Judah Stepped Forward...

Genesis 44: 18-34

Charles J. Tomlin, May 30th, 2021

Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership 

Series: The Roots of God’s Justice 8/20

 

Dear people of God,  there is a character among Charles Schulz's Peanut’s personalities,  called "Pig-pen." He is always dirty-- as dirty as a little boy can get.  In one cartoon series, Pig-pen is at the sink in a bathroom, washing, washing, and washing -- but to no avail.   

In the first frame, he says: "Well, I'll be." 

In the next frame, he is screaming this word, "I've been afraid this would happen someday!", and then he shouts, "Mom!".  

In the next frame,  Pig Pen says in a rather bewildered fashion, "I've scrubbed an' scrubbed an' scrubbed, but I can't get clean." 

In the final frame, he says, "I think I have reached the point of no return!"

Today we consider an Old Testament character who hoped he had not reached the point of no return.  He had to come clean in his life, no matter what it cost him.   In Jewish and the biblical tradition, Judah is considered a biblical hero because of his own transformation.   More than any other of the brothers to Joseph, Judah had the willingness to recognize his mistakes and take responsibility for his actions.   This is what lead to his most ‘shinning moment’ in the Biblical story.

We have been considering the Old Testament roots of doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with God, as Micah described the human duty to God and to each other.   Today, we make a transition from doing justice to loving mercy, and our first example is this little known, unsung hero of the Hebrew Bible.   He was one of the Sons of Jacob and a brother to Joseph, named Judah.  You know the name because his tribe became the longest lasting tribe of Israel, where Jerusalem is located.  But do you know his story?

         

WE SAID...   SEEING RESPONSIBILITY

            Judah’s transformation into a person who loved mercy, didn’t come out of nowhere.   Genesis teaches that Judah’s leadership grew out painful lessons which ended with a sharp upward learning curve with far-ranging consequences.   Let’s briefly trace Judah’s growth, both as a leader and a learner in the school of mercy.

            Judah was the fourth son of Jacob and Leah.   We first meet him in Genesis 37, when he convinces his brothers to sell their loathed and most hated younger sibling, Joseph, rather than killing him.   Judah argued, “What do we gain by killing our brother and covering up his blood...after all, he is our brother, our own flesh (Gen. 37: 26-27).  Judah must be credited at having saved Joseph’s life, although the eldest Ruben also tried to steer his brothers away from their murderous intent.   Judah knew the violent nature of his brothers, because they had slaughtered the men of Shechem after their sister Dinah was raped by them.   Judah may have participated in that killing and is now having some regrets.   He sees what can happen if this kind of rage is turned against one of their own.   So, Judah steps up and intervenes.   However, Judah still doesn’t walk away with a clear conscience.  He still colludes in the both the selling of Joseph into slavery, and then later lying about it to his father. 

Next, the book of Genesis interrupts the story of Joseph, to devote an entire chapter to an episode in Judah’s life (Gen. 38).   Tragedy strikes again, when Judah’s newly married firstborn son dies, and then not long afterwards, his second-born son, also dies.  Judah blames his daughter-in-law Tamar for the bad luck.  She had been married to both of them, as she was chosen also to marry the second son after the first son had died.  So, Judah asks her to remain a widow at her father’s house until his third son was married to someone else.   

While Tamar is unfairly put away at her father’s house, learning that Judah had arrived in town with the third son, She removed her widow’s clothes, making herself appear available to be married.   However, Judah mistook her as a temple prostitute, lay with her, and she ended up pregnant.   Rumor gets around that Tamar had ‘played the whore and this so outraged Judah, he threatened to have her burned.  When Tamar presented evidence that Judah is the father, he immediately admitted his wrongdoing, saying,  “she is more right than I“(Gen. 38:26).  

            This strange story is told to show us that Judah is on a journey.  But Judah’s true shinning moment came much later, right here in our text when he approaches the Egyptian official, who unbeknownst to him, is really is long lost brother.   The way Judah admits the responsibility of his brothers and then accepts his own, as he tries to protect his youngest brother Benjamin and his aged Father, expressing his regret for what has been done to Joseph.  This is what finally moves Joseph to tears.   It is Judah’s step forward that opened up the path to his whole family’s reconciliation.

 

I SAID...   ACCEPTING RESPONSIBILITY

            Notably, Judah is the first example of open and obvious repentance in the Bible.   While is true that Jacob was reconciled with his brother Esau, it was not made clear how he admitted his wrongdoing and sought forgiveness.  Judah’s personal transformation is unselfish and full of pathos and compassion.  He’s changing heart and stepping up for a father, a brother, just as he did earlier for a daughter-in-law, Tamar.    

