Shiphrah and Puah and Miep

When I first heard about the Stockholm Syndrome, I thought it might describe the stresses of a Swedish elementary school.

In fact, the term refers to a 1973 bank robbery in Stockholm in which hostages became emotionally attached to their captors and defended them after nearly a week in captivity. The syndrome, described by psychiatrist Nils Bejerot, was cited a year later when heiress Patty Hearst, after being kidnapped, bound and raped by the Symbionese Liberation Army, changed her name to Tanya and blithely joined the band of hippy cutthroats.

Maybe that’s not exactly what’s happening in the fifth grade, but I can remember instances when my teacher seemed more like a subjugator than an educator.

Mrs. Seymour was not the best teacher in the Morrisville-Eaton school district, but she was the strictest disciplinarian. Her morning roll calls hummed so quietly that we could hear the muffled chaos in adjoining class rooms. Mrs. Seymour kept order by using her hand as a weapon of mass destruction. She believed in corporal punishment and she could slap kids silly.

She had two favorite targets: an African American girl and a boy with huge ears. The girl usually caught the teacher’s hand when she turned from a whispered conversation with the girl behind her and the sharp slapping sound made the hair stand on our heads.

I would hear the girl sobbing as Mrs. Seymour walked away but I was afraid to turn around and look at her. She was the only child of color in the room, so it wasn’t hard to discern Mrs. Seymour’s problem with her. I don’t know what bothered her about the big-eared boy. Maybe she thought he was funny looking. She would slap him without warning and he would look stunned, protecting his cheek with his elbow.

Of course I knew it was abusive behavior but I never mentioned it to anyone, not even Dad, who was a teacher in the same building. At 11, I thought nasty teachers were a rare but unavoidable fact of childhood and I did my best to keep conflict to a minimum. I made a tactical decision never to associate with the weeping girl or the stunned boy. Mrs. Seymour was nice to most of the other children in the class. Long before we knew what the Stockholm Syndrome was, I greedily accepted her affection and occasional hugs.

It’s not a happy memory and it’s not even an unusual experience. Most of us had toughening moments on the Serengetis of our playgrounds and we try not to remember the details. We learned very early how difficult it is to stand up to abusers and bullies.

That's what makes it all the more remarkable when we discover people who have the courage to take that stand. Judged by the behavioral standards of the Genesis patriarchs, two characters introduced in the first chapter of Exodus are exceptional:

The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, "When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live." But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. Exodus 1:15-17.

It’s impossible to exaggerate the courage of these two women, and equally difficult to emulate it.

Shiphrah and Puah were members of an oppressed class whose daily survival depended on their ability to stay out of the way, avoid attracting attention and do what they were told. Pharaoh, the undisputed monarch of a vast empire, was worried that the enslaved but prolific Jews would soon outnumber his army. He decided to thin their ranks by killing the boy babies. It’s unclear if he gave the order to other midwives, or how many of them decided to get along by going along and smothered the babies between their mothers’ legs. But we do know that Shiphrah and Puah defied Pharaoh and let the boy babies live.

They lied to Pharaoh and told him the Hebrew women delivered their babies before they could get to them, and Pharaoh, a unique blend of ruthlessness and dumbness, let them go. But Shiphrah and Puah had no reason to count on official stupidity to protect them. When they defied Pharaoh, they expected to die. They chose to die rather than carry out an order they knew was wrong. Their survival was an unexpected miracle.

It’s a little surprising that Shiphrah and Puah are such minor characters in our Sunday school lessons. Their courage and faithfulness transcends all whose stories were told in Genesis, and sets the stage for the dramatic events that will follow in Exodus.

They are pivotal figures whose roles were noted but not fully acknowledged by the writers of Exodus, who were of course male. With a little more insight, Exodus would have opened with the lines, “Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not notice Shiphrah and Puah, lowly Hebrew women who would soon outsmart him and ignite the long fuse to revolution.”

Shiphrah and Puah set the gold standard for defending the powerless against bullies and tyrants. Almost all of us get a chance to take stands similar to theirs, even if on a smaller scale. All of us would like to think we would have their courage to stand up for others. But when you look at the history of the world, you quickly realize how rare were Shiphrah and Puah.

During the Holocaust, the Gestapo offered small rewards to citizens who turned in hiding Jews: a bottle of schnapps, a bag of sugar, a carton of cigarettes and occasionally a handful of deutschmarks. It doesn’t add up to 50 pieces of silver, but to many trying to survive in the stark deprivation of wartime, it was temptation enough.

Tens of thousands willingly followed orders comparable to Pharaoh’s command to kill Jewish baby boys. Those who reported Jews to the Gestapo received minor gratuities, but if they had failed to do so they could be shot or dragged outside their houses and hanged. Thousands who followed the model of Shiphrah and Puah to save Jews from certain death paid with their own lives.

We know some of the names of those who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. Miep Gies (pictured above), who died at 101 in January 2010, is the woman who hid Anne Frank, her family and friends in an unused room over an office building in Amsterdam. It was Gies who rescued Anne Frank’s diary when the family was betrayed and arrested in August 1944. Anne’s father, Otto, the sole survivor, published the diary in 1947.

Gies, who would have been summarily executed if police had known of her complicity in hiding the Franks, believed it was worth the risk. Television interviews reveal a woman with a distinctly non-heroic demeanor. She was small and soft-spoken and her ability to disappear into a crowd may have helped save her life. It was only in a figurative sense that she stood tall, like Shiphrah and Puah.

Toward the end of her long life, Gies wrote, “I stand at the end of the long, long line of good Dutch people who did what I did or more – much more - during those dark and terrible times years ago, but always like yesterday in the hearts of those of us who bear witness. Never a day goes by that I do not think of what happened then.”

Persons who stood in that long line of good people were Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who saved an estimated 90,000 Jews in Hungary by granting Swedish passports, setting up safe-houses, and distributing food and medical supplies. Jan Karski was smuggled into the Jewish Ghetto in Warsaw and reported what was happening to President Roosevelt and other world leaders.

Too, Cardinal Archbishop of Lwow (Count Andreas Szeptycki) ordered that the clergy reporting to him act to save Jews. Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, a founder of the Polish resistance, organized an underground organization comprised mostly of Catholics to save Jews.

It’s no coincidence that so many of the righteous gentiles who risked their lives for their fellow human beings were Christians.

One of the remarkable phenomena to emerge during the period was the Confessing Church, a reaction to the pro-Nazi German Christian Movement that embraced Martin Luther’s anti-Semitic statements and de-emphasized the Old Testament.

When Hitler embraced the movement, the Confessing Church arose and declared the Nazis to be heretical. Some of the leaders of the Confessing Church, such as Martin Niemöller or Heinrich Grüber, were sent to concentration camps. While Grüber and Niemöller survived, not all did: Dietrich Bonhoeffer was sent first to Tegel Prison, then to Buchenwald concentration camp, and finally to Flossenbürg concentration camp, where he was hanged.

Throughout history there have been Shiphrahs and Puahs who have risked their lives to stand as a barrier between the powerful and the weak. And, like Shiphrah and Puah, “they feared God; they did not do as the King … commanded them” (Exodus 1:17). They recognized an authority far above the powers and principalities of perfumed Pharaohs and ranting dictators.

Pharaoh’s power was dazzling and limitless. The Nazis were evil on a scale that drains the imagination. They were all archetypal bullies against which all other bullies pale.

Usually, the forces we are called to confront are not as awesome. Racist fifth grade teachers. Homophobes who shout “God hates fags” at soldiers’ funerals. Islamaphobes who think Muslims are the enemy and yell vile threats at Muslim children. Xenophobes who think 11 million undocumented people living in the U.S. should be arrested, deported, or deprived of basic protections under the law. Ecclesiophobes who hate the churches for accepting and welcoming everyone – everyone – into the fellowship of Christ.

