The Seventh Sunday after Epiphany

The Seventh Sunday in Ordinary Time

GENESIS 45:1-5: This is one of the greatest stories of reconciliation in the whole Bible. Joseph identifies himself to his fearful brothers, and the family is made whole once more.

As we know from what has gone on before, Joseph's brothers had sold him into slavery in Egypt. But he did not remain a slave long. Pharaoh himself soon recognized the abilities of the man and appointed him prime minister of the Kingdom of Egypt. Joseph's great task was laying up stores from seven years of plenty to cover the time when there would be seven years of drought. He organized Egypt so well that when the drought and famine began, there was food enough for all and some to spare.

In the famine other people than Egyptians also needed food, and shortly the family of Jacob appeared in Egypt before Joseph. He recognized his brothers. They did not recognize him. He sold them grain, but then he planted his silver cup in the grain being carried by Benjamin, Jacob's youngest son, Joseph's full brother, and the one who in Jacob's eyes had replaced the lost Joseph. When the brothers learned that Benjamin was charged with the theft, and was about to be imprisoned, one of the brothers volunteered to take his place if only Benjamin could go free. Joseph knew from this that his brothers were changed men. Here our story from Scripture begins.

I quote now from Robert Alter's translation of the event: "Joseph could no longer hold himself in check before all who stood attendance upon him, and he cried, 'Clear out everyone around me!' And no man stood with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept aloud (literally, 'he gave his voice to weeping') and the Egyptians heard, and the house of Pharaoh heard. And Joseph said to his brothers, 'I am Joseph.'"

Let us see the rest of the story from the point of view of one of the unnamed brothers. He is standing amidst the others when he hears the words, "I am Joseph." He is shocked into disbelief. "Joseph is dead," he says to himself. "We saw to that ourselves. How can this man in his Egyptian robes, with the symbols of office all around him, claim to be our brother?" He hears the next words, "Is my father still alive?" They had assured him of that when first they met him. Why does he ask again? Does he think that we lied to him just to get grain, that our father was dead but we did not want him to know it? We were so dismayed at what had happened to us that we could not even answer his question."

Then the brothers heard Joseph say, "Come close to me, pray." "The distance between us was immense," goes on this unnamed brother. "He was Egyptian, we were Hebrews. He was rich, we were imploring him for sustenance. We are sheep herders, he is the prime minister of the powerful land of Egypt. We are to draw close to him? He speaks again, 'I am Joseph your brother,' and then he adds the dread words, 'whom you sold into Egypt.' Here it comes," thinks the brother. "Retribution. Imprisonment. Death at his hands, perhaps." Silence on the part of all. The words sink into the brothers' conscious and their unconscious: "whom you sold into Egypt." The prime minister goes on, "Do not be incensed with yourselves. For sustenance God has sent me before you." "Is Joseph saying," asks the brother, "that God had a hand in flinging Joseph into the pit, in pulling him out and selling him to the slave traders, in sending him to Egypt before us? Did Joseph, in his time in the house of the Egyptian official, and in prison, and through his tenure as prime minister, come to the conclusion that God had a hand in all this? We meant to do him evil, that much is true. But God, Joseph is saying to us, brought good from the evil. God brought him into Egypt that he might provide sustenance for Jacob's hungry family, as well as for Egyptians, and for all the world. Astounding, that Joseph should reason so. Amazing, that it should be so."

"Yet here it is, the prime minister of Egypt forgiving us for what we had done to him and asking us to bring our father and our families to dwell with him in Egypt. Reconciliation had been affected. Not tolerance merely; Joseph was reaching out to us in sorrow and in love. Not accommodation; he asked nothing of us except that we come. This is reconciliation, truly, all the broken pieces of our lives put back together again, with no parts left over." The story of Genesis concerning Joseph meeting his brothers in his royal home is a story of true reconciliation. They had been enemies before. Now they are friends again.

PSALM 37:1-11, 39-40: This psalm describes our proper way of living with God, and it does so by using five imperatives.

Trust in the Lord. All life with God is predicated on our absolute unconditional trust.

Do good to one another, and you will live in the land with security.

Take delight in the Lord. He will give you the desires of your heart.

Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him. God will yet act in your life.

Refrain from anger and forsake wrath. To a generation like ours that is filled with rage - road rage, office rage, national and international rage - these welcome words come like a bright sun in a winter's day.

The psalmist puts these imperatives in the context of the wicked prospering while the righteous suffer. It is a perennial problem which cannot be solved by raging against the injustice of it. It is only resolved by trusting God, doing good to one another, taking delight in the Lord, being still before him, and refraining from the anger that otherwise could fill our souls. The psalmist's reason for doing these things is summed up in the closing verses of the psalm, and it is to be our reason as well:

The salvation of the righteous is from the Lord.

God is our refuge in time of trouble.

The Lord helps us and rescues us.

He rescues us from the wicked and saves us,

because we take refuge in him.

