Mothering Sunday and the Prodigal Son

 Sermon. 30 March 2025. St Nicholas’,  Ashill.

4^th Sunday of Lent, Year of Luke: Mothering Sunday.

2 Corinthians 5:16-21

Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32

 

Time for a question. A thing about this year is that Mothering Sunday falls on a particular Sunday in the Church calendar. In the Church calendar today has, well, quite a lot of names, actually. It is Laetare Sunday. That means it is “Praise Sunday”. It is also “Refreshment Sunday”. It is also – and this is most boring one – “The Fourth Sunday of Lent”. So the question is this: when you think was the last time Mothers’ Day happened on this particular Sunday in the Church calendar? How many years back? Anyone want to guess? [People guess.]

 

It is every year. Yes, it was a trick question. It is deliberate that Mothers’ Day happens on “Refreshment Sunday” in the Church. In fact, that’s how Mothering Sunday started. Some of it is lost in the sands of time, but a possible history is this:

1. Lent was a time of fasting. Of going without. But the Church knew that it needed to be gentle with people. So around the middle of Lent, it said to people quite openly: you can have a pause, a pause from your fasting. You can treat yourself today.

2, Then a tradition grew up doing something a bit special on this Refreshment Sunday. You go to your Mother Church, the Church were you were baptised (christened).

3. Now, people who had servants knew that it was a good thing to give their servants this day off, to go to their Mother Church, and, in all probability, see their mothers, perhaps picking flowers from the hedgerows along the way.

That’s one account of why Refreshment Sunday is Mothering Sunday. Every year.

 

Let’s turn to our readings. The First Reading tells us of new life and a new creation. I hope this is attractive to you. Many families long for a fresh start. That reading wants you to have confidence that you can. God can give you a fresh start.

 

And in our Gospel reading, Jesus tells a story. Do you remember it? It’s on your sheet. It’s a story you may well have heard. It’s often called the story of “the Prodigal Son”.

 

Here’s my next question. Who is the most important woman or girl in the story of the Prodigal Son? [Nervous laughter.]

 

Yes, it’s another trick question. We have to be honest. In this story – a story told by Jesus, no less – no women and no girls are mentioned. I say again: we have to be honest. This is how a lot – maybe almost all - of the Bible is. Time and again, in the Bible, the men are named, and the women are not.

 

This is not a good thing. It comes about because of course the Bible comes to us from an ancient culture. Today, even people who call themselves “conservative” or “traditional” would do things differently. Today, we would all name women, and tell their stories too. That doesn’t mean that God made a mistake, coming in Jesus 2000 years ago. Whenever God came to us – whenever - some things would be strange, to those who came centuries before that time, and to those who came centuries after that time.

 

Now, a promise: no more trick questions. A serious question and an open question: is the story that Jesus tells us believable? [Various answers; all affirmative.]

 

You can argue it either way. The younger son ends up eyeing up the pigs’ food. Very few of us do that. Things have gone catastrophically wrong, if you end up envying pigs their comforts. So, it’s an extreme story. Unlikely, then.

 

But take a step back, and think about the shape of the story. A child falls out with the family, and goes away. The child comes to regret this, and comes home, expecting a telling-off, at least. What happens is some welcome him back with open arms. But some – meaning his own brother - resent him. So we have the rebellious child, and the resentful child. And… very tentatively… I think… that is believable. I think this sort of thing happens in families.

 

So it’s good to name it. Church isn’t a place where we make things up, where we pretend things are better than they are. Things can go wrong in families. People fall out. When people try to make up, sometimes people forgive, and sometimes they do not. Families survive all of this, and worse. Families are resilient. On Mothering Sunday, let us thank God for the resilience of families!

 

Another serious question (serious, open question): what’s the turning point in the story? [People speak of both sons.]

 

Well, one turning point is obvious. The younger son gets into the mess, then he really sees what a mess he is in. The English says: “he came to his senses”. The original (Greek) says: “he came to himself”. And that makes perfect sense in English too. He came to himself. And he gets up, and goes on a journey. The turning point. Obvious.

