Month: July 2018

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Funerals and Family Relationships

The gravestone of my 2nd Great Grandfather Robert White with my 2nd Great Grandmother’s behind it at our family’s ancestral cemetery in Russellville, KY
Much of modern life is geared around avoiding the aging process and not thinking about death. The Christian message is rooted in the reality of death. “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

It challenges everyone to consider their own standing before God and to be ready to meet Him on the day of their death. It also offers comfort in the face of death through the death, life, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Consider as an illustration the first question in the Heidelberg Catechism, a series of questions and answers explaining the Biblical faith written in the 16th century and adopted and loved by millions of Christians since: “What is your only comfort in life and death?”

Notice, however, that the focus is on the individual. The problem with this perspective is that an individual’s death is not only about that individual. It is about the family and those closely connected with that person.

The Bible answers the question of how an individual ought to face his or her own death. Does it have anything to say to the family about dealing with death?

I was wondering about this a few months ago. I was thinking, does God have anything to say about funerals? I quickly remembered that the Bible was full of examples of funerals.

Recently, I have been studying the book of Genesis. This is a book about families, and, not surprisingly, it records several funerals and describes in detail what happened.

The first thing you observe is that these funerals bring families together. For example, Isaac and Ishmael, who did not seem to be on best of terms, came together to bury their father Abraham (see also 35:29 and 49:1).

Second, the families take time to mourn. This is most clearly seen in Genesis 50. Joseph’s sons take 70 days to mourn for Jacob in Canaan, and they take a journey together to mourn him and bury him in the land of Canaan.

Third, when these funerals are done well, they allow the family to heal. Genesis 47–50 record Jacob’s preparations for death, his death, and what followed after. The conclusion of this series of events is Joseph’s firm declaration of his forgiveness of his brothers and his determination to take leadership in providing for the family in Egypt.

Most of the funerals in Genesis allow people to mourn the loss of a key person from the family system, deal with unresolved issues, and allow a new structure to form.

By way of contrast, consider the death of Rachel. Rachel was in a cold war against her sister and their servants (who had also served as Jacob’s wives) over Jacob’s affection and devotion. She died immediately after giving birth to her son. She was so full of frustration that she named her son “Son of my Affliction”!

Jacob took the child and said, “I don’t think so. We’ll call him ‘Son of my Strength.'”

Rachel’s death was unforeseen, and it was not handled with same care that the other funerals were. One result was that things got worse. Jacob looked to Rachel’s son to comfort him. This choice exacerbated the already tense situation with the sons of his other wives, and they eventually kidnapped their brother and sold him as a slave.

In light of this, I think there are several important lessons to consider about funerals and family relationships from the Bible.

The presence of funerals in the Bible indicates that God is interested in the key events of our family life. He takes an interest in these exits from our family system. God made the family, loves it, and is involved with it.

We need to take the time to mourn losses. This is true of all losses: opportunities, jobs, friendships, and death. It is especially true of funerals. No one has the right to demand that we put a period on our mourning, but when we take the time to mourn, we provide opportunity for healing.

Death and funerals are opportunities as well as losses. We can speak into people’s lives, we can call people together who might not have spoken for a while, we can testify to God’s grace, and we can recognize that there is hope for the future.

At the end of his life, Jacob gave Joseph’s children, Ephraim and Manasseh, the status of his own sons. Then he blessed them. He spoke into their lives and encouraged them in regards to the future:

May the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked faithfully, the God who has been my shepherd all my life to this day, the Angel who has delivered me from all harm—may he bless these boys. May they be called by my name and the names of my fathers Abraham and Isaac, and may they increase greatly on the earth.

This blessing embodies the grieving and the opportunity for the family in times of loss, death, and funerals.

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Why Did Joseph Test His Brothers?

In Genesis 42, Joseph’s brothers who had sold him into slavery arrived in Egypt and appeared before him, the ruler of Egypt. They obviously did not expect to see him there and so did not recognize him. Joseph recognized his brothers, but he did not reveal his true identity to them. Instead, he treated them with harshness. Why?

Commentators are not agreed on the reason. Perhaps my favorite suggestion is one we might call the “Hey y’all, watch this!” explanation. Picture Joseph talking to his friends at his office in Egypt. His brothers come in, and he says, “Hey y’all, remember my brothers I was telling y’all about. There they are. Watch this! Hold my beer!”

Unfortunately, this fruitful way of interpreting the Scripture has not been widely accepted by scholars.

One thing that scholars seem to agree on is that Joseph was not trying to get revenge. As one example, Matthew Henry says: “Now why was Joseph thus hard upon his brethren? We may be sure it was not from a spirit of revenge, that he might now trample upon those who had formerly trampled upon him he was not a man of that temper.”

