The finale of the family drama

For the past month, we moved through the story of Jacob’s family found in Genesis. It’s the tale of family dysfunction, complete with favoritism, jealousy, hatred & revenge. It starts with Jacob’s favorite son, Joseph, being thrown into a pit by his own brothers. That’s not how the story ends though.

The story ends with Joseph now in power, his brothers coming to him in the middle of a famine in need of food and with this family experiencing an imperfect & unexpected & highly emotional reunion.

Here are the closing “words for the journey” that were shared during Sunday’s gathering.

What invitation do you hear?

Genesis is not a prescription. It is a description of how the promise of God is passed down from messed up generation to messed up generation, from one dysfunctional family to the next. Genesis is not about what we “should” be able to do or even what God tells us to do, but about what is possible.

Even with all of the rifts, the twists & turns, the frailty, the losses, the hatred, God is the goodness that sneaks in, that finds us where we are & wraps her arms around us & says I know it looks bleak, I know it seems beyond repair, I know it is so hard to trust, to hope, to imagine, but there is a future here.

We call that grace.

It’s not something we can force or fabricate. We often only discover it when we dare to look back and to see what we have survived, how we have been given enough for each day, how we have continued to love & be loved despite the horror, the hatred, the hunger & whatever else has threatened to DO US IN.

And slowly we may find that that we inch further from needing to turn around & give the middle finger to those who’ve hurt us. We have now become so focused on responding to the One who has sustained us that we may even find ourselves feeding our enemies.

May we dwell not in shoulds or regrets or in what feels insurmountable, but in what is possible.

Amen.

[Artwork: Joseph's Brothers Throw Him Into the Pit by Yoram Raanan]