 

But I suggest that again it’s different if we ask what is the turning point for us, who are hearing the story.

 

What about this: “while [the son] was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him.”

 

While he was still far off. That’s when we get to the secret in the story. We learn that the story had a secret all along, and now we know it. The secret it this:

 

the father never stopped looking for his son.

 

His father, all the time, was looking into the far distance, and thinking, longing, praying:

“May this be the day, when my son comes home”.

While he was still far off, his father saw him, and rejoiced.

 

By the way, if it isn’t obvious, the father in the story is God. God the Father longs for each one of us to come home to Him.

 

God is loving, and some people speak of the motherly-fatherly love of God. God is a motherly Father. Now, thank goodness, the roles of the mother and the father are not as fixed as they used to be, with, at worst, the mother offering love and the father as the rule-giver. Thank God those days are gone. And yet… and yet I think it does make sense to think of the motherly-fatherly love of God.

 

While you were yet far off, God is looking out for you, longing for you to come home to Him, and rejoicing in your home-coming.

 

Happy Mothering Sunday.

*

Why is this service a Eucharist?

 

We now come to the Eucharistic Prayer.  That sounds like very churchy language. It’s only because it comes from a Greek word. It’s not hard to say what it means. It means the great Prayer of Thanksgiving of the Church. We pray thanks over bread and wine.

 

The culmination of this prayer is communion. A word about that. If you are confirmed, or if you normally receive communion in your own church, you are welcome to receive communion here. Just hold out your hand for the wafer, and take a sip from the common cup. If for any reason you are uncomfortable sharing the common cup, if you just take the wafer, you will have made your full communion. Moreover, any one is very welcome to come forward at communion – for a personal blessing. I will pray that Christ will nourish you, without physical communion. Christ can do that. Just bow your head when I come to you.

 

This prayer we pray now is so important for lots of reasons. I am going to mention two. At the heart of it, we do something. We take and bless bread and wine (I do it on behalf of us all). This is because Jesus at his Last Supper told us to do something. And it is good to pray by doing something. It’s not all about our minds and our words and our hearing. We do what he told us to do.

 

And the other reason I’ve already mentioned. This is the great prayer of thanksgiving of the church. If you want the direct route to God – there is one  - if you want the direct route to God, give thanks.

 

With this great thanksgiving, I say most of the words (not all of them) but you are welcome to join in silently.

If that seems strange, you are also welcome to let the words wash over you, and just see where they leave you. That’s perfectly acceptable.

But if that too is strange for you, just use this time to say your own prayers of thanks to God. The Church will be praying with you. That is what we are doing here.

 

*

Prayer over the Flowers

 

Let us pray.

God,

we thank you that you call each one of us to a unique vocation.

No one else can be the child of yours you call each one of us to be.

We thank you today for the unique vocation of motherhood,

and for all mothers,

for all who bear children, and who raise children.

Be with all mothers.

Be with

• all mothers who are a long way from their children
  and all children who are a long way from their mothers;
• all who are struggling to become mothers;
• all who feel pressure to become mothers, when it is not for them;
• all who bear disappointment because they cannot be mothers;
• all who mourn a mother who has died;
• all who have known too little of motherly love;
• all who were not able to grow as mothers,
  because of the loss of a child for any reason.

Give them strength and consolation.

Be with all whose fruitfulness takes another form.

Help your Church to get it right,

when it comes to knowing and saying what families are, and are not,

and how nuclear families fit into the wider Church community,

which, like our schools, is also family.

 

 

Bless now these flowers

in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

that all who look upon them

and enjoy their scent

will come to trust more firmly

that you are our good Creator

who loves us and calls us, each one of us,

to our own unique nurturing and fruit-bearing vocation.

Amen.  

 

 

Repentance, Thinking Again, Turning (and Spitting)!

 

Sermon. 23 February 2025. St Nicholas', Ashill. 

