Something I want to believe - A Sermon preached August 9, 2020 at St. Margaret's Anglican

 The Generations...

 “Jacob settled in the land where his father had lived as an alien, the land of Canaan. This is the story of the family of Jacob.”

 One of the peculiar things about the book of Genesis is its structure. The book is structured around the word, “toledoth” which is often translated “generations” in English translations. Sometimes this makes sense given the way we use “generations” in normal English usage, as there are several genealogies listed throughout the book, including the genealogy of Esau in the chapter immediately preceding our reading today. But elsewhere in Genesis, the toledoth marks a narrative of origins. Our reading today is this latter type, and is the opening scene of the toledoth of Jacob. This is the longest toledoth in the book of Genesis, stretching from chapter 37 to the end of the book.

 Given the toledoth structure of the book of Genesis, we may be tempted to read Genesis as history, for what else could a book of origin stories be concerned with more than history? Surely, our reading today begins like an historical account, but here, the lectionary’s selective editing has proven an unreliable guide. While verses 1-4 begin with a historical quality, this introduction merely sets the stage for the portion of the text the lectionary has decided to drop out – the dreams of Joseph:

Let me read verses 5-11 for you:

Once Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. He said to them, “Listen to this dream that I dreamed. There we were, binding sheaves in the field. Suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright; then your sheaves gathered around it, and bowed down to my sheaf.” His brothers said to him, “Are you indeed to reign over us? Are you indeed to have dominion over us?” So they hated him even more because of his dreams and his words.

He had another dream, and told it to his brothers, saying, “Look, I have had another dream: the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him, and said to him, “What kind of dream is this that you have had? Shall we indeed come, I and your mother and your brothers, and bow to the ground before you?” So his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.

 Far from being dreams of the past, these are visions for the future. It turns out that the toledoth of the family of Jacob is in fact the story of Joseph, and Joseph is a figure of the future hope of all Israel.

 Futurity

To suggest that Joseph is a figure of future hope is to return to interrogate the opening verse once more. “Jacob settled in the land where his father had lived as an alien, the land of Canaan.” Jacob is the son of immigrants. God had called Abraham out of the land of Babylon telling him to go to the land that God would show him. But like so many immigrants, he could not help but have one eye back on his home, and so, first for Isaac, and then for Jacob, return trips home were made to get wives and to keep those family ties alive. Abraham and Isaac were sojourners in the land of Canaan, but Jacob was a settler. While Abraham and Isaac had been brought out of their homeland to the foreign land of Canaan with a promise for the future, they nevertheless maintained a tight grasp on the past – in the toledoth of Jacob, this sojourning comes to an end, and Jacob, known now as Israel, settles in this land of Canaan as a home and thus turns resolutely to a future that will be in this place.

 Is it any surprise, then, with this settler turn to futurity, that Joseph is to be the hero of this story? Our introduction to Joseph, one of the youngest brothers of a large family, is as a dreamer – worse, as a dreamer who sees that he will rule over his entire family. While his brothers and his father rebuke him, nevertheless, the text tells us that “his father kept the matter in mind.”

 Jacob, the scheming trickster who had stolen his brother’s birth-right and inheritance, tricked his father-in-law out of his fortune, and even wrestled a blessing out of God himself, is clearly impressed with Joseph. He cannot hide his favoritism and gives Joseph a special coat as a mark of his favour. Our translation calls it a “long robe with sleeves” some of you may know of it as the “coat of many colours,” but one of the traditions from the Jewish Targum suggests that this coat is in fact the same suit of clothes that God had made for Adam to cover his shame in the garden. Of course, the biblical text itself gives us little indication of where this coat really came from, but let’s imagine that the Targumic tradition is correct, that this coat really was Adam’s. In that case, Joseph is being introduced to us as the settler par excellence. For in Adam, there is pure promise of the future – all of humanity, and all of humanity’s dominion over the earth exists in Adam’s lordship. In Jacob’s gift of this coat to Joseph, there is a validation of the future Joseph has dreamed for himself. Joseph will indeed exercise adamic dominion, over his brothers, his father, and all the land which Sun and Moon overlook.

 So here is Joseph, despised by his brothers, beloved of his father, on full display for us as the future of Jacob’s settlement, and as such, the fulfillment of the covenant with Yahweh. Israel will have a future, and it will come to it through this man, Joseph.

 Hineni

 Our lectionary reading picks up again at verse 12,

Now his brothers went to pasture their father’s flock near Shechem. And Israel said to Joseph, “Are not your brothers pasturing the flock at Shechem? Come, I will send you to them.” He answered, “Here I am.” So he said to him, “Go now, see if it is well with your brothers and with the flock; and bring word back to me.” So he sent him from the valley of Hebron.