We often encounter individuals or groups who don’t believe God loves everyone, or that Jesus accepts everyone. What do we do when we hear these people say hateful, bullying or merely ignorant things about the people they don’t understand? My approach is to be passive-aggressive. Not wishing to get involved, I listen silently and politely to the rants of ignoramuses. But I write nasty blogs about them later.

The lesson of Shiphrah and Puah is that we have to take a stand when evil is afoot. And the lesson of the Gospel is that we don’t have to keep silent about it. God has given us the authority to speak out.

Simon Peter answered, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. (Matthew 16:16-20)

Jesus (in the non-apostolic view) is not addressing Peter alone.  He is addressing all who confess him. Jesus calls you and me individually, and all of us together, to be the bedrock on which the church is built. And along with that comes the keys to the kingdom, the authority – and the responsibility – to speak God’s truth.

Shiphrah and Puah took a courageous stand to speak God’s truth in action, even if it meant their lives. Jesus bids us to take similar stands. Because he has anointed us

“to bring good news to the poor … proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18).

Whenever tyrants or bullies or ignoramuses bid us to do evil, or to stand aside silently while they taunt and threaten the weak and powerless, Shiphrah and Puah have shown us the way. And Christ gives us the authority and, God willing, the courage to act.

Who was that masked man?

If it hadn’t been for Sid Caesar, I wouldn’t know that Joseph’s reunion with his brothers is one of the funniest schticks in the bible.

“And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it ... Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, while Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them.” (Genesis 45:2; 14-15a.)

Call me insensitive, but the scene is hilarious. It’s set up like a spoof of This is Your Life on Caesar’s TV comedy program Your Show of Shows (1950-1954). Caesar plays Al Duncey, a man in the audience who is unwillingly pulled to the stage by Carl Reiner to have his life examined on national television. (Yes, kids, Ralph Edwards actually did have a show like that, but it was never as amusing as Caesar’s send-up.)

The riotous episode reunites Duncey with his long-lost Uncle Goofy, played by Howard Morris. Their reunion is so emotional that it frustrates Reiner’s efforts to move the show along. Caesar and Morris weep and embrace and embrace and weep and can’t keep their hands off each other. Finally, as Reiner insists it’s time to move on, Caesar carries Morris to a chair. But still sobbing convulsively, Morris climbs on Caesar’s back and howls as Caesar awkwardly drags him to back stage. But as additional guests are introduced, Uncle Goofy leaps into the huddles of reunited relatives, all of them blubbering copiously.

Okay, it gives me pause that I can recall the details a 58-year-old TV show but can’t remember the skeleton on last night’s Bones. Be that as it may, once you see that scene, I dare you to read about Joseph and his weeping brothers without snickering. I try to be piously reflective, but all I can see are these big hairy dudes, their desert burlap soggy with tears, climbing over each other to embrace their gilded brother whose Egyptian mascara is streaking down his cheeks. It has all the homoerotic energy of a Worldwide Wrestling Federation bout. I love it.

Granted, the intent of the story is not so much to amuse as to remind the reader that God is the God of history, and that the brothers’ scheme to sell Joseph into slavery was brought to naught. In the dramatic moment when Joseph reveals himself to his brothers, he tells them not to feel bad because their dastardly scheme was God’s doing, not theirs.

“So it was not you who sent me here, but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh, and Lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt.” (Genesis 45:8)

It’s a little difficult, in the second decade of the 21st century, to accept the concept of God as the governor of history. The Holocaust, Stalinist genocides, endless wars, chronic human hatred, AIDS, cancer, xenophobic excesses, 9/11, bad things happening to good people, all make it hard to explain to our children how God watches over us and keeps us safe. In the late 20th century, evidence of God’s presence was so rare TIME asked, “Is God Dead?” and artists and writers began to insinuate the theme into their work. Prior Walter, the angel-designated prophet living with AIDS in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, expresses his anger that God has gone missing:

“He isn’t coming back. And even if he did … If He ever did come back, if He ever dared to show His face, or his Glyph or whatever in the Garden again...if after all this destruction, if after all the terrible days of this terrible century He returned to see...how much suffering His abandonment had created, if He did come back you should sue the bastard. That's my only contribution to all this Theology. Sue the bastard for walking out. How dare He.”

Not everyone believes God has abandoned creation, although theater audiences generally applaud Prior Walter’s bitter complaint.

But even if the God-in-history angle takes some sorting out, the central character Joseph remains intriguing. He is a classic literary conceit: the person with issues who, for whatever reason, disappears for a long period of time and reappears at a dramatic moment to save the day. The conceit often includes an element of mystery, a secret identity, or a masquerade. Joseph the shepherd boy disappears and, for all practical purposes, is lost to history. Then, when he is all but forgotten but when it matters most, he reappears as a person of great power.

Modern literature is full of such characters. The ones we knew when we were children were Superman and the Lone Ranger. Both mythical heroes shared with Joseph a violent banishment from everything they knew. They wandered in an uncertain wilderness and eventually emerged with amazing powers and indisputable moral authority. Superman was a refugee from a shattered planet who wandered the known universe before arriving on earth, where his super strength and moral authority were virtually messianic. (See Messiah in Blue Tights from an earlier era of Little Scrolls, below.)

The Lone Ranger was a virtuous lawman whose band of Texas Rangers was massacred by the Butch Cavendish gang and who lay dying in the sun until his loyal indigenous associate and life companion Tonto nursed him back to health. Long after Cavendish was no longer around to recognize him as the ranger he couldn’t kill, he wore a mask as a sign of moral authority and justice for all.

There are also interesting Jungian twists on the story of people who, like Joseph, disappear and later reappear with a different image. There are legends in many cultures about soldiers who go away to war and are not heard from for years, until they mysteriously reappear and resume conjugal relations with their startled wives. One such tale was told in the 1993 film, Sommersby, starring Jody Foster and Richard Gere. Jack Sommersby (Gere), a surly and somewhat abusive man, leaves his farm to fight for the Confederacy and never returns. That’s okay with his wife (Foster), who manages very well on her own. But then a man strongly resembling Jack and claiming to be him shows up unexpectedly. He looks like Jack, but there’s something wrong with him: he’s nice. Is he an imposter? And if he is, why does he know so much about Jack’s past life? It’s a mystery and, for those still planning to get the DVD, I won’t reveal the ending. But the story is very Joseph-like: he’s here, he’s gone, he’s back – and he’s very different.

My favorite Joseph character in literature is Jean Valjean, the central figure in Victor Hugo’s massive 1862 novel, Les Misérables and, more recently, lead tenor in the Broadway opera of the same name.

The full story of Jean Valjean is too complicated to be told here, and the musical drastically abridged it, but literati who made it through the novel know he was born of poor parents in tiny French village. When he was a child, his parents died. One suspects Hugo is not trying to be funny, but the story goes that Jean’s father, also Jean Valjean, falls out of a tree and his mother, Jeanne Valjean, dies of milk fever. Jean is raised by his sister Jeanne Valjean, but hard times fall upon them and young Jean steals a loaf of bread so they can live.

It’s at that point that Jean, like Joseph, disappears from familiar surroundings. Like Joseph, he is forced into the insidious form of slavery maintained by the French penal system. Assigned prisoner number 24601, his sentence for stealing a loaf of bread is five years. Adding penalties for bad behavior, he’s in the clink for 19 years.

When he is finally released, Valjean is taken in by Bishop Myriel, a kindly only man in the town of Digne. But Valjean steals the bishop’s silver and runs off. When police capture him and return him to the bishop, Myriel pretends to scold Valjean for not taking the silver candlesticks as well (“Would you leave the best behind?”). Chastened, Valjean turns away from temptation and commits his life to God.

When we see Valjean again in the musical, he has evolved from hardened criminal to the virtuous mayor of Montreuil-sur-Mer. Just how that happened is voluminously detailed by Hugo, but for theater-goers it’s enough to gauge the dramatic ascendency from prisoner to chief executive. It’s not unlike the rise from slave to Pharaoh’s first minister.