Lent 3 (Year of Luke)

Gospel: Luke 13:1-9

 

It’s not a secret. If you’ve had any teaching on the Bible, or have come to church a lot, you will know that we don’t really know who wrote the third gospel. We don’t know that Luke wrote Luke. Just like we don’t know that Matthew wrote Matthew, Mark wrote Mark, or John wrote John. The names we give to the four gospels are not plucked out of the air. There are real reasons for them, even if they don’t meet the standard of proof for a court of law.

 

So the tradition is that Luke wrote Luke (and Acts of course). Another tradition is that Luke was a gentile; he wasn’t a Jew. This makes most sense if Luke wrote Luke. I mean: there is a Luke character mentioned elsewhere in the New Testament, and he seems to have been a gentile. This means he wasn’t a disciple of Jesus, who followed him on his journeys between Galilee and Jerusalem. He didn’t grow up and live in the Holy Land. He was, as it were, a next-generation disciple, who had lots of contact with the first generation (including, quite possibly, Mary).

 

We can test this. If Luke were a gentile writing with gentiles in mind, he would have to explain Jewish practice. He couldn’t take background knowledge for granted. There are some hint of this.  He explains that Passover is the beginning of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for example. No Jewish person needs to be told that. It would be like explaining that Christmas Eve is part of Christmas. What would act to confirm this, is if Luke, when explaining Jewish practice or the practice of that part of the world, occasionally got things wrong. And I have to say: there are some hints of this too. Where? Well, I’ll mention when the paralysed man is lowered through the roof, and what we call the “Presentation of Christ in the Temple”. If you want to know what he seems to have got wrong, ask me later. (I occasionally like to leave some teasers in a sermon.)

 

So what? Well, I want to draw attention to what Luke does not explain today. In reverse order, he has Jesus referring to the collapse of the tower of Siloam, killing 18 people. And he refers to Pilate mingling the blood of some Galileans in the Temple. And he doesn’t give any background. He doesn’t explain what was going on. And so it is that we don’t know what Jesus, or Luke, is talking about. We don’t know of any tower of Siloam. We don’t know of Pilate mingling any human blood with sacrificial animal blood. We do know, by the way, that Pilate was cruel and bloodthirsty, and was not above killing people in the Temple. It may well be that that is all that is being referred to here.

 

Luke does not explain. He doesn’t tell us how the tower fell. He does not tell us what Pilate did. Why not?

 

I suggest it must be deliberate. It must be because he knew his hearers, or his readers, would be able to imagine the sort of thing. All people can imagine a disaster like a tower collapsing. It’s not quite a natural disaster. But it’s an unwilled catastrophe, an accident, even if a fatal one. And, just like that, Luke is assuming that his hearers and readers will be able to imagine a tyrant, a dictator, who, without a moment’s thought, openly and publicly, kills off trouble-makers.  Who seems to be in love with violence, and the threat of violence. What do we make of that?

 

There have been times in my life when the idea has been in the air that the days of murderous dictators were coming to an end. That democracy and civilisation and the rule of law were taking over the world, and once they had taken over, they would be unchallengeable. If like me, you remember that sort of thing being “common sense”, then, like me, you’ll be sad and distressed that those days are gone. We can be blunt. We don’t need to imagine murderous dictators. We know of them. We see them in our news.

 

It is always good to face up to things, perhaps especially in Lent. We can all imagine buildings collapsing. We can all imagine dictators and states killing people. Luke was, alas, right.

 

So far, so bad. Fortunately, that is the background of Jesus’s message, and not the content. The content itself is bracing. Jesus says this: “unless you repent you will all perish just as they did”. Unless you repent. You have to repent. We have to repent.

