Things Are Not Always As They Appear
Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28; Matthew 14:22-33
Prayer from the heart: “Lord, save me!” Without pretense; filled with fear and anguish: “Lord, save me!”
Over the years, I have come to realize that prayer and fasting as
spiritual disciplines have great value but there is a prayer and
fasting in time of trial that surpasses even the most rigorous of
disciplines in meeting the needs of our worst crises.
I can well imagine that young Joseph might have cried out from that
pit. His brothers, his own brothers, throw him into the pit and
sit down to enjoy their dinner! He must know that, for some of
them at least, his death is an imminent part of their plan to be rid of
him.
I have, for several weeks purposely avoided letting my thoughts dwell
on the story of Jacob and his family but it seemed to beg to be
examined this week.
In the words of the opening reading, “This is the story of family of
Jacob…” That story is the archetypal family story. It is
our own story; it echoes and reverberates through the ages, as current
today as ever. It is a story of deception — self-deception and deception of others — and
revelation that exacts a price on human relationships and robs us of
our joy in fulfillment as creatures of a loving God. But, there
is a thread that runs through this story that makes it different than
any other saga of a family's history — the ongoing intervention of a God who loves us and liberates us from the slavery of our own devising.
A quick sketch — remebering that Abraham is the seed, Isaac, the sprouted plant, Jacob the fruited plant — the culmination of the promise.
Grandfather Abraham opens the story with his tendency to stretch the
truth, to lie, when he felt it would be safer for him. Yet he is
the chosen one, the one who will father a great nation, the people of
God through whom God wills to bless the entire world. Such a
promise! Had Abraham only suspected what it meant, he might have
run the other way!
Isaac supplants Ishmael and becomes the son of the promise to
Abraham. Throughout his life, we see him as a passive recipient
of the labor of others. His wife, Rebecca, pushes Jacob to the
fore through deception so that he might receive the blessing of his
father. We know that Esau despised his birthright and sold it for
a bowl of beans — though likely to have been neither baked beans with catsup and brown sugar nor served as bean burritos.
Not the only one capable of master deception in this saga, Jacob soon
finds himself deceived by his mother's brother, Uncle Laban. In
that remarkably chastising quip when Laban explains why Leah was
Jacob's wife when he had expected it to be her younger sister, Rachel,
“This is not done in our country — giving
the younger before the firstborn.” Ouch! But life was not to get
much better as the time came, after fourteen years to return home with
wives, concubines, children, and possessions in tow. As he got
closer though Jacob's fear of Esau led him to send offering
ahead. He actually buffers himself from a possible retributive
onslaught by placing those of less importance in caravan ahead of
himself. His fears proved unfounded but even as a wanderer in his
old homeland, life would always be difficult for Jacob. In
childbirth, he would lose his beloved Rachel. His sons would
commit heinous crimes for which the family would be a pariah wherever
they traveled. His favorite son, Joseph, would, as far as he
knew, die at the hands of animals — the ultimate classic scene of the deceiver being deceived.
Throughout the story, the forces of jealousy, greed, the desire to
control spin a downward spiral of human relationships and acts of
horrible consequences. Yet, God always has a but, an answer to
the human condition — and hopeless things are not always what they seem.
Reminds me of the old Yiddish tale of two angels.
One day two angels from heaven came down to earth to see how people
are. It was night time, cold, and snowing. They knocked on
a palace to ask if they could sleep the night. The owners of the
palace were very arrogant and rude. They refused to help the two
angels.
After the angels begged and begged, they finally agreed to let them
sleep over under one condition: The angels were to sleep in the very
dark, damp, and dirty store room. The angels agreed and thanked
them.
In the middle of the night, the older angel found a hole in the
storeroom's ceiling. He blocked the hole and repaired it.
The younger angel said to the older one, “The owners of the palace have
no mercy and are rude; why did you repair their ceiling?” The
older angel said, “Things are not always as they appear.”
The next day, the angels left the palace and continued on their journey.
That night, they found an old house made of mud. They knocked on
the door, and asked the owners to let them sleep the night in their
house. The owners were but a poor family — a
man, his wife, and two young children. Their simple house had
only a single bedroom with just one bed and a small area for their only
cow. The cow provided some milk they could sell in order to be
able to survive.
Never the less, the family welcomed the two angels. They fed them
from the little food they had and insisted they sleep on their only bed.
In the middle of the night, the two angels heard screaming. They
ran to see what happened. The cow – the only means of income to
this loving family — had died.
