are to be dealt with in the same way as God deals with the host of us sinners. "Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful" (6:36). Admittedly, Luke's use of oiktirmoz (merciful) gives better definition as to the shape of human behavior than Matthew's corresponding use of teleioz (perfect, complete; Matthew 5:48). However, the purpose is similar -- to model one's behavior after God's, which is completely perfect in mercy. In our human relationships we are to strive to embody the nature of God's relation with humanity. Jesus defines that model with forgiveness, which is the ultimate mercy, not giving us what we deserve -- namely, punishment and condemnation -- but what we do not deserve -- namely, the unmerited love of God. The Gospel writer John picks this up when he explains, "For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him" (John 3:17).
Application
At first glance, these three texts may appear so disparate as to have little to do with one another. One deals with a family reunion, another with the concept of resurrected bodies, and the third with how to treat enemies. However, when we approach these texts to gain a deeper understanding of love, there are insights that present themselves to us. It is remarkable how Scripture can speak to us, when we bring the right questions and the urgency of our needs to its well-worn pages. Its stories, thoughts, and words can shape the living of our days.
We can look at the cycles of our nation in this past century to see how God has lead us through times of judgment and hardship into times of prosperity and blessing. In a very broad stroke, one can see on the canvass of the twentieth century the turmoil of our nation going through two world wars, a market crash, and a depression; but, then, rebounding from it all and developing a surging economy, military might, and a political presence so as to be the guardians of democracy and freedom in the world (vis-a-vis fascism and communism and, so far, terrorism and anarchy). Even personally, we can cite cycles of life through which we tumble and turn. Yet, we have the sense to see God leading us through. We know we live in a fallen creation, yet, through the cycles of the season, God sustains the world and leads it on. So, too, as we experience personal and national and global cycles (politically, economically, militarily, socially, culturally, and so on), we are called upon to perceive the hand of God in and through it all. This is what Joseph did in discerning the meaning of all the craziness, the challenges, and all the opportunities that he was part of. As a type of Jesus (he became a slave that he may be the savior of his family and the people of God; see Philippians 2:5-11 and 1 John 4:9-15), Joseph helps us perceive the warp and woof of our lives theologically; that is, the providential plan of God making sense of the nonsense and writing straight with our crooked lines. Standing on the far side of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, we can claim with confidence that the glory of God is truly revealed in and through how Jesus and we are indeed led through any and all valleys of the shadow and all cycles of any saeculum.
The fundamental witness of the resurrection is that God will have the last word. This glory that is God's, revealed in Jesus as a first-fruit sign, will be shared with us as the Beloved of God's creation. Paul says, "When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory" (Colossians 3:4). Even now, we live presently by the power of what is to be. This becomes a steady source of self-esteem with which we can love ourselves as God loves us. There is the promise of glory for each of us.
Everyone who has gone through puberty knows what a difficult time that can be in terms of self-esteem, when the promise of youth does not seem to unfold into ideal beauty and strength, leaving creases of disappointment on scarred hearts. How encouraging to hear that like the celestial bodies which each have their glory and like the difference between the terrestrial and the celestial, so too God values each of us as we are and has a plan for us as to who we will become within the scope of his purposes. God is not through with us yet, neither in this life nor the next. We need not devalue this present experience, like Manichaeans, nor despair in the future. Barbara W. Tuchman, in her work A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, offers an uplifting word about our time "of disarray" as she compares it to the time of the Black Death in Europe: "If our last decade or two of collapsing assumptions has been a period of unusual discomfort, it is reassuring to know that the human species has lived through worse before." Although writing in the wake of the turbulent 1960s and the whitecaps of Watergate in the 1970s, these words are pertinent to our nation as we move through our current time of unraveling into a period of crisis (a la Strauss and Howe, The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny).
Voltaire said, "History never repeats itself; man always does." Therefore, the words of Jesus about how to deal with the ungrateful and the selfish side of our humanity are always pertinent. Christians are called to a radical discipleship based on the radical divinity of the God of love. In Jesus we see and hear so clearly about the nature of love as mercy. Where the spirits of the age (or in Martin Luther's words, "the world") entice us with messages like "pursue your own dreams, be a success, improve your lot, take care of yourself, bemuse yourself, pamper yourself, consume and get it all in," our Lord calls us to do good -- return it for evil, speak words of blessing to those who speak words of cursing, pray for abusers, be givers to the takers, withhold judgment, and offer forgiveness. It's not easy to assume the mantel of Christianity. Bonhoeffer said it was tantamount to bidding a person "come and die."