 

What is it to repent? It’s one of those religious words we may think is just too convoluted to mean anything real. In fact, it’s not like that. The Greek word for repentance, metanoia, means “think again”. It makes sense that, when we do wrong, that we sit ourselves down, and think again. You know the sort of thing. We are angry, and our anger takes over, and we cause harm. Or we are fearful, and we don’t speak out when someone is racist or in other ways cruel. Or we resent someone, and we know that we are actually enjoying our resentment. We feed it. Or – here is a big one – we feel compelled to pray, and we say: “tomorrow I will pray”, and we realise we have been saying that for months. The variations are endless. We need to think again.

 

That is repentance. The Hebrew word for repentance, teshuvah, means “turning”, or “turning around”. This is the underlying idea that Jesus is calling us to. When Jesus says “unless you repent you will all perish”, he is saying: “you really have to turn around”.

 

That’s a powerful idea. To be right with Gd, we really have to do something. Gd isn’t going to pour forgiveness over our head by force, whatever attitude we take to our lives. We have to do something; we have to turn. But! But that is all we have to do. All we have to do is turn.

 

In the last couple of weeks, I have had the privilege of preparing some parents for the baptism of their young children. You probably remember that part of the baptism service is called “the Decision”. Parents and godparents have to answer six questions. I always say that these questions have a centre. At the heart of them, there is the question: “Do you turn to Christ?”, the reply is: “I turn to Christ.”

 

In some forms of the service, this turning was literal. People would face the West, and face the devil, they might spit on him (a ritual spit). That’s not very Church of England, I know. But it can be a good thing to do. It can be good to belittle the devil. The devil only ever has the power we choose to give him. If we spit on him, he is nothing. Then we turn. We turn towards the East, towards the light, towards Christ.

 

Now is not the time to renew our baptism vows. The time for that is Easter itself, is Easter (the Easter Vigil, to be precise). But! But we can practise. In particular, let us have that experience of turning, of turning around, which true repentance is.

Face West.

Please don’t spit, or make your spitting a theatrical spit only!

Do you reject the devil and all rebellion against God?

I reject them.

Symbolic spit.

Do you renounce the deceit and corruption of evil?

I renounce them.

Do you repent of the sins that separate us from God and neighbour?

I repent of them.

 

Do you turn to Christ as Saviour?

I turn to Christ.

Turn.

Do you [welcome] Christ as Lord?

I [welcome] Christ.

Do you come to Christ, the way, the truth and the life?

I come to Christ.

 

To be right with Gd, you have to do something. You have to turn.

All you have to do is turn, and you will find Christ already turned towards you.

Amen.

To Heaven with Scribes and Pharisees!

 

Sermon. St Peter’s, Merton. 16 February 2025.

Lent 2 (Year of Luke)

 

                        Luke 13:31-35

 

Today’s readings are short, the Gospel especially so. A short reading can pack a punch. What is going on, in this punch? If we treat the end as the climax, as is natural, the reading is hard, harsh, and sharp. It has the smell of judgement about it, indeed maybe judgement in the sense of condemnation. Hear again: 

“You were not willing! See, your house is left to you… you will not see me…!” 

We might feel we know why this reading was chosen for the Second Sunday of Lent.

 

So far, so congruent. But there is something utterly surprising about the Gospel text. I wonder if you can spot it. It is hiding in plain sight.

 

I am thinking not of the end but of the beginning. The Pharisees. The role the Pharisees play. The Pharisees appear as… the allies of Jesus. They warn him that his life is at risk and he needs to flee. As we would warn someone we care for.

 

Now, it is true that some say that the Pharisees are opposing Jesus even here. The argument is that Jesus has set his face to go to Jerusalem [Lk 9.51] and meet his end as a martyr, for God’s purposes, and the Pharisees are trying to throw him off course. But there is nothing in the text to point in that direction. Much more natural is the idea that here the Pharisees are Jesus’ allies. They are worried about him.

 

How does that feel?

