From Family to Nation: From Conflict to Unity

August 10th, 2014
9th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 14, Year A
The Rev. David Kendrick

Never in this long saga has the chasm between this family’s most noble call, and the reality of their failure, been so wide and vast.  “All the peoples on earth will be blessed because of you,” God had said to the great grandfather of Jacob’s twelve sons.  But they hardly seem to be a source of blessing to each other, much less all the peoples on earth.  There is a sickness in this family of favoritism, disappointed and frustrated love, lack of courage, all the things that modern counselors call “dysfunctional,” but which we in the Church call, sin, alienation from God and each other. 

And as all nations were originally families, then all those disappointments, preferential treatments, perceived betrayals, fear of standing out, trickle up from families to tribes to countries.  But we who call ourselves the Church are called to something different. “What is the mission of the Church?  The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”  It is the same mission that God promised to the people of “The Old Covenant.”  “What did God promise them?” our Outline of the Faith, or Catechism asks. “God promised them that they would be his people to bring all the nations of the world to him.”  But how will this people ever do that if they can’t even be unified as a family?

Obviously, the brothers of Joseph resented their father’s spoiling of Joseph, the child of his old age, as we heard in our reading.  But Joseph was more than the child of Jacob’s old age.  He was the child of Rachel, Jacob’s first love, his favorite wife, even though Leah gave him more sons.  Rachel gave birth to only two, Joseph and Benjamin, whom Rachel had died giving birth to.  Joseph and Benjamin were the children of Jacob’s grief.  They were his most visible connection to Rachel.  And the coat that Jacob gave to Joseph, visible to his bothers from miles away, was a reminder to them that because of their mother, they would always be second fiddle.  They would never be loved as Joseph and Benjamin were.  How terrible it is when some parents favor one child over another, or when children perceive that they are being less favored than their brother or sister.  It doesn’t always lead to murder, fortunately.

One only has to look at Reuben in today’s episode to see how crippling such a perceived betrayal of affection can be.  At least he gets credit for keeping the brothers from killing Joseph right then and there.  But Reuben is the firstborn, and he would have had the authority to take his brother right back to Jacob.  But all his life, he had lived with the knowledge that his mother was not really loved by his father.  No doubt the sons of Leah had learned to stick together.  And he could not defy the rage of his other nine brothers directly.  So he concocted this scheme to have it both ways.  Throw him in a well, then fish him out lay when no one is looking.  But then he’s the one who leaves and isn’t there when the slave traders come along. 

And so we are left at the end of today’s episode.  And so is God left at the end of today’s episode.  God has bet everything on this one family, to be the beginning of the reconciliation of human beings to each other and their Maker.  How can they possibly turn out to be that beginning?  Where’s their happy ending?  Where’s our happy ending, as families, as churches, as nations?  Tune in next Sunday.