FIRST CORINTHIANS 15: 35-38, 42-50: "How are the dead raised?" One of Paul's opponents in Corinth had put this question to him. We raise the same question in our time. What happens to a person after death? We have formulated our own answers to the question.

The first answer is "Nothing." When a person dies, that is it. Nothing happens after that. We go down to the grave, we disintegrate, to use Paul's term "we fall to dust." There is no life after death. For many people this is the only answer that conforms to the empirical evidence all around us. So they claim that the dead are dead, and that is the end of the matter.

A second answer suggests a form of "social immortality." This means that though we die, our influence lives on after us. The influence may live on in our genes; persons who come long after we die will carry some of the genetic makeup that we have now. The influence may live on in the lifestyle we have chosen for ourselves; people who spend time working on their genealogies do so because they believe that they will discover through those dead ancestors some of the clues they offer us for living today. The influence may live on in the kind of impact we make in our lifetime. So we tell people to make decisions for the good of tomorrow and not just for the good of today. It takes many forms, this social immortality. It is another way we answer the question of what happens after we die.

A third answer is that we live on in a life that is less perfect, less fulfilling than the life we live today. Oddly enough, both the ancient Jews and the ancient Greeks had come to this same conclusion. They called it "life in Hades, life in the Pit." The Book of Samuel tells that Saul wanted to recall Samuel to life for a little while so that Samuel could conduct him through the crises of his life. He went to the witch of Endor, and she called Samuel's specter forth from the Pit, and this specter talked with Saul for a while before it returned to the Pit. In Greek and Latin literature there is the picture of Aeneas being led through Hades. He spies a ghost who looks a bit like one of his friends who had died. The ghost says, "Give me some blood." He drinks the blood and for a moment his form and shape return to what they were before he died, and he is able to talk with Aeneas again. Then, before the eyes of Aeneas, the blood fades, and the person does too, until he is just as Aeneas found him, a ghost-like wreath, unable to talk but only to moan. There is a life after death, says this ancient view, but it is unsatisfactory life. We cannot talk, we cannot make out the faces of our friends, we cannot love, we cannot praise God - the negation of all these things that make life on earth worthwhile.

Another answer grew out of that: "immortality of the soul." The body dies, said this belief, but the spark of life, that which gives life to the body, continues on. It flies to the center of immortal spirits, where it lives on with other souls. "We live as in a cave," said Plato. "We see only images of the divine Reality, as shadows on the wall. After death, the shadows disappear, and the soul migrates to live in the light of that divine Reality, in the presence of what is really real": immortality of the soul.

Yet another answer comes in the doctrine of "Re-incarnation." This means that the soul migrates from one body to another in the course of its journey to its final state. It may take the form of a bird, an animal, a man or a woman, a snake or a cow. Life has the same inner part with various kinds of outer parts. It takes different kinds of outer parts largely from the decisions it makes in each incarnation: live well and you move up, live poorly and you move down. Whole civilizations accept re-incarnation as the best answer we have to the question of life after death.

Others accept "resuscitation." Our bodies die, but on the last day God picks up the broken and divided pieces and puts these bodies of ours together again as they were before to live with God into eternity.

"Resurrection," says Paul, is like none of these. In "resurrection" God gives the person a new body and society a new shape and form. God transforms both the human being and the human society we live in. This is the essence of "resurrection.

Paul tries three ways to say this in this 15^th chapter of First Corinthians. He used the agricultural image of the seed. He used the celestial image of the sun and moon and stars. He used the scriptural image of the relationship between Christ and Adam.

"We sow a bare seed," said Paul. The seed is not "the body that will be." The seed disintegrates, then grows again. There is continuity of seed with grain, and there is discontinuity between the seed and the grain. God chooses a new body for it, as it grows into wheat or some other kind of grain. So it is in the resurrection. It is the same person but not the same fleshly parts. The resurrected body of Christ is our model for this. Christ returned with a body that was identifiable with his earthly body, but it was a different body that could accomplish different things, a body of heaven. What is sown is perishable, dishonorable, weak. What is raised is imperishable, glorious, powerful.

"There is one glory for the sun," said Paul, as he turned to the celestial image. "There is another glory for the moon, another for the stars." (Remember, Paul's "science" was that which was observable to the naked eye, not the probing of Hubbell telescopes into the depths of the universe, as we can do today.) So, said Paul, there is one glory for the earthly body and another glory for the heavenly body. The "glory of the heavens" is the key to this. Our raised bodies will be made of the light of glory and will give glory to God forever and ever.

Paul turned also to the relationship between Christ and Adam to explain resurrection. In this life we bear the image of Adam, and we are like him, under the power of sin, our relationships with God and each other broken; we are subject to death. In the life to come, sin has been expiated, our relationship with God and with others is restored and made new; we are subject to life eternal with God. Here our persons, living in a physical body that is animated by the soul, are equipped to live in this age. What is to come is the spiritual body, a new body animated by the Spirit of God in Christ, with which God will equip the persons who have died to live in the age to come. Said Paul: "Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we will also bear the image of the man of heaven."