Time and again, when we meet the Pharisees in the Gospel, they are Jesus’ opponents. They are portrayed negatively. Yet this text is not actually unique. We might think of what Jesus says of the Pharisees at one point in Matthew [Mt 23.2], that the Pharisees sit on the seat of Moses – so do what they say! Think of the Pharisee Nicodemus, genuinely searching and seeking [Jn 3.1], defending Jesus in the Sanhedrin [Jn 7.50f], helping to bury him [Jn 19.39]. And in Acts, the Pharisee Gamaliel at the very least has an open mind towards the Jesus movement [Ac 5.38f].

 

All of that said, if we were to ask the average churchgoer, maybe even the average Briton: “Who were the enemies of Jesus? Don’t think about it, just give your first answer…” it is still likely that the word “Pharisee” would be voiced. And, yes, there is no doubt that Jesus has some hard words to say against them. I am not trying to deny that.

 

So, even within the gospels, the role of the Pharisees is complex, and can be ambivalent. What of it?

 

Well, here I will say a word from scholarship. For scholars have for some decades now been rethinking who the Pharisees were. Christian tradition tends to say that they were cold legalists. They thought God was distant, or judgemental, or both. They thought that Jewish people should be obsessing about the details of “the Law”, if they were to stand a chance with God. But this isn’t the picture that historical scholarship paints. The Pharisees were – if you can believe it – the reformers. I’ll say that again: the Pharisees were the reformers, the radicals. They had a deep love of the people. Yes, they wanted the ordinary people to live according to the commandments from Moses in detail, but that was because they wanted the ordinary people to be concerned with God and the ways of God. It was not that God was distant or judgemental. Rather, God is close, and is gracious. God has shown God’s grace supremely, by inviting God’s own people to live in a certain way. Why shouldn’t the people – all the people - relish responding to God’s gracious invitation to live well? That was the Pharisees’ view, and, if they had a failing, it was, rather than being too cold, that they were too hot in their enthusiasm for God and God’s ways (as they understood them).

 

The Pharisees as the reformers who really cared for the ordinary people. If we can catch a sense of that, it is a small step to think of the Pharisees as the Jewish group closest to Jesus and his movement. That’s what the historians say. I say again: the Pharisees seem to have been close to Jesus. And, that being the case, we can surely think of Jesus’s harsh words against the Pharisees – which, as I say, are there - not as Jesus condemning his enemies “over there”, but as having a passionate “in-house” disagreement with close associates.

 

You may well say: “So what? Why need we trouble ourselves with the reputation of a defunct sect?” Well, I say something is at stake. You see, the Jewish people – the Jewish people to this day - trace their heritage back to the Pharisees. Among the reformers of the Jewish faith (in Jewish thinking), first came the Pharisees, then came the Rabbis. The Rabbis are the heirs of the Pharisees. Don’t believe me? You can look this up. Rabbi Lionel Blue of Blessed and Righteous Memory wrote an introduction to Jewish life, and he called it: To Heaven with Scribes and Pharisees!

 

To heaven with scribes and Pharisees! Lent is a time of fasting. If you have given up meat, or chocolate, I wish and pray you well. Another kind of fast – a fast that doesn’t come to an end – is to do all we can to fast from prejudice. We can’t eliminate prejudice. We will all have instant and instinctive internal reactions to some people and places and things. But! But we can make sure we are flexible, supple, learning, in our attitudes. Make sure we are willing to think and feel differently about people and places and things, even when it feels strange, even when it turns our understandings and ordering of the world upside down. We can, for example, come to think that the Pharisees were not “the enemies of Jesus”. To say they were is an oversimplification, and worse than that. Perhaps we too might even come to exclaim: “To heaven with scribes and Pharisees!”

 

I wish you a blessed Fast. Amen.

"Creation Sunday" - Back to Basics

 

Sermon. St Nicholas’,  Ashill, 23 February 2025.

Second Sunday Before Lent (Year of Luke).

 

Genesis 2.4b-9; 15-end

Revelation 4

Luke 8.22-25

 

Someone once said:

the secret to doing well in a leadership role is this:

it’s about lowering people’s expectations at an acceptable rate.

[Gentle laughter.]

I didn’t know how you’d react to that.

Some people laugh, thinking it’s a joke.

