As of a few months ago, I am PADI certified as an “Open Water Diver.” Yesterday, I got the scuba gear that I bought on eBay . So now I’m looking for some dive buddies! Wendy has no interest in learning to dive, so I’m putting out the call to those who read this (and who hopefully aren’t too far away) to see if there are any other closet divers out there.
Today’s reading has some good stuff! Joseph finally gets a break in Genesis 41 when he is able, with God’s help, to interpret Pharoah’s dreams, and so ends up as Pharoah’s right hand man. Mike’s comments suggest that Joseph didn’t put himself forward for this position, but the next thing he mentions is the picture from “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” While the scripture doesn’t indicate that he did so, the play certainly does. Not in so many words, but in the tone of voice used when Joseph makes the suggestion of finding the “right” man. Who knows” Maybe Webber and Rice were right. After all, you can’t read tone in the written word. 
I personally thing that the more significant portion of the reading, though, comes in Genesis 42, when the brothers come to Egypt. Joseph turns up the heat on them, bur Reuben reacts not in anger or fear, but with the realization that they deserved what they were getting. I think it’s a turning point for them.
The Matthew passage has a lot of familiar parables. But the one that jumped out at me was one that I don’t remember really noticing before. Matthew 13:33 reads
He told them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.”
There’s no interpretation. Just this one sentence. But it spoke to me. The kingdom of heaven isn’t some far-off place with no interaction with this world. The kingdom of heaven is to me so mingled with the world that it is inseparable, but it still has a profound influence on the world. It is all “leavened.” Which means, of course, “made to rise.” I’m still not sure what all the implications of that are – I’m sort of “typing out loud” at the moment.
And, finally, thanks to Psalm 18, I now have a song stuck in my head. There’s a great bouncy song based on this Psalm that’ve been very popular at the Cursillo events that I’ve been involved with. It’s called “I Will Call Upon the Lord” (I don’t care a great deal for this particular record recording, but it’s the only one I could find on the web)
I will call upon the Lord
Who is worthy to be praised
So shall I be saved from mine enemies
The Lord liveth, and blessed be my Rock
And may the God of my salvation be exalted
The Lord liveth, and blessed be my Rock
And may the God of my salvation be exalted
Those of you who’ve been reading along with my comments for the Bible in a Year blog will have notice a theme. At least, I have. I seem to be caught up with the idea that Abraham’s deceit and self-reliance carried through with negative consequences to Isaac, and Jacob, and Jacob’s children. But, in today’s reading , Joseph seems to be the remedy for that chain of sin. No matter what calamaties life throws at him, he continues to live with complete integrity and reliance on God.
That’s not to say he’s not taking care of himself, of course. When he interprets the cup bearer’s dream, he asks to be remembered. But he’s being honest about everything. He defers to God in everything, but, at the same time, he actively lives his life, not waiting for God to just “take care of it” for him.
The parallels to Jesus are hard to miss, of course. Living faithfully. Falsely accused. Inprisoned (in the tomb), and restored to life again. But I think it’s Joseph’s breaking of the cycle of deception and sin that’s the most important parallel.
A P.S.
Props to Andrew B for his idea of making a blogroll of the bloggers who have been participating in this discussion. I’ve done the same here.
Today’s reading from Genesis contains the first part of the story of Joseph in Egypt (Genesis 37). The part where he alienates his brothers, to the point that they plan on killing him, but then decide to sell him into slavery instead.
I had remembered from the last time I read this that Reuben was the one who saved Joseph’s life, by suggesting they leave him in a pit, rather than killing him outtright. What I saw for the first time in this reading was his motivation: he was planning on coming back later to save Joseph, to win favor with Jacob. When the other brothers messed up his plan by selling Joseph, he was upset. He had no involvement in the selling.
