REAL MEN DON T CRY August 14, 2011 Genesis 45:1-15 Erin M. Keys, The Brick Presbyterian Church in the City of New York God of mercy, amid the changing words of our generation, speak your eternal Word that does not change. Pour out upon us the spirit of wisdom and understanding that, being taught by you in Holy Scripture, our hearts and minds may be opened and lives may be transformed. Now may the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. My friend Laura has a five-year-old daughter whom she describes as emotionally intense. Now, most five-year-olds are emotionally intense at one point or another, but Laura s daughter, while not always able to control her emotions and I don t know many five-year-olds who are is remarkably capable at articulating what she feels. Let me share with you the story that Laura told me over coffee last week: It was a Thursday morning and Laura was getting her daughter ready for school. After one of their all-too-common fights about what to wear and what to eat for breakfast, Laura said she had to leave her angry, crying daughter with the nanny and go to work. Later in the day Laura s daughter called her on the phone and said, I am sorry, Mommy, for getting upset this morning. I was just so angry. To which Laura, wise mother that she is, replied, I understand, but what are we supposed to do with our anger? Laura s daughter was quiet for a moment, thinking, and then said, Scream?! It is a funny response because children so often articulate that knee-jerk reaction to emotions, a reaction that most adults have learned to control, yet we all still feel. - 1 -
My hunch is that most of us lose our temper and sometimes want to scream, but we can t go around yelling at each other every time we get angry. If someone hurts our feelings, we aren t always able to cry or sulk. Learning how to understand and control our emotions is an important part of the development from child to adult. A great way to help children process their emotions is to have them make life graphs. A life graph is exactly what it sounds like. On the left side of the page, you write your birthday, and on the right side of the page, you write today s date, and you fill in all the major events of your life up to now. I can remember making one of these graphs in third grade. I didn t have a whole lot to fill in, because I was only about eight, but I do remember distinctly marking the day my younger sister was born as the day I stopped receiving all of my parents attention. If you have ever made one of these life graphs, you know those particular experiences that make up your own emotional history. The day you had your first kiss. The day your Dad moved out. The month you were bed-ridden with mono. The year you spent abroad. As we age, our life graphs grow and expand. Some memories burn bright while others fade into the shadows. But the major events, the ones that haunt our silent moments, the ones that keep us warm on cold nights, those events are almost always the ones heavy with emotion. The time you lost a pregnancy. The time you had your first child. The time you fell in love for the first time and couldn t sleep because you were so excited. The time you lost that love. The times you laughed so hard you cried. The times you cried so hard you wondered if you would ever laugh again. In her book, An Altar in the World, 1 Barbara Brown Taylor talks about these life graphs and she says that if you study your own personal graph, it is likely you will notice that the most emotional times in your life correspond with the times of the most growth. Or, in other words, the emotional times in your life make you who you are today. 1 Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar In The World, Canterbury Press Norwich, p. 157. - 2 -
If Joseph, son of Jacob, were to make a life graph, tears would mark almost every major event. I went back and counted the number of times the story of Joseph mentions crying, and it was over thirteen. That is more than once for every chapter of Joseph s life. The most tears occur around the event in our text for this morning, the reuniting of Joseph with his brothers. In this text, Joseph weeps publicly as his true identity is revealed, much to his brothers astonishment. In previous chapters when Joseph encountered his brothers he wept in private, hiding his emotion, hiding his true self, and then washing his face to make the tear stains fade. Joseph s act proved effective, as his brothers had no idea who he was until his emotion made it clear. We are told that his youngest brother, Benjamin, the last child of Rachel, also began to weep at the sight of Joseph, and together they wept and kissed each other in a display of affection. This type of emotion, especially since they are males, is rarely seen in scripture or anywhere else, for that matter. In fact, one of the only other events in scripture that comes close to capturing this much emotion occurs when Lazarus has died and we are told that Jesus wept. So moved by the tears of Mary and Martha, and perhaps by his personal loss of Lazarus, Jesus wept, and we are told his spirit was greatly distressed. People often use the story of Jesus tears to highlight his humanity. That Jesus wept demonstrates he was, in fact, human to his core, for there is nothing more human than raw emotion. Emotions are the language of the flesh. They are our instinctual reactions to life as it unfolds before us. At times, our emotions betray us by revealing who we truly are when we so desperately want to cover it up. In the name of decency and pride, we will go to great lengths to hide our emotions from other people, and even from ourselves. We have been taught that emotions make us weak by making us vulnerable. When we are vulnerable, others see us in ways that we may not even want to see ourselves. As a result, we tend to keep our emotions hidden, packed away in large heavy trunks we shove under the bed. - 3 -