Admittedly, this passage from First Corinthians is one of the most difficult in all the Bible to interpret. Let me conclude by summing up in my own words what I think Paul is saying to us today.

1. Resurrection means that the lives we live on earth will be transformed in the life to come.

2. Resurrection means that this is accomplished not by some natural processes but is done by God, who makes that which is new out of that which is old, who takes that which is dead and in a new act of creation turns it into that which is alive.

3. Resurrection means that we will be new persons in a new world, persons alive to the spirit of Christ in a community that is filled with that same spirit of Jesus Christ.

LUKE 6:27-38: We are again considering words from Luke's "Sermon on the Plain." This incorporates much that is in Matthew's

"Sermon on the Mount." Luke's sermon is shorter. It contains 30 verses, whereas Matthew's version contains 108. Luke sets Jesus' sayings in different social settings as well. We shall see some of these as we consider the sermon.

This text begins when Jesus makes a statement and then illustrates it. "Love your enemies," said Jesus. He amplified this in three ways. "Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you." Jesus is not talking about increasing our feelings of good will toward our enemies. He is telling us to take action in their behalf: do good, bless, pray. Such a prescription fits any situation of enmity and hostility.

Jesus brings to his hearers attention three situations of hostility with which all of them might be familiar.

The first refers to a fight between two people. "If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other." Matthew had said that if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. If a man was right-handed, in a real battle he would hit his adversary on the left cheek. To be struck on the right cheek meant that he was struck with the back of his opponent's hand. This kind of blow was an insult, and the two would have to work out its implications. Luke says, "If anyone strikes you on the cheek." This points to an out-and-out brawl between the two. Jesus says, according to Luke, in those circumstances offer him the other cheek. Your action may be precipitous enough to stop the quarrel between you. It is the risk you have to take.

The second illustration refers to a mugging. Someone confronts you and takes your coat. The "coat" was a relatively expensive garment. A person probably owned only one of them over a lifetime, and it was a valuable possession. It was made of camel hair. Wrapped around you, it kept away the heat of the day and the cold of the night. Some mugger might catch you on your way and demand the coat. Said Luke's Jesus, "Give it to him. Give him your shirt as well." The "shirt" was the tunic that the Palestinian peasant wore as his customary garment. He worked in it, he slept in it. It cost a day's wage, a single denarius, and the peasant would own more than one. Why give this, too? "Surprise the mugger," said Jesus. "Let him have your coat. Then offer him your shirt. That may jolt him enough to cause the vicious cycle between the two of you to be broken."

The third illustration talks of an equally vicious situation. A beggar has stopped you in the street. He asks for alms. This request is only a ruse. He really wants your possessions. He begins to steal them from you, openly or secretly. Said Jesus, according to Luke, "If anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again." In other words, let him have what he wants to take. This, too, may break the cycle of hostility and suspicion that exists between the two.

These three situations are moments of danger for the one accosted. He may be injured, perhaps even killed. These are the kinds of crises faced at any time by anyone who lived in an urban area like Corinth or Athens or Rome. How does a Christian react in these circumstances, people of the congregations asked their teachers. The advice the teachers gave was simply, "Do what you can to relieve the ugliness of the moment." The teachers also said that this was the advice that Jesus had given.

We cannot be certain that Jesus said these exact words. When Matthew gives them, the circumstances behind them seem to be those that a Palestinian peasant might face in his village. When Luke gives them, they are set in the urban areas into which the church had gone. It is clear that Jesus had said something like, "When someone strikes you, . . when someone steals from you, . . when someone begs from you." The way in which Jesus is said to have finished the sentence was recast by the teachers of the church to fit the framework, urban or rural, in which the persons lived. This is the way the Holy Spirit of Christ works. The spirit takes a statement of Jesus and fits it into the situation before the disciple. The authority of Jesus becomes attached to the answer the church offers. We cannot recover what Jesus said originally to the situation. We can only appreciate the way that the church employed the sayings of Jesus in order to address the predicaments of the day.

Luke rounded out his presentation of these precepts by invoking the Golden Rule. "Do to others what you would have them do to you." The principle involved was that of doing those things that break the cycles of evil in which we live. "Do good, . . bless, . . pray." No matter what Jesus said in his original statements, these three injunctions are valid both for first century Palestine and Rome and for twentieth-first century New York and your home town.

These edicts of Jesus move smoothly into Jesus' discussion of those whom we are to love. It is not enough to love those who love you, said Jesus. Sinners - meaning people outside the congregations - do that. Such love is natural. Loving enemies is not natural. It takes the grace of God in you to do it. "Be merciful," said Jesus, "just as your Father is merciful." We show mercy to others because God showers mercy upon us.