Jack Hardaway
So get this.
Jacob, of all people, has 12 sons and one daughter.
They become the 12 tribes of Israel.
Of course, only God would choose Jacob’s children to be the chosen people, to bring the Lord’s light to the nations.
What could possibly go wrong?
You know Jacob’s parents were rolling over in their graves, laughing about payback.
Jacob was a wild child. And now he learns to appreciate what he put his parents through.
Jacob’s family is simply shameless, the things they do and say, and Joseph probably had it coming, and it was all Jacob’s fault anyway for setting a bad example.
This reads like an afternoon soap opera, like sands through the hour glass so are the days of our lives…
All families are dysfunctional, especially God’s family. I used that line years ago. Gill Powell quotes it back to me quite often.
There are no heroes or villains, just a hot mess. And the God who loves them like crazy.
No one is innocent. They all share the guilt, though some more than others.
Being Chosen, what to do with it? This is a story about the wrong way to go about it and God bringing good out of it anyway.
It turns out being God’s people and God’s children isn’t about being special in any way, it’s about being given a job, often despite of who and what we are.
The dream of God. To carry that dream into the world. That is the job, the vision, the mission.
Jacob dreams, Joseph dreams, they become part of God’s dream to bring liberation, to set the captives free.
A people who are always under the thumb of someone, they dream of freedom.
That is God’s dream for a world held in bondage.
We see the beginning of the breaking of that bondage as Joseph is sold into slavery and taken to Egypt. The dream is coming true.
Joseph is the foreshadowing of Jesus going into the bondage of death and hell to set the captives free.
Joseph goes to Egypt as a slave, to set the world free.
God’s dream turns betrayal and deception into the glory of freedom, the glory of resurrection.
Peter is baptized today into that same death when he sinks into the storming waves of chaos.
And Jesus pulls him up again, and brings him back into the boat of the blessed community of faith, and they cross over the sea, to the other side, the exodus, to bring the healing and the freedom to love.
Jesus’ appearance on the sea like a ghost is a foreshadowing of his own resurrection appearance and his words of hope, to not fear, be not afraid. Rather take heart, take courage.
Peter foreshadows our baptism.
Pulled from the waters, into the body of believers, who cross to the other side, bringing healing and the freedom that is love.
What a crazy family we have been baptized into.
Nothing particularly special or perfect about it.
A spectacular calamity.
A shameless hot mess.
It’s just that God loves this failed family like crazy.
We simply bring who we are, as we are, where we are.
And God pulls us up out of the water.
Jesus is that crazy love for the world that we may be free to love like crazy as well.
A love that is without shame.
Take heart. Be not afraid.