“But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him… They said, “Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him, for he is our brother, our own flesh.” And his brothers agreed” (Genesis 37:4, 27).
Good morning again. For those of you who may not know me, my name is David. I am the pastor here. At least that’s what the sign out on the front lawn tells me. After being away on sabbatical the last eight weeks, it is good, and more than good, it is reviving, to be back here in this place with you today. To know you’re home because your name is still on the mailbox or hanging somewhere on the wall with all the other brothers and sisters who have ever come here looking to be known. What a gift. But what a gift sabbatical is as well.
For this is what sabbatical is, or at least what it’s supposed to be: gift. From the word sabbath and the biblical story of Genesis, a sabbatical is what God took on the seventh day of creation. After having worked for 6 days straight, Genesis 2 records, …and on the seventh day, God rested from all the work that he had done. In that moment, I imagine God a painter, stepping back from the canvas to get a good look at his painting. He steps back far so he can see how it all came together. How the sky meets the ocean, turning plain old blue into turquoise. How the sun and moon both manage to stay always perched in the sky, never trying to outshine each other. How the elephant sits so calmly while a funny little bird sits on its back pecking at ticks hidden away in the tangly hairs of this great, gray, gentle beast. How Adam and Eve seem to understand so easily and so well what it means to have been included last, and not first, in the painting. Be fruitful and multiply, God told them. Fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion over everything you see. Tricky words for our industrialized, American, 21st century ears to take in, but not for Adam and Eve, who must have known that when God said to subdue, God didn’t mean for them to have their way with everything, without any consideration for what would happen to them or their fellow creatures if they were to mistreat, kill, or destroy the earth.
But there are a few things we need to recall, a few things we must recall, if we are to keep from being destroyed. First, while there is no getting around the fact that in Hebrew, the word subdue does in fact mean to subdue, even to a point of getting hostile, in Genesis chapter one there is nothing worth getting hostile over. There are no nations, no borders, nothing to fight about. It’s just Adam and Eve, and short of some unruly weeds they might encounter in the back yard, they have no enemies, nothing to subdue. What does it mean, then, that God uses this word to describe what Adam and Eve are to do? Is God setting them up for things to come? Does God already know that, for as good as things are now—in the beginning—it won’t take long for things to get bad, and Adam and Eve should prepare now for that day when they will need to subdue and dominate? No, I don’t believe so.
Read the whole of Genesis chapter one and what we see is that God is not the kind of painter who just throws paint on the wall willy-nilly. Inventive, surprising, and unpredictable as God is, there is equal purpose and order to the way God goes about creating the world. God begins with darkness, and then uses the darkness to call forth light, from which comes the day, from which comes the night. On the second day of creation, God adds the sky, from which then comes the sun, moon, and stars. On the third day, the earth appears, and from the earth, fruits and vegetables, which grow in seasons made possible only by the turning of the sun and moon. Then there are the waters, which, along with the birds, come from the sky. You see how it works? Everything depends upon everything for its life, indeed for its very survival. Nothing and no one can afford to fight for dominance, or to act with intolerance and indifference towards the earth or each other. For God made us in such a way as to make it impossible for us to go it alone. We need each other. We are part of a great cosmic, holy order, what the late Frederick Buechner calls an alphabet of grace. Each of us a letter that, on its own, can be meaningless, or can be part of great meaning. This is us—an alphabet of grace, a holy order of love that must be honored, respected, and tended to as such.
Of course, we know through painful experience that sometimes, most of the time, things get out of order—we forget our place in the world. When this happens, order must be reestablished. In a word, we must subdue, and be subdued ourselves.
I thought about this and read for us a piece of the Joseph story from Genesis 37, a reminder of what can happen when things get out of order, and pride, jealousy, and fear are allowed to dominate at the front of the line. In the Joseph story, Joseph, the second youngest of 12 sons born to his father Jacob, is sold into slavery by his brothers. Here’s how it happened: Jacob, having two wives named Leah and Rachel, loved Rachel the most. But for years, Rachel could not get pregnant, and pregnancy, being a badge of honor for a woman back then, made Rachel’s barrenness a point of disdain for her and her husband. I have been cursed by God, is what Rachel told herself lying in bed each night.
For better or for worse, however, ancient Mesopotamian society provided a back-up plan for women like Rachel. If unable to become pregnant, she could give her slave woman to her husband to become pregnant for her. Which is what Rachel does; she gives her slave Bilhah to Jacob.
That Rachel even has Bilhah to give says a great deal about Jacob and Rachel. They are people of economic means in this world, and Rachel, though feeling powerless in her role as a wife and woman, uses those means to prove she is still more powerful than some. Who among us hasn’t, from time to time, done this very thing? Standing at the back of the line, we cry, I don’t belong here! Do we ever stop to think, though, about the fact that what the person directly in front of us hears in that moment is, I am better than you.
In the case of Rachel, crying out from the back of the line will only get her so far. For, in the end, any children Bilhah may have will belong to Bilhah and Jacob, not Rachel and Jacob. You see, this is not a surrogacy situation between the two women. It is simply a way for Rachel to save what little face she can.
