MISERY LOVES COMPANY?

 

They say, “Misery loves company,” but I don’t know about that. 

The idea is we tend to spread our pain to others as if by division we can diminish our share of anguish.  I’ve been sad enough to be bitter and make my company miserable, too.  It didn’t help.  For each companion infected with despair, the inverse occurred, and my share of misery multiplied.   My misery does not love present company. 

But PAST company is welcome. 

There is surprising comfort in realizing that my particular distress isn’t particular to me.  Someone else has scars in the same place.  Others have fought the same battle, lost it like me, survived the loss, fought it again, and survived to share the story.

 This is why I love the Bible’s record of failures.  

 Jacob “wrestling” with insomnia because he’s convinced himself that his brother is going to massacre his entire family (Genesis 32).  David starving himself in seemingly suicidal desperation because he can’t fix the consequences his stupid choices have caused for his child (2 Samuel 12).  Elijah in a state of bi-polar depression running away from his greatest success, isolating himself from loyal company, mentally self-abusing, and wanting to just die. “It is enough! Now, Lord, take my life, for I am no better than my fathers!” (1 Kings 19: 4).  

None of those miserable examples of humanity survived that moment unscathed, but each of them survived.  They got up --- limping, grieving, chastised and still angry; but they got up and went on to succeed.   

 It comforts me to be in the company of such a great cloud of miserable witnesses.  

It should comfort our community to open the Bible and read that that we are not  the first community of faith to experience this particular combination of anxiety, anger, hope?, resignation, and cynicism about the possibilities of justice. 

The Korahites had been slaves, leaders, rebels, outcasts, and worship leaders.   One of their songs declares the misery of being citizens of a country defined by sin, led by lies, governed unjustly, and oppressed with impunity. 

Vindicate me, O God,

And plead my cause against an ungodly nation;

Oh, deliver me from the deceitful and unjust man!

For You are the God of my strength;

Why do You cast me off?

Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?  (Psalm 43: 1-2)

 

The sons of Korah pleaded for a sign, for a Word from the Lord that would make all their praise and worship seem relevant in the midst of national misery.

 Oh, send out Your light and Your truth!

Let them lead me;

Let them bring me to Your holy hill

And to Your tabernacle.

Then I will go to the altar of God,

To God my exceeding joy;

And on the harp I will praise You,

O God, my God. (Psalm 43: 3-4)

We don’t know what were the specific issues which inspired the 43^rd psalm. What were the alternative facts delivered by the deceitful and unjust man?  Whose lives didn’t matter to the ungodly nation they nevertheless loved?  What were the systemic tools used for oppression?  We don’t know how or if the complaints in the psalm were justly resolved? 

 

All we know is their misery. 

And we know how they survived, got up, and kept going. 

 Why are you cast down, O my soul?

And why are you disquieted within me?

Hope in God;

For I shall yet praise Him,

The help of my countenance and my God. (Psalm 43:  5)     

 

The Korahites worked on themselves internally. 

Why are you cast down, O my soul?  And why are you disquieted within me? 

They concluded that they could not survive depending on circumstances as the source of their mental health.  They recalled that they, like the miserable saints before could endure and progress if they placed their hope in God. 

Hope in God 

The Sons of Korah decided to reinvest in their praise and worship.  To simply DECIDE that their praise and worship was relevant. 

For I shall yet praise Him

They decided to remember, to believe, to KNOW that God had brought them through every past battle; and, therefore, He would bring them through the next battles, including the battles with their own misery. 

The help of my countenance and my God.  

 These all foreshadowed the greatest story of misery and success. 

JESUS had no form or comeliness . . . no beauty that we should desire Him. . .  He was despised and rejected by men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.  He was lonely because we hid, as it were, our faces from Him.  He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.   (Isaiah 53: 2, 3)

Jesus triumphed over death, the grave, Hell, sin, and human betrayal.  This is our God in whose eternal company we have our most precious hope. 

This is the company that misery can love.   

Over and over, the Bible affirms:  You may not feel alright right now, but you will be alright in the long run. 

You will lose sometimes, but you will ultimately win.

God’s people hurt, too.  But God heals His people.   Every time.

May our present anxiety find relief in the great cloud of witnesses who have suffered and triumphed before us.       

 AND GO VOTE ON TUESDAY. 

-  Anderson T. Graves II, is a writer, community organizer, consultant and the pastor of Bailey Tabernacle CME Church 

Email: BaileyTabernacleChurch@comcast.net

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DINAH'S STORY: THE SEXUAL ASSAULT OF ISRAEL'S DAUGHTER

blogging Genesis 34.

Israel, aka Jacob, had 12 sons, but he only had 1 daughter.  Her name was Dinah.  

She was raped.