Israel sends Joseph to his brothers who are scattered, grazing, across the land. Though this is still the land of Canaan, Israel and his sons are already occupying the land, land far beyond the little grove of oaks at Mamre, also known as Hebron, where Abraham used to dwell. Joseph answers this summons in a manner which will become very familiar to the prophets of Israel, “Hineni” he says, “Here I am.” And so he goes, seeking his scattered brethren, yet, while he was still far off, they see him and plot his death.

 “So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the long robe with sleeves that he wore; and they took him and threw him into a pit.”

 Into the pit goes Joseph – is this the same pit that would one day hold the prophet Jeremiah too? We don’t know, but as he goes down, Joseph is stripped of his robe, stripped of his authority, and stripped of his future. Joseph is thrust back into dealing with the realities of history, as his brothers soon decide that it would be a fitting end to their upstart brother to sell him to the sons of their grandfather’s upstart brother – the Ishmaelites.

 The brothers will return from the wilderness with Joseph’s bloody robe, telling their father that wild animals had ripped him apart. But it is the brothers who are the wild animals, and they have handed their brother over to the sons of the mighty hunter of wild animals, Ishmael, and it is the story of Ishmael that will now determine Joseph’s fate, for Ishmael, having been abandoned by Abraham in the wilderness, went down to Egypt and won great renown for himself. And so Joseph will go to Egypt, and there, perhaps, he will find the future that he foresaw in his visions, much to his brothers dismay.

 Don’t be afraid: On hoping rightly

 Our reading ends with Joseph’s descent into Egypt, and here, we too, should end our reflection. Biblical scholars will tell you that this story was probably written down during the time of Israel’s exile to Babylon. For Israel, the exile was nothing short of the end of history. The traumatic rupture of being taken from the land and unsettled from their place on earth sent Israel back to their origins in search for a hope for the future. In this return to history, Israel remembered Joseph, the man of hope for the future, but a man who found that this hoped for future can be a long way off, and that the way to it leads through a pit and a detour to a strange land.

 Visions of hope for the future are tricky things. T.S. Eliot once wrote that we should learn to wait without hope, writing in his poem, East Coker:

 “I said to my soul, to wait without hope, for hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing there is yet faith but the faith and the love and hope are all in the waiting.”

 Joseph is a figure of future hope, but what kind of future? This must have been the question Israel asked itself from exile, and surely, there are many of us today who are asking “what kind of future” is in store for us? But the Bible doesn’t offer us any answers, rather, it gives us language to ask the hardest imaginable questions and makes hopeful promises that God has given us all the time in the world to wrestle with them.

The future hope Joseph represents is ambiguous, on the one hand, he will prove to be the saviour and ruler of his family and indeed the entire land. Insofar as Joseph realizes his visions for the future, he also sows the seeds of rupture for Israel’s life in the land. They are uprooted, sent into Egypt, and eventually, slavery, and it will be four long centuries before they return to “settle” the land in which their forefather sojourned.

Yet, that future did come, and the hope that God would be faithful to the promise was enough for the children of Israel to keep waiting. The toledoth of the family of Israel is the history of a people who, in Joseph, were propelled forward by visions of the future. Yet, this future was not the pure, positivistic advance into peaceful, settled dominion that they hoped. It was always already determined by a history of promise and failure. Joseph had Adam’s mantle stripped from him in the pit, but came back to take up Pharaoh’s, which in turn was stripped from Israel as they were sent back into the pit of slavery. Centuries later, Moses and Joshua would lead this people back to the land of promise, and yet along the way to this promised future, that whole generation would die. And so the cycle goes. Israel, finally, in exile, realizes that this is their story, from Adam, through Joseph, Moses, the prophets, and onward, there is a future, but there is a history to this future, and that history has long lists of failures and fallings.

 In the gospel reading we heard this evening, this story of future promise and a history of fear and falling is recapitulated, Jesus sends his disciples on ahead, to the far shore, and then walks to meet them. They are justifiably terrified, but Peter seizes the opportunity to come toward him. But Peter is a son of Israel too, and the pit beckons, so he slips beneath the waves in terror. He cries out for salvation and Jesus, Yeshua, the God who saves, reaches out his hand and pulls him back just as Yahweh has covenanted to always pull the children of Israel back.

 We are inexorably drawn to the future, and sometimes the possibilities or dangers of that future can completely fill our imaginations. But we are a people who, through Israel, have inherited a history. This history has many failings and fallings, but there remains one who speaks from the midst of all of that saying, “Do not be afraid.” And when we cry out for salvation, he is there, with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. And so we can wait for the future and discover the love, and the faith, and the hope that is in the waiting. Amen.