Removing barriers to move from death to resurrection
In
today’s readings, we have pairs of opposites: the liar (Potiphar’s
wife) and the honest person (Joseph); the unspiritual and the spiritual;
the paralyzed and the able-bodied. Black and white. Good and bad.
Blessed by the LORD and not.
But can it really be so simple?
There
is likely more to the relationship between Potiphar’s wife and Joseph
than we get in Genesis. (I suspect there is more to every relationship
than meets the eye!) Perhaps Joseph subconsciously gave off a couple
“I’d love to lie with you” signals, and his “master’s wife” acted on those hints. Is she, then, wholly to blame?
And,
Paul, who has said that circumcision and uncircumcision are as nothing,
why label people now? It’s finger pointing, this business of
“spiritual” and “unspiritual” people.
Then
there’s the Gospel. Jesus himself seems to suggest that Sin (and the
forgiveness of Sin) is what differentiates the able-bodied and the
paralyzed. But while I believe that the Son of Man has authority on
earth to forgive sins, I do not want to believe that the man was
physically paralyzed because of sin.
Sin
is what separates us from God. Dividing people into categories or sides
(Christian vs. Muslim, straight vs. gay, Democrat vs. Republican,
blessed by the LORD and not) separates us. We are divided when we don’t
see the wholeness of everything – all of creation, including all of what
makes each person human.
This
Lent, I pray that together, as One Body of Christ, we will work to
remove the boundaries between people and between us and the Love of God,
which sees all of us wholly as we are – wholly broken. Then we will
move from death to resurrection.
____________________________________________
And that’s the first half of this meditation—written before
I heard the story on NPR about the Boston University hockey player’s rape
assault charges. Then I wondered if I had sounded like I was blaming the victim (Joseph) in my
reflection on Genesis. I did not intend to do that!
Here’s the thing—I believe the story of Joseph and
Potiphar’s wife is complicated, as I believe all relationships are. They both
have aspects of power and powerlessness—she’s associated with power as the wife
of a powerful man, but she’s an unnamed woman (powerless); he’s a slave and an outsider
(powerless), but he’s a man (power), and the sun, moon, and stars all bow down
before him in his dreams (that’s power!).
So there’s sex and sexual politics in this story, plus a
host of emotions, including anger, fear, lust, and more—and that makes it
complicated. And that’s what I tried to capture above.
My original reflection came to me almost in full one morning
while out for a walk, and it only occurred to me much later (listening to NPR)
that there were layers of meaning I didn’t consider. Was I taking the easy way
out in wanting a tidy storyline for my reflection? A simple lesson on the
dangers of labeling this vs. that (the same theme I took up in last year’s
Lenten meditation!)?
I pray for simplicity in the midst of complexity—but not so
simple that we miss the beautifully nuanced shades of gray that make up a
too-simple black-and-white world.
(Cynthia M)
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