This morning’s reading from the book of Genesis is a story of envy, rivalry, and anger, all of which culminate in violence. We are told that Joseph is the favorite son of his father, Jacob, which causes his eleven brothers to resent him. To symbolize his place of privilege in Jacob’s heart and family, Jacob makes Joseph a colorful coat with sleeves. One would think that Jacob would have learned the dangers of favoritism after the debacle with his own father Isaac and his estranged older brother Esau, but alas, problems like these are often handed down from generation to generation.
Not only is Joseph loved by his father more than all of his brothers, he is gifted with dreams that seem to indicate that he will be elevated to a position of authority over his brothers, although they are almost all older than he. And he is not shy about sharing these dreams with his brothers. And so for years his brothers envy him as their rival for their father’s affection and for influence in the family. And they burn with anger towards him. Until finally they resort to violence. They seize upon a moment, assault Joseph, kidnap him, and sell him into slavery. Rivalry. Envy. Anger. Violence.
These themes are familiar to us today, and according to philosopher, historian, literary critic, and theologian Rene Girard, they are rooted in the phenomenon of imitation. So much of human behavior is a matter of us imitating other people, from how we fix our hair, to the style of the clothes we wear, to the music we listen to, to what we value and give our ultimate allegiance to. We learn what to desire from others. We’re not born wanting a fancy car or knowing that we like Mexican food. We take our cues from each other from a very early age, and it continues into adulthood. I once saw an advertisement in a jewelry story window of Eli Manning, the NFL quarterback, wearing a jacket and tie, with special attention given to his watch. The advertisement was for a certain brand of watch. Why would I care what watch Eli Manning wears, particularly when it has nothing to do with his playing football? I care because he is more wealthy than I, more successful, more athletic, and more admired. And perhaps if I bought that watch, I would be a little more like him. This is how our advertising-saturated culture would condition us to think – that we should imitate people that we deem cool or successful or beautiful.
Consider how imitation plays out in the world of real estate. Certain areas of town can quickly go from undesirable and inexpensive to highly desirable and very expensive largely based on our perception of the people who are living and moving there. If I believe that cool, successful people are moving into an area, I may imitate them by trying to move there myself. And I may be willing to pay considerably more to be in an area I perceive to be teeming with hip people, much like I might be willing to pay more for a watch that is endorsed by an NFL player. And we know that when more and more people start imitating each other, all trying to move into the same hip neighborhood, prices go up. The neighborhood becomes even more exclusive and desirable. Now we’re talking about rivalry. Two people imitating one another who desire the same thing. Like the sons of Jacob. Rivalry is the shadow of imitation. Rivalry divides people, pits them against each other. Rivalry results in an us-them dichotomy, winners and losers. Rivalry foments anger. And as the wise Jedi Master Yoda taught us, anger leads to the dark side. Rivalry and anger can lead a person to drive a car into a crowd of protesters. They can cause us to act violently against each other, as Joseph’s brothers did to him.
Joseph’s brothers did not dare blame their father, the patriarch, the authority, for his unfair favoritism and giving Joseph special privileges. They locate the blame on Joseph. Joseph becomes the scapegoat. And like any scapegoat, Joseph is subjected to violent exclusion from the community in order to restore harmony.
We are well-acquainted with the issues of envy, rivalry, anger, and even violence and scapegoating because our socio-political climate is dominated by them. Could it be more clear that we are a divided people, separated by political ideology, race, sexual orientation, religion, socio-economic status, gender, and nationality? We are scrambling in competition with each other for power, money, influence, and resources. Political candidates and parties rival each other for votes and offices. Religious groups contend against each other for orthodoxy and congregants. And as we saw in the example of Jacob’s sons, when rivalry exists on even a small scale, when there is envy and anger at play, someone must take the blame. A scapegoat will emerge who will serve as a target.
Some of our politicians and even some of our religious leaders would have us believe that Muslims are the problem. We should blame Islam. And people respond by bombing the Dar Al-Farooq Islamic Center in Minneapolis less than two weeks ago, much like the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed in 1963, when white people who were afraid that their economic and political power and influence were diminishing made African-Americans into their scapegoat. Or we are told that illegal immigrants are the problem. Blame them. Let them serve as the scapegoat. Keep them out. To hell with the profound, aspirational testament to hospitality that is inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. I saw recently people at a rally in Iowa of all places chanting “Build That Wall!” As if a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico could have any positive impact for the people of Iowa. Do you know where Iowa is? But rivalry and anger and scapegoating are not based on good sense, any more than buying a watch modeled by a football player makes sense. The people at that rally are imitating what they have heard from their favorite political candidates and media pundits. They have been told where to put the blame, they have been given a scapegoat. Their anger and frustration are now directed at people perceived to be below them, such as immigrants, not at the people in positions of authority like Jacob.