This all seems to go back to the theme of living by your wits, and by deception, which has been going on for a while now. God ends up using it for good later on, but not before the whole family pays a price. I’m reminded of the passage (can’t remember where) that talks about the sins of the father passed on to future generations. I think that’s what we’re seeing here. Not so much God punishing Jacob’s children for Jacob’s errors, but rather that attitude being passed on to the children. Sort of like the way children of alcoholics tend to show addictive tendencies themselves.
One more thing: Mike asked about the show “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” As somebody who’s been in the show (I played Naphthali) I can tell you that it’s a fun show, but don’t expect a great deal of deep theology. It’s one of the earlier works by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice, before Jesus Christ, Superstar. It’s got some good music, and some cute “bits.” For instance, Pharoah is played as Elvis. You know – “The King.” There’s been a movie made of the stage production, staring Donny Osmond, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Stage plays rarely translate well to the screen, and this one does a particularly bad job of it.
OK. I don’t normally do these, but I have to admit that I had fun with this.
Some of my thoughts for today’s readings
Genesis 32:13-32
We’ve got Jacob wrestling with somebody, getting all out of joint (
), and then getting a new name. The whole “wrestling” story has always bothered me. It just seems to come out of nowhere. It doesn’t “fit” with the rest of the narrative, as far as I can see. If the Bible were written with a computer, I would say it was a case of somebody making a mistake with cut and paste.
I was struck, however, with the renaming of Jacob to Israel. I’m sure I’d read it before, but it didn’t “stick” that Israel means both “God Strives” and “Strives with God.” I think that both of those meanings are significant, not just for Jacob, but for the nation which descended from him, which shares his name. And, by extension, to us who descend, morally and culturally, from that nation.
Genesis 33
Israel goes off to meet Esau. (Maybe Jacob wanted to have a name change so Esau wouldn’t recognise him? Â ). Anyway, Jacob assumes that Esau will be angry, and sends off gifts to appease him. It’s apparent to me that Jacob is expecting Esau to act as he himself would. Even when it’s clear that Esau has no intention of taking revenge, Jacob appears to stall, to keep as much separation as possible. I think this is still a consequence of Jacob’s deceitful behavior in earlier chapter. He acted falsely, so he expects others to do the same.
Genesis 34:1-31
When one of Jacob’s daughters is raped, her brothers trick the household of the rapist into incapacitating themselves, and then kill them all. When Jacob learns of this, he is angry with the brothers, because he’s finally learning the consequences of deceit. Unfortunately, the brothers haven’t. After all, these are the same brothers who will plot to kill one of their own, and then sell him into slavery, in just a few chapters.
Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light
I’ve seen a lot of discussion about the fact that a “yoke” is meant for two animals, not for one alone. The idea usually put forth is that we’re sharing the burden with Jesus. But I think this misses the mark slightly. The passage says “my yoke” not “our yoke.” In a typical plowing situation, the yoke doesn’t belong to either animal, but to the driver of the plow. If you’re going to talk about the yoke as being for two, then I think the lesson would more appropriately be that we, as fellow believers, share the burden with each other, so that none has to bear it alone. But of course, Jesus, as the driver, tells us that he is “gentle and humble in heart,” meaning that he won’t drive us beyond what we can bear. I just don’t think it means that he carries our load for us. We’re still responsible for it.
Question from our “moderator”
Creationism vs Evolutions vs Intelligent design (creationism lite?)
I’m sure I’ll take some heat for this, but I see abolutely no conflict between any of these. They are fundamentally different things. The creation story in Genesis is not a history book or scientific text. It is first and foremost a story. Stories can be True (with a capital ‘T’) without being accurate. Evolution is a theory to explain the mechanism of how life on this planet came to be as we find it today. It doesn’t know, or care, why these things happened. That is what the Genesis stories tell us.
I do not believe that creationism or intelligent design belong in public schools. At least, not in the United States, where separation of church and state is supposed to be one of our fundamental principles.
I know – you’re all getting tired of this.