As Christians hear this bidding to such heavenly perfection and as they imitate the perfect model found in Christ, they live faithfully in the ways of mercy and reflect the glory of God, becoming an ephemeral epiphany until the day of resurrection.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Genesis 45:3-11, 15
This Old Testament text is paired with the Gospel Lesson in Luke 6:27-38, a portion of Jesus' Sermon on the Plain. Specifically, it is paired with our Lord's commands to love our enemies, and not to judge so that we will not be judged. It is easy to see why the two lessons were put together, but their pairing poses a terrible temptation to the preacher -- to use the Genesis story as an illustration of loving our enemies. Indeed, the common approach of our society would be to advocate an easy forgiveness or a sentimental compassion, in which we let bygones be bygones and sin has no consequences. In such an approach, the Genesis story is turned into a moral lesson, so common in the treatment of the Joseph stories, and Joseph becomes a model of how we are to act. As Joseph forgave his brothers, so should we. As Joseph learned humility, so should we. Thus, the Genesis story is loosed from all foundations in history and transformed into a pragmatic example of how expediently to patch up our relations with those with whom we have been at odds. I have often labeled such a superficial approach a Reader's Digest religion that has little relation to the biblical message.
The biblical text is never divorced from a historical context, and that is true of our stated passage this morning. Many scholars have located the Joseph novella in the period when the Hyksos, an Asiatic people of Northwest sematic stock, controlled Egypt, in the seventeenth and sixteen centuries B.C. At that time, Jacob was the clan leader of semi-nomadic peoples who lived in tents, and who moved up and down in the central hill region of Palestine and southward into the Negeb in search of seasonal pasture for their flocks. Occasionally, some of them made longer journeys into Upper Egypt or Mesopotamia. Camels were unknown at the time, and they were ass nomads, migrating from place to place. Such is the wider setting of our text. But the preacher will also have to tell something of the story preceding our text in order to make it understandable to the congregation.
Because the young Joseph was such a braggart, the favored brat of his father Jacob, his brothers sell him as a slave to passing Midianite or Ishmaelite traders, who carry him into Egypt and sell him to the household of Potiphar, a captain of the Pharaoh's guard. When Joseph fends off an attempted seduction by Potiphar's wife, he is falsely accused and thrown into prison. But his God-given ability to interpret dreams brings him before Pharaoh. That king has had a dream of seven thin cows eating up seven fat cows. When Joseph interprets the dream as a prediction of seven years of plenty, followed by seven years of famine, he is made the vizier of Pharaoh, in charge of all of Egypt.
The famine afflicts Palestine as well as Egypt, so Jacob decides to send ten of his remaining sons to Egypt to buy grain. When they arrive in Egypt, the ten brothers do not recognize Joseph, although he of course knows them. Joseph arranges an elaborate test to see if the brothers have changed in character. He imprisons Simeon as a hostage and insists that when the brothers return, they bring with them Jacob's youngest son, Benjamin. Benjamin comes with his brothers, but as they leave, Joseph hides his silver cup (a diviner's object) in Benjamin's sack, accuses the brothers of stealing it, and vows that the one in whose sack the cup is found will die. When the cup is found with Benjamin, Judah offers to give his life in Benjamin's stead. From that display of self-sacrifice, Joseph knows that his brothers' characters have changed, and he reveals his identity to them. It is at this point that our text for the morning begins.
But it is also at this point that the historical background of our text widens out to include all eternity. When Joseph reveals his identity to his amazed and guilt-laden brothers, he first asks after the well-being of his father, and then urges his brothers not to blame and chastise themselves for their past hatred of him. "It was not you who sent me here, but God," Joseph tells them.
You see, Joseph realizes that he is an actor, not just on the stage of his famine-ridden country and not just in the land of Egypt. Joseph realizes that he is a participant in the universal, on-going purpose of God. At the beginning of Israel's history, when God called Abraham out of Mesopotamia, in about the eighteenth century B.C., God promised Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation, with many descendants, that those descendants would have a land to call their own, that God would enter into a covenant relationship with them, and that through them, God would bring his blessing on all the families of the earth (Genesis 12:1-3, 7; 17:1-8). Jacob and his twelve sons are the beginning of the fulfillment of that promise of descendants. But their lives are threatened by famine, and if they die, God cannot keep his word. So God sends Joseph ahead of Jacob and his brothers into Egypt, in order that when the famine comes, they may survive. "God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth," Joseph tells his brothers, "and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God." God is guaranteeing the fulfillment of his word. God is keeping his promise.
