Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28

We've skipped a few chapters in our trip through Genesis, to get to the beginning of the story of Joseph. This is the “coat of many colors” boy, although this translation doesn't say that. And the first thing we find out about him is he tells on his brothers. There is no setup of this, but it might have something to do with his father favoring the youngest boy. Who hasn't seen that? So, it's a tale of jealousy. Joseph's ability to have dreams that predict the future is mentioned in verses 5-11, that are left out, but most people are familiar with this.

The linked translation also avoids the word “shalom”. I guess they wanted to interpret it for you. It's too bad, it's a word with a lot of tradition and worth getting to know and use. In this story, in verse 4, the brothers don't say “shalom” to Joseph (translated “speak peaceably” here), the feeling would be like someone you know passing you on the street without saying hello. Later, his father sends Joseph off to “see if it is well with your brothers”, or as some translate to “see the shalom of your brothers”. Ironic, and maybe showing his father's ignorance of the situation, since if Joseph said, “Hey, how's it going”, they wouldn't even say “fine”.

There is then what seems to be just filler, as Joseph meets an extra in the story who just sends him to a different town. The OT usually does not waste words, so this is probably something the brothers did to get Joseph even further from home. When we meet up with the brothers, they are indeed talking about killing him. Reuben, another minor character, but someone who has had a bit part in recent chapters has some sort of scheme of his own, so Joseph only ends up sold into slavery, instead of murdered.

There's a little more to Reuben's story if you want to read on. The lectionary will skip over the details and get to where they all meet up again, next week.

1 Kings 19:9-18

In year C this passage appears, but they skip right over the part where God sends Elijah to build an army. The “still soft voice of God”, or in this translation, “sheer silence”, is a well-known and poetic verse. It is part of this pivotal book where God is no longer bringing plagues or appearing in the face of strangers, but actually sits with and gives counsel to prophets. In this case, that counsel is about anointing kings to build armies, but if we look at it as just a story of a warrior, not an actual history of a conqueror, there might be something we can see about ourselves.

Kings has not been covered much this year, and won’t be. So you might want to peak back a couple chapters and see why he is alone in this cave. He performed a bunch of miracles and seemed to be on the rise, but his enemies turned on him when he started killing them. Miracles don’t ever seem to last long in the memories of the people, so he felt attacked without anyone to defend him. He fled.

Elijah is feeling alone and he’s forgotten the support he has. This conversation with God is his reminder. An all-knowing God does not need to ask his prophet what he’s doing, so you could see God acting as a teacher here, asking a rhetorical question to a student who is not doing his work. Or, you could see this as Elijah meditating, asking himself what he’s doing off in a cave by himself. His answer is a whining mish mash. After the display of nature, which is not God, he gets silence. Silence is “heard” in that it is noticed as something missing when there was something else or should be something else. Elijah is now centered, ready to confront what he’s done and what he knows he must do. The question comes again. And he fails again.

He still feels alone and victimized. As all of us sometimes do, and we can’t shake it. There are storms and fire in our heads. But in the silence, we remember we have partners, willing to go to bat for us. In this case, willing to die for us, but this is a warrior’s story. It doesn’t mean God is always hanging out in the desert, waiting for us to come along so he can send us back into war. What Elijah does here is face his fear. As Nelson Mandela said, “I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”

Romans 10:5-15

Paul gives lots to look up this week, if we are so inclined. Let's just say that his Hebrew may have left something to be desired. We don't really know what Christianity might be if it were not for a slight turn of phrase here or there. Whether he understood what the writers of Deuteronomy or Leviticus meant, he is rewriting them anyway. Those authors didn't know Jesus.

Verse 12 gives us one of the nice inclusive statements and the lack of distinction, that anyone can “call on” this new incarnation of God. Verse 13 is grabbed out of context, since Joel is talking about being saved from a plague of Locusts. The central message here though is, spread the good word. Might as well call up some poetry from Isaiah to make that a little more flowery.

Matthew 14:22-33

I'm not that interested in how stories like this came to be. I don't like the “Jesus as magician” meme, nor do I care much for trying to figure out what people actually saw 2,000 years ago. Witnesses are evidence, but witnesses are also fallible. Like last week, it's important to know that John the Baptist just got his head cut off. I'm going to give the lectionary creaters the benefit of the doubt and say they left that out because they want the preacher to choose how to present that to whatever audience they might have. Once you do that, I think the analogy of sailing on troubled waters becomes pretty clear. Unlike last week, this miracle does end with “surely you are the Son of God.”

The metaphor of calming the water is pretty straight forward. It's interesting that this passage is paired with the 1 Kings passage. The faith of walking on water is less clear. It's interesting that Peter uses Jesus commanding him to join him on the water as proof that it IS Jesus. Like Elijah, as soon as he gets the courage, the storm comes up again and he begins to sink. The question this time goes unanswered.