The younger angel said to the older one, “Why did that happen to this
loving family? It is not fair.” The older angel answered,
“Things are not always as they appear.”
The two angels comforted the family and then left.
On the way, the younger angel was very upset with the older
angel. He unreasonably rewarded the arrogant family but hurt the
poor, loving family. He finally demanded an explanation.
The older angel said, “I fixed the hole in the rich people's palace,
because I found it contained gold and diamonds. They were rude
and arrogant so I sealed these riches from them since they did not
deserve them. When we were at the poor people's home, I saw the
angel of death coming to get the soul of the wife, so I gave him the
cow's instead, in order to keep this loving family together.
Things are not always as they appear”
Years later, this band of brothers would travel to Egypt in time of
famine, seeking food for their family and their aged father, the now
nearly blind Jacob. And who but Joseph, unrecognized by them,
should be the means of God’s grace by which their lives are spared and
the promise to Abraham is kept alive.
There is a not so subtle fundamental lesson in this story of the family
of Jacob. The brothers sell their father's favorite into slavery
in Egypt but he rises to a position of influence and becomes their
savior. They are saved by traveling to Egypt but unwilling
perhaps to leave when the crisis ended, they stay on and find
themselves in slavery.
Yet, God always has an answer to the human condition – and the
seemingly hopeless things are not always as they appear. When the
time is right, God raises up a Moses to bring his people out of Egypt,
out of bondage.
Fast forward two millennia. God has sent his son, Jesus, into the
world of his chosen people who are once again in bondage, not in a
strange land, but in their own home. He has sent his son to
rescue Israel from slavery and deliver them out of bondage, into their
true home. Jesus gathers disciples about him so the message that
the true home, the Kingdom of God is a present reality and that
physical circumstance is but a shadow of true life can be spread
throughout the land — even to the ends of the earth.
But what he encounters is fear, uncertainty, a need to have wants met
while avoiding difficulty and pain. Sound like anyone we
know? Just as the First Testament reading tells the story of the
family of Jacob, so the Gospel tells a new story of the family of
God. Over the last few weeks, as we followed the story of Jesus
and his disciples, we saw fear, misunderstanding, desire for
recognition, and resistance to difficulty surface again and again.
Only last week, in the midst of Jesus’ grief over the death of John
Baptist, he is forced to meet the needs of the crowds who need healing,
love, and food. And now he wishes to have some alone time.
He makes the disciples set sail for the other side of the sea while he
withdraws. But Matthew writes that the wind was against them — they
encounter a spirit of resistance . And when, in the midst of the
wind and the waves, Jesus comes to them, they perceive what is not,
taking him to be a ghost — a
fearful and threatening appearance. Then Peter, asking for
assurance steps out of the boat, only to take his eyes off Jesus as he
began, once again, to focus instead on the wind – now Matthew says, the
strong wind; the strong opposing spirit – and begins to sink.
Lord, save me! It is enough. No deep theological analysis
of the significance of opposing spirit or whether the wind is from the
east or west, no discussion of the necessity of whether he should have
led with his right foot or his left — simply, Lord, save me!
Then Matthew, with no small sense of humor I think, records Jesus’ words — “You
of little faith…” If Peter who got out of the boat and walked on
the water was of little faith, what does it speak of those who were
afraid to leave the boat in the first place?
How often do we wish for comfort and ease, to avoid the hard things,
the painful, threatening things of life. How often do we try to
devise our own “soulutions” in such a way that we can get what we think
we need while avoiding tribulation. And how often do we find
ourselves in crises of our own making.
But the seemingly hopeless things are not always as they appear.
Paul writes that we are not to judge, not even ourselves, before the
end of the age in as much as our understanding is imperfect,
incomplete, insufficient. Have faith, trust God, keep your eyes
on Jesus. Even in the midst of the storm whipped up by the
opposing spirit, even as the waves of an uncertain future threaten to
break over an anxious situation today, remember, things are not always
as they appear.
God’s “and yet” comes to us, sometimes in ways we do not see or
misunderstand, and calls us to experience freedom in the life of
Christ, to let our place in the kingdom be our place of refuge,
strength, and peace.
Come to the table, remember, give thanks, eat, celebrate. And
with “those in the boat,” we can say, “Truly you are the Son of God.”
Hallelujah!
The Rev. John Dryden Burton
St. James’ Episcopal
Church
August 10,
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