For the rest of the story, Jean Valjean’s life is full ups and downs: he risks his life to protect prostitutes and an escaped prisoner, among others, and when his identify is discovered by police Inspector Javert, he is forced to go into hiding with Collette, his adopted daughter whom he has rescued from a life of poverty and abuse. It’s all in the book, and much, much more.

But at the end of the story, Valjean can look back on his life and know that God has brought him from a life of poverty and crime to positions of power and opportunity that he has used in love to protect the weak, the poor, the young, the oppressed and the disempowered. I defy anyone to hear without weeping the song in the final scene of the musical:

Take my hand
And lead me to salvation.
Take my love,
For love is everlasting.
And remember
The truth that once was spoken:
To love another person
Is to see the face of God.

That truth once spoken – to love another person is to see the face of God – is the real message in the story of Joseph and his brothers. Despite all the angry, cruel and resentful baggage they are carrying, they still find it possible to love each other. That’s a major miracle, and it enables all the brothers to see God’s face as they gather in Pharaoh’s pristine palace.

It was not, as Joseph told his brothers, God who made them sell their little brother into slavery so many years before. His brothers committed that sin on their own. It can’t be blamed on God.

Nor is the story of Joseph and his brothers a confirmation that God controls the events of history. Evidently, in the fallen world in which we live, God has designated that responsibility to a flawed humanity.

So maybe it’s not history, per se, that God controls. What God controls are the hearts and minds of the individuals who make history. Earlier in Genesis, when Joseph first recognized his brothers after years of separation, he had the power to arrest them, torture them and execute them. But God spoke to his heart, and that potential vindictive history – so common in our time and in all times – never happened.

It is the God of love, not the God of history, who is introduced to us late in the book of Genesis. Love changes everything. And when the brothers repented of their cruelty, their jealousy and their sins and decided to love each other, history was changed forever.

And they knew it had changed because, when they least expected it, they could see the face of God.

Pictured above: Clockwise from top left: Clayton Moore as the Lone Ranger; Colm Wilkinson as Jean Valjean; George Reeves as Superman; Joseph and His Brothers by Francois Pascal Simon Baron Gerard; Sommersby with Jody Foster and Richard Gere.

Messiah in Blue Tights

Man Of Steel swoops into theaters June 14. Directed by Zack Snyder. Starring, Henry Cavill as the Man of Steel, Diane Lane as Martha Kent, Kevin Costner as Jonathan Kent, Amy Adams as Lois Lane, Michael Shannon as General Zod, and Russell Crowe as Jor-El.

It has been 34 years since the Superman legend was revived by Christopher Reeve. In1979 we needed to be persuaded,  “You will believe a man can fly,” and the fairly primitive special effects of the era knocked our socks off. We suspected Chris Reeve was suspended in air by wires, but why couldn’t we see them?

In the three-and-a-half decades since the debut of Superman The Movie, 3D digital special effects and quadraphonic sound have advanced exponentially. The grandchildren of those of us who packed theaters in 1979 now smile indulgently that we could have been so impressed. Those of us who sit through Man of Steel this weekend may well depart with scrambled brains and nosebleeds.

But if you were among those who saw Chris Reeve bring the man of steel to life, let’s pause to remember what a mystical event it was.

For many of us it was so mystical, in fact, that it reminded us of another famous story.

I saw Chris Reeve fly when I was editor of The American Baptist Magazine, and I was so impressed that I devoted my December 1979 editorial to a celebration of both stories.

Here’s what I thought then:

Even a Sunday school dropout would recognize the plot: 

A wise, all-knowing father in the sky looks down on the earth. He sees a torn and primitive planet badly in need of help, and he sends the world his only begotten son. 

The son, whose miraculous arrival on earth is heralded by a star in the heavens, learns the virtues of working with his hands from his adopted earthly dad. The lad grows in the favor of his friends, even as he begins to notice that he has powers and abilities far beyond those of mere mortals. 

Then, the boy senses that his time has come, and he departs to the barren wilderness for a time of testing. While meditating in the wasteland, the spirit of his other-worldly father prepares him for the mission to come. 

Finally, transfigured and self-assured, the young man returns to society, which stands in awe of his miracles, his goodness and his power. Only the forces of evil stand in his way, and these forces launch a never-ending struggle against him … 

Movie makers recognize a good plot when they see one, and this particular storyline, despite its familiarity, has found a new vehicle. Superman has proven to be a critical and popular success. 

Unfortunately, Superman opened in first-run-theatres two weeks before Christmas, just as the television networks were broadcasting their own special programs about the coming of that other messiah, Jesus. Anyone whose knowledge of messiahs is restricted to what is shown on screens will have to conclude that the messiah in the manger is no match for the messiah in blue tights. 

The Jesus of the tube is a fairly one-dimensional and distant character whose ice-blue eyes look through people and who has a penchant for talking at clouds rather than to crowds. People keep their distance from him as if they thought he had some benign form of leprosy, but otherwise treat him with the same deference Philadelphians reserve for Frank Sinatra. 

For the most part (NBC’s Jesus of Nazareth being a rare exception) the Jesus of the tube never sweats, never smiles, and never relates to people as if he has the slightest idea what it is like to be the human beings he has come to save. 

Superman, on the other hand, is a perfect balance of just-folks humanity and all-powerful being. In the skillful portrayal of actor Christopher Reeve, the man of steel performs his miracles with a casual warmth. Even after he has single-handedly saved a portion of humanity from destruction and resurrected the dead – two singularly messianic acts – he is as human and as approachable as your next door neighbor. Moreover, Superman’s alter-ego, Clark Kent, is a kind of a bumbling Everyman who gets hung up in the same revolving doors and waits for the same never-arriving elevators as us all. Superman is one god who knows what it is like to be human. 

Nevertheless, it is not difficult to isolate those things which Jesus offers but Superman doesn’t. Superman doesn’t offer to reconcile the world with his father – there’s not even evidence Jor-El is mad at us. More important, though Superman is a nice guy who obviously wants to be liked, he certainly doesn’t claim to have the words of eternal life. Superman can only save you if you fall out of a building. 

On balance, despite the fact that people who haven’t darkened a church doorstep in years are flocking to see Superman, Jesus is the superior messiah. The question is: if it came down to the ultimate competition, would Jesus or Superman win the Academy Award? 

For those who have had a personal experience with Jesus, there would be no contest. 

For those unchurched people who rely on movies and TV shows for their knowledge of messianic figures, however, I think the competition would be a bit stiffer. Those who seek Jesus only on the screen are not likely to find him, They will only find a plastic figure seeking to portray a God to whom we cannot relate – and Superman will be a preferable alternative. 

But dramatists and actors who portray Jesus ought to learn something from the screen portrayal of Superman. People are fascinated by Superman not because he is super, but because he is a super being who acts human. He is no aloof, unapproachable person who is removed from the aches, pains and emotions of humanness – and that makes him all the more super. 

But the same is true of Jesus. The messiah who reconciles the world to God is no celluloid automaton who performs special-effects miracles. Jesus transforms history not because he is a distant God with no ties to humanity, but because he is God in human flesh: a human being capable of pain, perspiration and laughter. It is the power of his godliness which saves us, but it is the warmth of his humanness which attracts us to him. If he were merely God without laughter or tears, he would not be so humanly appealing or even, in literary terms, so unusual. But he is a wonderful savior because he is not merely God – he is one of us. And that is awesome indeed. 

It may be that television, with its infatuation with melodrama and special effects, is not capable of portraying the real Jesus. It would be a helpful start, however, if the TV Jesus were portrayed as being a little more human. 

That would be an important step toward making him more godly.

Joseph had it coming

“Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him.” Genesis 37:19-20)

The famous phrase is inscribed on the tomb of Martin Luther King, Jr. in Atlanta. But there’s another phrase from the same chapter of Genesis that not only clinches the dysfunction of Jacob’s family, but informs only-children what it’s like to have siblings.

