St. Andrew’s Pictou, August 14^th 2006

 

The Soul’s Reunion

 

Genesis 45:1-15

Matthew 15:21-28

 

The scenes are still vivid for us about the recent crash of a large Air France passenger jet in Toronto. Everyone was surprised that all 309 people on board were safe and alive. Government officials were declaring it a miracle. No church officials needed to be called for verification; secular types were calling it a miracle that nobody died.

 

For some length of time, people waiting in the airport didn’t know if their loved ones were dead or alive. Motorists even picked up some of the survivors on highway 401 suffering from shock and delivered them to the airport terminal. We saw the pictures of joyful reunions and people hugging each other for dear life.

 

There are different kinds of reunions, but I think that we can agree that being reunited with those we love, dead or alive, is one the most powerful of human longings that we can feel or experience.

 

The more powerful the longing for reuniting feels in our soul seems to be predicated on the assumption that it is impossible. The more impossible it seems, the more intense the longing.

 

When we think of one we love and desire uniting with them again, that very thought can bring us to tears.

 

The psalmist puts it so beautifully in our psalm for the day:

“How very good and pleasant it is when kindred live together in unity!” (Psalm 133)

 

When we are disunited, we long for a reunion, so that we can experience that unity the psalmist praises in words spoken and spirit felt for centuries over and over again.

 

So when we hear in today’s reading that Joseph, who had been sold into slavery and abandoned for death by his brothers, who longed for reunification with the father he so loved and his family, finally did meet them again, and told them who he was, the text says that. “…he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it.”

 

His brothers were so shocked that the brother they had abandoned years ago was now second in command of Egypt and the benefactor of the food that saved them from famine and hunger, they were frozen in wonder… “his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence,” the text says.

 

This was not a simple reunion, it was highly complex and drawn out over a period of time:

-as a young boy, Joseph had been sold into slavery by his brothers who were jealous at his father’s love for his youngest son,

-by his wit and brilliance, by 30 years of age, Joseph had risen to power in Egypt, second only to Pharaoh by foretelling the famine by interpreting the King’s dreams and thereby saving the country. He had organized the country to be prepared.

-Joseph’s father and family back in Shechem are suffering from the famine and the brothers are sent with money to buy food. The youngest son, Benjamin is kept with his father because he is scared that he will lose them all.

-Joseph hears about the brothers and recognizes them; they are impressed by this great governor, but do not recognize him.

-Joseph scares them by having them charged with spying. They tell the family story about their aged father and the brother that was killed not knowing that they are telling this to their own brother. Joseph puts them in jail so that he could decide what to do.

-finally Joseph offers them a deal: the older brother stays as a hostage while they retrieve the younger Benjamin. They talk in their own language, not knowing Joseph hears what they are saying.

-The father is aghast at letting Benjamin out of his sight, but famine dictates surrender. The money for the food had mysteriously been put back in their sacks, they returned with it, Benjamin, and a small gift for the great Egyptian Lord from their father, with him not knowing that it was going to the son he so loved.

-the emotion of his brother’s returning with the father’s gift, over whelms Joseph. A meal is prepared. They are stunned that the chairs are set out in order of age and Benjamin gets a double portion! They don’t know what is going on.

-like before, they get their corn, say their good byes and leave, but Joseph can’t bear to part with brother Benjamin who saved his life, and has a cup hidden in his sack. Officials go out and capture Benjamin and bring them back. Brother Judah steps us to the plate, offers to substitute for his brother, tells Joseph the story and that it would kill their father for Benjamin not to return.

 

The emotion is now far too much for Joseph to endure. The brothers must have been shocked to see the great Lord, sob uncontrollably, and confess that he is their long lost brother; he is not dead as they thought.

 

Joseph explains the famine and that it will continue and invites them to bring the father and for them all to live with him in Egypt.

 

Great stories of the Hebrew Scriptures are rich with the wisdom of God for us:

-how Joseph was moved at the love and courage that Judah showed in offering to replace Benjamin so that the father would not die in grief,

-how the will of God can work through what we perceive as tragedy,

-how what we know, is only part of the whole,

-how time changes reality, or

-how human control is only an illusion.

 

The most significant learning for us is how God’s principle of resurrection lies buried in the ashes of what we call death; in Genesis no less. For years, the father, Jacob thought his son Joseph was dead. He was to see his son resurrected into his life before he died. God can bring life where we think that there is death, and we human beings cleave to the need of reunion and the resurrection that will come from those reunions.

 

As a father’s love is poignant in Genesis, so we see the power of a mother’s love in Matthew.

 

A Syrian woman; a Canaanite woman comes to Jesus for him to heal her daughter from an unclean spirit.

 

We hear her begging: “Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David, my daughter is tormented by a demon.”

 

What maybe seem unusual for us is that Jesus ignores her and the disciples even suggest that he ask her to go away, because she keeps shouting. Although there were various reasons and times that Jesus kept silent.

 

Contrary to what we have been taught (that Jesus is for all people,) he says, “I was only sent for the sheep of the house of Israel.”

 

When she begs further on her knees, Jesus seems to add insult to injury and says,

“It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

 

We find Jesus’ answer harsh, referring to the woman as a dog.

 

But this woman wasn’t going to take no for an answer when she wanted her daughter’s healing, and she seemed to believe that Jesus could heal her. So she must have summoned all her energy, and used Jesus’ words against him by saying:

“Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”

 

That mother’s 15 words changed history.

 

“Then Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.”

 

There is a lot of discussion about this text. Whether Jesus was really excluding non-Jews, or whether he said what he did as a teaching to show that the Gospel was for non Jews as well as Jews, I don’t know.

 

What I do know is that according to Jesus, the woman’s faith brought a reunion of health and the daughter’s soul; this woman’s faith contrasted with the lack of faith he sometimes encountered in Israel.

 

Like Joseph and his family, what was previously fractured is now reunited. There was a reunion and unity now existed in the form of safety for Jacob’s family and good health for a woman and her daughter.

 

“Re”union implies that something that a unity that had subsequently been separated is now been rejoined; reunited.

 

We use words to communicate. To say that we “connect” with God, or “come” to God, or “find” God is not enough for me.

 

I have to say that what we are looking for is a reunion with God, because were are coming back to where we had been with God, because we were with God in the first place because that is where we came from and our connection with God is a reunion of the highest spiritual order.

 

The place of God is the place where all souls reunite and dwell in unity.

 

The famous philosopher, Socrates (469-399 BC) said:

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways – I to die and you to live. Which is the better, only God knows.

 

Four hundred years after Socrates died Jesus, the son of God was born and told us what God knows that he is love and we are to love our God and each other in exactly the same way we love God; we are to love our “neighbour as ourselves.”

 

God’s kind of soul’s reunion, here on earth or in heaven has to be the greatest kind of love event.

 

Whenever we love, with all of our passion and from the depth of who we are, we experience the love resolution of our soul’s longing: the food from God’s table, where  even the crumbs that fall on the floor are enough.

 

AMEN    Rev. Alan Stewart