SEITZ PART THREE

Final Meditation: "Joseph - Reconciliation in an Unexpected Season"

Thus Joseph knew his brothers, but they did not know him. And Joseph
remembered the dreams which he had dreamed of them. (Gen 42:9)

When Joseph's brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, "It
may be that Joseph will hate us and pay us back for all the evil which
we did to him." So they sent a message to Joseph, saying, "Your father
gave this command before he died, 'Say to Joseph, Forgive, I pray you,
the transgression of your brothers and their sin, because they did evil
to you.'

And now we pray you, forgive the transgression of the servants of the
God of your father." Joseph wept when they spoke to him. His brothers
also came and fell down before him, and said, "Behold we are your
servants." But Joseph said to them, "Fear not, for am I in the place of
God? As for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good,
to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are at
this day. (Gen 50:15-20)

Genesis is punctuated with unexpected chapters. Indeed, one could call
the walk of Israel with God a walk with nothing but unexpected
chapters. Abraham called out and sent, literally, to God knows where.
Sarah made laughable promises. Isaac winning an unexpected birthright.
Jacob working an unexpected seven years. But still through it all, a
consistent thread could be spotted, even by eyes worn out by patience
and obedience.

Israel was being birthed. Guided. Provided for. Occasionally a
blessing. Being fruitful and multiplying. Dying but being buried in a
land of future promise, as a surety, an earnest on those repeated,
unexpected, promises. The twelve tribes come forth from Jacob-Israel,
with all their unruly character. But then there is, not an unexpected
chapter, but an unexpected season: a famine unlike the smaller famines
hits. Joseph is in Egypt, not for a stay to pass his wife off as his
sister, but as a citizen, as a man who eventually marries one of the
Egyptian women and rises to power and influence. This is a strange
detour from the promises to bless, to multiply, and to give a home at
last.

We are experiencing a strange and unexpected season in our shared
life. Our church is in turmoil, and we may sense it is not a chapter
but a season.

What did we expect when we decided to become priests and leaders in
this church?

Some of us expected a long season: the continuation of strong
catholic, prayerbook worship. We puzzled at the chapters of zebra
books, and green books and finally a '79 revision and adjusted, with
varying degrees of acceptance. But we hear of new, alternative books
and further revisions and we wonder why this must be such a long
season.

Some us of saw the traditionalism of our past belief dry up and leave
us stranded, and then the winds of renewal breathed new life. We were
dead bones and we tasted, and saw, that the Lord was good. We saw
miracles of transformation around us and knew the strong words of the
man born blind, look, this I know, I was blind and now I see. But the
years wear on and the hoped for harvest, in all its proper length and
breadth, has not transpired as we had hope. We are entering a time-with
a score of Cursillo and Faith Alive and Toronto Blessing and HTB years
properly credited, for what God has indeed wrought in spades-but still
unsure of our season.

There are women among us. Who looked forward to sharing fully in the
good work of Christ's ministry, mindful of a saviour who took on human
flesh and redeemed both male and female by a miracle of grace. And yet
we see tension and division among ourselves, about just what ministry
we are exercising and why. The season has come on us slowly and
unexpectedly but it shows no signs of resolution.

Some of us, men and women, rejoiced to see scripture again opened and
changing lives, yes, even among us Episcopalians. An unexpected
chapter, as the dry business of finding sources or debating synoptic
problems or authentic Pauline letters, gave way to a new urgency and
expectancy before scripture's plain sense word of address. And yet the
same scriptures in our season are opened to a different, at times
opposite and self-evidently corrosive alternative purpose, in defense
of axioms and virtues which seem at one with the culture's best sense
of itself anyway. And this season is a season, and no mere chapter.

In this season of unexpected disappointments and turns and confusions,
it is very easy to seek short-term solutions. I am struck at how, in a
very long season indeed, Daniel never sought to fix things, and yet he
is as active and busy and committed as anyone can possibly be.

In our season, the one thing I think we can be sure will happen, is
that people will make mistakes and hurt each other. Much of this
happens because our season of unexpected turns, is but part of a larger
season in the church's missionary life. Things are in enormous flux.