“But when his brothers saw that their father loved Joseph more that all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him.” (Genesis 37: 4)

This particular passage, like the sagas of Cain and Abel, Jacob’s battles with his brother Esau, the parable of the prodigal son and others, is easier to understand if you have siblings. The rivalry is natural. And while most sibling encounters don’t lead to fratricide, many sisters and brothers who have pulled back from one another’s throats could paraphrase Chris Rock: “I don’t approve of brothers killing brothers – but I understand.”

I was the oldest of four brothers and a sister and while I spent my teen years wishing I was a Kennedy, I now realize that to outsiders, we looked like a black-and-white sit-com. “The Adventures of Elmore and Mary”. “Leave it to Paul”. “Dad knows best.” Even our daily dialogue, recalled decades later, sounds like it had a laugh track.

Scene: 14-year-old Philip is in his room typing letters to his political idols while Dad has drafted Larry and Jim to help him hang tools on the garage wall.
Dad: I can’t find the stud. Where’s the stud?
Jim: He’s upstairs typing. (Laughter. Applause.)

I looked for a picture of the five of us kids together and had to cut and paste. The black-and-white portrait looks like it was initially discarded by the photographer, Mr. Nickel, who by day was a teaching colleague of Dad’s. Seated from left, I’m the one with evil eye, Jim is in the striped Charlie Brown T-shirt gazing into a distant future, Larry is happily day dreaming about Ann Margaret (or he should have been) and Paul is studying the photo optic mechanics of the SLR camera. In part to avoid exacerbating sibling issues, I added a picture of baby sister Susan. In living color as well as in her Little Miss Sunshine stage, Susan is modeling Christmas pajamas. Actually, the sibling issues began before Susan was born when Mom began preparing us boys for a new member of the family. Paul held resolutely to his demands: “I want a doggie.”

I spent two glorious years as an only child. Alone and adored in the tiny apartment over Flora Cramer’s house on Main Street in Morrisville, I couldn’t have been happier. Early snapshots show me sitting on Dad’s lap, chewing on his pipe, or sitting bathed by sunlight in a bay window, watching bulldozers on Main Street in 1947. I even enjoyed the luxury of an imaginary friend only I could see, but whose ectoplasmic form was mysteriously captured on film while I stood nearby. (See the red circled figure above, for which I offer no explanation.) 

As any only-child knows, having one’s parents to one’s self is an Edenic experience. It was only after the fall that siblings Cain and Abel began competing for parental attention and Cain killed Abel. Looking back, I think Cain had a reasonable defense. God liked Abel best and praised him at Cain's expense. “The Lord said to Cain why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin in couching at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.” (Genesis 4:6-7) Just the kind of condescending, parental preaching no child can bear.

My brother Larry was born almost exactly two years after me. I was too young to be aware of any Cain-like hostilities toward him, but these animosities are often unconscious and revealed in family tales told decades later. One of my favorite relatives was often reminded by her mother that when she was a toddler, she reacted poorly to the usurpation of a baby sister. “What shall we do with Sissy today?” her mother asked her. “We could drown her,” she suggested.

I don’t recall having fratricidal impulses when I first met Larry – and I should interject here that Larry is a retired architect, writer and an active member of Calvary Baptist Church in Denver. I don’t encounter his quiet wit and unconditional affection often enough. But perhaps it was not always so.

When I close my eyes, I can actually remember this: I’m not sure how old we were, but Larry had just started crawling. We were still living in the apartment, and we must have been rambunctious (one of Mom’s favorite words) because Flora the landlady often knocked on our door to ask Mom to keep the noise down. Those ominous visits would unnerve Mom, but rarely deterred me as I took advantage of my superior ambulation to chase Larry with objects he found terrifying, my favorite being a serpentine enema hose I found in the bathroom.

One day, when Mom left the apartment for a few moments – probably to apologize to the landlady for the noise – Larry and I were playing in the bedroom. There was a tall, narrow dresser in the room and I enjoyed pulling out the drawers to form steps so I could climb to the top. Larry, not old enough to attempt such a journey, would watch longingly as I giddily ascended. As I sat on the top of the dresser this particular morning and looked down at Larry looking up at me, I had a sudden inspiration. I scurried back down the creaking drawers, opened the bottom one, and pushed Larry into it. Noticing how perfectly he fit in it (once all the underwear and lingerie had been tossed out), I pushed the drawer shut.

Silence.

Larry was not whimpering. He likes it! Hey, Larry! Exhilarated, I scurried to the top of the dresser to declare my domain. Before I reached the top, the dresser began to topple forward. I jumped to safety, but the dresser fell on its face in a pile of its former contents. All the drawers made exhaling sounds and closed under the weight.

Silence.

I wish I could say this was the last time in my life that an action of mine had unexpected consequences. I was beginning to surmise that what had happened was not good and I might be in trouble. The feeling did not go away when I heard my mother’s footsteps outside.

More than sixty years later, I can only wonder what was going through my mother’s mind. “I will only be gone a minute. What can happen in a minute?” She must have heard the muffled crash of the dresser as she came through the door.

I can’t remember the expression on Mom’s face, but given that she had a progressive cornea deterioration disease that would take away her sight, she must have questioned the fuzzy scene before her. The tall dresser was now prone in a pile of socks, panties and boxers on the floor. I was standing calmly beside it.

“What happened?” Mom asked.

I looked at her quizzically.

“What did you do?”

I shrugged.

“What made the dresser fall over?”

I shrugged.

Then, more urgently: “Where is your brother?”

I was too young to know that the answer to that question had already been scripted in the bible, so I stuck to my story. I shrugged.

At this point Larry, who may have been shrewdly silent while waiting to see if he was in some kind of trouble, decided it was time to whimper.

My mother looked stunned, and at first I thought it might have been the dresser itself that was whining. Not understanding what was happening, Mom’s eyes darted around the room to see where Larry’s voice was coming from.

“Where is he?”

I shrugged again, but thought it not inconsistent with my testimony to put my thumb in my mouth and nod toward the bottom drawer.

As soon as she grasped what had happened, the power of a protective lioness surged through her veins. With unnatural strength, Mom pushed the heavy dresser on its side and pulled open the drawer. Larry tumbled out unharmed and, so far as I could see, unruffled. Compared to being chased with an enema hose, he probably thought snuggling in the warm recesses of a piece of furniture was no big deal.

I can’t remember what happened after that – whether Mom muttered something about just waiting “until your father gets home” or whether this sibling confrontation resulted in punishments or consequences. But it does remind me that when it comes to sibling relationships, anything is possible.

My siblings and I were alternately loving and rowdy, forgiving and aggressive and always competitive for attention. We got into loud fights and vicious wrestling matches that led to the parental prime directive: don’t bleed in here. When the three youngest members of our blended family engaged in the same loud confrontations in Port Chester, my spouse Martha – an only-child – was appalled and thought there must be something wrong with them. But as one-of-five, I knew better. The sibling rivalry was normal. All too normal.

The story of Joseph and his brothers begins in Genesis 37, and it’s not a pretty one. Joseph, the youngest of Jacob’s large brood of sons – remember Jacob, the dirty rotten scoundrel who stole his brother’s birthright? – is his father’s favorite. “Jacob loved Joseph more than any of his children, because he was the son of his old age,” goes the story (Genesis 37:3). You can’t be an only-child and understand why that’s a dangerous dynamic, but it also helps to be old. I’m 65, and a miracle baby at this stage of our lives would certainly attract my attention. I would probably spend the rest of my life staring at him with my mouth open.

