Cat and mouse. While Hugh was dying, while one thing went wrong after another, to the consternation of his doctors, it seemed that some malign power was playing cat and mouse. Cat and mouse all over the planet. Terrorist attacks in Paris. Strange, deranged men stalking and killing young women. A horrible fire in a South African gold mine—a terrible disaster in an already beleaguered country. We seem to be surrounded by a horror and a hissing and an everlasting reproach.
What is that normal my friend was looking for?
The powers of darkness are at work. Another word for them is echthroi, Greek for “the enemy,” and the echthroi, too, are fighting the light.
Lady Julian of Norwich wrote,
He said not, “Thou shalt not be troubled, thou shalt not be travailed, thou shalt not be distressed,” but he said, “Thou shalt not be overcome.” It is God’s will that we take heed to these words, that we may be ever mighty in faithful trust in weal and woe.
How were Benjamin’s brothers to be faithful, taking the youngest away from their father, to a strange lord who had already shown himself to be erratic and unpredictable? As soon as the brothers arrived they were taken to Joseph’s house, and again they were terrified. Benjamin was dazzled with what seemed to him to be a palace. His brothers were again speaking all at once, explaining that they had returned the money they had found in their sacks.
And Joseph’s chief steward said,
“Peace be to you. Fear not,”
speaking in the familiar words of angels all through the Bible, “Fear not!” He went on,
“Your God, and the God of your father, has given you treasure in your sacks.” And then he brought Simeon out to them.
Then they were given water, and their feet were washed [prefiguring Jesus’ washing of his friends’ feet], and their animals were given provender.
When Joseph came home, the brothers gave him the presents they had brought, and bowed themselves to the earth before him.
How many of them remembered Joseph’s dream, and that this was the fulfillment of it?
Joseph asked them how they were. Then he questioned, “Is your father well, the old man of whom you spoke? Is he still alive?”
And they answered, “Your servant, our father, is in good health. He is yet alive.” And they bowed down their heads and made obeisance.
And Joseph lifted up his eyes and saw his brother Benjamin, his mother’s son, and said, “Is this your younger brother, of whom you spoke?” And he said to Benjamin, “God be gracious to you, my son.”
Joseph was overcome with emotion and left them, because he ached to embrace his brother; so he went into his chamber and wept there. Then he washed his face and controlled himself, and the meal was brought in.
Joseph was served by himself, and the brothers were served by themselves, and Asenath, Joseph’s wife, was served by herself,
because the Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews, for that is an abomination unto the Egyptians.
And later it became an abomination for the orthodox Jew to eat with the unorthodox.
How strange human customs are! When my daughter, Josephine, and her husband, Alan, an Episcopal priest, visited acquaintances in Israel, they were served food and drink, but their host and hostess would not eat with them, because that would have been an abomination to these orthodox Jews!
In my church, the Episcopal Church, it is only in recent decades that God’s table has been opened to people of other denominations. And half a century ago a convicted murderer could confess, repent, and then be welcome at the altar rail, but a divorced person could not. In many places we still hold to the kind of division into differing denominations that my Baptist mother-in-law grew up with.
Not long ago I talked with a friend and he told me about reading a Metropolitan Opera bulletin and checking the names of all the singers he knew to be Christians. His question was not, Are they good singers, serving their art to the best of their ability? but, Are they Christian? And as we ate at a table with a group of people there was a conversation about whether or not a certain doctor was a Christian—not was he a good doctor, but was he a Christian? Isn’t this reversed way of looking at things the reason that so much Christian art isn’t very good art? That if you’re a Christian that is all that matters? Christian or no, if you are a pianist you have to practice eight hours a day or you won’t be a good pianist—or a good Christian. We are not very rational, we human beings who are called to observe and contemplate, but who often get wound up in customs and laws and dogmas and are blinded to that which we are supposed to see.
And Asenath, too, ate alone.
ASENATH
And who is the God of the gods?
Is there a God who orders the gods, chastises them for their jealousies and their outrageous demands?
My husband would say that his one god is this god, but his god, too, has limits—is the god of the Hebrew people only. Does he not care for all the rest of us, whether we live or die? This god my husband obeys does not hear the cry of anguish of the Egyptian mother whose child is caught by the crocodile. Only his own people matter to him.
So, he, too, is a god among many gods.
Is there a God whose mercy is over all?
I did not think these thoughts until I was given by my father, Potiphar, to be Joseph’s wife. My father is priest of On, and his god is Ra, the sun god. My father is high priest, and has served Ra all his life, Ra who gives both life and death. It was a strange thing to me that I was given to the Hebrew, and it was a mark of how highly the Pharaoh regarded this strange man.
At night we lie together, we know each other. We have our sons, and what must they think about all these strange gods, each one more important (in someone’s eyes) than another? There are many gods in Egypt, many priests who serve them, but Ra is the sun. Without Ra it would be perpetual night. Without Ra the Nile would not know when to flood and fertilize the land.
