Grace Cathedral

“The word is near you, on your lips and in your heart” (Rom. 10).

The section of the Bible that comes before the Old Testament story of Joseph’s betrayal by his brothers is very fresh in my mind. It begins with these words, “This is the story of the family of Jacob” (Gen. 37).

What is your family story? My mother grew up in Yorkshire during World War II with a German mother and an English father. Although the air raids frightened her, and she could not understand why an enemy would bomb children, she enjoyed her early childhood with her brother, sister, and parents. After my grandfather heard her speaking with a local Yorkshire accent as she played with some friends, he very quickly sent her away to Roedean boarding school when she was very little. My mother left England forever with her family in the 1950’s.

My father grew up as the oldest child with a brother and a sister. His father who was an Episcopal priest and his mother taught preschool. There is something in my family DNA that leads us to marry people from different countries and cultures. Many of you know that my wife comes from a family deeply rooted on the island of Maui. Her family background includes Native Hawaiians and Native Americans, as well as people whose families come from Japan, China, Ireland, England, and Western Europe.

People in my family do not really have a home, although we long for one. Our lives have taught us how to be ready to make new friends and meet new people. For homework, I want you to talk about your family story as you drive home today. How does your family fit into an ongoing story that began long before we were born? It is hard sometimes to talk honestly about the forces that shaped our family culture or about what kind of family we want to be.

“[T]he story of the family of Jacob” includes some unforgettable characters. Jacob had a complicated relationship with his own parents. As a second-born twin, he was his mother’s favorite. Once when his brother Essau was hungry, Jacob made him sell his birthright as firstborn for some stew he had made. Later Jacob’s mother helped him to trick his blind father into blessing him.

Escaping his brother’s wrath, Jacob went to live with one of his relatives named Laban. Jacob worked for seven years there with the promise that he could marry Rebecca. Then Laban tricked Jacob into marrying her sister Leah. After working for a total of fourteen years, Jacob married both sisters. But Rebecca and her two boys, especially Joseph, were his favorites.

And so Joseph got special treatment. This included a beautiful robe (a coat of many colors or of long sleeves, depending on how you translate it). Joseph basically spied on his brothers and would report their misdeeds to his father. In the Book of Genesis, it says, “But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him” (Gen. 37). Joseph also told everyone about dreams he had in which all his brothers would bow down before him. Then when Joseph went out to see his brothers one day, they decided to kill him. The oldest, Reuben, spoke up to defend Joseph, and they sold Joseph into slavery instead.

For years Joseph suffered. But he was also brilliant at organizing things. Wherever he went, he would quickly end up in charge. Soon he was managing all Egypt on behalf of the Pharoah. This brings us to the story today. A terrible famine came to the land, and Joseph’s brothers came seeking food in Egypt. They did not recognize their brother. When Joseph saw them, he was so happy. He cried loudly enough for the people in the next room to hear him. He forgave his brothers. “He kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that, his brothers talked with him” (Gen 45).

We all know stories of people who are not talking to someone that they are supposed to love, to a family member or a friend. This is how the not talking to each other phase ended in the family of Jacob. It ended with this astonishing act of forgiveness. Joseph wept with joy to be reunited with his family. And they began to talk with each other again.

This story reminds us of a few things. Showing a preference for one family member over another undermines the family. It gives us a picture of how important forgiveness is in all human relationships. It also shows how ordinary times together matter. We will not always be together. The people in our families will grow up and move away. Parents get divorced and die. You will find times in the future when you will long to be back at a moment like this, when we are all together celebrating the beginning of the new choir year.

My son Micah was in Camerata Choir at Grace Cathedral. It was a nuisance for us as a family to go to his 3 pm Sunday evensongs. But we never missed a day because we realized how precious those times were and that they would not last forever. I would give almost anything to have just one of those ordinary days back. I hope that you experience the same joy that I did as a choir parent.

I want to share a story about the preciousness of our time together. When we allow ourselves to receive this gift of being together, it allows good times to circle back and become part of our lives again in surprising ways, even after tragedies.

Hans Fantel was an author and music critic for the New York Times. In 1989 he wrote about listening to a reissue of a live recording made January 16, 1938. It was the Vienna Philharmonic playing Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony under the direction of Bruno Walter.[1]

Fantel had attended that performance with his father. This is what he wrote, “We could not know on that winter Sunday that this would turn out to be the last performance of the Vienna Philharmonic before Hitler crushed his homeland to make it part of the German Reich.” “The music, captured that day by the bulky old microphones I remember strung across the stage, was the last to be heard from many of the musicians in the orchestra. They and their country vanished.”

Looking back over so many years, Fantel says, “I could now recognize and appreciate the singular aura of that performance: I could sense its uncanny intensity – a strange inner turmoil quite different from the many other recordings and performances of Mahler’s Ninth I had heard since.”

“This disc held fast an event I had shared with my father: seventy-one minutes out of sixteen years we had together. Soon after, as an ‘enemy of Reich and Führer,’ my father also disappeared into Hitler’s abyss. That’s what made me realize something about the nature of phonographs: they admit no ending. They imply perpetuity… Something of life itself steps over the normal limits of time.”

Today we are welcoming the Johnsons’ into our choir family. Jared, our new Canon for Music, is someone with a deep understanding of how music can transform our souls forever. He also sees that the way we treat each other is practice for what kind of relationship we will have in the future.

The Persian mystical poet Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207-1273) wrote a poem about Joseph. He writes, “I have heard that for ten years Joseph never slept at night. That prince kept on praying to God for the sake of his brothers: ‘Oh God, if thou forgives them, so be it. But if not, then I will fill the world with mourning. Punish them not, oh Lord… The [song of] lamentation spread to the celestial spheres and the angels, and the sea of Gentleness bubbled up and then broke the bonds…”[2]

This is a poem about forgiveness and the power of music as we discover what is most beautiful about us.

Let forgiveness, kindness, and self-sacrifice be the story of our families. As a choir family, let us enjoy these days that God has given us together. May the music we make be a blessing to all those who struggle to draw closer to God.

[1] “We could not know on that winter Sunday that this would turn out to be the last performance of the Vienna Philharmonic before Hitler crushed his homeland to make it part of the German Reich.” “The music, captured that day by the bulky old microphones I remember strung across the stage, was the last to be hear from many of the musicians in the orchestra. They and their country vanished.

Looking back over so many years Fantel says, “I could now recognize and appreciate the singular aura of that performance: I could sense its uncanny intensity – a strange inner turmoil quite different from the many other recordings and performances of Mahler’s Ninth I had heard since.

This disc held fast an event I had shared with my father: seventy-one minutes out of sixteen years we had together. Soon after, as an ‘enemy of Reich and Führer,’ my father also disappeared into Hitler’s abyss. That’s what made me realize something about the nature of phonographs: they admit no ending. They imply perpetuity… Something of life itself steps over the normal limits of time.”

Alex Ross, Listen to This (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010) 67-8.

[2] William C Chittick, The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1983) 137.