Israel had settled his family on land he bought near the Canaanite city of Shechem (Genesis 33:19).  At this point in history, the house of Israel wasn’t on a campaign to dispossess the Canaanites, and God had not commanded them to separate themselves from Canaanite communities.  Israel (the man and the family) were free to cultivate close business and personal relationships with the Canaanites,  which is why it was neither sinful, unwise, or unusual for Dinah, Israel’s only daughter, to go visit Caananite girl-friends in the city (Genesis 34:1)

"Now Dinah the daughter of Leah, whom she had borne to Jacob, went out to see the daughters of the land." (Genesis 34:1)

On one of those visits to Shechem, Hamor noticed Dinah.  Hamor was the richest young man in the city that was named after his family.  He was known as the “prince of the country” and he wanted Dinah.

The Bible says he “saw her, he took her and lay with her, and violated her” (Genesis 34:2, NKJV).  

The KJV says “he took her, and lay with her, and defiled her.” The NASB translates “he took her and lay with her by force.”  The NIV says “he took her and raped her.”

The Hebrew verb being used is anah which means to afflict, to force into humility, to abase, to impose one’s will upon.  Hamor did to Dinah what Hamor wanted to do and he did it WITHOUT DINAH’S CONSENT.   He abducted and raped her.

Genesis 34:7 calls what Hamor did to Dinah “a disgraceful thing in Israel. . . , a thing which ought not to be done.”  In other words, it was NOT O.K. 

After his crime, Hamor tried to be charming.  He tried to convince Dinah that she had wanted it, too.  He even asked his father to arrange marriage between them.  That was verses 3 and 4.  Verse 7 says what Hamor did to Dinah was “a disgraceful thing in Israel. . . , a thing which ought not to be done.”  It was still not O.K.

The Bible is essential not comprehensive.  Scripture doesn’t provide comprehensive details of all or of any historical events in the Old Testmament and New Testament timelines.  I’m not on a tangent; follow me on this.  Through scripture, God retells the events, ideas, and details that are essential for knowing God and living in right relationship with Him.  Most historical events don’t make it into the Biblical record.  Those that do, like Dinah’s rape, are case studies from which we can extrapolate lessons about God and humanity which transcend culture, time, and geography.

So, the details missing from the case of sexual assault in Dinah vs. Hamor are details which the Holy Spirit has ruled are non-essential.

We don’t know what Dinah was wearing when she visited her friends in Shechem because God’s saying it doesn’t matter what she was wearing.   We don’t know if Dinah had been drinking.  God’s saying that doesn’t matter.  How’d she end up alone with Hamor?  Did she try to fight?  Why didn’t she fight harder?  Why didn’t she yell for help or yell louder?  There’s no way to know or derive those answer from the information in the Bible because IT DOESN’T MATTER.

What does matter is:  Hamor took Dinah and lay without her consent.    He raped her. 

Christians claim spiritual (not necessarily biological) descent from Abraham.   “Know then that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham” (Galatians 3:7).  So Old Testament Israel is a metaphor for the church.  Dinah is the daughter of Israel, and she represents the daughters of the church.   Israel's response to Dinah speaks to the church's response to women in our congregations, our spiritual daughters.

So how did Israel handle Dinah’s sexual assault?  Typically. Which is to say BADLY.

Misstep 1.  Control the damage instead of comfort the victim. 

When Jacob/ Israel found out, his first act was to limit access to information to prevent negative publicity.  ^“And Jacob heard that he had defiled Dinah his daughter. Now his sons were with his livestock in the field; so Jacob held his peace until they came out” (Genesis 34:5).

Misstep 2.  Negotiation instead of investigation.    

In verses 6-9, Hamor and Shechem have the actual audacity to show up at Dinah’s home say, “Ask me ever so much dowry and gift, and I will give according to what you say to me; but give me the young woman as a wife.”  As his wife in those times, Dinah wouldn’t be able to claim he’d dishonored her.    

Israel participated in what was the Bronze Age equivalent of offering a monetary settlement to the company in exchange for the victim signing a nondisclosure agreement.

  

Misstep 3.  Vaccum of injustice.  Israel did not appropriately handle these very serious allegations.  He tried to silence the complaint before it damaged his business relationships.   Where there should have been justice there was ----- nothing.  Nature abhors a vacuum.  God abhors a vacuum of injustice. 

You shall not pervert justice; you shall not show partiality, nor take a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous.  (Deuteronomy 16: 19)

He who justifies the wicked, and he who condemns the just, both of them alike are an abomination to the Lord. (Proverbs 17: 15)

It’s easy to calculate a response when the perpetrator is an addict, a vagrant, or a certified sex-offender.  But what about when the predator is a prince, and he’s charming, and he speaks sweetly, and he’s from a good family, and we have important business with them? 

What happens to Dinah’s allegations when they implicate someone we like?

A vacuum of injustice  will be filled with VENGEANCE.  Organized, public, loud, costly vengeance. 