But what an incredible way God has gone about it! He has not worked some awesome miracle or suddenly appeared in person to rescue his chosen people. Instead, he has remained hidden in the concourse of everyday. He has used the brothers' hatred of Joseph and Joseph's slavery, the sinful seduction by Potiphar's wife, Joseph's imprisonment with all of its up and downs, and the dreams of a pagan Pharaoh to ensure that the twelve forbears of Israel do not die from famine and thus to keep alive the possibility of the fulfillment of his ancient promise. God has caused none of that evil. But he has used it to further his purpose. And Joseph, seeing beyond the sin of his brothers, beyond the trials he has experienced in Egypt, beyond the resentment which he might justly hold against his brothers, beyond his immediate circumstances, has understood that eternal purpose and his role in it, and willingly and lovingly accepted it.
I wonder if something like that is not involved when our Lord Jesus commands us to forgive our enemies. You see, we are not dealing in our lives with just the contentions and quarrels and upheavals of human relationships. We are not just actors in a little moment of history on an isolated stage in our little town. We are participants in an ongoing, universal purpose of God, in which our Lord is at work to bring in his kingdom and to save all people. And one of the necessary ingredients in that work by God is our forgiveness and love toward our fellow human beings, even if they be our enemies. The Kingdom of God is not advanced by human hatreds. And God's purpose is not furthered by enmities and strife. It is furthered by those who know how to forgive and love, even as they have been forgiven and loved by their Lord. We live and act on a universal and eternal stage, good Christians, for God or against him. And our Lord Jesus is telling us in his commands how to live our lives in that setting.
Every person spends a lifetime in search for love, a love that can endure the ravages of human experience. Sometimes love is hard to find in the hard-knock world of abuse, assault, theft, and exploitive policies in business or government. Sometimes love is hard to reclaim in a betrayed relationship. Sometimes love is lost because a relationship has died due to neglect or brokenness or the literal death of the beloved.
God's Word speaks encouragingly to those who seek after love. Especially in families, love can cover a multitude of sins, as Joseph will demonstrate in our first text for today. Due to God's gift of Jesus, there is an abiding quality to love which has been infused with the power of the resurrection from the dead, because of which, love never ends. The essential character of this love is mercy.
We could make the claim that every Sunday is God's Valentine's Day to the world. On this day as people gather in places of searching, the message is proclaimed that God is love, that God loves us, and that we are to love likewise!
Genesis 45:3-11, 15
Just as it is important to set the context for Jesus' weeping, whether outside the tomb of Lazarus or inside the Garden of Gethsemane, so it is important to set the context for Joseph's weeping over the reunion of his family. How else to understand the tears without knowing the unfolding story that is bathed by them?
Of course, one needs to remember the beloved position Joseph enjoyed in the esteem of his father, Jacob, which led his brothers to sell him into slavery and then lie to the father, creating a skeleton in the closet which would jump out to scare them nearly to death years later. (This could almost be a storyline for Tales from the Crypt.) The more immediate context of Joseph's tear-stained disclosure is the famine in Canaan, which brought his brothers into Egypt searching for food. Joseph concocts a ruse (which would have made his father, the Schemer, proud) in order to see Benjamin, his full brother by their mother, Rachel, Jacob's beloved. He keeps Simeon as a pledge that the brothers will return with Benjamin, proving that they are not spies. He replaces their money for the grain in the life-filled sacks they are bringing home. All this creates consternation among the brothers and for the father. It is a well-deserved turn-about for all they have put Joseph through and all Jacob put Uncle Esau through.
The seriousness with which all this impacts the family can be seen in Jacob's dismay (Genesis 42:35f) and the pledge Reuben, and then Simeon, give to their father. Reuben is willing to sacrifice his own two sons if Simeon and Benjamin do not return to their father; Judah is willing to give up his own life, should they not protect the brothers and save the father from further grief. When they arrive in Egypt a second time, now with Benjamin, Joseph continues to play with them by setting up Benjamin as a thief (Genesis 44:1-11). The ploy works to bring his brothers before him again. The first couple times the brothers appear before Joseph, they pay him respect by bowing in obeisance (Genesis 42:6; 43:28). This time, however, they fall before him to the ground (Genesis 44:14). It appears as if the father's fears are going to come true. When Judah makes a stirring plea for the welfare of Benjamin and offers his own life in servitude in his place, Joseph sees the deep repentance in his brothers and he can no longer contain himself. It is now that he weeps!