This is probably what happened to Joseph, and both he and his brothers noticed that their old man was constantly staring at Joseph with his mouth open. And Joseph began to get the idea that he was special. His father lavished him with gifts, including the famous robe of many colors – actually “a long robe with sleeves” if the correct translation is used – and Joseph proceeded to make several tactical errors that must be explained by the fact that his frontal lobe had not developed. He had dreams that sheaves representing his brothers bowed down to his sheaf and, stupidly, he told his brothers about it. The dreams continued, and “his brothers were jealous of him.” (Genesis 37:11) They plotted to kill him but, out of mercy or guilt, they sold the boy to Midianite traders for 20 shekels of silver. The Midianites took Joseph to Egypt. In a breathtaking act of sibling cruelty, they killed a goat and smeared the blood of Joseph’s coat so Jacob would think the boy was dead.

The story has been told in many forms for millennia. One of my favorite versions is the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat by Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice, where the Pharaoh of Egypt is portrayed as an Elvis impersonator. But the fate of Joseph and his brothers is yet to be told, and the Common Lectionary wants us to stop reading here today. Imagine Joseph in shackles, humiliated and rejected, in the hands of a Midianite caravan en route to Egypt. What happens next? It’s a lectionary cliff-hanger.

Now, back to my own band of sibs. We turned out all right. As time passed we grew up and began our own families in various parts of the country. We eventually evolved into occasionally mature and often nurturing human beings who love each other and wish we had more opportunities to see each other. Growing up in Elmore and Mary’s place may not have been easy on Mary and Elmore, but we survived. And looking back on it, the memories are happy ones.*

And one of the benefits of growing up as competitive siblings is that when we read the story of Joseph and his brothers, we don’t have to Google bible commentaries to understand what is happening. We know. We lived it.

Perhaps very few of us would have sold our most annoying sibling into slavery. But it would have crossed our minds.
And the grace we hold in common is that the God who watched over Joseph and brought him from slavery to salvation is the same God who brings order to our own lives. The God who guided Joseph’s brothers from murderous dysfunction to ultimate reconciliation is the same God who watches over us all.

Fraternal love may not be instinctive, and it’s not always the sort of thing we can accomplish on our own. But with God’s grace, siblings can transcend their natures. With God’s grace, we can emerge from the Jungian tumult as sisters and brothers together.

* Larry, as I mentioned earlier, is a retired architect in Denver. Jim is a semi-retired physician in Saranac Lake, N.Y. Paul is an electrical engineer in Saint Cloud, Fla. Susan is a healthcare professional in Orlando, Fla.

Wrestling the Angel of our Better Nature

Karl Barth never heard of cable news, but he’d be reeling this week if he read the bible with CNN blaring in his ear.

With the federal debt ceiling deadline looming and civilization hanging in the balance, Republicans and Democrats in Congress grappled to a sweaty impasse. Like Jacob wrestling with the angel (Genesis 32:22-31), politicians of both parties stubbornly refused to yield. And while politicians tussled over which federal programs would be slashed to cut the budget by billions or trillions, few worried that proposed cuts will do serious damage to programs that support the very poor. It’s as if, when Jesus told his disciples to feed a hungry crowd of 5,000, the disciples told the kid with the fish and chips to get lost (Matthew 14:13-21).

The partisan stalemate in Washington is infuriating. A half century ago, when I was about 15, the faculty of Morrisville-Eaton Central School presented a whimsical drama for the entertainment of our tiny central New York community. I don’t remember the name of the play but I remember Mrs. Drake, the school librarian, portrayed a character given the memorable line:

“Thirty needles and thirty pins and thirty dirty Republicans.”

As one of the town’s rare Kennedy supporters, I liked the line. But Mrs. Drake, a pillar in our mostly Republican village, resented the line and suggested it be changed to:

“Thirty dogs and thirty cats and thirty dirty Democrats.”

Copyright issues and the fact that Mrs. Drake was playing a left-leaning dowager convinced her she had to say the line as it was written. But fifty years on, I’m beginning to agree with her on both counts. The wresting match between dirty Republicans and dirty Democrats is not pretty.

No one knows what will happen Tuesday if Congress does not raise the federal borrowing limit, but most analysts think it will be bad – very bad. Fictional White House staffer Toby Ziegler said on an episode of the NBC television drama The West Wing, failure to act will mean this: “The immediate collapse of the U.S. economy, followed by Japan sinking into the sea, followed by a worldwide depression the likes of which no mortal can imagine. Followed by week two.”

Yet Republicans and Democrats continue to tumble on the brink. Clearly some 307 million of us innocent bystanders have the right to ask: What the hell is wrong with you?

What is wrong is that leaders of both parties have danced to the edge of disaster because they think their posturing will help them consolidate power. They are seeking to maneuver their way into majorities in both houses of Congress and take over the White House in 2012. Never mind that increasing numbers of American voters are disgusted by their inability to compromise on a plan to avert economic disaster. This week-end’s legislative drama made that clear enough. First Speaker John Boehner posted a bill that would require the government to revisit the debt question in the midst of next year’s campaign. The bill passed the House late Friday, despite the fact that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said it would never pass the senate, President Obama said he would veto it, and a score of Tea Party Republicans refused to support it. Then Saturday, Reid presented a Senate bill which purported to include all the provisions demanded by Republicans, but it was dismissed in a symbolic vote in the Republican House. Back to the brink.

If all this wrangling is about winning control of Congress and the White House next year, one wonders how valuable these acquisitions will be in a post-default America. I envision passing the tattered figures of the House and Senate leaders as they stumble in the steaming rubble of post-apocalypse Washington. “How’s that take-over plan working out for you, Guys?”

Republicans and Democrats have made their positions clear. The GOP calls for lowering the national debt by making massive cuts to the budget but without raising taxes. Democrats say the debt must be reduced by spending cuts and by implementing new revenue streams, mostly in the form increased taxes on the very rich. Both parties say their approach will require huge sacrifices in order reduce the debt, and both say they are acting in the interest of the American middle class. But who is making the sacrifices? Obviously not the rich. And really not the middle class. I haven’t been asked to sacrifice anything to save my country. Have you?

Sisters and brothers, we face a scary week. Both the president and the speaker express confidence that they will work out a compromise before the economy of the United States slides into Sheol, but what if they don’t? The situation has become so bad that you’ve got to wonder if human wisdom can prevail. We have found ourselves inside a Roman tragedy in which human greed and folly have created a situation so twisted and bound with knots so complex that human hands will never untie them. When classical plays got to this stage, there was only one solution: the deus ex machina – the god in the machine, which is to say, Mighty Mouse – here I come to save the day – or some godlike figure who will be lowered onto the stage to offer godlike solutions to human dilemmas.

Come, Captain America!

Actually, if you’re the type who reads the back pages of the paper, you may have noticed that the god in the machine has actually landed on stage. The question now is whether the god will win enough audience applause to attract the attention of the wrestling wretches on stage.

Last April, a group of unusual Christians came together with the idea that the budget debate in Washington, which focused on taxing the rich and protecting the middle class, was omitting an element that breaks God’s heart. That element was the struggling poor in the United States – families who lost their homes in the recession, who live in their cars or on the street, working families unable to rise above the poverty line, children who go to bed hungry most nights, elderly and disabled struggling to survive – when was the last time you heard your favorite politician speak about these poor and vulnerable populations?

Last April this unusual group of Christians came together to form a Circle of Protection around government programs that support the poor. The group is unusual because it's composed of Christians who usually don’t talk to each other: the National Association of Evangelicals, the National Council of Churches, Sojourners, Bread for the World, the Alliance to End hunger and more – liberal Protestants, Evangelicals and Pentecostals, Roman Catholics, historic African American churches, living peace churches and others. These groups have historically followed different paths of ministry. But last April, they agreed on one thing: when the politicians in Washington talk about cutting the budget, they have an absolute imperative to protect programs that support the poor – Social Security, Medicaid, support services for the hungry and homeless, or foreign aid that keeps millions of people alive. Yet Washington isn’t worried about the poor because the poor can’t afford to hire lobbyists. So these Christians decided that the Circle of Protection will speak for the poor. When the National Association of Evangelicals and the National Council of Churches agrees on an issue, it’s clear both are listening to God’s voice.