Bilhah will have children, two boys. Much to everyone’s surprise, Rachel will wind up becoming a mother as well, giving birth to two boys of her own, Joseph and Benjamin. All told, Jacob will have 12 sons by 4 women. But here’s the rub, Rachel, whom he loves the most and only ever wanted to be with, will die first. Leah, whom he had to marry but, really, never wanted to, will live on in the book of Genesis with barely a mention. And Bilhah and Zilpah, Rachel and Leah’s slave women, they of course are never mentioned again.
In the end, what will remain is Jacob and his 12 sons. They and they alone make up the story line of 13 chapters in the book of Genesis, beginning in chapter 37 when 10 of the brothers decide to sell Joseph into slavery. The only reasons we are given for this cruel move on their part is that they see how their father loves Joseph more than them, and they hate Joseph for it. But a closer look at the story and we find, as always, there is more to it. In verse two, Joseph is in the fields helping his brothers tend the family herd. Specifically, he is said to be helping four of his brothers, the four who were born to Bilhah and Zilpah. Boy, it must have torn Joseph up to hear his father say, go help those ones. With Rachel dead, he, the favorite son of his father’s favorite wife is being made servant to the sons of the servants. Bilhah had been brought in to do what Joseph’s own mother could not. Do you think, while they were out tending the sheep, their father back in the house, the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah might have dug into Joseph about it. You know, Joseph, our mothers might have been slaves, but at least they were masterful at being women. Your mother, she wasn’t even a full woman. And you think you’re better than us, Joseph?
Then, one day, Joseph, perhaps looking to put them in their place, snitches on them to their father. What dirt Joseph had on them, we don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. The point is, in going to dad to rat out his brothers, Joseph is pushing back. He knows his father will listen to what he has to say and believe it. After all, he is the favorite son. Better than me? Ha! I’ll show my brothers who’s better.
It’s hard to say who’s to blame for the way things turn out. If Joseph had just not acted so arrogant and privileged; if his brothers had just not given in to revenge and slavery; if their mothers had just been there to tell them all to knock it off; if their dad had just loved them all the same when they were young; if they could have all just stepped back in that moment to recall the way it’s supposed to be, the way God made us—an alphabet of grace, a cosmic, holy order of love, each of us a gift, no one better than another.
Ernest Hemingway, author of Old Man and the Sea, once said, “There is no nobility in being superior to others. The only nobility is in being superior to our former self.”
In 2020, The 1619 Project was published by the New York Times. As part of the project, Khalil Gibran Muhammad reminds us in her essay titled, Sugar, that when Africans started getting bought, sold, and shipped as slaves between Great Britain, the West Indies, and the American Colonies, it wasn’t just the southern colonies who were guilty of getting involved. From 1709 to 1809, from what is now the stretch of land between Fox Point and India Point in Providence, Rhode Islanders made over a thousand voyages to Africa, procuring 106,544 enslaved persons.[1]
I’d like to think we have come a long way from our past, that we have learned the wisdom of Hemingway: “There is no nobility in being superior to others. The only nobility is in being superior to our former self.” But if you woke up today worried for a world still stuck in an old order, I offer you one final thought.
As part of my sabbatical, I spent five days back at the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, a monastic community of 11 brothers in Cambridge, Massachusetts. On my last day there, a Sunday as it would so happen, Moira, Lillian, and Rowan drove into the city to go to church with me. I think it’s safe to say, both kids were curious to see how monks live. Everyone wearing the same black habit, tied off at the waist with a simple rope. A pair of sandals on their feet. All day long they walk about not in total silence but in a quietness so practiced it feels natural; gathering to pray 5 times per day, working only to give away what they make to the poor. To the uncurious, their life together might appear boring, unproductive, irrelevant, pointless.
On the day Moira and the kids came in to meet me, it was a sunny, unusually cool July day, perfect for gathering in the monastery gardens after church for a time of fellowship hosted by the brothers. Over a glass of lemonade and a piece of zucchini bread, one of the brothers mentioned that they used to have a dog living at the monastery, a black lab who would roam about the hallways, greeting guests and stealing scraps from the kitchen. “He was systemically starved,” Brother Curtis said with a laugh and a soft, far-off look in his eyes. “Will you ever get another dog?” Rowan asked. “Some of us would like to,” said Brother Curtis, “I want one very much, but not everyone does.” Rowan was quick to make the connection. “That sounds a lot like our family, except we do have a dog. Why don’t you all just vote on getting a dog?” “Well, sometimes that can work,” Brother Curtis said with a smile, “but there are certain things you need everyone to agree on.” “You mean everyone has to say they want a dog before anyone can get one? That seems like it will never happen,” Rowan exclaimed. “No, we don’t all have to want a dog, but we do all have to agree that if we get one, we will all love the dog.”
“I really only love God as much as I love the person I love the least,” said Dorothy Day once upon a time.
If the Bible begins in Genesis with these words, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth—an alphabet of grace, a cosmic, holy order born in love— it ends in Revelation with these words, And behold, I saw a new heaven and a new earth.
I heard someone ask a question not too long ago about why people go to church. “Do you go to be with the people you love, or do you go to love the people you are with?” Both can have their good points, and I don’t know your reason for being here today, but can we all agree that, in being here, we will all love?
And behold, I saw a new heaven and a new earth.
[1] Khalil Gibran Muhammad, from her essay, Sugar, (“The 1619 Project,” NY: The New York Times Company, 2021), p. 80, ref. The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A History, rev. ed. (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005), 212-13.
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