Is your world too small?
Commentary
I am fascinated by the writings and television work of Dr. Carl Sagan, the American astronomer. Whenever my world gets too small, it's helpful to listen to his description of the awesome reaches of time and space. Earth -- "a mote of dust suspended on a moonbeam" -- seems overwhelmed by space. My awe, however, is sobered by Sagan's assertion that, in his judgment, creation "does not require a Designer. The significance of our lives ... is determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning." (Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot; New York: Random House, 1994, pp. 8, 57.)
All three of our texts today speak an opposing word. Though life seems to overwhelm us at times, there is a design and purpose to it that is above our plans, our schemes, and, yes, even our knowledge of what is happening. Out of the jealousy and cruelty of his brothers, God is at work in the life of Joseph so that part of a larger, grander design is unfolding. In the particular circumstance of one life, the plan of God is at work.
Paul, as we learned from earlier accounts in Romans, cannot understand why his own people have not embraced the Gospel. But he has no doubt whatever that in some way, now hidden from him, God is at work among the Jews. He remembers that from the beginning it was God's purpose to use them to lead others to the light. He doesn't know when or how God will do this work, he simply is confident that it will happen.
And Jesus' encounter with the Canaanite woman is yet another story of a God who works in both the particular and universal world of events. The Good News cannot be stifled, cannot be bottled and confined to a particular people. God keeps breaking out of our narrow and restrictive understanding of the larger plan and purpose of God.
vThis is a good Sunday to challenge the narrow and selfish view of the church and the world that pervades so much of the Christian community. It is a weekly challenge for the preacher to get the listeners to lift their sights beyond "our church and our local community." Sagan is right when he suggests that we cling to the particular because of our fear of the universal. And he also is right when he asserts that "we have not been given the lead in the cosmic drama." But when he goes on to suggest that "perhaps someone else has; Perhaps no one else has," (Sagan, ibid., p. 39), we respond with a strong affirmation: "Yes, Someone else has -- the God we come to know in Jesus Christ." We speak confidently of a God who is at work both in the individual heart as well as in the grand design of all things in creation.
Grist For The Mill
Genesis 45:1-15
Since God's call to Abraham in chapter 12 the focus of Genesis has been quite narrow. We have followed, by and large, the fortunes of a single family. What little contact they have had with the larger world has been almost entirely hostile and unfriendly. God has made promises to this peculiar family, but until now the unfolding story has lacked a universal dimension.
With Joseph all of that changes. What started as his brothers' fit of rage and envy has evolved into a story that reads like a novel. Within his lifetime, Joseph moves from the confines of his family into the center of the political structures of the world's foremost power.
Adopted persons who find their biological family may understand best what Joseph feels when he meets his brothers. Joseph had been welcomed into the families of many Egyptians and had a relationship with the Pharaoh for a time that was like that of father and son. Yet he must have struggled for decades with the issue of personal identity. Would he ever be reunited with his family of origin? No wonder he "wept so loudly" when he was alone with his brothers that the Egyptians standing outside the room were puzzled by his behavior.
The core of this text is in Joseph's affirmation that this is a part of the work of God. "God sent me before to preserve life" (v. 5); "It is not you who sent me, but God" (v. 8). He had every reason to be cynical, pessimistic, and discouraged. He could have remembered only the pit, the slave caravan, the test by Pharaoh's wife, and the years in prison. Instead, he believes that God's hand has been in all these events in his life for some larger purpose.
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
If one chooses to preach on this Second Lesson -- or even to refer to it in the sermon -- it is essential to make some reference to that part of Romans 11 that is not included in the text that is read. It is all of one piece. Paul is here returning to the enigma that troubled him earlier. How is God's plan to be worked out among his chosen people?
In this chapter Paul answers that question with a rather odd-sounding idea. Is it possible, he asks, that the Gospel has gone out to the Gentile world in order to make the Jews jealous of them? Will this arouse so much curiosity that they will be driven to explore more carefully the word about Jesus, one of their own?
Paul does not presume to know if his idea has merit. What he does know, however, is that the privilege of knowing Christ and coming into the Kingdom should not now be reason for pride among the Gentiles. If they are inclined to make judgments of the Jews, they have only to recall that they too lived in disobedience and are now God's children only by grace.
God's plans and purposes may elude us at times. But we can be certain that God is at work. Of that there can be no doubt.
Matthew 15:(10-20) 21-28
It is helpful to note the different way in which Matthew reports this story as compared to Mark. The latter, it seems, is more interested in the details of the miracle, including the conclusion of the account where the child is healed. Matthew, on the other hand, centers his attention on the faith of this "foreigner."
This is one of the more difficult texts in the Gospel. Why does Jesus seem to jest with the woman? Why put her off? The very fact that she, a non-Jew, was brave enough to come to him for help was evidence that she had great faith from the beginning. Why refer to her as a "dog"? Even today, in most parts of the world, dogs are not the friendly, pampered pets we tend to have in our homes. They are mangy, ill-tempered creatures. Why then this seeming insult?
