Adult Bible Study November 18, 2007

Lesson Text: Genesis 45:1-12
By Melanie Zuercher
E-mail: mz606@cox.net

[Then Joseph said to his brothers,] “God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.” —Genesis 45:7 NIV

While preparing this week’s commentary, I heard a story on National Public Radio’s Day to Day program about a just-released documentary called “To Die in Jerusalem.” It tells of two girls who died in a 2002 suicide bombing in a Jerusalem grocery store. Both of them were 17-year-old high school students and both with long, dark hair and dark eyes. The bomber was a Palestinian, the victim a Jew. The story is about the struggle of the Jewish girl’s mother to understand how and why this happened.

I was thinking about forgiveness and about stories I knew of negative actions or situations that ultimately led to positive results. Most of us can think of an experience or a story of just that. The climax of “To Die in Jerusalem” is a meeting via satellite (because face-to-face proved impossible to arrange) between Avigail Levy, mother of Rachel, and Um Salim al-Akhras, mother of Ayat. Oh, I thought, perhaps this documentary is another illustration.

But it is not—not really. According to reviews, no profound revelations come from the meeting of the mothers. Avigail does not find the answers she is seeking. Despite having an enormous tragedy in common and being inextricably linked by their daughters’ involvement in it, Avigail and Um Samir seem unable to understand the other’s perspective in regard to the tragedy itself or the larger social, theological, and historical context in which each lives.

Wilma Ann Bailey, writer of this quarter of the Adult Bible Study, notes in this week’s lesson text that while Joseph is reconciled to his brothers, there is no evidence he forgives them. (See pages 71–73, Adult Bible Study.) She suggests that we consider whether war, a negative action, can truly lead to positive results.

In the short term, Joseph’s presence in Egypt, though resulting from a negative action, led to “a great deliverance” for his family. Yet a look at the longer history shows that further results were not so positive. Like this text, “To Die in Jerusalem” reminds us that even with intent, forgiveness is not always inevitable. Yet the documentary includes the hope inherent in the opening of a new channel of communication. Perhaps God’s “great deliverance” is simply that—that there is always hope.