Following this journey of transformation, the tribe of Judah will go on to play a pivotal role in Israel’s story and history.  It was from Judah’s own line that David was born, and the Davidic dynasty ruled Israel for over 500 years.   Judah is also the tribal line, from which Jesus was born.  Judah was not only the forerunner of Israel’s kings, but he was the forerunner of the king of kings.   It was also out of the line of Judah that kings were punished for their misdeeds and rewarded for their repentance.   It was also out of this line of Judah, that Jesus came preaching the message that the kingdom had come near, through preaching of repentance for the forgiveness of sin.   What we see on display in Judah’ life in the earliest days of the biblical story,  is a person who was on a journey to learn how to love mercy by first accepting his own responsibility his wrong, challenging human brokenness with a growing love for mercy and reconciliation.  

“To err is human,” Alexander Pope, the famous British writer, reminded us.   When you read closely everything that was going on in the early stories of the Bible, from Adam to Judah, Genesis reveals just how deeply embedded our human flaws are.  Besides, Adam and Eve’s fall in the Garden of Eden, in the very first story their sons, Cain and Abel, when Cain was filled with hate for his own brother, God warned him,  “Sin crouches at the door... it desires to have you, but you must be its master (4:7).   We have been given the power to overcome evil, but instead, we are too often overtaken by evil.   Even King David, the Lord’s most favored ‘anointed one’ in the Hebrew Bible, sinned grievously.   Time and time again, the prophets emphasize the need to return to the right path---a path that accepts our own individual responsibility for our own wrongs, so that our relationship with God and with others can be restored.   The way we are both reconciled and restored is the way of repentance, what today, seems to become the most ‘missed’ and ‘left out’ word in our own spiritual vocabularies.  

Actually, the word ‘repentance’, which means to ‘turn’ is never actually used to described Judah’s actions.   It’s a word that doesn’t appear in the Bible until the book of Deuteronomy.   Yet Judah’s corporate and personal confessions and admittance of wrongdoing, are perfect examples of how this great spiritual need is unfolding, which is later expanded upon.   This happens in a long speech Moses began in Deuteronomy 4 that continues to Deuteronomy 30, where Moses makes his most important point, saying: ‘When all these things befall you….and you return (Heb. shub) to the Lord your God...then God will restore your fortunes and take you back in love (Deut. 30: 1-3). 

How do we still understand the implications of accepting personal responsibility that is expressed in true repentance, which is literally, a way of ‘turning around’ or ‘returning’  to the Lord who loves us.   Here, we must remember that the actual Hebrew word doesn’t just mean having sorrowful feelings about what we’ve done wrong or haven’t done right, or realizing our spiritual need before God, but this word ‘shub’ includes an actual ‘turning’ that results in an real, visible, measurable change in human behavior.    As a noted Hebrew scholar, Jacob Milgroom has pointed out, ‘This word Shub combines both repentance to ‘turn from doing evil’ to begin to do good.   True repentance is the living proof that sin has not destroyed us, so we are now able to get back on the right path, so that with God’s help, even sinners are able to participate in God’s restoring and saving love.

Of all the prophets who follow in Judah’s legacy most closely,  is the prophet Jeremiah.  Over and over Jeremiah frames repentance as ‘a return to the true terms of the original promise  that was made with God, both acknowledging sin and agreeing to get back on the right path.  God speaks through the prophet, saying:   “If you return, O Israel, declares the LORD, if you return to Me; if you remove the abominations from my presence and do not waver...in sincerity, justice and righteousness, nations shall bless themselves because of you… (Jer. 4: 1-2).   Here, we’re reminded that true, inward, heart-felt repentance, not only makes a difference in our personal relationship with God, but should touch the world around us too.   But for this to happen, as Jeremiah has already said in chapter three, we must actually, ‘turn back...recognize (our) sin...against the LORD (Jer. 3: 12-14).   

The proof that God’s people have actually ‘turned back’ is that we ‘mend our ways and actions..., by executing justice between people; by taking responsibility not only for ourselves, but for reaching out to others too.  As Jeremiah continues, he says we show true repentance, ‘by not oppressing the stranger, the orphan, and the widow; by not shedding the blood of the innocent..., by not following other gods that only hurt us...,”  Then God says, if we truly ‘repent’ and do justice and love mercy by showing it, we can ‘continue to dwell in the land’ God has given to us (Jer. 7: 3-7).  Do you see both the requirement that comes with a requisition that lays claim on the land.  The land is the promise given, but is also provisional.  It’sonly kept in possession as long as the promise of justice, righteousness, and mercy are kept.  