On July 21, Religious leaders representing the Circle of Protection met with President Obama in an “extraordinary” 40-minute meeting. They emerged expressing confidence that the chief executive sees the need for a circle of protection around government programs that support the poor.

“We were asked not to quote the president directly,” said the Rev. Michael Livingston, director of the National Council of Churches poverty initiative, who was among the Christian leaders who met with Mr. Obama in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

“But the president used a biblical phrase that has been quoted in the church for two thousand years,” Livingston said. “He referred to ‘the least of these,’ which was the phrase Jesus used to describe the poor and hungry who needed to be fed and clothed and treated as sisters and brothers.” (Matthew 25:45)

Obama’s use of the phrase showed he understood why the group had come to the White House, Livingston said.

Roman Catholic Bishop Ricardo Ramirez of Las Cruces, New Mexico, said the group stressed with the president “the fundamental moral principle that we should put the needs of the poor first in allocating scarce resources. Matthew 25 has gotten all twisted to say ‘whatsoever you do for the forgotten middle class you do unto me.’ We’re not interested in which party wins but we support those who are likely to lose, the families feeding kids looking for work.”

Ramirez noted that there are several “givens” in the debate over the budget, including the Republican given that there be no tax increases and the Democratic given that tax breaks for the rich should be eliminated.

“When you listen to the debate it seems that protecting the poor is not a given,” Ramirez said. “We asked the president to join us in forming a circle of protection around the poor. They have no lobbyists, but they do have the greatest moral claim.”

Last Thursday, these Christian leaders, joined by Jewish and Muslim leaders, took the deus ex machina to center stage.
Frustrated that their pleas to the Administration and Congress to protect funding for the nation’s most vulnerable are being ignored, nearly a dozen leaders from the faith community were arrested inside the U.S. Capitol Building.
Despite repeated warnings from the U.S. Capitol Police, the leaders refused to end their public prayers asking the Administration and Congress not to balance the budget on the backs of the poor.

Among those who were arrested was Rev. Livingston.

“Congress is paralyzed by toxic partisan politics while people suffer,” he said. “Our elected officials are protecting corporations and wealthy individuals while shredding the safety net for millions of the most vulnerable people in our nation and abroad. Our faith won't allow us to passively watch this travesty unfold. We've written letters, talked with and prayed for our elected officials, and prayed together daily in interreligious community. Today, we 'offer our bodies as a living sacrifice' to say to congress 'Raise revenue, protect the vulnerable and those living in poverty.'”

The God in the Machine is on stage now. Yet the wrestling between parties continues. In a sense, the modern Jacob wrestles stubbornly with the angel of his better nature.

Genesis 32:24-32: Jacob was left alone; and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket; and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, ‘Let me go, for the day is breaking.’ But Jacob said, ‘I will not let you go, unless you bless me.’ So he said to him, ‘What is your name?’ And he said, ‘Jacob.’ Then the man said, ‘You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans, and have prevailed. ’Then Jacob asked him, ‘Please tell me your name.’ But he said, ‘Why is it that you ask my name?’ And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, ‘For I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.’ The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. Therefore to this day the Israelites do not eat the thigh muscle that is on the hip socket, because he struck Jacob on the hip socket at the thigh muscle.

Jacob, who stole his birthright from his twin, Esau, has been a dirty, rotten scoundrel until this night at Peniel. All his life he has sought power and advantage at the expense of everyone else. And then an angel came, and wrestled with him, and Jacob realized for the first time in his life that God was calling him to a higher service. This is one of the great conversion stories of Genesis, as Jacob the liar and fraud realizes this may be his last chance to get right with God. He holds desperately to the angel and will not let him go until the angel blesses him. And when the blessing comes, Jacob realizes: “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.”

This week the members of the Congress believe they are wrestling with each other over issues they believe to be important. Let us unite our hearts in prayer that they will realize who they are really wrestling with – the God who loves the poor and blesses those who create circles of protection around them.

Political deals to protect the rich from higher taxes, or win the support of the middle class, may win votes. That remains to be seen. But one thing is clear: supporting the rich while ignoring the poor is no way to win the blessing of God’s wrestling angels.

The Godfather

Genesis 24 

Our bible story this week finds us in the luxurious tent of the Patriarch Abraham.

It’s a history story and all week I’ve been trying to discern its theological significance.

As the scene opens, Abraham is surrounded by the rustic opulence of the rich desert ruler he is. He sits in fleecy comfort, his every whim satisfied by hard-working and loyal servants. Long gone are the poor shepherd’s itchy burlap garments that absorb the desert’s heat and radiate the odor of human sweat at night. Gone are the sand-encrusted sandals that abused his bunions. Abraham has been blessed by God, and he is very comfortable and very rich.

But Abraham is not happy. He is feeling old. He has already passed his centennial and lately he has been fretting about the future.

It’s no wonder he frets because God has been known to toy with him, often maliciously. Last week, the Common Lectionary pointed to a chilling experience earlier in Abraham’s life, the horrifying story of God’s demand that Abraham take his son Isaac to a mountain in Moriah and slit the boy’s throat. This is simply staggering cruelty and it takes some theological acrobatics to comprehend it. Why is God ordering Abraham to kill Isaac, his only son, the one he loves most on earth? What is God, anyway, a dyspeptic deity flaunting unlimited power who wants to see how high Abraham will jump when God yells, “Jump”? Only after Abraham has bound Isaac to a sacrificial altar and just as Abraham raises his blade, does God intervene. Psych! God was just testing your obedience, old man. Good job. On your way.

It’s hard to understand what God did to Abraham in Moriah, and the passage has undergone a lot of exegesis over several millennia. Perhaps it’s a tribal legend that created a good story to tell around campfires at the oasis, an allegory of God’s power and human obedience that made a point while creeping out the kids – and that last-minute rescue of an imperiled victim is a timeless literary device that predates Neolithic tale spinning and will postdate IMAX 3D movies.

There had been other times when God toyed with Abraham. Abraham was 75 when God ordered him to move to Canaan where, God assured him, he would be the primogenitor of a vast nation. God said “jump” and Abraham jumped, possibly winking at his beautiful wife, Sarah, to tell her they’d better get started. But years went by and the nation-starting business was going nowhere and there’s reason to suspect Sarah was wearying of her husband’s sweaty efforts to make God happy. Looking around, she saw her beautiful Egyptian servant, Hagar, and presented her to him as a gift. “She’s all yours, dear,” and Abraham dutifully continued his feverish endeavors to please God. Initially relieved that her vigorous husband was occupied elsewhere, Sarah soon became annoyed by Abraham’s sacred enthusiasm and threw Hagar out of the tent – but not before Hagar was heavy with a child, whom she named Ishmael. Good job, God said. But years passed and God declared that Abraham’s nation-building tasks needed to continue only with Sarah, who thought she had retired from that job and, besides, was far past the normal age of child bearing. And to complicate matters, God had another idea: he ordered Abraham and all the males of his tent-hold to get circumcised. Abraham was 93. Although the bible does not make a point of it, this would correspond to the birth of the world’s second oldest profession, the mohel. No one knows who this fleet-fingered guy was, but he must have been as busy as he was unpopular.

The story continues, along with evidence that in his advanced age, Abraham’s vigor to please God was waning. It so happened that three men came to visit Abraham and Sarah at the tent, and Abraham ordered Sarah to prepare a meal for the visitors. As Sarah was baking cakes and broiling a calf, she overheard one of the men tell her husband, “I will surely return to you in the spring, and Sarah your wife will have a son.”

Maybe it was the guy’s comedic timing, but Sarah burst out laughing. In our gentrified versions of Genesis, in the King James or Revised Standard Version, Sarah’s comment to herself is dignified and grandmotherly: “After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?” Earlier translations, including the Book of J, are less polite, quoting Sarah’s comment that her husband’s instrument of nation building has dangled uselessly for years. But all humor aside: the prediction came true, and Isaac was born.