The best response seems to be that Jesus here is not so much testing her faith as he is teaching the disciples a lesson about the universal appeal of the Gospel. When this Word goes out to the world, it is Good News to those who are regarded as "dogs." And if we can assume that Matthew's audience may have been Jewish Christians, then the lesson for them is that the church is meant to be for both Jew and Gentile. Christ has broken the wall of separation.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By James A. Nestingen
Genesis 45:1-15
It may be heresy, at least from a generic American protestant point of view, but from the looks of this text, motives don't mean much -- at least not when the good Lord has a purpose in mind.
Like apple pie and motherhood, free will has long been one of the keys to church life in the U.S. Accepting, responding, letting, allowing, desiring, expecting, or at least wanting to do one of the above is regarded as the essential minimum needed on the human side before God can move forward. Subtly or blatantly, the good Lord becomes dependent on the faithful's cooperation.
But it won't work with Joseph's brothers. Their intentions were diametrically opposed to anything positive. Reactive, driven along thoughtlessly by envy or despising, they wanted rid of Joseph as economically as possible. They sold him out. That done, they stood steely cold and listened as old Jacob wept over Joseph's dreamcoat, soaked in blood. Had these brothers seen any divine purpose in their actions, they would have defied them.
Joseph's motives may have been ambiguous, but there's not enough to make much of a case for them. He comes off in the narrative as more clean-cut than the rest of his family -- self-possessed, suburban, accustomed to power. But he had been around -- he knew about slave markets, sexual boundaries, prison cells, palace intrigues and he survived them all. Joseph was no innocent.
The malevolence and ambiguity in the human dimension of this story just put God's graciousness in even bolder relief. For somehow, the good Lord got through to Joseph. Maybe when he was at the bottom of things, being auctioned by the slavemasters or sitting in prison thinking through the incident with Potiphar's wife, he came to see the futility of resentment and retaliation. Maybe time and power had given him enough distance to restore some equanimity, though that hardly seems likely in view of the way he wept. Whatever means God used, in Joseph he broke the cycle of retribution, giving him and the whole family a new beginning.
Even while putting the cycle to an end, however, God used both the evil and the ambiguous to a larger purpose. The brothers' despising of Jacob's favorite and his rise to power in the Egyptian system preserved life of both the Hebrews and the Egyptians. The very dreaminess that got Joseph in trouble with his family filled granaries along the Nile for a long famine that threatened life across the whole Middle East. It just goes to show that the Lord can always use a sinner, whether cooperative or railing against him all the way.
All three of our texts today speak an opposing word. Though life seems to overwhelm us at times, there is a design and purpose to it that is above our plans, our schemes, and, yes, even our knowledge of what is happening. Out of the jealousy and cruelty of his brothers, God is at work in the life of Joseph so that part of a larger, grander design is unfolding. In the particular circumstance of one life, the plan of God is at work.
Paul, as we learned from earlier accounts in Romans, cannot understand why his own people have not embraced the Gospel. But he has no doubt whatever that in some way, now hidden from him, God is at work among the Jews. He remembers that from the beginning it was God's purpose to use them to lead others to the light. He doesn't know when or how God will do this work, he simply is confident that it will happen.
And Jesus' encounter with the Canaanite woman is yet another story of a God who works in both the particular and universal world of events. The Good News cannot be stifled, cannot be bottled and confined to a particular people. God keeps breaking out of our narrow and restrictive understanding of the larger plan and purpose of God.
vThis is a good Sunday to challenge the narrow and selfish view of the church and the world that pervades so much of the Christian community. It is a weekly challenge for the preacher to get the listeners to lift their sights beyond "our church and our local community." Sagan is right when he suggests that we cling to the particular because of our fear of the universal. And he also is right when he asserts that "we have not been given the lead in the cosmic drama." But when he goes on to suggest that "perhaps someone else has; Perhaps no one else has," (Sagan, ibid., p. 39), we respond with a strong affirmation: "Yes, Someone else has -- the God we come to know in Jesus Christ." We speak confidently of a God who is at work both in the individual heart as well as in the grand design of all things in creation.
Grist For The Mill
Genesis 45:1-15
Since God's call to Abraham in chapter 12 the focus of Genesis has been quite narrow. We have followed, by and large, the fortunes of a single family. What little contact they have had with the larger world has been almost entirely hostile and unfriendly. God has made promises to this peculiar family, but until now the unfolding story has lacked a universal dimension.
With Joseph all of that changes. What started as his brothers' fit of rage and envy has evolved into a story that reads like a novel. Within his lifetime, Joseph moves from the confines of his family into the center of the political structures of the world's foremost power.