Latter in his own ministry, Jeremiah employs a vivid artistic picture to put God’s involvement in our willingness to repent and return to the promise.   After visiting the Potter’s house,  Jeremiah likens God to a potter who can build up or tear down his creation at any time.  “At one moment,”  God says, “I may decree that a nation or a kingdom be uprooted, pulled down, and destroyed; but if that nation... turns back (repents) from its wickedness, I change My mind concerning the punishment I planned to bring upon it(Jer. 18: 7-8).   In all these various passages, the prophet, following the kind of spiritual growth on display in the life of Judah,  presents the power of repentance as the way to change the situation; both for the one who has sinned, and for the one who is sinned against.

Through the years, the emphasis of repentance has often been placed on the person who has sinned, rather than the one sinned against.   As a Rabbi once told his listeners, “Repent the day before you death.”   

His disciples then asked him, “But Rabbi, does a person know what day he or she is going to die?”    The Rabbi responded, ‘All the more reason to repent today, lest one die tomorrow without having repented.’ 

Yes, repentance is something we must do, as the movies say, before we  ‘prepare to meet our maker ‘.   However that’s something you more in the movies than you see in the Bible.  In the Bible, like in the story of Zacchaeus, where he asks forgiveness and offers restitution to those he’s harmed.  It’s also the primary focus in the preaching of John the Baptist, Jesus, Peter, and Paul too.  The main emphasis of repentance is on how our change of heart influences the world around us, here and now.   Of course, we need to be ready to die, but we don’t want to miss what it means to live after we make peace with God, ourselves, those that we’ve sinned against.  

This is exactly what is so important to see in Judah’s life, as the first great biblical example of a repentant heart.  Judah’s repentance is not simply individual or personal, but it’s also relational and social.  The emphasis is on restoring his relationship with his brother which is what it meant for him to be reconciled in his relationship with God in this moment.   This is exactly the kind of repentance Jacob also observed as he embraced his brother, then looked into his brother’s face and commented,  ‘seeing you, and knowing you receive me favorably,  is like looking into the face of God” (Gen. 33:10).  How can we know what repentance looks like, until it shows up in how we live and relate to those others?

 

TAKE ME INSTEAD...  Ready to make a difference

This ‘outward’ nature of true repentance coming out of Judah’s heart is most clearly revealed to us in how he tries to look out for his ‘other’ little brother and his aged Father, rather than himself.   Do you see it?  The focus of true repentance can never be only self-oriented.   If repentance is only to save ourselves, we have failed to understand its full ramifications.  We missed how repentance relates to restoring our relationship with God in a way that also seeks reconciliation with others.  

This whole movement from the experience of mercy in our own hearts to

 showing mercy toward others goes all the way back to one the most important characteristics of human beings; our capacity to distinguish right from wrong.   In Genesis 3: 5, even the serpent knows that humans can know right from wrong (3:5).  This is who humans are, people who are like God, knowing good and bad (3:22).   This knowledge of good and evil means that we know how to choose to do ‘good’ rather than ‘evil’ too.   Making this choice is how true repentance is proven in the decisions we make in our relations with others.  The book of James says ‘faith’ in the heart, without good ‘works’ in our lives for others, is dead alone.  

            In his own repentant heart, Judah shows us how faith works, as he recognizes his duty to do justice (what is right) and then clarifies the aim of justice is to love mercy, by showing mercy, and here he begs for mercy regarding his little brother and aged Father.  Judah puts his own life on the line to do the right thing, asking for mercy for the sake of those he loves, not for his own sake, proving his true repentant heart.   

            There’s an very artistic movie made about the life of a Christian man, who lived in the Austrian Alps, during World War II, by the name of Franz Jaegerstaetter.   The movie is based upon the letters Franz wrote to his wife from prison, before he was executed for refusing to go to serve in Hitler’s army.  Franz’s courage to live and die for his convictions was heroic, but also tragic.  He suffered ridicule by his village, was mocked by fellow prisoners, and was beaten by the guards.  In the end, he left his wife to raise their two children all alone, after the Nazi’s beheaded him for treason against the state.  But in spite of everything it cost him personally, Franz was willing to give up his life.  

Today, Franz is remember as a modern ‘saint’ to his hometown people, because he was willing to speak and suffer for the truth as an example of righteousness and compassion toward others.  He spoke the truth, even though he looked like a pitiful, nonconforming fool at the time, much in the same way Christ looked to the Jewish and Roman leaders.    The questions people kept asking Franz over and over were,, ‘What difference are you really going to make in the world?  Who really knows why you are suffering?  Who really cares?  Aren’t you wasting your life for nothing?  Why don’t you swear an oath to Hitler, even if you don’t mean it, just like everyone else?

              In a certain way Judah was like Franz, willing to not to remain silent like his other brothers, but to step forward, face and and speak the truth the others remained silent.  Judah stepped up and spoke up, not knowing how it would turn out.   Fortunately, his actions touched Joseph’s heart.  Jospeh who was moved to tears and forgave all his brothers and was reconciled with them all because Judah’s risk to speak up for mercy.     

Amen.