Some people grimace, thinking it’s horrible cynicism.

You….!

Well, in truth, the person who said it meant it both kindly and seriously.

I think it can be taken seriously.

Let us name it.

I, as your new priest-in-charge, will not meet everyone’s expectations.

This is because some expectations will be just plain unrealistic

(won’t be serious about where the church in the world is today);

some will be in principle realistic, but will clash with my own frailties

(which I cannot just wish away);

And, most obviously, the expectations of some will conflict with the expectations of others.  

In one respect, I am bound to fail.

The parishes –

that’s both you, but really more the non-church-folk we are here to serve –

the parishes will want a “parson”, someone who shows up to village stuff.

But! But there are four parishes, and I am half-time.

It is built-in that I will disappoint.

(“Baked-in”, I suppose we now say.)

And, when it comes to other ways I will disappoint…

No! Don’t worry.

I am not proposing to give a longer list of my inadequacies.

I have named the point.

Expectations are high, not because I inspire admiration (I don’t),   

but because there is bound to be relief and excitement,

that there is a priest here again.

And, for all that relief and excitement,

there will be times when we will just have to bumble along together.

 

I am choosing to – I am daring – to say this out-loud, now,

not to focus on the negative,  

but because the theme of our readings (and set prayers)

today can help us focus,

focus on where we truly can place all of our hope, and all of our trust.

 

So, let us take a step back, where are we, today?

Well, today is one of quite a few Sundays actually

which might be called Creation Sunday.

I’ll take another step back.

Did you know that our cycle of readings

– our three-year cycle of readings –

is an “ecumenical matter” (as somebody once said).

It’s a cycle we share with Roman Catholics, and quite a few others.

But not this Sunday. 

This Sunday we divert from the path, and do our own thing.

It is not because we want to be cussed.

It is because we think it is good and wise to have this pattern:

year in, year out, we have:

a kind of Creation Sunday,

then a kind of Transfiguration Sunday

(remembering Jesus when his face was lit up and glorified),

and then… then we are into Lent.

Creation. Transfiguration. Lent.

Year in, year out.

 

So, you see, today is an excellent day to say:

don’t put your trust or hope in me;

put your trust and hope in the Gd, Gd, Creator.  

 

In our first reading, from Genesis, we are:

“In the day that Lord God made the earth and the heavens.”

We are right back at the foundation of creation.

We are led to imagine a creation

still new, pristine, perfectly beautiful, and naturally full of life and love.

This isn’t a tale about life long ago (however many millennia ago).

This is a statement about what God wills for this creation. Now.

This is a statement

about how we creatures can trust in Gd. Now.

 

If we doubt that, let us look to the second reading, from Revelation,

where we are given the picture of creation put right.

“[T]here in heaven a door stood open!”

and creatures manage to fulfil their destiny:

they worship the Creator:

“You are worthy, our Lord and God,

to receive glory and honour and power,

for you created all things,

and by your will they existed and were created.”

You see:

it is by Gd’s will that we exist and are created.  

This isn’t a tale about what might perhaps happen one day.

This is a statement

about how we creatures can trust and worship Gd.

Gd will draw us to worship. Now.

 

And so to our Gospel.

A short story of a storm, a gale, of raging waves,

a gale which Jesus calms.

Which leads the disciples to ask:

“Who is this, that he commands even the winds and the water,

and they obey him?”

 

Just hear these words again:

Jesus “rebuked the wind and the raging waves;

they ceased and there was a calm.”

They ceased and there was a calm.

We who know the whole story here see Jesus,

not in the power of the storm, but in the gentleness of the calm,

as the Lord of Creation.

This isn’t a tale about someone performing

some magic trick or some piece of theatre, back then.

This is statement about

how we can trust in God Creator and the Lord of Creation. Now.

 

So, if we will it, we are

“[i]n the day that Lord God made the earth and the heavens”.

If we will it, we can say, just like the highest of the archangels:

God, Creator,  “[y]ou are worthy… to receive glory and honour and power”.