Adopted persons who find their biological family may understand best what Joseph feels when he meets his brothers. Joseph had been welcomed into the families of many Egyptians and had a relationship with the Pharaoh for a time that was like that of father and son. Yet he must have struggled for decades with the issue of personal identity. Would he ever be reunited with his family of origin? No wonder he "wept so loudly" when he was alone with his brothers that the Egyptians standing outside the room were puzzled by his behavior.
The core of this text is in Joseph's affirmation that this is a part of the work of God. "God sent me before to preserve life" (v. 5); "It is not you who sent me, but God" (v. 8). He had every reason to be cynical, pessimistic, and discouraged. He could have remembered only the pit, the slave caravan, the test by Pharaoh's wife, and the years in prison. Instead, he believes that God's hand has been in all these events in his life for some larger purpose.
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
If one chooses to preach on this Second Lesson -- or even to refer to it in the sermon -- it is essential to make some reference to that part of Romans 11 that is not included in the text that is read. It is all of one piece. Paul is here returning to the enigma that troubled him earlier. How is God's plan to be worked out among his chosen people?
In this chapter Paul answers that question with a rather odd-sounding idea. Is it possible, he asks, that the Gospel has gone out to the Gentile world in order to make the Jews jealous of them? Will this arouse so much curiosity that they will be driven to explore more carefully the word about Jesus, one of their own?
Paul does not presume to know if his idea has merit. What he does know, however, is that the privilege of knowing Christ and coming into the Kingdom should not now be reason for pride among the Gentiles. If they are inclined to make judgments of the Jews, they have only to recall that they too lived in disobedience and are now God's children only by grace.
God's plans and purposes may elude us at times. But we can be certain that God is at work. Of that there can be no doubt.
Matthew 15:(10-20) 21-28
It is helpful to note the different way in which Matthew reports this story as compared to Mark. The latter, it seems, is more interested in the details of the miracle, including the conclusion of the account where the child is healed. Matthew, on the other hand, centers his attention on the faith of this "foreigner."
This is one of the more difficult texts in the Gospel. Why does Jesus seem to jest with the woman? Why put her off? The very fact that she, a non-Jew, was brave enough to come to him for help was evidence that she had great faith from the beginning. Why refer to her as a "dog"? Even today, in most parts of the world, dogs are not the friendly, pampered pets we tend to have in our homes. They are mangy, ill-tempered creatures. Why then this seeming insult?
The best response seems to be that Jesus here is not so much testing her faith as he is teaching the disciples a lesson about the universal appeal of the Gospel. When this Word goes out to the world, it is Good News to those who are regarded as "dogs." And if we can assume that Matthew's audience may have been Jewish Christians, then the lesson for them is that the church is meant to be for both Jew and Gentile. Christ has broken the wall of separation.
FIRST LESSON FOCUS
By James A. Nestingen
Genesis 45:1-15
It may be heresy, at least from a generic American protestant point of view, but from the looks of this text, motives don't mean much -- at least not when the good Lord has a purpose in mind.
Like apple pie and motherhood, free will has long been one of the keys to church life in the U.S. Accepting, responding, letting, allowing, desiring, expecting, or at least wanting to do one of the above is regarded as the essential minimum needed on the human side before God can move forward. Subtly or blatantly, the good Lord becomes dependent on the faithful's cooperation.
But it won't work with Joseph's brothers. Their intentions were diametrically opposed to anything positive. Reactive, driven along thoughtlessly by envy or despising, they wanted rid of Joseph as economically as possible. They sold him out. That done, they stood steely cold and listened as old Jacob wept over Joseph's dreamcoat, soaked in blood. Had these brothers seen any divine purpose in their actions, they would have defied them.
Joseph's motives may have been ambiguous, but there's not enough to make much of a case for them. He comes off in the narrative as more clean-cut than the rest of his family -- self-possessed, suburban, accustomed to power. But he had been around -- he knew about slave markets, sexual boundaries, prison cells, palace intrigues and he survived them all. Joseph was no innocent.
The malevolence and ambiguity in the human dimension of this story just put God's graciousness in even bolder relief. For somehow, the good Lord got through to Joseph. Maybe when he was at the bottom of things, being auctioned by the slavemasters or sitting in prison thinking through the incident with Potiphar's wife, he came to see the futility of resentment and retaliation. Maybe time and power had given him enough distance to restore some equanimity, though that hardly seems likely in view of the way he wept. Whatever means God used, in Joseph he broke the cycle of retribution, giving him and the whole family a new beginning.
Even while putting the cycle to an end, however, God used both the evil and the ambiguous to a larger purpose. The brothers' despising of Jacob's favorite and his rise to power in the Egyptian system preserved life of both the Hebrews and the Egyptians. The very dreaminess that got Joseph in trouble with his family filled granaries along the Nile for a long famine that threatened life across the whole Middle East. It just goes to show that the Lord can always use a sinner, whether cooperative or railing against him all the way.