In a little piece of heilsgeschichte, Joseph provides an understanding of all the events that included parental favoritism, sibling rivalry, betrayal, deceit, slavery, imprisonment, famine, political appointments, government policies, family distress, conniving, fear, repentance, and joy -- all under the providential hand of God. Even in the unseemly affairs of broken family relationships, God is working to bring about his seemly purposes, not only for the family, but through them also for the world. The remnant (45:7) will find its purpose in the plans of God, who can take intended harm and make it serve his intended good. Typical of so many of the cycles in Israel's history, the judgment (here rather light; confrontation toward honesty and repentance is a far cry from destruction, as in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.) is followed by restoration (see Genesis 45:16-20). Also, typical of the cycles of Israel's history, there will be renewed problems that evoke God's wrath to yield to his mercy in prototypical ways until the full purpose of heilsgeschichte is revealed in Jesus -- incarnated, crucified, resurrected, and consummated.
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
If we listen closely enough to this text, we get a sound-bite of Paul, the orator. We have already seen him in the Athenian Areopagus (Acts 9:16f) and heard his persuasive words about the identity of God in the context of pagan pluralism. Paul knows how to begin where the people are and bring them to where they need to be. He is adept at mentoring both Jew and pagan into the Christian faith, even though both are at different places in their spiritual journeys. His method is to ask the very questions the people are asking and then proceed to answer them with whatever means makes sense and connects with the seeker's life and thoughts. Romans 9:19f is a good example of this. So is our text from his Corinthian correspondence.
The ostensible question is: What is the nature of the resurrected body? Now, this is a question that is asked only by those who actually believe in the "resurrection of the body and the life everlasting." Remember that the Sadducees denied the reality of the resurrection. Josephus reports the Sadducees concluding that "the soul perishes along with the body" (Jewish Antiquities 18.16). Greeks proposed some different views, that, although they spoke of something after death, were not anything like the Christian claim of the resurrection of the body. Platonist could speak of the soul living beyond death in a disembodied way. This, of course, is a different notion than a more vintage Greek outlook, as expressed by Homer, where at best a soul in Hades leads a wispy existence -- this soul which is not the real person, which still remains in the ground, devoid of life. In consort with this goyum strain, there were those within the tradition of Judaism that sounded rather platonic in their perspective, claiming that there was a kind of disembodied immortality. Amidst all this, there was a voice in later Judaism that talked boldly of the resurrection of the dead, pointing to such texts at Daniel 12, 2 Maccabees, and the Mishnah. Here, as in the Christian message, resurrection is understood as the reversal of death. Life everlasting is not just a different spiritual state beyond death. It is the reclaiming of the body that has been destroyed. It is the casting off of the mantel of death. It is the raising of that which had been laid down. So, the question becomes, what kind of body is raised? When those who have died are raised, "with what kind of body do they come?" (15:35).
It is to such a varied audience in Corinth, crossroads of trade in the Greek/Roman/Jewish world, that Paul addresses his remarks about the resurrected body. He uses an analogy that at the same time speaks of continuity and striking contrast. The seed that is planted in the ground contains all that the plant becomes. However, one could not recognize the plant in the seed, because there is a genuine newness about the plant that emerges. So it is with the body of the resurrection. It comes from the very seed that was laid in the ground at the time of death; but what comes from it is phenomenally unique. "God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body" (15:38).
Unfortunately, the text is edited in the lectionary. It must have been a principle forgotten, that the goal of preaching is to elucidate that which is difficult to comprehend, to make clear that which is unclear. Granted, these next couple verses (15:39-41) can certainly sound unclear. Yet, these verses lay the ground work for honoring each "body" in life and in death, appreciating the difference and recognizing the glory of God manifested in each. At a time when our new president has just been installed and Cabinet appointments are being considered and new assignments will be given to different folks, distinctions are naturally made about the influential and the powerful. How equalizing to hear that regardless of the different luster of celestial bodies, they are all ordained by God. Every body has its place and God personally chooses which is what and what is where. This is very comforting and encouraging for anyone who is questioning his or her timely and enduring significance in the universe.
