September 17, 2006 Sermon

Jacob Breathes His Last
Genesis 49:29-50:21

Big names inhabit Genesis: Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. Jacob does not stand out in this lineup. Yet his story takes up half of Genesis. He debuts in chapter 26. We just read of his death on the doorstep of the very last chapter in the book.

Jacob has never before grabbed my attention as he did this time through. Yet he did so much. He tricked his father to get a blessing. He fought and then reconciled with Esau, his older brother. He married twice and fathered an entire nation through four women. He wrestled with an angel. He received God’s covenant promises. He became the all-important back-story in the saga of Joseph. Now, finally in Genesis 49, he dies. With him dies the protection eleven of his sons have against the wrath of the twelfth. Or so they fear.

Immediately upon burying Jacob’s body the brothers asked, “What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for the all the wrongs we did to him?” After all, they had faked his death, sold him into slavery, and lied to their father about it all. They naturally wondered whether Joseph might take advantage of the freedom their father’s death gave him finally to take revenge against them.

Being Jacob the Trickster’s sons, the brothers tried to play a game on Joseph. They sent him a message that they fabricated, as far as we know. They claimed that before he died Jacob had said, “I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.” The brothers hoped this story would prolong their father’s protection even after he died. They need not have worried.

Genesis tells us Joseph wept when he learned his brothers feared him. “Do not be afraid,” he told them. “Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what we now do, the saving of many lives.” Joseph made two points. First, he refused to equate himself with God. He did not desire nor deserve his brothers’ servitude. He was not their Lord. He had great earthly power but recognized this did not make him God. Would that all leaders had the same clear-eyed understanding of their place in God’s plan!

Joseph also made a point that displays a strong and mature faith in God: his brothers meant to harm him, but God meant their hateful actions to create good. If we believe in God we must also believe in the power God has to plan and to act. A god who cannot make good come from bad is no god. This does not mean that all evil results in good. It does mean that when we believe in God we can trust that in the end, good triumphs.

Five years ago last Monday nineteen evil men serving a false god killed themselves and approximately 3,000 other people in the 9/11 attacks. Whether or not we accept Allah, the God of Islam, as the God of the Bible (and this is a hotly debated topic) we can certainly agree that these men did not worship any true god. They had become consumed with evil. Their hearts and minds had become blinded by hatred. They intended and they accomplished evil. What good can we say God has wrought from their actions?

For months following the attacks America came together. We put up lawn signs, pasted on bumper stickers, put tag lines on our emails, all of them saying, “United We Stand”. This was a good outcome of the evil perpetrated on 9/11. But whatever unity may have resulted from 9/11 has evaporated. The elections of 2004 and 2006 are completely partisan. The old fault lines have reappeared. The two sides that exist on every issue have resumed talking—no shouting—past each other.

What good did God intend to come from 9/11? We still do not know the answer. Perhaps it will come in the eventual awakening of all civilized peoples on this planet to the true nature of evil. Perhaps the ancient and proud civilizations of China and Japan ; of Western Europe ; of America ; and of highly educated, progressive, mainstream Islam will finally learn to take seriously the threat posed to all humanity by the 1,000 year-old specter of radical Islam. I doubt it, but it could happen. If God could cleanse Joseph’s heart of the rage he once felt against his brothers, God could also purpose to destroy this disease-ridden ideology. Only time will tell. Meanwhile, our faith in God’s purposes is the only hope we have.

We live in the in-between. We live in the midst of evil, awaiting God’s promised deliverance from it. We live in the valley of the shadow of death. But we live. And life is a gift from God. What shall we do with our lives while we have them? What evil people intend, God turns to good. It happens all the time. We, with Joseph, must learn to see it.

In the winter of 1974 I played in a freshman basketball game in the next town north of where we went to high school. This other town had a reputation for racism. I had teammates from Taiwan , Guam and Pigeon Hill, the impoverished black neighborhood in our little city. All game long we heard racial slurs and chants from the fans at, remember, a freshman game. In the fourth quarter my best friend on the team, a black guy whose father was a colonel in the U.S. Army, dove into the stands after a loose ball. One white boy in the stands held him down while another punched his head repeatedly. My teammates and I rushed to rescue him. We fought our way in and out of that crowd, and then ran to our bus to get away.

In the winter of 1998, when our school team made its annual trip to play in that town, they were met with a player who had written “KKK” on his basketball shoes. Another player bit a black opponent on the arm. When the bitten player complained to the referee, the biter yelled, “Quit whining, you baboon!” Yet another player elbowed yet another black on our team in the stomach as they ran down the court. When he staggered over to the sideline and began retching an elderly woman in the stands started screaming, “Stop that nigger from spitting on our floor!” The man who reported these incidents writes for an Indianapolis newspaper. They really happened.

The Presbyterian pastor in that town had arrived from Los Angeles only a couple of years before. He is an acquaintance of mine named Christy Wareham. Appalled by the situation, he took action. He led the effort to create a new group in town that would work long and hard to improve race relations. The two teams and coaches ate a meal together at a Subway restaurant closed to the public for the occasion. They did not just sit together and start gabbing about their similarities, but the event made each side seem more human, more vulnerable to pain and capable of joy, to the other.

The fabric of that town changed. Led by a Presbyterian pastor, its residents rebuked their past. Not all of them approve. Reactionary letters to the editor still get printed in the local paper. Certain local yokels, some of whom graduated from that school more than thirty years ago, were in the habit of “greeting” visiting teams with non-whites when they arrived in the school parking lot with racial slurs and obscene gestures. I personally witnessed this “tradition” twice. But since 1999 this horrible practice has been strictly prohibited. A friend familiar with the situation says nowadays the school principal meets visiting teams and walks them from the parking lot into their locker rooms.

Evil by its very nature commands our attention. We focus on it. This sometimes makes us miss the good that God creates from the ashes of evil. But take it from me: if it can happen in that southern Indiana town, it can happen in your life. Look for God at work in the world. God turned evil into good in Egypt all those centuries ago. God will turn the evil of 9/11 into good. We may not live to see it in this life, but I believe it will happen.

Believe in the God of the Bible. Believe in God’s power to overcome evil with good, hatred with forgiveness, war with peace. And live in the freedom, the joy this belief brings. It worked for Joseph. It can work for us.