The Episcopal church in the US, we discover in our unexpected season,
is but a tiny part of a worldwide Anglican communion. And we adjust to
this, at times with enthusiasm, and at times with humility, and at
times with a sense of loss of control and confusion. How does this
communion, which is itself facing an unexpected season, think it will
find its way?

The Episcopal church, we discover in our unexpected season, has an
identity marked by the old world, and the effect of missionary
transplantation into the new world, alongside German, French, Italian,
Spanish, Skandanavian versions of post-reformation Christianity. And
yet in the new world, where do those old world, denominated identities
still mean something critical, and where are they falling away in the
light of a new missionary imperative? A fire needs a fireplace, but
what will the fireplace look like if it does not have preaching tabs,
or a 1928 prayer book, or a geneva gown or a credal core, or an
anabaptist zeal or an historic confession or a magesterial polity? As
single, critical, identifying features.

We have come to see the centrality of our scriptures, some of us out
of sheer desperation and last-inning discovery, as crucially as did the
reformers in their own day. But the season we are in does not mean that
the clarity or sufficiency of scripture meets with uniform acceptance
or clear tea ching and living. We need something else, working with
scripture, on our side of the ledger, and we need language to help
describe it, old language like Holy Spirit, Rule of Faith, the Father's
Interpretation and like things.

At the end of his long season, Joseph could look back and survey the
damage. Wrong decisions were made. Evil was meant. Within the bosom of
Israel itself, and not from outside it, because the season was hard and
the future held together only by God's word of promise, wrong was done.
In his dreams, Joseph saw something that looked like submission. Like
bowing down before an irritating favorite younger brother. Even Joseph
may have thought this was what he saw.

But everyone was wrong, however much they were right! They saw through
a glass dimly, in this unexpected season upon which they were soon to
embark. And some of the brothers, unsure what season they were
entering, sought to keep the frightening season out. "Let's get rid of
the dreamer" they cried. But the dream was not Joseph. It was a dream
God gave. And so God would oversee it and God would, in His time, make
the dream clear. In this unexpected season. God's favorite speaking
season.

It only dawns on Joseph that the dream is not about his personal
success when, in Ch 42, the brothers come down to buy grain. Suddenly
what looked like a dream about him and his power over his brothers was
a dream about what God was doing through him, maybe even in spite of
his own best sense of what he was up to, in an unexpected season.
Because he was faithful in an unexpected season, God could use his good
and others' evil to an end He alone could see.

Friends, we live now in an unexpected season. In this season mistakes
will be made. Some will try to shut the season out. Some will thing the
season is not about them. Some will think they know what the season and
its attending dreams are about, and they'll be wrong. We will all of
us-after the pattern of Judah in his way, Rueben in his, old father
Jacob in his, and Joseph in his-have to be caught short-sighted.

But each of us will discover in our errors and our faults, our fears,
our mis-steps, and even our tough stay-on-course-ness, that there is a
dream which will not die, and that God alone is bringing about, even
for us in this fragile ECUSA ship, in the difficult time to be a priest
in His church.

We can count ourselves blessed, not always to have got things right,
but to hear in the end that God is working through our faults, in spite
of ourselves. That God's long-sightedness corrects and forgives our
short-sightedness. Inside that scene of forgiveness and correction,
which we see in Joseph and his brothers, may it also be our gift to
forgive those who meant us harm, and be forgiven by those we sought to
be rid of, in this unexpected season, at a difficult time in our
church.

For in the end it is not our time, but God's time, God's plan, God's
church, and we are only earthly vessels gazing on a vast treasure, a
treasure which has caught us up in its vast heaven and which promises
to deliver us on another shore.

In the end it was enough that Joseph relinguished himself into God's
care and protection. "Don't forget my bones" was all that was left to
him to care about!

And God didn't forget, because He was faithful in his difficult time.
And He won't forget us either, who are priests in this difficult time
in the church.

END

Professor Seitz is Professor of Old Testament at St. Mary's College,
University of St. Andrews in Scotland. He is also President of SEAD -
the Society for the Engagement of Anglican Doctrine.