August 7, 2011

Glynn Cardy

Pentecost 8
     Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28     Matthew 14:22-33


One of the literary and cinematic phenomena of the last decade is the Harry Potter series. With lots of creativity and humour, a modern tale of witches and wizards has been produced that extols the virtues of friendship, courage, and wisdom. These virtues are pitted against power, fear, and violence.

Lord Voldemort is the arch villain. In the last episode Voldemort is now the most powerful wizard in the world, with the most powerful wand, and who has at his command the most violent followers. His leadership is based on fear. His followers fear him. His opponents fear him. The innocent fear him. Indeed his greatest power is fear.

The Gospel reading today is about fear. Unlike in New Zealand where the sea, associated with beaches, swimming, and boating, is largely viewed positively, in the ancient world the sea was a place of dragons, destruction and death. The Book of Revelation, for example, offers a vision of paradise where the sea will be no more! (21:1)

Commentators call this walking on water story ‘symbolic’. That’s the polite way of saying it never happened. Jesus did not walk on water, and neither did Peter. The story is a parable about fear and faith created by the early church.

The theological problem for those who like to believe in miracles where the laws of nature are ignored is that Jesus becomes other than human. That’s okay you might think, after all the tradition calls him divine. But, if Jesus is not constrained by the laws of nature, is his suffering really suffering? Did he just pretend to be hurt when they whipped him and nailed him? Did he just pretend to die?

Our tradition is clear that Jesus really did suffer and die, and really was fully human. He wasn’t an alien. To be fully human is to live within constraints. It is to know suffering, fear, and hopefully, love. There is no miraculous emergency exit when the going gets tough.

How Jesus was fully divine, how the love and purpose of God permeated all that he did, and in doing so what it told us/tells us about God, is the better question. As we wrestle with that question however let’s be clear that Jesus did not literally still storms, did not literally walk on water, did not literally cure the physical aspects of illness, or literally bring a dead child or a dead Lazarus back to life.

So back to this parable of fear and faith: There are a number of references here to the Hebrew Bible. The Psalms and Job have God rebuking and controlling the sea [i], and walking over the water. [ii] This is symbolic code for keeping the power of fear in its rightful place, and not letting it overwhelm us. Fear can be destructive of our soul. It needs to be kept under control by live-giving power – like compassion, friendship, and courage. The invitation to Peter to ‘walk on the sea,’ to put his fear under his feet, is an invitation to let those life-giving powers predominate.

As an aside I was reading some of Gabriele Winkler’s work on Syriac Christianity this week. Our New Testament texts owe their origins largely to Christianity shaped by the Greek language, and inevitably the thought forms of that culture. Her work looks at the New Testament in Syriac – texts shaped by the Syrian Church and language.

In Matthew 9:22 where Jesus says in the Greek ‘Your faith has saved you’, the Syriac says ‘Your faith has made you alive’. Matthew 10:22 says in Greek, ‘The one who endures to the end will be saved’. The Syriac says, ‘The one who endures will be living’. Similarly Luke 2:11 ‘To you is born this day a Saviour’. The Syriac: ‘To you is born today the one who makes alive’.

So, in this sea parable rather than thinking of Jesus saving Peter and the other disciples from the fear that is threatening to overwhelm them, we might think of Jesus making the disciples alive to all the possibilities that the power of fear has blinded them to.

Let’s turn now to the Hebrew Bible text for today. This is the edited introduction to the saga of Joseph. Last week [chapter 32] we heard how Joseph’s father, Jacob, had wrestled with God [his fear?] as he prepared to meet his brother Esau whom he had wronged. Although Esau and he hug and kiss they don’t make up. Jacob didn’t know how to do reconciliation.

Jacob didn’t know how to do family either. Our lectionary skips from chapter 32 over to 37, bypassing the story of Dinah. Dinah was Jacob’s daughter who was both raped and kidnapped by a Hivite chief’s son. On hearing the news Jacob is callously indifferent to her plight, and keeps silent.