For Paul, the answer to the question about the nature of the resurrected body is given in Jesus, "the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep" (1 Corinthians 15:20). Paul contrasts our "lowly body" with "his glorious body" (referring to the resurrected and ascended Lord who is coming again; Philippians 3:21). As difficult as it is to talk about these things of which we really have only cursory knowledge, Paul does go on to speak of "the image of the man of heaven" which is imperishable (15:49). When we are raised, we shall share in this nature. It will change us, for sure, just like the glorious full-headed stalk of wheat has been radically changed from the naked seed that was inserted into the earth to die unto itself.
Although Paul uses some of the language of Greek thought, namely the language of immortality (1 Corinthians 15:54), he remains consistent with his Jewish heritage which does not view the world -- or worlds! -- in platonic terms. Rather, Paul has a sense of the real historical processes that bear fruit into eternity by the hand of God and by the grace of God and by the power of God. (For a helpful review of all these things, see Krister Stendahl's book Immortality and Resurrection: Death in the Western World -- Two Conflicting Currents of Thought.)
Luke 6:27-38
Luke's short, summary version of Jesus' teachings, sometimes referred to as the Sermon on the Plain viz. Matthew's longer Sermon on the Mount, defines love in terms of mercy. This is accentuated by the fact that, whereas in Matthew 7:12, the Golden Rule is explicated within the context of doing good to others who also know how to do good, in Luke 6:31 the Golden Rule is placed in the context of a response to those who are behaving badly. In other words, "When others abuse and misuse you, do not respond in kind, but, rather, show mercy and treat them as you would have wished to be treated in the first place."
This is not an easy word to accept. Jesus bends the ear of those within range by saying, "But I say to you that hear...." There is a subtle jibe here, that is poignantly expressed in the German rendition of Mark 4:9 in DIE BIBEL in heutigem Deutsch: "Wer horen kann, soll gut zuhoren," loosely rendered, "If you can hear this, then pay close attention." Jesus goes on, then, to describe a radical discipleship that for love's sake treats the enemy better than the enemy behaves. The nature of mercy is that it does not return evil for evil; it does not give back what a person may indeed deserve. Paul heard this message loudly and clearly and repeats it to his Christian friends in Thessalonica, when he writes, "See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all" (1 Thessalonians 5:15); and again, this time to his Roman audience, "Repay no one evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all ... Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good" (Romans 12:17, 21). The mean, the ungrateful, the selfish are to be dealt with in the same way as God deals with the host of us sinners. "Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful" (6:36). Admittedly, Luke's use of oiktirmoz (merciful) gives better definition as to the shape of human behavior than Matthew's corresponding use of teleioz (perfect, complete; Matthew 5:48). However, the purpose is similar -- to model one's behavior after God's, which is completely perfect in mercy. In our human relationships we are to strive to embody the nature of God's relation with humanity. Jesus defines that model with forgiveness, which is the ultimate mercy, not giving us what we deserve -- namely, punishment and condemnation -- but what we do not deserve -- namely, the unmerited love of God. The Gospel writer John picks this up when he explains, "For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him" (John 3:17).
Application
At first glance, these three texts may appear so disparate as to have little to do with one another. One deals with a family reunion, another with the concept of resurrected bodies, and the third with how to treat enemies. However, when we approach these texts to gain a deeper understanding of love, there are insights that present themselves to us. It is remarkable how Scripture can speak to us, when we bring the right questions and the urgency of our needs to its well-worn pages. Its stories, thoughts, and words can shape the living of our days.
We can look at the cycles of our nation in this past century to see how God has lead us through times of judgment and hardship into times of prosperity and blessing. In a very broad stroke, one can see on the canvass of the twentieth century the turmoil of our nation going through two world wars, a market crash, and a depression; but, then, rebounding from it all and developing a surging economy, military might, and a political presence so as to be the guardians of democracy and freedom in the world (vis-a-vis fascism and communism and, so far, terrorism and anarchy). Even personally, we can cite cycles of life through which we tumble and turn. Yet, we have the sense to see God leading us through. We know we live in a fallen creation, yet, through the cycles of the season, God sustains the world and leads it on. So, too, as we experience personal and national and global cycles (politically, economically, militarily, socially, culturally, and so on), we are called upon to perceive the hand of God in and through it all. This is what Joseph did in discerning the meaning of all the craziness, the challenges, and all the opportunities that he was part of. As a type of Jesus (he became a slave that he may be the savior of his family and the people of God; see Philippians 2:5-11 and 1 John 4:9-15), Joseph helps us perceive the warp and woof of our lives theologically; that is, the providential plan of God making sense of the nonsense and writing straight with our crooked lines. Standing on the far side of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, we can claim with confidence that the glory of God is truly revealed in and through how Jesus and we are indeed led through any and all valleys of the shadow and all cycles of any saeculum.