This might be hard to believe in light of the fact that Joseph put all of the brothers in prison for three days. Then, he kept the oldest, Simeon, in prison, telling them that he would only release him if they came back with their youngest brother Benjamin. After all, when people start taking hostages, it’s not funny anymore.

There are two solid reasons to think that this is not revenge. First, Joseph could have done much worse. He could have made them slaves. He chose not to. Second, his own explanation of the situation indicates a long reflection on the meaning of his sufferings that excludes a desire for revenge: “And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you” (Genesis 45:5).

So, what was Joseph doing? It seems most likely that he was trying to determine if they had changed. Forgiveness allows people a fresh start, but relationships are built on the basis of people’s character. If someone has been abusive in the past, forgiveness allows a fresh start. However, a real relationship can only flourish if the abuser can let go of their abusive ways.

So it was with Joseph. Happily, in this case, Joseph saw that their hearts had changed. His pretend harshness culminated with a situation where he was going to take Benjamin as his slave. Judah stood up and said:

So now, if the boy is not with us when I go back to your servant my father, and if my father, whose life is closely bound up with the boy’s life, sees that the boy isn’t there, he will die. . . . Now then, please let your servant remain here as my lord’s slave in place of the boy, and let the boy return with his brothers.

At this point, Joseph could bare it no longer. He broke down and wept before his brothers. Reconciliation had begun.

Is there an application to us today? When we don’t feel safe because of past hurts, we can approach those who have hurt us to see if they have changed. If they have, then we should be willing to be reconciled without demanding anything else in return.

This may be hard, but it is the way of King Jesus. “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.”

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Judah & Tamar

When people haven’t read the Bible, they tend to think that the families of the Bible look something like this:

But when they read the Bible, they discover that the families of the Bible are more like this:

One of the best examples of this is the story of Judah and Tamar in Genesis 38.

Judah’s family of origin was a mess. There were multiple wives who were fighting for the favor of Judah’s father Jacob. This led to sibling rivalry. The brothers of three of the wives hated the sons of the favorite wife and eventually sold the oldest of those two, Joseph, into slavery.

It’s not surprising in this toxic environment that Judah decided to bail. “Judah left his brothers…” (38:1).

Judah sought out his own identity. He aligned himself with a Canaanite named Hirah and married a Canaanite woman. He had three children with her: Er, Onan, and Shelah.

And do you know what happens? Sibling rivalry. We often think that we can escape our family’s legacy by simply moving away. We can’t. As one author writes, “Time and distance cannot fool an emotional system.” They may provide temporary relief, but you have to confront the underlying emotional and relationship issues in order to really grow.

Judah’s firstborn, Er, married Tamar. He follows his own path and is a wicked man, so God sends judgment upon him. He dies without having any child.

In those days, the law was that if a husband died childless, then the next younger brother would marry the widowed woman and have a child for the deceased husband. It was called the law of the Levirate.

So, Judah’s second son Onan married Tamar, but he refused to impregnate her. He knew the child would be his brother’s, so he married her but refused to have a child with her. God was not pleased, and so Onan died as well.

Judah had one more son: Shelah. Judah was scared. He thought that marrying Tamar was the issue, so he held Shelah back, and he had a good excuse. Shelah was too young.

Tamar returned to her father’s home, and time passed. Tamar realized that Judah was not going to let Shelah marry her.

So, she came up with a plan to get pregnant. She dressed up as a shrine prostitute, and came out while Judah was on his way to shear sheep. Sure enough, he asked if he could sleep with her, and she said, “What will you give me?”

He said, “I will give you a young goat, but I don’t have it with me.”

She replied, “Give me your seal, cord, and staff as surety.” He did so, and they made love.

Later, Judah sent the goat so he could get his seal, cord, and staff, but the prostitute was gone. Nobody even knew who she was.

And . . . Tamar was pregnant.

Judah was furious, and he said: “Burn her!”

She was then brought out to be executed according to Judah’s hypocritical standards of sexual (im)morality.

Then, she held out Judah’s seal, cord, and staff. “I’m pregnant by the man whose seal, cord, and staff these are.”

Caught! Judah was deeply humbled. “She is more righteous than I,” he said, “for I did not give her my youngest son.”

Judah’s statement may not seem remarkable at first glance, but if you look at the rest of the book of Genesis, you will see that this was extremely rare in the book of Genesis. Adam blamed Eve. Eve blamed the serpent. Cain blamed Abel. Cain killed Abel. Sarah told Abraham, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering!” This was the way of things in those days and ours (see my article on this here).

But Judah took responsibility for his actions and confessed his sin.

This is always what opens the door to family healing. When one person takes responsibility for his or her action, the family has hope for change.

Judah was a changed man, and he symbolically received his family identity back by receiving his seal, cord, and staff. He was ready to go back to his family again and be the agent for change that he became when the brothers met Joseph again.

Taking responsibility for one’s own failings opens the door to family healing, no matter how messed up your family may be.

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