How are you today?, a friend asks. Fine, we say, just fine. If we were to pull that trunk out from under the bed, blow off the dust and wipe our hand across its lid, we might see the beautiful carvings in the wood. If we dared to creak open the lid just a little bit, and let the sunlight filter in, we might find newspaper clippings of the past events in our lives. Remember that time your mother hurt your feelings, but you didn t say anything? Or what about when your cousin asked you to forgive her but you refused. Here is a story about your first break-up, and, look, here is a picture of you the night before your Dad had a heart attack. How are you today?, a friend asks. Fine, we say, just fine, and you can t really blame us. Beginning with misinterpretations of Paul and continuing throughout the history of Christianity, countless theologians have insisted that the language of emotion, the language of the flesh, is unreasonable. Be reasonable, we say to ourselves as tears well up in our eyes. Be reasonable, we say to children when they throw their toys across the room in anger. It is no wonder that emotions have often been seen as the antitheses of reason. If you ask yourself why you fall in love with someone, is it because you made a list of pros and cons, or because you were drawn to them in a way that defies words? It is the unreasonable quality of our emotions that makes them so scary. They have the power to rip us wide open, to make us do things we would never think of, to say things we would never dream of saying. Emotions, dredge up from the bottom of our hearts, all the primal instincts we possess and it is for this reason that we have to learn to control them. But it is also for this reason that we may want to let them out once in a while, acknowledge them, and perhaps, when someone asks the question of how we are doing, we will have more to say than just fine. - 4 -
When Joseph wept repeatedly before his brothers, we are told that because he was unable to control himself, the tears flowed freely. In Hebrew, the word used for control means to be strong. When Joseph could no longer remain strong, he began to weep at the sight of his brothers. Why do we always feel like we have to be so strong, so reasonable? Like we shouldn t dare to let anyone else see us as the tender and sometimes weak creatures that we are? Immediately following Joseph s emotional breakdown, it is interesting to note that God s entire plan for his life became clear. Only after he weeps with his brothers are we aware of how Joseph really feels about being sold into slavery, going to jail, and rising to power in Pharaoh s court. As we discussed last week, God did not say anything to Joseph offering clarification on the events of his life, and Joseph has not said all that much about God until the crucial disclosure that comes in our text today. Up until the weeping, we had no idea that Joseph knew he was part of God s purpose. And in this moment, not only is God s plan revealed, but, for Joseph s brothers, the dead one has become alive again. It may be Joseph s moment of emotional weakness, but suddenly God seems exceedingly strong. In a similar way, right after Jesus weeps with Mary and Martha, Lazarus comes walking out of his tomb, a dead man no more. In both the case with Joseph and with Jesus it was their human emotions, the weaknesses of their flesh that cracked just enough to reveal the blinding light of God s life-giving intentions. As Christians, we are followers of the Word Made Flesh; the one who is divine, but also profoundly human. This means that we cannot separate the language of our flesh completely from the Word of God. The two are intricately intertwined, and while our emotions are often ambiguous, confusing, and misleading, making us weak as they open us up to be the vulnerable creatures we were intended to be, we may find, like Joseph, that as soon as we stop being strong, God will rush right in, filling us with life and illuminating the darkest parts of our hearts. - 5 -
I want to leave you this morning, with a poem. This poem is an adaptation and translation of the writings of St. Irenaeus, a highly influential Early Church philosopher and, thankfully, a theologian with a less reasonable take on human emotions. This poem is called Capable Flesh. 2 The tender flesh itself will be found one day quite surprisingly to be capable of receiving, and yes, full capable of embracing the searing energies of God. Go figure. Fear not. For even at its beginning the humble clay received God s art, whereby one part became the eye, another the ear, and yet another this impetuous hand. Therefore, the flesh is not to be excluded from the wisdom and the power that now and ever animates all things. His life-giving agency is made perfect, we are told, in weakness made perfect in the flesh. All praise be to God. Amen. 2 Adapted and translated by Scott Cairns, Love s Immensity: Mystics on the Endless Life, Paraclete Press, p 5. - 6 -