I’ve added a facility to make it even easier to subscribe to feeds. There’s a new link, “QuickSub” with instructions on how to add a button to your web browser to automate subscriptions. Once you’ve installed this button, you just need to click on it when you’re on a page that interests you. As long as there are feeds available for that page, the software should hopefully pick it up and subscribe you.
Of course, there will probably be problems with it, but give it a try.
(I’m also trying out a new publishing tool, so I’m not sure how this post will turn out.)
There are a couple of feed options I’ve added for BlogWatcher that might require a little explanation. They both work with the concept of “tagged” content.
Tagging is one of the “hot” new topics in blogging. When new posts are made in a lot of software (including mine) the author can tag it with whatever keywords seem relevent to them. There are then services that allow you to search for content that has been tagged with words that interest you.
I’ve added two new feed types that support tags. “Tagged posts” and “Flickr photos” For each one, you can enter the keyword that interests you in the target box, and you’ll be shown content related to your tag. The “Tagged posts” option is for blog entries (it searches technorati.com), while the “Flickr photos” will bring up pictures that people have uploaded to flickr.com .
This gives you the chance to find content from people you know nothing about, if they happen to write something that might interest you. For instance, if you happen to really like pictures of waterfalls, you could create a new “Flickr photos” feed with the keyword waterfall, and then, whenever anybody posts a public picture to flickr.com that they tag as a waterfall, you’ll see it in your Blogwatcher list. Pretty cool, huh? 
I’ve made what I hope will be a big improvement in the usability of BlogWatcher. It should now be less complicated to add new subscriptions. Especially for esoteric ones like MySpace. I’m modified it so that, in many cases, you won’t need to try to track down the RSS feed for the site that you want to subscribe to!
To use this new feature, find a page that you’d like to subscribe to. As a sample, maybe you want to subscribe to Wendy’s blog, which is at http://wendy.thebaileys.name/blog/. Just type that into the “user” field on the subscription page (or copy and paste it, which is more likely ) and choose “Best Guess” from the list of subscription types. The system will try it’s best to determine the optimal subscription settings.
This hasn’t undergone a lot of testing yet, so I’m sure there are PLENTY of pages where it won’t work as expected. But I think it will work a majority of the time. And since the biggest problem I see is that people are putting blog URLs instead of feed URLs when they choose the “Generic RSS” option, I think this will make things easier for everybody.
Please report any problems that you encounter, so that I can resolve them.
Today’s readings bring up some interesting points for me.
First, there’s the story of Jacob stealing Esau’s blessing. This has always been something of a troubling passage for me. Jacob, at his mother’s direction, tells some bold-faced, flat out lies. And he seems to be rewarded for it. This has always bothered me. Why didn’t he receive punishment, instead of blessing. But a comment made by Nigel on the main post helped to clarify something for me. Jacob achieved the result that God had planned, but the way he did it resulted in Jacob’s exile from his family for many years. God didn’t punish Jacob. His actions brought with them their own punishment, which I think is generally true of much of what we would call “sin.”
Which segues nicely into the Matthew passage
Jesus caused a scandal among the religious leaders of his day by associating with sinners. He was even called a blasphemer for saying that someone’s sins were forgiven. I rather like that. Mike’s commentary says that Jesus would in fact have been blasphemous, if he weren’t God himself. But I’m not sure I agree. I may be misremembering, but I think I remember another spot where the disciples, who clearly are not God, are told to forgive sin as well. Rather than saying that Jesus’ words and actions were blasphemous (implying against God), I think it more accurate to say that they were in opposition to the religous traditions of the day. An important distinction, in my opinion. I’ll bet most of us could name some present-day religions traditions which perhaps should be challenged, but which may just result in a charge of blasphemy. For instance, and I know many people will disagree with me, I think that the position of “the church” on homosexual individuals is wrong and un Christ-like. Regardless of how you feel about the act of homosexuality, we’re still talking about people here. People who may be sinners, but then, who isn’t? See the Eklektos homepage for a ministry my wife is working on in this regard.
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