2023 August 20 (Proper 15A)

2023 Proper 15A

When I was a kid, one of those “games” bullies would play was called “mercy.” They would interlace their fingers with yours, palm-to-palm, and then push your hand backwards until you said, “MERCY!” at which time—ideally—they would release you from this torment and walk away laughing that they won.

So you can imagine that it took some considerable mental adjustment when I began studying the Bible and theology, and heard that mercy was one of the main characteristics of God. I couldn’t reconcile the God I loved with someone who would twist a person into knots until they finally begged for mercy.

But mercy is the thread that runs through all our readings today.

The lectionary doesn’t give us much of the story of Joseph. Last week you heard the story of how Joseph’s brothers, envious of his father’s favoritism toward Joseph (and, honestly, annoyed by Joseph’s arrogance) went to extreme measures to remove him from their family sphere. They were going to kill him, remember. One of the brothers didn’t want that to happen, so he convinced them to wait and put him down in a cistern. He was going to go back later and free him (imagine THAT conversation when Joseph gets home!) but things didn’t work out that way. They other brothers saw a group of travelers and sold their brother to them, then made a up a story of finding his beautiful many-colored coat torn and covered in blood, placing the blame on a non-existent predator who clearly stole him away and ate him.

Where’s the mercy in that story?!

The lectionary skips over everything that happens while Joseph is in Egypt—placed as a slave in a wealthy household and then falsely accused by the wife; imprisoned and forgotten until someone remembered that he had an ability to interpret dreams; being called into Pharaoh’s house and ultimately being placed in charge of the entire campaign to mitigate the effects of the famine that would descend upon the region; suddenly one day finding himself face-to-face with those same brothers who had done such harm to him in earlier years.

The lectionary skips over all the little dirty tricks Joseph plays on them—the ways in which he metaphorically bent their hands backwards until they cried “Mercy!”—and drops us back into the narrative with the reading we heard today. The reading that makes Joseph look so pious and righteous and…merciful.

And to be fair, for the rest of the book of Genesis, Joseph is merciful…even after his father dies and his brothers are afraid he’s just been biding his time.

Joseph sees that God has accomplished amazing things out of the pieces of their treachery. It is not my theological mindset to say that God intended or orchestrated those horrible acts in order to bring about the good. God doesn’t bend our fingers back until we cry out “Mercy!”

God is not a bully.

Jesus comes to that same conclusion in today’s Gospel reading. He has been working within the framework of his own religious upbringing, in which people from outside Israel are not part of God’s community. They don’t “deserve” God’s mercy.

I’m not going to sugar-coat this story. Jesus is incredibly rude and demeaning to this woman. He calls her a dog, which is a cultural slur against outsiders in general and Canaanites in particular. This is not the lovely, loving Jesus we’re used to.

But that’s part of what makes this story so wonderful. Because Jesus learns from her. His worldview is broadened. He gains a deeper understanding of God’s mercy.

Mercy could be seen through a fairly legalistic lens, in which it is clemency shown to someone who has done some wrong. Forgiveness to someone who doesn’t deserve it.

But this woman offered a different meaning. Mercy as compassion to those whose hands are being bent backwards by circumstances they didn’t cause or can’t control. Mercy as kindness to those who are suffering, if they aren’t “one of us.” Mercy without limits because it comes from the source of all love and compassion.

Our final hymn today is one we just sang at Hank’s funeral on Wednesday: There’s a wideness in God’s mercy… I consistently make the same typo when I am adding it to the hymns list. I type, “There’s a wildness in God’s mercy…”

And it’s not wrong. There is something wild about it. Something untamed, and out of our control. Something that might, sometimes, unsettle us. Something that we might not dare to trust as fully as we ought.

Joseph offered his brothers mercy in that reading today. They didn’t really fully accept it until years later, after Jacob had died, and they realized he hadn’t been biding his time until he could punish them for what they had done all those years before.  In some sense, they finally showed themselves mercy by trusting that they were really, truly forgiven, and given another chance. They finally stopped pushing back against some phantom hand, and instead leaned into the embrace being offered.  They accepted that even the dogs find nourishment in the crumbs dropped.

That in the wildness of God’s mercy, there is room for everyone.

Amen.