Two Vast and Spacious Things

The Book of Genesis is a rich theological text. It is foundational for the scriptural and philosophical traditions of Judaism and Christianity especially. It is not a scientific treatise nor a collection of fables and myths haphazardly thrown together. It is theology, a commentary on the overarching justice or righteousness of God in creation and human experience despite the repeated and constant failings of our humanity. As the theologian and novelist Marilynne Robinson notes it is really “a theodicy, a meditation on the problem of evil” that “acknowledge[s] in a meaningful way the darkest aspects of the reality we experience” and undertakes to “reconcile them with the goodness of God and Being itself against which the darkness of our world stands out so sharply.”

 

Much of Genesis is the story of sibling rivalry, a story of brothers. There is the story of Abraham and Lot, the story of Isaac and Ishmael, of the sisters Leah and Rachel, of Jacob and Esau, all of which ultimately culminate in the story of Joseph and his brothers. The tensions and divisions that these stories present are the setting through which God’s goodness and will, his purpose and patience, are glimpsed and known. It is all the grace of providence at work in and through our sins and failings. The first story after the fall of our humanity from Paradise is the story of Cain and Abel, the first murder. The last story of Joseph and his brothers, so beautifully and movingly told, is about forgiveness and reconciliation. Ultimately, it is the overcoming of the resentments and envy, and even violence that are so often a feature of sibling rivalry.

 

Joseph is the youngest son and the so-called favourite of his father, Jacob, of which the coat given to him by his father is the constant reminder, it seems. This excites the hatred of his brothers towards him especially when he tells them his dreams which they think proclaim his superiority over his older brothers. They conspire to kill him and throw him into one of the pits in the wilderness near Shechem and to tell their father that a wild beast has devoured him. Only Reuben intervenes to prevent them from killing him, planning to “rescue him out of their hand, to restore him to his father,” as the text puts it.

 

Joseph is left in an empty and waterless pit only to be found by Midianite traders who sell him to the Ishmaelites, in one version, or to an Egyptian officer of Pharaoh, Potiphar, in another. In any event, he is not killed but instead rises to prominence in Egypt through an intriguing set of events related again to his dreams which are really about prophetic insight.

 

Next week, we will jump ahead to the resolution of the story which shows the reconciliation of Joseph with his brothers despite their evil. There are “two vast and spacious things”, the poet George Herbert says about the passion and death of Christ that go beyond the wisdom of philosophers. They are, he says, sin and love. That is the recurring providential theme of the Scriptures as a whole, concentrated in the Christian understanding in Christ’s sacrifice which reveals both to us. So too with the story of Joseph and his brothers.

 

Parents love their children but love cannot be quantified and measured. Love has to acknowledge what is true and unique about each child as an individual. In our culture of ‘likes’ and ‘befriendings’ in the social media realm, there is the danger of division and hurt feelings and claims about who is loved more or less or even not at all. Such rivalry, like sibling rivalry, overlooks the deeper truth of our lives. Love is not and cannot be a competition for affection or attention. Our affection for one another in family and school should not be something calculative for that would not honour one another but seek to manipulate and use one another. The same thing belongs to sibling rivalry - our competition with one another for parental favour or attention. This negates the reality of love which cannot be measured in this way.

 

As Herbert puts it, “philosophers have measured mountains, fathom’d the depth of seas, of states and kings, walk’d with a staff to heav’n, traced fountains.” All good “but there are two vast and spacious things,” he says, things which are greater than natural philosophy, political philosophy, natural theology and cosmology, “the which to measure” is something of greater significance. “Yet few there are that sound them,” meaning to search them out. What are they? Sin and Love. That is what the Scriptures show and bid us sound them out.

 

The story of Joseph and his brothers, like the story of Christ, redeems us from our feelings of insecurity and resentment and their consequences. These are the things which destroy ourselves. These stories reveal another will at work that is greater than the limitations of all our loves and as such redeems them and us. We may intend something harmful to others, an evil which God turns into something good. In all of these stories and especially in the Passion of Christ we confront ourselves but in the love of Christ which redeems us from ourselves. The “two vast and spacious things” are sin and love.