Genesis 42:36
Everything is going against me!
Yeah, the bit about it being wonderful is, unsurprisingly, not in the text. Jacob doesn't think it's wonderful at all. His favorite son Joseph is (so far as he knows) dead. His son Simeon is a prisoner in Egypt. And now he fears losing his son Benjamin too. And, oh by the way, the entire clan is facing death by starvation. Things don't look wonderful. They look grim.
But while Jacob can recite the reasons for his desperate frustration, the one thing he doesn't get at all is that it is, in fact, wonderful. Wonderful. God is protecting Jacob and his family from a terrible fate. Jacob's problem is that he doesn't know what he's being protected from.
And who can blame him? For the longest time I didn't see it either. I thought the whole episode basically revolved around surviving the regional famine. But thanks to some commentary in my helpful study Bible, I see that God was protecting his people not merely from starvation but also from assimilation.
Assimilation. It's what every nation wishes for its immigrants. If our immigrants would just become more like us! But God did not want the Israelites to become like their Canaanite hosts. In fact, God was willing to do whatever it took to prevent it from happening. The Canaanites worshipped many gods. They even sacrificed their children to some of them. No, God did not want Jacob and sons to become like their hosts. Something had to be done, and fast. Because the process of assimilation had already begun.
Genesis 38:1-6
About this time, Judah left home and moved to Adullam, where he stayed with a man named Hirah. There he saw a Canaanite woman, the daughter of Shua, and he married her. When he slept with her, she became pregnant and gave birth to a son, and he named the boy Er. Then she became pregnant again and gave birth to another son, and she named him Onan. And when she gave birth to a third son, she named him Shelah. At the time of Shelah’s birth, they were living at Kezib.
In the course of time, Judah arranged for his firstborn son, Er, to marry a young woman named Tamar.
This might seem like parenthetical information, but my Study Bible points out that these verses show "the beginnings of assimilation with the people of the land to help explain why God sent the family to Egypt. The Egyptians were strict separatists; the Israelites would retain their unique identity better in Egypt than in Canaan."
And here all this time I thought it was just about food. Well, on the face of it, it is! Joseph says as much to his brothers.
Genesis 45:7
God has sent me ahead of you to keep you and your families alive and to preserve many survivors.
But Joseph saw something else too. He seems to have understood that bodily survival was not the whole story. Survival of the clan identity was at stake too.
Genesis 46:33-34
Then he said, “When Pharaoh calls for you and asks you about your occupation, you must tell him, ‘We, your servants, have raised livestock all our lives, as our ancestors have always done.’ When you tell him this, he will let you live here in the region of Goshen, for the Egyptians despise shepherds.”
Genesis 43:32 also notes that "Egyptians despise Hebrews and refuse to eat with them." To sum it up, Egyptians despised Hebrews and they despised shepherds. So where does God take his Hebrew shepherds? To Egypt. How did they end up there? By a series of disasters. Would the clan have arrived there by any other means? No.
Disasters have a way of taking us where we would not willingly go. Which is exactly why God uses them in our lives, because sometimes exactly where we don't want to go is exactly where God wants us. For reasons which might not even be on our radar.
Hopefully I'll keep that thought in mind the next time my life derails.
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ReplyDeleteI'm preaching tomorrow on Luke 13:1-9. In the first part of this passage Jesus is asked about two disasters (the death of 18 when the Tower of Siloam collapsed and the death of some Galileans -- probably at the hands of Pilate, who then mixed their blood with the temple sacrifice). He makes it clear that the deaths weren't a result of these poor folks being anymore sinful than anyone else. But he reminds his audience that we should repent lest we perish. When disasters befall others, we should respond by trying to help them. But we should also respond by recognizing that disaster could befall us. And thus, disasters should remind us of our own need to repent.
ReplyDeleteJesus goes on to tell a parable about an unfruitful fruit (fig) tree. The fig tree is about to get chopped down (I can tell no lie), but the caretaker pleads for the landowner to keep it alive one more year "Let me dig around it and fertilize it and if in one year's time it hasn't produced any fruit, THEN cut it down."
We need to live repentant lives, but we also need to bear fruit. And in order to bear fruit, we may need to do some digging -- especially if the soil that surrounds us is hard and not very rich. And we may need some extra nourishment.
I've titled the sermon, "The Axe or the Shovel?" Disasters must remind us that our time may be limited. And we need to be fruitful in whatever time we have left.
you sly fox you... do they realize you're following the lectionary texts? I heard that sermon last night at an Anglican service! You go, girl. We'll proceed together on the Canterbury trail...
ReplyDeleteAnyway, your comments (and those from the sermon I heard) are good reminders for all of us. May the Lord grow your flock in wisdom and stature. I am glad for your church, Chris, that they have a man after God's heart as their pastor.