Standing Under the Scriptures
August 24, 2008

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

Our readings for this Sunday are:

Romans 12.1-8: Paul here uses the image of body to convey the relationship of believers to Christ and to each other. This reminds us that although Christianity has an individual dimension, its corporate one is primary.

Matthew 16.13-28 (going beyond the lectionary to the end of the chapter): This is the confession of Peter and its sequel. It is critical for the understanding of both messiahship and discipleship.

A couple of weeks ago I told how our class discussion led me to the discovery at long last of meaning of Israel, in Hebrew a compound word. It is persisting or persevering (s-r-h, from which the s and the r) with God (El). This was exemplified not only by Jacob in his wrestling with the angel but also, before him, by Abraham in his “bargaining” with the Lord over the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah. It can be seen as characterizing the people throughout their history as well. And it is worth emulating in our struggles over our own misfortunes and shortcomings. In connection with our readings for last Sunday (Genesis 45.1-8 and Matthew 15.10-28, especially 21-28) I made a similarly exciting discovery. This is the parallelism between the story of Joseph and his brothers and Jesus’ healing of the Canaanite woman’s daughter. As we discussed, this parallelism casts light on the two passages and beyond.

Our Genesis reading included only the dénouement of the Joseph story. But that story (chapters 37 through 47 of Genesis, except chapter 38) is sufficiently known. Joseph, through his immodesty about his dreams, incurred the wrath of his brothers, who responded by selling him into slavery in Egypt. There a further misfortune befell him in connection with his master’s wife. But he had the ability to interpret dreams as well as to dream them. And through this he turned things around, ending as Pharaoh’s chief minister with special responsibility for famine relief. The famine then ranging extended to Canaan, where it afflicted Joseph’s brothers and their father, Jacob/Israel. So the brothers set off for Egypt to buy grain. There they came face to face with Joseph but did not recognize him although he recognized them. And, one might say, he put them through the mill. He accused them of being spies, planted their money in their grain sacks to make them look like thieves, required them when they came again to leave one of their number behind, and said that he would have no more dealings with them unless they brought their youngest brother, Benjamin, with them. This Jacob was reluctant to allow, having already lost Joseph. But finally he acceded. It was in their third encounter that Joseph finally broke down and revealed himself to them, as we read in our passage. He went on to reassure them about their having sold him into slavery, saying in effect they meant it for evil but God meant it for good, namely so that their lives and the lives of the Egyptians as well might be saved.

And this putting through the mill has its counterpart in Jesus’ healing of the daughter of a woman who is a Canaanite and therefore a Gentile. When the woman comes to him crying for help for her afflicted daughter, he at first ignores her. The disciples in fact urge him to send her away for her bothering of them. This leads to his policy statement: “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” And when the woman continues to plead, he responds even more harshly, “It is not fitting to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.” The woman is still undeterred, however, answering within the framework of Jesus’ own stricture: “Yes Lord, yet the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” And Jesus now pronounces, “O woman, great is your faith. Be it done for you as you desire.” And her daughter was healed “from that hour.”

What are we to make of this “putting through the mill” common to both passages? It involves judgment, at least ostensibly, which does not always get a good press. And yet if Joseph had said to his brothers simply, “Aw shucks, you sold me but I should live so long,” or if Jesus had immediately answered the Canaanite woman’s plea for healing with “Why sure,” the tension would have gone out of the respective episodes; their resolution would not impress us in the deep way that it does. And as we noted, Joseph does not come across as in any way mean spirited, nor do the brothers develop feelings other than gratitude towards him. Even the anxiety about his sons that Jacob was put through in the process only heightens his joy when he learned the truth. And Jesus may be regarded as having already sensed the woman’s faith (and she his underlying good will), his apparent harshness being the means to make it evident to her as well as to others. So something can be said for judgment after all. Perhaps it is a form of the opus alienum of God that Luther propounded and that we have heard about. We may think of it also in terms of the basic Christian insight that it is necessary to pass through death (judgment) in order to enter fully into life (redemption).

All this is not without application to our own lives. For we encounter opera aliena (pl.) often enough, in the form of setbacks, disappointments, failures, illnesses, and the like. And these are liable to make us feel alienated from God. But in the light of the brothers’ perception of Joseph’s underlying good will, and the Canaanite woman’s of that of Jesus, we may perceive that these are God’s means not to distance us from him but to unite us to him. There is an application also to our own exercise of judgment. It is not that we should abandon all judgment of others but instead that we should exercise it only as we take it on ourselves. This requires our recognition that we are no less offenders than those who have offended us. In fact our offenses against them may well be greater than theirs against us. On this basis---the commonality of offenses---judgment can be received without destroying.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted