I have been thinking again, about the paradoxical relationship between good and evil, and the way suffering gets moved from the latter category to the former in Christ.
The Hebrew Bible has a fantastic hero story about the patriarch Jacob’s favored child, Joseph, one of 12 sons. He is betrayed by some of his jealous brothers and sold to the Egyptians as a slave. He is falsely accused by his master’s wife of attempted rape, and thrown in an Egyptian jail to die. By a serendipitous prison relationship and later turn of events, he interprets the Pharaoh’s dreams accurately, and in gratitude, the Pharaoh made him viceroy of Egypt, second in command to the Pharaoh himself. He is resurrected, liberated, if you will, from a living death, rotting in jail, to a position of power and honor. He then lives with a dual consciousness, as a Hebrew and an Egyptian. This position of privilege later gives him the chance to be reconciled to his brothers, and restored to his father, and to save his Hebrew people and the Egyptians from worldwide catastrophic famine…. And in the story, an astonishing statement is made about suffering, good and evil, with implications for theodicy.
Then consider the New Testament’s story of Jesus. He is the favored son of Joseph and Mary. He is betrayed by one of his twelve disciples, and his jealous Jewish “brothers”, who are the religious elite of his day. Jesus is turned over to the Romans, after having been falsely accused, and after remaining in their custody for torture, interrogation and humiliation, he is forthwith executed by the Empire. No jail time to speak of, unlike Joseph, his distant relative. The story about Jesus takes an unlikely turn of events when Jesus is resurrected, liberated from death’s tomb, and “exalted to the right hand of God the Father”. His position of power, after one of weakness, suffering, abasement and torment, makes possible the reconciliation of Jesus to the ones who abandoned him and betrayed him, and saves the world from spiritual death. He gathers his family and his disciples together, and they are empowered by him to henceforth go into all the world, and turn the world upside down, with a ministry of reconciling all peoples to God and to each other.
The statement made by Joseph to his brothers in the Hebrew story of redemption and reconciliation is this: what you meant for evil, God meant for good. Joseph’s words were said just to a few poor, hungry and fearful men, his brothers. They were clearly guilty of having done evil. They were the perpetrators of cruelty, suffering, pettiness and selfishness, racked by their father’s grief and too ashamed to tell the truth. Joseph said those words to them in private, in confidence, perhaps not wanting to further humiliate them.
This is amazing. The good news Joseph told his brothers is similar to the good news of Jesus, said now to all the world. Evil does not have to rule over us. Evil will not have the final word on our destiny. The evil we do, intended or not, God forgives, and God nevertheless meant for good. There is a transformational transcendent Path out of evil’s devastation, by the grace and peace and power of God’s love, to a greater Good. It takes human beings to live into that Good, with courageous love, hope and faith. Had Joseph given up, the Good that God intended to do through him would have been thwarted. The process of reconciliation, of changing the world one disciple at a time, works through us. That door to “Peace On Earth, Good Will To Humankind” hinges on us taking to Heart the manifold grace of God. We must claim the power we each have been given to be an instrument for Good in the face of evil, in the midst of suffering, in our steadfast resistance to despair, fear, shame and hatred, in our steadfast claim on the love of God and the God of love in the name of God’s nail-scarred Christ.
When tragedy strikes, when unjustifiable evil surfaces through the foolish hands of God’s wayward children, we who claim to be Christians can do no less than He did. WE must take up our cross, and follow him to the Other side of those Crosses. The good news is that there is Good news. We are the ones we have been waiting for. WE must be God’s Easter people. That is what it means to be disciples of Jesus.
Leave a comment