Which, jumping once again over the story of the attempted sacrifice of the adored Isaac-the-miracle-boy, brings us again to today’s scripture: Genesis 24. Abraham, now over 100, is sitting sadly in his tent, fretting once again about the covenant with God to build a nation bursting with more people than there are stars in the sky. Abraham and Sarah have done their part (God knows), but it’s still not happening. Isaac is 37 and he sits around the tent all day playing with his sheep and there is no Mrs. Isaac on the horizon. If a vast nation is to be built, it’s time for the boy to get busy. So Abraham hatches a plan to find his son a wife.

Genesis 24 is the story of that plan. And I’m still wondering what theological pearls may be plucked from this literary oyster.

Maybe the significance would be clearer if the story were contextualized to a more familiar time. The Divine M – my spouse and homiletical mentor – is in Tampa this week attending the general synod of the United Church of Christ, so she is not readily available to shed her usual light on an obscure passage. But before she left, she downloaded the Godfather trilogy to her iPad to while away the evening hours in the hotel. And it occurs to me: what better context for Genesis 24?

Let it play in your head: the theme from The Godfather.

godfather theme songs
Music for free

Scene I:  Abraham, The Godfather, sits quietly in his office, drumming his fingers on an immaculately polished mahogany desk. He gazes out a large window and sees his adult son, Isaac, sitting at a videogame, where he has been playing Cars2 for hours. The Godfather frowns, and pushes a button on his desk. Immediately his consigliore, Eliezer, enters the office.

Eliezer: You called, Godfather?

Abraham: Eliezer, we gotta do something about this boy of mine.

Eliezer: Godfather?

Abraham: He sits around all day watching television or playing games. It’s time he grew up.

Eliezer: What d'ya gonna do?

Abraham: Eliezer, my most trusted consigliore, you gotta swear to me …

Eliezer: (self-consciously wiping his hands on his shirt)

Abraham: No, just swear to me.

Eliezer: Anything, Godfather.

Abraham: Swear to me that you will go to Sicily, the land of my birth, and find a nice Sicilian girl for Isaac – not one of these modern New York girls with tattoos and big hair and chewing gum.

Eliezer: You got it, Godfather. But what if she don’t wanna come back wid me?

Abraham: (Shrugs) Then fogeddaboudit. The deal’s off.

Scene II. The airport in Palermo, Sicily. Eliezer watches ten huge bags slide heavily down the belt at baggage claim. The bags are filled with jewelry, shoes, silks, perfumes, iPads, and other expensive gifts. He orders the bags opened and the gifts are placed visible in the backseats of ten Cadillac convertibles.

Eliezer (tipping each of the ten drivers with a $100 bill): This is the Godfather’s way of making friends.

Eliezer jumps in the lead car, and the ostentatious caravan moves slowly out of the airport.

Scene III. Corleone, Sicily, a small, sleepy sheep herding village where the Godfather was born. The crunch of the tires of ten Cadillacs on gravel roads can be heard for miles, and startled farmers stare at the caravan as it makes its way to the center of the village. The cars pull up in front of Bethuel’s tavern, the only visible business in the village.

Eliezer (Shouting):  Hey. Can a guy get a drink around here?

Scuffling sounds can be heard from inside the tavern, and Bethuel emerges, sleepily pulling his suspenders over his shoulders. Bethuel blinks in amazement as his eyes scan the ten Cadillac convertibles filled with gifts.

Eliezer: Hey. Can a guy get a drink around here?

Bethuel continues to stare at the ten Cadillac convertibles filled with gifts.

Bethuel: Momento, Signore!

Bethuel turns and runs back into the tavern. Inside, the sounds of shouting and scraping furniture can be heard. A young woman can be heard raising her voice in protest, followed by equally insistent male shouting. Eliezer leans against the lead Cadillac and checks his watch. Finally, the beautiful Rebekah is pushed out the door. She is carrying bottles of wine on a tray. She begins to place the tray on a small table, but freezes when she sees the ten Cadillac convertibles filled with gifts.

Eliezer: Hey. Can a guy get a drink around here?

Rebekah: Drink? Are you kiddin’?

Rebekah places the tray on the table and pulls Eliezer to a chair and makes him sit down. Eliezer sips his wine.

Rebekah: Anything else I can get for you? Anything?

Eliezer: Well, I gotta get gas in these cars.

Rebekah: You got it, Signore.

Rebekah brushes past Eliezer and signals the drivers of the Cadillacs to pull up to the side of the tavern where a gasoline pump waits. She rolls up her sleeves and begins to pump gas into each car. She squirts water on each windshield and expertly draws a squeegee across them, leaving them spotless. She opens each hood and checks the oil. She finishes the last car, she wipes her hands on a well-used rag. There is a spot of oil on her nose. Eliezer is clearly impressed.

Eliezer: You sure ain't a Manhattan girl.

Eliezer reaches into one of the Cadillacs and pulls out a large golden ring and a bejeweled necklace, which he gives to Rebekah.

Eliezer: For your trouble.

Rebekah: Oh, any time, really.

Eliezer: Pardon me for being so direct, but are you married?

Rebekah: No, Signore.

Eliezer: You wanna be?

Flustered, Rebekah runs back into the tavern. Bethuel and Rebekah’s brother, Laban, run outside.

Bethuel: Is something wrong? Did you get something to drink?

Eliezer: Everything is fine. But let me explain: I’m on a mission from my Godfather to find a wife for his son. I’ve brought gifts for the lucky girl and her family. That girl who ran inside – is she available?

Bethuel and Laban exchange glances.

Laban: Um, well, that’s up to her, you know.

Bethuel: Yeah, right, we couldn’t possibly tell her what to do.

Laban: Yeah. We gotta talk to her.

Bethuel and Laban turn toward the door of the tavern but they are knocked aside as Rebekah bursts through the door carrying two suitcases.

Rebekah: When’s the next flight to New York?

Eliezer takes a final sip from his wine and stands up.

Eliezer: We leave now. My employer is a man who likes to hear good news immediately.

The drivers of the Cadillacs unload their precious cargo and deposit the goods inside the tavern. Rebekah tosses her bags inside the lead Cadillac and Eliezer joins her. The caravan, now empty, turns down the dirt road toward Palermo, where a 747 jetliner awaits to take them back to New York. The theme from the Godfather swells to a crescendo, and the screen goes dark.

The story of Rebekah and Isaac goes on for several episodes. After many fruitless years, Rebekah finally conceives twins – Jacob and Esau – who wrestle inside her womb. The two would continue to fight each other all their lives until Jacob finally stole Esau’s birthright by deceiving his blind father. But these are stories for another day, as the founding family of three major faiths becomes more like the Sopranos.

And what is the theological significance of today’s story about the recruitment of Rebekah?

As my spouse prepared to head for the airport last week, her one comment about the passage was this: “The patriarchs of the Old Testament were terrible models of family values.”

That’s certainly true. Our idea of a standard family – rarely found in real life – is pop, mom and the kids, a relationship made in heaven and inviolable until death do they part. But this standard is more honored in the breach than in reality. We don’t have to look far in our own families to see the deviations brought about by divorce, remarriage, blended families of siblings and stepsiblings, working moms, absentee dads, absentee moms. It’s complicated. And it’s a mistake to look to the great biblical families for guidance. They were dysfunctional parents, disgraceful spouses, sinful collectors of concubines, and often disobedient to the God who covenanted with them.

But – and it’s a large but – God did great and wonderful things with these imperfect creatures. From Abraham’s seed came three faiths and mighty nations, and wherever Christians, Jews and Muslims occupy the earth, they must trace their presence back to this imperfect Godfather, this sometimes powerful and sometimes pathetic Patriarch.

That’s good news for all of is. All of us are imperfect. All of us sin. All of us stray from the paths of righteousness. All of us behave in ways that are not upright. Yet God still loves us and, just as important, God still uses us.