The fundamental witness of the resurrection is that God will have the last word. This glory that is God's, revealed in Jesus as a first-fruit sign, will be shared with us as the Beloved of God's creation. Paul says, "When Christ who is our life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory" (Colossians 3:4). Even now, we live presently by the power of what is to be. This becomes a steady source of self-esteem with which we can love ourselves as God loves us. There is the promise of glory for each of us.
Everyone who has gone through puberty knows what a difficult time that can be in terms of self-esteem, when the promise of youth does not seem to unfold into ideal beauty and strength, leaving creases of disappointment on scarred hearts. How encouraging to hear that like the celestial bodies which each have their glory and like the difference between the terrestrial and the celestial, so too God values each of us as we are and has a plan for us as to who we will become within the scope of his purposes. God is not through with us yet, neither in this life nor the next. We need not devalue this present experience, like Manichaeans, nor despair in the future. Barbara W. Tuchman, in her work A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century, offers an uplifting word about our time "of disarray" as she compares it to the time of the Black Death in Europe: "If our last decade or two of collapsing assumptions has been a period of unusual discomfort, it is reassuring to know that the human species has lived through worse before." Although writing in the wake of the turbulent 1960s and the whitecaps of Watergate in the 1970s, these words are pertinent to our nation as we move through our current time of unraveling into a period of crisis (a la Strauss and Howe, The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America's Next Rendezvous with Destiny).
Voltaire said, "History never repeats itself; man always does." Therefore, the words of Jesus about how to deal with the ungrateful and the selfish side of our humanity are always pertinent. Christians are called to a radical discipleship based on the radical divinity of the God of love. In Jesus we see and hear so clearly about the nature of love as mercy. Where the spirits of the age (or in Martin Luther's words, "the world") entice us with messages like "pursue your own dreams, be a success, improve your lot, take care of yourself, bemuse yourself, pamper yourself, consume and get it all in," our Lord calls us to do good -- return it for evil, speak words of blessing to those who speak words of cursing, pray for abusers, be givers to the takers, withhold judgment, and offer forgiveness. It's not easy to assume the mantel of Christianity. Bonhoeffer said it was tantamount to bidding a person "come and die."
As Christians hear this bidding to such heavenly perfection and as they imitate the perfect model found in Christ, they live faithfully in the ways of mercy and reflect the glory of God, becoming an ephemeral epiphany until the day of resurrection.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By Elizabeth Achtemeier
Genesis 45:3-11, 15
This Old Testament text is paired with the Gospel Lesson in Luke 6:27-38, a portion of Jesus' Sermon on the Plain. Specifically, it is paired with our Lord's commands to love our enemies, and not to judge so that we will not be judged. It is easy to see why the two lessons were put together, but their pairing poses a terrible temptation to the preacher -- to use the Genesis story as an illustration of loving our enemies. Indeed, the common approach of our society would be to advocate an easy forgiveness or a sentimental compassion, in which we let bygones be bygones and sin has no consequences. In such an approach, the Genesis story is turned into a moral lesson, so common in the treatment of the Joseph stories, and Joseph becomes a model of how we are to act. As Joseph forgave his brothers, so should we. As Joseph learned humility, so should we. Thus, the Genesis story is loosed from all foundations in history and transformed into a pragmatic example of how expediently to patch up our relations with those with whom we have been at odds. I have often labeled such a superficial approach a Reader's Digest religion that has little relation to the biblical message.
The biblical text is never divorced from a historical context, and that is true of our stated passage this morning. Many scholars have located the Joseph novella in the period when the Hyksos, an Asiatic people of Northwest sematic stock, controlled Egypt, in the seventeenth and sixteen centuries B.C. At that time, Jacob was the clan leader of semi-nomadic peoples who lived in tents, and who moved up and down in the central hill region of Palestine and southward into the Negeb in search of seasonal pasture for their flocks. Occasionally, some of them made longer journeys into Upper Egypt or Mesopotamia. Camels were unknown at the time, and they were ass nomads, migrating from place to place. Such is the wider setting of our text. But the preacher will also have to tell something of the story preceding our text in order to make it understandable to the congregation.