What did it mean to my father, the high priest, to give me to a man whose god was not his god?
My husband is a good man. He is fair. He is just. But he is seldom merry. Sometimes he has laughed when he has played with our sons, tossing them in the air, delighting to hear them shriek with pleasure, knowing themselves safe in his strong arms. With me he is always courteous. At night, when Ra has turned away, my husband brings up from me strange depths of delight, and I please him, too. This I know by his sighs of fulfillment, by his arms that remain around me as he falls into a deep sleep of contentment.
Do our gods know each other? Are they friends? In the darkness when Ra is behind the earth does he laugh with Joseph’s god at our lack of understanding? It is not just Ra—this god of Joseph’s whose name is unwritten, unspoken, and unpronounceable. In Egypt we have many gods, gods of the underworld, gods to lead us in this life and to lead us in the afterlife. Vultures and crocodiles and the strange black dog, Anubis. A jackal, some say. And there are the goddesses, too, of fertility, fertility for the crops, and for the people, too. Too many gods.
But it was a strong and strange thing for me to be given to Joseph—the Hebrew, the one with the most alien of gods—a tribute to his power, to his ability to rule with justice and not with pride. One might suppose he would have been a threat to the Pharaoh, but he was not. He did what needed to be done and at the end of the day came quietly home to play with our sons, to eat alone, to sleep with me.
Zebulun shall dwell at the haven of the sea; and he shall be for an haven of ships; and his border shall be by Zidon.
GENESIS 49:13
Zebulun was the head of the tenth tribe of Israel. His inherited land was mountainous, but within it was Gath Hepher, where Jonah came from, and Nazareth, Jesus’ “home town.”
Isaiah writes,
Nevertheless there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honour Galilee of the Gentiles, by way of the sea, along the Jordan.
And then f
ollow some of Isaiah’s most beautiful verses,
The people walking in darkness have seen a great light, on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned.
And Matthew quotes Isaiah in the fourth chapter of his Gospel:
Leaving Nazareth, he [Jesus] went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali, to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah,
“Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali,
the way to the sea, along the Jordan,
Galilee of the Gentiles—
the people living in darkness
have seen a great light;
on those living in the land of the
shadow of death
a light has dawned.”
The Old Testament so often nourishes and informs the New.
Zebulun, meanwhile, came with the brothers from Canaan, to Egypt, to the great lord’s palace, was reunited with Simeon, and when they were seated in order of age—Reuben first, then Simeon, and on down to Benjamin—they looked at each other in wonder.
And Joseph put food before them, but Benjamin got five times as much food as any of the others. They ate and were merry with him.
Did Benjamin wonder at this favouritism, or was he used to it? Did it, perhaps, embarrass him? But he was the youngest, so he did not speak. How strange it must have been for Benjamin, receiving special and inexplicable favours from the great lord of Egypt. How strange was Egypt itself, with its buildings of stone, rather than tents of skins, with its huge palaces and temples and tombs—edifices that were built to last forever.
How strange the Pharaonic Egyptian language, into which the brothers’ words were translated for the great lord. And how overwhelming for Joseph, to hear them murmuring in his own familiar language, and yet to have to wait to respond until the interpreter gave him the words in Egyptian.
Words have incredible power to heal or to harm. The Name of Jesus is a word of love, and one which I hear misused daily, thoughtlessly, with no evil intent, but weakened and debased by misuse. Words of prayer can be words of healing. It frightens me very much to know that people, not only those in “primitive” tribes, but even people who call themselves Christian, can pray against other people. But prayer that is not for love is not truly prayer.
In Joseph’s story we note over and over again the power of words. Joseph abuses words by bragging, and pays for his abuse. His brothers use words with murderous intent, and are kept from acting out those words only by Reuben and Judah. Potiphar’s wife uses words of false accusation against Joseph, so that he is cast into prison. Malicious gossip can cause terrible harm. Casual, thoughtless words, too, can cause grave damage. More than once it has come to my ears that someone has reported, “Madeleine said…” something that Madeleine never said or even thought at all, but the damage has been done.
How powerful words are, and how we seem to forget that power today, with our radical loss of vocabulary. I was horrified to read that the textbook publishing houses are having to simplify the language of the college textbooks because today these books are too difficult for college students, who had no difficulty with them a few decades ago.
As our vocabulary dwindles, so does our ability to think, and so does our theology, and what is theology but the word about God?
Would we quarrel so much about God if we were able to think more clearly about our Maker? I worry about what we are doing to the story God has told about Elself in the greatest story ever told, that of Jesus of Nazareth.
It is easier to see what we are doing to our story in the credal churches, such as my own, where, after great committee effort and expense we have come up with a new Book of Common Prayer. Now I don’t want to go back to the 1928 Prayer Book. We needed to think about what we believe in terms of the disturbed twentieth century in which we are living. But we haven’t done well by the language, and when we do not do well by the language, we do not do well by our faith. What distresses me most acutely is that we have changed our story, that greatest story ever told, and without so much as a “by your leave.” It is a strange, powerful, difficult story, but it has been our story for nearly two thousand years. If we are going to change it, we should at the very least call a Council of Houston or Omaha or Chicago and do it publicly.