Misstep 4.  Division of the house.  Dinah’s brothers pretended to go along with the old, rich men’s  plan for settlement and damage control.  

“The sons of Jacob answered Shechem and Hamor his father, and spoke deceitfully, because he had defiled Dinah their sister. And they said to them, “. . . On this condition we will consent to you: If you will become as we are, if every male of you is circumcised” (Genesis 34: 13-16).

But  the militant young brothers in the (church) family had plans of their own.  

“Now it came to pass on the third day, when they were in pain, that two of the sons of Jacob, Simeon and Levi, Dinah’s brothers, each took his sword and came boldly upon the city and killed all the males. And they killed Hamor and Shechem . . . and took Dinah from Shechem’s house, . . . and plundered the city” (Genesis 34:25-28).

Organized, public, loud, costly vengeance. 

Israel rebuked them.  The old head(s) of the family   Israel argued that their extreme, public actions would upset the dominant majority and make trouble for their good, law-abiding community. 

Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, “You have troubled me by making me obnoxious among the inhabitants of the land, among the Canaanites and the Perizzites; and since I am few in number, they will gather themselves together against me and kill me. I shall be destroyed, my household and I.” (Genesis 34:30)

The young militant brothers didn’t care (verse 31).

Israel's standing in that community was ruined.  The next chapters detail how they had to close and move.  The whole (church) family entered a season marked by soul-searching, death/decline, and inconsolable grief (Genesis 35).  The relationship between the 2 generations in the house of Israel was damaged beyond repair.  The rest of Genesis is story after story of betrayal, drama, mess, back-stabbing, selling-out, and moral hypocrisy that makes the house so dysfunctional  that all their old leader Israel ever talks about for the rest of the book is dying.

Mess.  Drama.  Cross-generational infighting. Organizational dysfunction.  Hypocrisy.  Loss of moral center.  An obsession with the death of the institution.   Does any of this sound familiar to the church? 

This generation will no longer accept the old missteps.  They won’t settle for silence  just to keep peace.  They demand justice and if that is denied ---- they will fill the vacuum.

So will our spiritual Israel learn from the missteps of the man Israel, or will we repeat them like all our institutions have been doing for all the centuries since Dinah was attacked?

We’ll find out.  And I don’t think it’ll be long before we do.

 For the time has come for judgment to begin at the house of God; and if it begins with us first, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God?  (1 Peter 4:17)

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

Click here to support this ministry with a donation.  Or go to andersontgraves.blogspot.com and click on the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

LOGICAL INJUSTICE

So, there’s this thing I’ve heard in church for decades ---- well, one of several things ---- that just never quite sounded right to me.  When my preachers and Sunday school teachers talked about Jesus’ trial and crucifixion they explained that Jesus’ Jewish accusers brought Him to Pilate Jewish courts didn’t have the authority to issue the death penalty.  That sounded logical.  The Jews were a conquered people living under Roman occupation as second-class citizens in their own land.  It made sense that Rome would limit the legal power of Jewish courts.  My teachers even had a Scripture reference.  

In John 18:31 Pilate tried to remand Jesus’ case back to the Jewish Councils.   He said, “You take Him and judge Him according to your law.”

Therefore the Jews said to him, “It is not lawful for us to put anyone to death.”

The Jews in this verse were experts on the Law. They said what the law said, so that must be right.

Right?

Do you remember the story of the woman they caught committing adultery and dragged before Jesus while He was teaching in the Temple.  Yes?  No?  Anyway,  it’s in John 8.

John 8:4-5  they said to Him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned.

Stoned.  As in, “to death.”  They didn’t need Pilate’s permission then.

And just to be clear that this wasn’t some gender-specific exception.  Go down a little further to John 8:59  and John 10:31 because in those passages, they tried to stone Jesus.  As in, “to death.”  Just a few months after the crucifixion, Acts 7 states that the same religious-political authority that told Pilate they didn’t have the legal authority to put anyone to death exercised their legal authority to stone Stephen to death for preaching Jesus.

So yeah, they said that they couldn’t carry out the death penalty, but they could.

In the late night and early morning between the Last Supper and the Crucifixion, two separate trials, presided over by the high priest emeritus Annas and reigning high priest Caiaphas, had both found Jesus guilty of criminal blasphemy.   And they all condemned Him to be deserving of death (Mark 14:64).  So why didn’t they carry out the sentence?  They had the authority to hit Jesus in the head with rocks until He died.  They could have thrown Him off a cliff on to the stones below (Luke 4:28-30). They had won.

Why did the winning prosecutors appeal their own case to Pilate?

Because --- and this is the puzzle piece that I hadn’t previously connected to the crucifixion story --- because of Deuteronomy 17.

The rulings of the Sanhedrin Councils were based on the Mosaic law like American court cases are based on the Constitution and state criminal codes.