Because the young Joseph was such a braggart, the favored brat of his father Jacob, his brothers sell him as a slave to passing Midianite or Ishmaelite traders, who carry him into Egypt and sell him to the household of Potiphar, a captain of the Pharaoh's guard. When Joseph fends off an attempted seduction by Potiphar's wife, he is falsely accused and thrown into prison. But his God-given ability to interpret dreams brings him before Pharaoh. That king has had a dream of seven thin cows eating up seven fat cows. When Joseph interprets the dream as a prediction of seven years of plenty, followed by seven years of famine, he is made the vizier of Pharaoh, in charge of all of Egypt.
The famine afflicts Palestine as well as Egypt, so Jacob decides to send ten of his remaining sons to Egypt to buy grain. When they arrive in Egypt, the ten brothers do not recognize Joseph, although he of course knows them. Joseph arranges an elaborate test to see if the brothers have changed in character. He imprisons Simeon as a hostage and insists that when the brothers return, they bring with them Jacob's youngest son, Benjamin. Benjamin comes with his brothers, but as they leave, Joseph hides his silver cup (a diviner's object) in Benjamin's sack, accuses the brothers of stealing it, and vows that the one in whose sack the cup is found will die. When the cup is found with Benjamin, Judah offers to give his life in Benjamin's stead. From that display of self-sacrifice, Joseph knows that his brothers' characters have changed, and he reveals his identity to them. It is at this point that our text for the morning begins.
But it is also at this point that the historical background of our text widens out to include all eternity. When Joseph reveals his identity to his amazed and guilt-laden brothers, he first asks after the well-being of his father, and then urges his brothers not to blame and chastise themselves for their past hatred of him. "It was not you who sent me here, but God," Joseph tells them.
You see, Joseph realizes that he is an actor, not just on the stage of his famine-ridden country and not just in the land of Egypt. Joseph realizes that he is a participant in the universal, on-going purpose of God. At the beginning of Israel's history, when God called Abraham out of Mesopotamia, in about the eighteenth century B.C., God promised Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation, with many descendants, that those descendants would have a land to call their own, that God would enter into a covenant relationship with them, and that through them, God would bring his blessing on all the families of the earth (Genesis 12:1-3, 7; 17:1-8). Jacob and his twelve sons are the beginning of the fulfillment of that promise of descendants. But their lives are threatened by famine, and if they die, God cannot keep his word. So God sends Joseph ahead of Jacob and his brothers into Egypt, in order that when the famine comes, they may survive. "God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth," Joseph tells his brothers, "and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God." God is guaranteeing the fulfillment of his word. God is keeping his promise.
But what an incredible way God has gone about it! He has not worked some awesome miracle or suddenly appeared in person to rescue his chosen people. Instead, he has remained hidden in the concourse of everyday. He has used the brothers' hatred of Joseph and Joseph's slavery, the sinful seduction by Potiphar's wife, Joseph's imprisonment with all of its up and downs, and the dreams of a pagan Pharaoh to ensure that the twelve forbears of Israel do not die from famine and thus to keep alive the possibility of the fulfillment of his ancient promise. God has caused none of that evil. But he has used it to further his purpose. And Joseph, seeing beyond the sin of his brothers, beyond the trials he has experienced in Egypt, beyond the resentment which he might justly hold against his brothers, beyond his immediate circumstances, has understood that eternal purpose and his role in it, and willingly and lovingly accepted it.
I wonder if something like that is not involved when our Lord Jesus commands us to forgive our enemies. You see, we are not dealing in our lives with just the contentions and quarrels and upheavals of human relationships. We are not just actors in a little moment of history on an isolated stage in our little town. We are participants in an ongoing, universal purpose of God, in which our Lord is at work to bring in his kingdom and to save all people. And one of the necessary ingredients in that work by God is our forgiveness and love toward our fellow human beings, even if they be our enemies. The Kingdom of God is not advanced by human hatreds. And God's purpose is not furthered by enmities and strife. It is furthered by those who know how to forgive and love, even as they have been forgiven and loved by their Lord. We live and act on a universal and eternal stage, good Christians, for God or against him. And our Lord Jesus is telling us in his commands how to live our lives in that setting.