My dearest friend, who is an Episcopalian, senior warden of her church, said to me, “I can’t say the creed anymore.”
I asked her, “Have you noticed that the language has been changed on you?”
“No.”
“Well, it has.”
Radically changed. I can’t say it anymore, either. In the language of the media I don’t believe a word of it. God is a greater storyteller than our recent committees, and we need to reflect back the glory with the greatest language of which we are capable.
I believe in One God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and in all things visible and invisible.
Visible and invisible has been replaced with seen and unseen, and that’s not the same thing at all. If I close my eyes I can’t physically see the page in front of me, but it’s still visible. I love the idea of the great invisible world that we cannot see, but God can—the world of subatomic particles, the world of the galaxies beyond the reach of our greatest telescopes.
Well, it gets worse. We’ve taken out Begotten of his Father before all worlds. That’s a terrible omission, because it allows people to forget that Christ was, was before the beginning, was the Power that shouted all things into being, was incarnate for us, and still is.
Oh, and even worse. We used to say, And was incarnate BY the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary. Or, who was conceived BY the Holy Ghost. Oh, yes, that’s the story, the greatest story ever told. But now we say, weakly, by the power of the Holy Spirit. We were all conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit. I was. My babies were. That’s the Trinity, shining forth in love: two human beings and the Holy Spirit, and the miracle of a baby. But Jesus was conceived BY the Holy Spirit, and that’s a very different story. That’s what we used to say.
I have never been particularly hung up over the Virgin Birth. It hasn’t been the focus of my faith one way or another. But it has been a significant part of our story and what it truly means is that Jesus’ humanity came from his mother, Mary, and that his divinity came from his father, who is God the Holy Spirit. Take away the Virgin Birth and you take away Jesus’ divinity.
And now the Virgin Birth has vanished into the lost world of the visible and the invisible. No one has even had the courtesy to ask those of us who go faithfully to church every Sunday, “Do you mind?” I mind.
I mind very much indeed. I can’t say the creed in the new, impoverished language either. I don’t believe that God is sitting on a golden throne with Jesus at his right hand on a smaller throne. I believe the creed in the language of high poetry that is the language of truth, not the language of fact. I think we need to do something about this, not to go backwards, but to admit humbly to ourselves that we have served language poorly, which means serving God poorly. Perhaps the men—they were men, weren’t they?—who wrote the new version of the Creed didn’t mean to change the story, didn’t even know they were changing the story, but that is what, in fact, they did.
The story that got changed is a wonderful story. My friend Canon Tallis said that the Virgin Birth was embarrassing to the early Christians. They wouldn’t have kept it in if it hadn’t happened. God came to us through the womb of a fourteen-year-old girl who had the courage to say to the angel,
“Be it unto me according to your word.”
And what about the angel? What do Scriptural angels say when they come to anyone? “Fear not!” That gives us a clue about what angels look like—that the first thing they have to cry out to us is, “Fear not!” We’ve prettied up angels; no longer are they seen as flaming fires, and that’s a weakening, too.
The Christian belief is that Jesus was wholly human and Jesus was wholly God. His humanness is his birthing by a young
girl, so that Jesus was born as all of us are born. His Godness is that his father is God Elself. That is how the paradox that Jesus is wholly human and Jesus is wholly God is reconciled. If the Virgin Birth is taken away, isn’t Jesus’ Godness taken away, too?
I sense a kind of limiting chauvinism here. Did the men doing the translation feel that Mary couldn’t have done it without one of them—Joseph, or whoever? Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit—condescending in total love. That is an extraordinary story, and when it got taken away from me, I found that I believe it passionately.
“And it came to pass.” “Once upon a time.” Wonderful words! To be a human being is to be able to listen to a story, to tell a story, and to know that story is the most perfect vehicle of truth available to the human being. What is so remarkable about the stories of ancient cultures is not their radical diversity, but their unity. We tell basically the same story in all parts of the world, over and over again in varying ways, but it is always the same story, of a universe created by God. We can tell more about God through the words of a story than through any amount of theology.
Joseph was forced to look low for the Creator, dumped into a pit, sold to strangers, sold again in Egypt, thrown into prison, catapulted into power. And with each strange reversal he grew, grew into a human being. To grow into a human being is not to grow into humanism, for humanists believe only in man, able to do it on his own without the help of God. To be a human being is to know clearly that anything good we do is sheer gift of grace, that God’s image in us shines so brightly that its light is visible.
While Joseph’s brothers ate the feast prepared for them he looked at them, his heart full, but he was not yet ready to reveal himself to them, and so he could not touch them. Men were not afraid to touch each other in those days, to fling their arms around each other in hilarity or grief or forgiveness, and Joseph must have longed particularly to touch Benjamin, his full brother, now grown to a comely young man.
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