God is still in the seed planting business. Abraham could not have imagined, especially in the years when his procreative efforts appeared useless, just how powerful his seed would become.

And neither can we imagine what seeds God has planted in us, seeds that may not grow to fruition for years or centuries after we are dead.

Perhaps the theological significance of these tribal histories of Abraham and the founding patriarchs is simple enough. When God makes a promise – when God plants a seed – the creator will never desert it.  And when we are discouraged or fretful or doubtful about the purpose of our lives, the lesson of Abraham calls to us from across the millennia: God has planted a seed in us, too. And great and wonderful things will come of it.

When God Mumbles

My spouse, Martha, and I subscribe to a daily blog that offers select passages from the late Henri J.M. Nouwen’s lifetime of spiritual reflection. On most occasions Nouwen’s insights are encouraging and uplifting. Tuesday’s comment was different.


“The beginning of the spiritual life is often difficult not only because the powers which cause us to worry are so strong,” Nouwen wrote, “but also because the presence of God's Spirit seems barely noticeable.”


I wasn’t expecting that harsh reflection, but I know what Nouwen meant. Sometimes the Spirit of God is hard to detect.


But it’s an odd thought to insert between Pentecost and Trinity Sunday, when the Holy Spirit is supposed to be the star. Where is the Spirit, anyway? If the spirit is among us, or inside us, why don’t we feel her? If the spirit is inside us this moment, why aren’t we citadels of love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control? Sometimes I feel those things, but not all at once. And often the serenity of the Spirit eludes me and I am anxious, worried and fretful.


Part of that may be due to the three years I spent as a police and political reporter for the Pottstown Mercury in Pennsylvania. A reporter sees a lot of grief and tragedy. All of us experience loss and pain at some point in our lives, but a reporter sees it every day: fatal fires and auto wrecks, airplane crashes, murders, murder suicides, sky jumping deaths, sexual assaults, child abuse. And not only journalists: police, ambulance drivers, judges and pastors see it, too. We become those pain-in-the-ass parents who growl when our kids ask for the keys to the car. “Aw, I’ll be careful,” they insist. “Nothing is going to happen.” But we know better. Something does happen, to someone, every day.


Of the thousands of poems I scanned as an English major in the sixties and seventies, there is one I can still recite from memory: “Hap,” by the poet and novelist Thomas Hardy.


IF but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!”


Then would I bear, and clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased, too, that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.


But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
--Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan...
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.


The poem was written in 1866 when Hardy was 26 years old. Scholars surmise Hardy was having a depressive reaction to the publication in 1859 of Darwin’s Origin of Species, which set forth the theory of evolution. For millions of good Anglicans – including Darwin himself – the book was a serious challenge to the story of creation and the nature of God.


In “Hap,” Hardy registers a complaint against the universe: if he is going to suffer and die because an Almighty God wills it, so be it, amen! But if suffering and joy are heaped upon us by chance, woe to us all. Later poets put it more succinctly:


Life sucks with dreadful
Interludes. Will God be there
When it’s time to die?


Most of the time we can face life with a qualified optimism. It has been ten years since 9/11, and there have been no further terror attacks – although a common prayer of drivers when they head into the Holland Tunnel is, “Please, God, not today.” But even reporters and cops have no reason to suspect imminent mayhem, especially this time of year, especially in June. Perhaps a little James Russell Lowell will provide an antidote to the pessimistic Hardy:


And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays;
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten ...


Sometimes it’s possible to sustain Lowell’s optimistic airs, at least when the sun shines. But every now and then something happens that gives us pause, a 9/11, the earthquakes in Haiti and Japan, or other natural disasters. Every now and then the media reports that a huge asteroid is passing precariously close to the earth’s orbit – a celestial phenomenon that happens often enough to inspire science fiction films. In the 1998 movie, Armageddon, an asteroid the size of Texas is headed for earth and the world's best deep core drilling team is sent to nuke the rock from the inside.


A century or more ago, it was easier to enjoy God’s creation without worrying about killer asteroids. Of course, asteroids did come, they did hit the earth, and the results were catastrophic. Some scientists attribute the extinction of the dinosaurs to an asteroid collision that strown (as Hardy would put it) dust and debris into the atmosphere for months, blotted out the sun and killed off the flora and fauna on which the dinosaurs depended to live. In 1908, an explosion rivaling the detonation of a hydrogen bomb leveled 830 square miles of forest near Tunguska, Russia – an event scientists believe was caused by an exploding asteroid. It happened in a remote area of Siberia, so few people noticed it at the time. If the asteroid had exploded over Port Chester – and it was pure chance that it did not – it would have been famous.


Happily, our ancestors rarely worried about these events because they didn’t know about them. If you Google “asteroid,” you get plenty of apocalyptic (if not always scientific) speculations. Scientists say a huge asteroid will hit the earth in 2014. No, update: in 2036. No, more likely: in 2182. Whenever. Asteroids have hit the earth before and they will hit the earth again.


Is there any way we can bring ourselves to stop worrying and love the asteroid? Many of us pray to a more powerfuller than we that the asteroid will miss us and hit somewhere else, or that it will avoid the earth until 2036 when our grandchildren can deal with it. But either petition puts us in the same predicament faced by the women and men of London during the Blitz in 1941. Is it fair to pray that the bombs will miss your house if they will hit your neighbor’s house instead?


Sometimes it’s exhausting to inventory all the things we have to worry about, ranging from your kids dinging the car to an asteroid hit on the Empire State Building. Life is unpredictable. Tomorrow we could discover a new Twitpic by Anthony Weiner and next November we could elect Michele Bachmann president of the United States. There’s not enough Alprazolam in the world to help us deal with the stress.


Which brings us back to Henri J.M. Nouwen, a spiritual leader whose authentic spirituality my spouse observed when she sat in a classroom with him during her seminary years. “The beginning of the spiritual life is often difficult not only because the powers which cause us to worry are so strong,” Nouwen wrote, “but also because the presence of God's Spirit seems barely noticeable.”


On Trinity Sunday, it seems more urgent than ever that we notice God’s spirit. The powers which cause us to worry are stronger than our will to set them aside, and until we can do that, our spiritual life remains embryonic. But how do we do it?


Nouwen is frank. In another blog this week, his words are recalled: “How can we move from fragmentation to unity, from many things to the one thing necessary, from our divided lives to undivided lives in the Spirit?” he asks. His answer: “A hard struggle is required.”


Sometimes I think the struggle is too hard. In order to keep going, I have to remind myself that some theologians believe the one sin beyond redemption is blasphemy against the Spirit. And I wonder: is it blasphemy to doubt that the Spirit will keep her promise to be with us at all times as an advocate against the powers that cause us worry?


No doubt Nouwen is correct. When the presence of God’s spirit is hard to detect, a hard struggle is required. And we can’t be passive about the struggle, delegating it as we often do to our pastor or our spouse or our loved ones. It has to take place within ourselves.


Brother Thomas Merton said that detecting the presence of the Spirit will require a willful shutting off of all the powers that cause us worry – turning off our televisions and computers, setting our iPods aside, closing our windows against the drone of traffic – and sitting in expectant silence. Only in the silence, Brother Thomas said, will we begin to hear the barely audible voice that dwells within us: the voice of the Spirit of God.


It won’t be easy, but the fruits are magnificent,the antithesis of the human weaknesses and worries that distract us: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. (Gal. 5:22)


But here’s the thing. We can't get there without the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and it takes many quiet moments to detect her presence. The journey to spirituality is not a caravan we join to follow others to the destination. It's a road we have to walk ourselves.

As always, Nouwen tells us where to begin.“Prayer,” he writes, “is in many ways the criterion of Christian life. Prayer requires that we stand in God's presence with open hands, naked and vulnerable, proclaiming to ourselves and to others that without God we can do nothing.”

Once we acknowledge our complete dependence, the Spirit of God will guide us all the way.