April 20, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Easter 5     Genesis 38:1-27

Sentence of the Day:

Look at the person in the mirror and know that you are wonderful, precious, and a repository of the divine. – Glynn Cardy

Prayer of the day:

The feisty courage of Tamar speaks to us down the centuries. May we know within us the God who doesn’t give up, doesn’t collude, and who is not afraid to break the law when the law is wrong. Amen. – Glynn Cardy

The story of Tamar [Genesis 38] is about rights, responsibilities, oppression, and God. The context is patriarchy, maybe as early as 10th century BCE. Men rule. Women serve, and are breeders. If you don’t serve and you don’t breed your worth is minimal. So on one level the story is not about Tamar at all, but about the patriarch Judah and Tamar’s male offspring.

Judah, the fourth-born son of Jacob, was one of the jealous brothers who ditched daddy’s favourite. The critical question that the Tamar saga seeks to answer is why the genealogical line of blessing – that in time would lead to King David – would go through Judah and not Reuben [Jacob’s first-born].

Judah had three sons the eldest of whom, Er, married Tamar. The text is brief and pointed: he was wicked and God slew him. ‘Wickedness’ is not explained. What is explained is that Er was childless and, as per Deuteronomy 25:5-10, it was the duty of Er’s siblings to ‘go in’ to Tamar so that she conceive and thus perpetuate the dead brother’s name. In Israel at this time there was no belief in afterlife bodily resurrection. Your offspring were your afterlife.

But this custom was not just for the benefit of the deceased. It protected the woman from economic deprivation and a sort of social wilderness. The childless widow was no longer a virgin in her father’s family, and no longer belonged there. Rather she remained a barren wife in her dead husband’s family until the so-called ‘curse’ of barrenness was lifted.

The second son of Judah, Onan, however practices a primitive form of birth control. The ‘sin’ of Onan though is not birth control but refusing meet his obligations and to help create another man's children. His reason was probably greed: Onan might have preferred to divide his inheritance with the one remaining brother [dividing it two ways] rather than also with the family of his deceased brother [dividing it three ways]. Again God pops up to kill another brother.

The next step following the Deuteronomic prescription should have been that the third son of Judah, Shelah, 'goes in' to Tamar. But Judah hesitates. He doesn't want his last son to die too. Tamar seems jinxed. Perhaps he feared she was a witch of sorts who killed her lovers. Fear and suspicion distract Judah from his responsibilities and the rights of Tamar.

Judah tells her to return to her father's house. There she is not a virgin, a wife, nor a mother. There she is either to be pitied or scorned. No one petitions Judah on her behalf. No one cries out for justice. No one seems to befriend Tamar, affirm her personhood, or tell her that she has done nothing wrong. She is terribly alone and hope seems lost. There she remains.

Between verse 11 and 12 something happened for Tamar. What it was we have no idea. But she moved from despair, from thoughts maybe of suicide or ‘overdose’, from feeling wronged and victimized, to determining that she would take hold of her own future. Despite her social powerlessness as a woman, and a barren widow at that, she determined to confront the injustice. And she changed history.

There is in mythology a character called a trickster. This is someone, real or imagined, who breaks the rules and disobeys normative behaviour. A trickster confronts the powers, and often triumphs through trickery. The role of the trickster is to point to the deep truth that the sacred often comes through upset, reversal and surprise.

Tamar the trickster disguises herself as a prostitute and waits on the edge. Along comes Judah and avails himself of her services. As surety in lieu of payment Tamar keeps Judah’s ring and staff – signs of his identity and authority. Tamar conceives from her encounter with Judah and the proverbial hits the fan. She has invited scandal, and scandal has come.

In response to the anger and death that Tamar’s supposed ‘adultery’ elicits she produces the ring and staff. Judah perceives the truth. “She is more right than I,” he admits, “since I did not give to her my [third-born] son.” Judah humbly acknowledges that he is wrong.

Note in verse 26 where it says, “He [Judah] did not lie with her again”. Scholars wonder whether this is just an admonition against incest or whether it reflects Judah's fear of a woman who has survived two husbands and has boldly bettered him. He is wary of the once-was-powerless one.

Tamar, like Rebekah before her, gives birth to twin boys – the mark of a special matriarch. The text vindicates her ethically scandalous action.

While this is a story of a woman’s courage, it is to its patriarchal audience about Judah. Judah has no love for his father Jacob who neglected him. Judah then loses two sons, and does not protect the widow rights of Tamar. Jacob has lost a son too [Joseph], thanks to the jealous brothers. This story of Tamar is a lesson for Judah – a lesson in feeling empathy for his father and a lesson in trying not to protect what he loves [his son Shelah] by denying what is right [justice for Tamar].

These lessons are at the heart of reconciliation. It is Judah who in later chapters facilitates the reconciliation with Joseph and thus saves the fledging Hebrew nation. Not surprisingly then the genealogical line of blessing bypasses the first-born Reuben, by-passes the gifted and big-headed Joseph, and instead goes through Judah and, as Jesus’ biographers noted, Tamar.

The role of God in this story is interesting. By name God is simply inserted as a killing machine: God killed Er, God killed Onan. I suspect the author is using God to explain the inexplicable, namely why two brothers should prematurely die. And I suppose this is preferable to Judah's musings about Tamar being a witch. Note that patriarchal cultures, and their religions like Christianity, have a long history of sticking the label ‘witch’ on any woman who seems different or outside their control.

Using God as a literary tool to explain the inexplicable is vacuous. We can of course psychologically understand it. We can for example empathize with the young man this week that attributed his survival to God while his school friends died in the raging floodwaters. Surviving while others perish can be deeply disturbing. Yet theologically it is nonsense. God doesn’t rescue one teenager and kill the others.

Similarly, while the patriarchal authors might only be able to see their God in death, the God of the prophets and powerless is present in the whole of the narrative even if not explicitly named. There is a saying in our Gospel today about the deity being in Jesus and Jesus being in the deity. I would claim that in her powerlessness, in her willingness to risk scandal, and in her trickery of the patriarch the deity was in Tamar and Tamar was in the deity. God is present in the story, and that presence is seen most powerfully in Tamar.

As we read afresh this story hear three challenges. Firstly, make time and effort to tell those who are marginalized and despairing that you believe in them. You are glad that they exist. Indeed because we don’t know everyone who is feeling marginalized and bereft, make a habit of conveying to anyone and everyone that you believe in them, and that they are a beautiful human being worthy of respect and dignity. And in addition to being empathetic take some responsibility, like Judah should have.

Secondly, be alert for the deep truth that God often is known and comes alive among us through upset, reversal and surprise. The institutional church has great problems with this. It wants to control and prescribe God. It doesn’t see God in barren widows, tricky prostitutes, or strong minded women. Let us be alert to God in places and people where we don’t believe God could be.

Lastly, and similarly, let us be mindful that the one who initiates a scandal, who seems to have ‘sinned’ in the eyes of the Church and world, could well be the bearer of the truth that sets us free. Can God be in the guise of a prostitute? Yes!