Which is not to say that we should scapegoat the people who do the scapegoating. After all, Trump didn’t start the fire, and neither did Obama or Bush or Clinton. But the tendency so often is to target the people on the margins, the people who are most vulnerable, the minorities, people who are already despised.
I teach in prisons from time to time in a college program where inmates are earning credit toward Associate’s and Bachelor’s degrees. And occasionally there have been articles in local newspapers about the program, about the way people are being given a second chance, about the positive effect education has in rehabilitation, in helping people not re-offend, get better jobs, etc. And every time one of these articles comes out, there are always negative comments. People say things like, “Nobody ever offered me a free college education.” “Why do these dirtbags get something for nothing?” “They don’t deserve it.” “Let ‘em rot.” “Wish I had known that all I needed to do was kill or rape somebody to go to college for free.” Envy. Rivalry. Anger. Blame. Scapegoating.
It’s like a violent flood. Waves are threatening all around us. The leaders of this country and North Korea are engaged in a foolish and dangerous rivalry of words with real lives at stake. Neo-Klansmen giving Nazi salutes have been emboldened to light torches and march as they haven't in a generation. And we've even seen these Anti-Christ spirits of white supremacy and imperial militarism infiltrate the Lord's Church. We look around at the divisions and the racism and the xenophobia and the misogyny and the homophobia and the bullying, and it feels like love of neighbor itself, not just Charloteesville, Virginia, is under siege. The waters are rising all around us and, like Peter in our gospel reading, we’re sinking like a stone beneath these waves of fear and anger and ugliness. And if we're honest, we must admit that we feel rivalry and anger rising in our own hearts, along with the desire to affix blame on a scapegoat. We feel the weight of it in our owl soul. Maybe we’re tempted to slap a label on the people who we think have caused this mess and dismiss them from further care or concern or consideration or compassion, forgetting that they too are bearers of the divine image. Like Joseph’s brothers did to him. “The dreamer” they called him as they conspired to do him harm.
My friend David Dark puts it like this: “When I label people, I no longer have to deal with them thoughtfully. I no longer have to feel overwhelmed by their complexity, the lives they live, the dreams they have. I know exactly where they are inside—or forever outside—my field of care, because they’ve been taken care of. The mystery of their existence has been solved and filed away before I’ve had a chance to be moved by them or even begun to catch a glimpse of who they might be. They’ve been neutralized. There’s hardly any action quite so undemanding, so utterly unimaginative, as the affixing of a label. It’s the costliest of mental shortcuts.”
But then, like Peter, we are confronted by the person of Jesus, who was not swept away by the torrent of rivalry and blame. Because he identified with the scapegoats, the poor, the outcast, the vulnerable, the excluded, the ones who were blamed, he was able to transcend these all-too-human tendencies. He loved the scapegoated ones without judgment. He ate with them. But he also ate with the religious leaders who played the scapegoating game. He also loved the rich young ruler who thought he had it all together.
Jesus rescues us from the waters of rivalry, envy, anger, and scapegoating by identifying with, standing in solidarity with the scapegoated ones, to the point of becoming the scapegoat for the religious and political leaders of his time. Suffering the violence of the cross, Jesus put an end to the scapegoat mechanism once and for all. And he invites us to join him.
Franciscan priest Richard Rohr writes, “If we are not marginalized [think scapegoated] ourselves in some way, we normally need to associate with some marginalized group to have an enlightened Gospel perspective and to be converted to compassion.” This is the invitation – to transcend envy, rivalry, anger and blame by being one with people who are being scapegoated. And like receding floodwaters, these harmful, dehumanizing tendencies will pose less and less of a threat to our hearts. Like Peter we are saved. In the words of the great Henri Nouwen, “In a world so torn apart by rivalry, anger, and hatred, we have the privileged vocation to be living signs of a love that can bridge all divisions and heal all wounds.”