Her brothers though were grieved and then outraged. They organized a rescue that became a cold-blooded massacre and looting. The rape was abhorrent. The revenge was abhorrent. 

The slaughter of the Hivites opened a new chapter of distrust and contempt between the offspring of Abraham and the native peoples of Canaan. It would be the first of a number of massacres of the indigenous peoples. 

Finally, at the end of the story, Jacob breaks his silence. Did he lament the outrage suffered by his daughter, or the cruelty of the crimes? No, he just regrets the danger that his sons have brought upon the family and – above all – upon himself (34:30)! 

This family is riddled with self-centredness and envy. It is therefore no surprise in our text today to find Jacob having a favourite among his sons [the child of his favourite wife], and displaying that favouritism by giving Joseph a multi-coloured cloak (37:3-4) and encouraging him to snitch on his brothers (37:2).

All his life Jacob has wanted to be centre stage. His selfishness ruled the family, and in time destroyed the family. Jacob feared losing his ‘chosen’ status – a status he had stolen from his brother. Jacob had wanted power, he acquired power, but he did not know how to wield it in order to bring life – that peace, love, and harmony - into the lives of his dependents and into his own life.

It is therefore no surprise to also find in our text today Joseph, seeking to emulate his beloved father, having dreams of grandeur (supposedly divinely inspired – yeah, right!), relating those dreams to his older brothers, and thinking he was the chosen. 

As Karen Armstrong says, “Joseph believed from the outset that he was born to greatness, and he continued throughout his life to assume that he was unquestionably the leading character in the scenario that unfolded around him and that he was directing events.” [iii] Joseph was gifted, and through that giftedness acquired power. Yet he did not have wisdom. There was little room with an ego that big for humility, or for God.

Joseph’s fears were the same as his father’s. He was frightened of not being centre-stage. He was frightened of losing his father’s favour. He was frightened that his brothers would have power over him, regulating him to the bottom. He was frightened of being a nothing.

The fears of the brothers – fear of losing whatever influence they had with their father – give way to violence. They pulled off his robe and cast him into a pit. Then, instead of killing him, turned a profit by selling him into slavery. The boy who dreamed of domination had to descend to the pit, not knowing whether he’d live or die. 

Meanwhile the brothers had broken the news to Jacob, showing a tunic dipped in goat’s blood. Jacob, who had himself deceived his father, was now deceived by his own sons. He then succumbed completely and indulgently to his grief, refusing to be consoled. Joseph’s extravagant mourning was a cruel demonstration to his remaining children that they were totally irrelevant to him.

I smile when some Christians talk about the ‘family values’ in the Bible. If Jacob’s is anything to go by then the values are pretty terrible. They are values of grasping for power and for blessing, and when getting them holding on tightly. They do not have the wisdom to let go, let others in, lose, and sit loose. The storms of fear are pervasive in this family. There is not much that is life-giving.

I began by talking about the Harry Potter series and the arch villain Lord Voldemort. He too is categorized as one who is grasping and acquiring, by foul means, the power he believes he deserves. And power he obtains… but not wisdom. For power is often grasped at, and once obtained clung to, whereas wisdom pays a visit when one’s hands and heart are open.

The penultimate scene in Harry Potter has the three friends exhausted after the demise of Lord Voldemort and his hordes. Harry now has in his possession the most powerful wand in the world. He has done great feats and achieved great power, of which the wand bears witness. Yet Harry, much to the horror of his friend Ron, breaks this wand in two and hurls it into the abyss. Harry has forsaken power. He has chosen wisdom instead.

[i] Ps 106:9, 65:7, 89:9, 107:25-32.

[ii] Ps 77:19, Job 9:8.

[iii] Armstrong, K. In The Beginning: A new reading of the Book of Genesis London : HarperCollins, 1996, p.100.