If we will it,

we can at least begin to enter into

the calm that the Lord Jesus brings.

 

This Creation Sunday is a good day – perhaps the best day –

for us to focus - to refocus on how we can have “great expectations”.

My hope and my prayer, today,

is that we will increase our expectations at an acceptable rate.

But I mean our expectations from Gd Creator.  

Not, of course that Gd will magic all our problems away.

We can be blunt: that is not Gd’s way.

But this expectation can grow and grow:

that Gd will meet us where we need – really need – to meet Gd.

God will meet us where we need – really need – to meet Gd. Now.

It’s my own privilege and joy to be called to be part of that with you.

I look forward to us all helping each other.

Amen.  

 

Commentary on Torah Portion Vayechi (Genesis 47:28-end)

Our parasha brings to a close the story of Joseph with his death. This narrative is truly a unique genre within Torah; it has been called its one "novella". In this, it also concludes the whole book of Genesis/Bereshit. It is short, but packs a punch. There is never any doubt who is centre-stage. Not Joseph, but his father, Jacob/Israel. 
 
It is Jacob who gives his farewell discourse (Gen 49:1ff), blessing his sons (albeit sometimes entirely negatively), in poetry both beautiful and at times impossible to translate (as one may expect, if the impression of archaic origins is desired). It is Jacob who is expressly mourned by the Egyptians for seventy days (50.3). It is Jacob whose dying wish is fulfilled, as his remains are taken, with pomp and ceremony, to his chosen resting-place, with his ancestors in Canaan (50.7ff). What is more, in the only disagreement between Jacob and Joseph, Jacob prevails. Jacob blesses Joseph’s sons as his own, but, in doing so, privileges the second-born Ephraim over the first-born Manasseh, against Joseph’s wishes. Jacob is clear that, whatever the failings of his eyesight, he knows what he is doing (48:19f). It is Jacob’s agency which counts.
 
There is something instructive here, for any who would make plans to shape their own legacy: it can never wholly be in your control; any effort to steer others may fail, on many levels.  
 
What of Joseph’s own death – without poetic farewells, without explicit mourning, without a journey home? He dies at 110 (50.26). Robert Alter, in his notes to his translation, tells us this is the Egyptian ideal age, over against the 120 years of Hebrew understanding. Joseph is placed in a coffin – an entirely Egyptian contraption within the Bible. Is there bathos here? The story that begins with the expanses of the heavens and the earth ends with its focus reduced to a mummified corpse in a box, a box alien to the corpse, as alien as the land into which the box is laid. Is this a warning against assimilation? Is the stage being set for the Pharoah “which knew not Joseph” (Ex 1.8 KJV), and the wretchedness of slavery?
 
Something may be lost if this is our only reading of the brief account of Joseph’s death. Perhaps there is another character in this passage whose legacy is not fully honoured. I refer to Egypt itself. If we limit ourselves to Genesis, it is only fair to describe Egypt as wholly benign, a place of refuge, of rescue, for Abraham, as for Jacob and his children. We hear Joseph say of his own travails: “God intended it for good, so as to bring about the… survival of many people” (50.20, NJPS). The Hebrew is strong: lehachayot: “to cause to live/to make alive”. That giving of life was brought about by the synergies of wise Joseph, and (let it be said) attentive and responsive Pharoah, and the fertility of Egypt itself. We who know the fuller story may miss here the absence of any strictly religious animosity between Pharaohs and patriarchs. In Christian language, this has been called the time of “ecumenical bonhomie” (Gordon Wenham). So Joseph’s coffin, which is called an “aron”, may in fact be a type of the ark (“aron”) of the covenant to come; it houses a memory of divine providence.
 
Biblical Egypt, like every nation since, is not one thing, neither simply refuge, nor simply oppressor. Just as it is folly to hope – or to fear – that our own legacy will be entirely one predictable and predicted thing. This is to the good!

Written for Limmud on One Leg, 2025.