Whoever is deserving of death shall be put to death on the testimony of two or three witnesses; he shall not be put to death on the testimony of one witness.

The hands of the witnesses shall be the first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hands of all the people. So you shall put away the evil from among you. (Deuteronomy 17: 6-7)

Every Jewish death penalty case required the testimony of multiple eye witnesses.  The witnesses in a capital case had to participate in carrying out the death sentence.  In fact  the  hands of the witnesses shall be the first against him to put him to death.

Witnesses had to be the first to cast stones.

You couldn’t testify that, for example, a man had blasphemed Moses and the Temple, falsely claimed to be the Son of God and threatened to destroy the Temple and overturn the scriptures and then just go home.  You had to go out in public and by casting the first stone  declare that you had personally seen and heard everything in your sworn testimony.

Oh, and another statue of the Mosaic Law stated that

If a false witness rises against any man to testify against him of wrongdoing, . . . then you shall do to him as he thought to have done to his brother; so you shall put away the evil from among you.. .  Your eye shall not pity: life shall be for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. (Deuteronomy 19:16, 19, 21)

If the community found out you had lied in a capital blasphemy case, they were required to stone you.  As in, “to death.”

. .  . many bore false witness against Him, but their testimonies did not agree (Mark 14:56).

None of the witnesses were willing to risk their lives on stories they couldn’t even keep straight among themselves, especially when just a few days earlier, on Palm Sunday, all of Jerusalem had been shouting “Hosanna” and praising Jesus as “He who comes in the name of the Lord” (John 12:13).

Even though the high priests had double-convictions against Jesus, they couldn’t carry out the sentence because nobody was willing to cast the first stone.

And that is why they took Jesus to Pilate. 

It’s like when a local district attorney  forces through a conviction on shaky evidence.  He asks for and gets the death penalty but he knows his case won’t hold up under the scrutiny of a death penalty appeal so he kicks the defendant over to the feds.  In federal court they change the charge to something terrorism-related and let politics run its crooked course.

Jesus was arrested for blashphemy against Moses.  He was executed for treason against Caesar.

Pilate never found Jesus guilty.  At least twice the Roman governor declared, “I find no fault in Him.” (John 18:38; 19:4). He gave the order for Crucifixion anyway. 

Politics.

The authorities who brought Jesus before Pilate claimed to be settling a legal technicality.  But they were really using Jesus to enforce their personal and political agenda.  They claimed to be following the Law, but the letter and spirit of their Laws was against them. 

My old teachers assumed that since the exchange in John 18:31 took place in a legal setting that it was an accurate explanation of the law.  It wasn’t.  Legal authorities lied about what the Law said.  The result was an innocent man executed for crimes that had absolutely nothing to do with Him.

Four Points:

1)  Legal injustice happens.  Even under a legal system derived from the tenets of Scripture, this kind of injustice actually happens. Stop saying that it doesn’t.

2) Injustice happens to the innocent.  No one was more innocent than Jesus.

3)  Injustice didn’t just start happening.  The same pattern of injustice that led to Jesus’ crucifixion are in play today in America, but it’s not unique to our times or to America’s particular racial and social history. 

4)  The fact that injustice happens in no excuse for letting injustice happen. And though it was prophesied to happen, it doesn’t diminish that sinfulness of those who participated in and kept silent in the face of the unjust legal activity.

It is impossible that no offenses should come, but woe to him through whom they do come! (Luke 17:31)

P.S.  Just because you don’t give the order or issue the verdict doesn’t mean you aren’t part of the problem.   As Jesus told Judge Pilate, “You could have no power at all against Me unless it had been given you from above. Therefore the one who delivered Me to you has the greater sin.”

Maybe you heard something different.  Maybe you heard that judges are always fair and that if people go to jail they deserve it.  Maybe you heard the reasons why people who kill unarmed people go free.  Maybe you heard those reasons from someone in legal authority.  I’m sure it sounded logical. 

But you have access to a Bible, don’t you.  A complete Bible. Read it.  Scrutinize what you heard against the whole witness of Scripture.  Pray and think.

Pray and think.

PUSH

Imagine you know you have less than 24 hours to live.  You gather your best friends around you and tell them, but they don’t believe you. They say you’re too calm, too peaceful, to healthy to die. How can you explain? How can you make them understand and at the same time, give them the words to guide them through grief and loss and into peace and strength?

In the text for Sunday’s sermon, Jesus was in exactly that situation. The Lord answered His friends with a metaphor about . . . childbirth.  Yes, childbirth.

Turn to the closing half of John 16.  The title of sermon is PUSH.

Listen well.

If you can’t get the audio on your device, visit the main podcast page at http://revandersongraves.podomatic.com/

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---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves  #Awordtothewise 

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

mourning, joy, peace