Circles in the Stream

Introduction

IMAGE: CIRCLES IN THE STREAM

Imagine you are standing beside a river, broad and deep. You watch the calm water as it ambles downstream, and before long you are looking for some smooth, flat stones. You try your hand at skipping them across the surface, trying to get more than two hops before the stone loses momentum and sinks to the bottom. Each time you take that sidearm throw, you watch the circles move outward wherever stone touches water.

I have come to think of biblical study for preaching and teaching as following the circles that spread out from a similar point of contact whenever we read or hear Scripture. The communication acts of writing and reading are like those moments when a stone hits water, sending their energy outward from there to here, then to now. Our eyes move across a page to make sense of written text, or our ears transmit sound vibrations as we listen to someone read aloud. Suddenly, we’ve made contact with people from “long ago and far away” in another time and place. We meet them in Scriptures handed down through generations by those who found life in these words about knowing God. We realize that the storytellers and poets who wrote in those ancient life situations found the life, true life (Psalm 36:9; John 10:10). We might choose other metaphors to remind us that the act of reading is a transfer of living energy—sparks struck from flint, electricity generated from moving magnets—but the sight of circles moving out from a center of contact reminds us of the ever-widening movement from life then to life now.

I’m borrowing the image from Bruce Cockburn, the Canadian singer-songwriter who has had a long and adventurous relationship with Jesus and Christian faith. It appears in his retelling of the Christmas story, “Cry of a Tiny Babe.” The chorus reaches for that transcendence of space and time:

Like a stone on the surface of a still river
Driving the ripples on forever
Redemption rips through the surface of time
In the cry of a tiny babe [Note 1]

I listened to the song for years without noticing the repetition of “surface” and the wordplay on “ripples” and “rips.” Both point to redemption begun with this baby’s cry: restored relationship, deep connection, intimate belonging with God that “rips through the surface of time.” So, to talk about the ever-widening circles in the stream of biblical study is to remember what preachers hope to evoke with their words about the text—life issues remembered in writing and recovered in speaking today. We pray for and work toward a message that spreads those circles into the lives of those who hear the Scriptures read and preached. Casey Barton is on to something when he talks about Preaching Through Time. We don’t preach timeless truths; we invite people into God’s drama as it unfolds in time. [Note 2]

It starts with Scripture and that contact point of reading. The circles are like the contexts we were taught to recognize when we studied interpretation: “Read words in sentences, sentences in paragraphs, etc.” We follow those ever-expanding circles of contexts to get from life then to life now. Reading Scripture follows these connections within the literary contexts of chapter, book, or testament while, at the same time, connecting us with the life issues we hope will lead to real change. When we teach and preach, we hope that we and our hearers will become recentered, focused on a life of worship and service. We hope we all will come to love God and neighbor in ways never imagined before. We hope we will come to view our own life-stories as moving ever closer toward God, set within the story of redemption in Jesus the Christ. [Note 3]

We aim for life transformation, but we don’t want our preaching to sound like some warmed-over self-help advice that has little to do with Scripture. [Note 4] Still, deep study of a text is akin to careful study of human relations, asking what brings joy or sorrow, confusion or conviction, despair or determination. Good study for preaching, observes Alyce McKenzie, connects Scripture and life as we learn attentiveness, “a knack for noticing,” from novelists and poets. [Note 5] We need preaching that reunites teaching and imagination, what David Schlafer calls Playing with Fire. [Note 6]

Let me be clear. I don’t mean to reject all that we’ve learned about ancient languages or attempts to appreciate what original hearers read and heard. I only ask that we let our sentence diagrams and historical studies lead us all the way to the life issues that originally called forth these narratives and songs, prophecy and wisdom. When we do, we will watch the circles spread out from the center of our reading toward the matters of living. It’s what moved someone, led by the Spirit of God long ago, to throw that stone in the water, to write down a story told for generations or compose a psalm of anguish or joy. Those stories and songs, particularly their anguish and joy, spread out over time and space to touch our own.

Here’s my concern: a lot of preaching advice rightly urges us to make connection with our listeners. [Note 7] I once heard a preacher who taught the congregation to ask the “So what?” question out loud when prompted midway through the sermon. It’s a great way to assure our hearers we won’t forget why they’ve given us their attention. Often, we try to connect by taking a biblical principle and finding contemporary analogies or stories to use as illustrations. However, from my reading in literary, rhetorical, and theological interpretation, I’ve realized that I don’t have to worry about making connection with my listeners. The connections are already there in Scripture, waiting to be found. From one literary-rhetorical critic, Kenneth Burke, I’ve learned that there are connections within a text (or a group of texts) that point to the big connection, the one between the life issues that called forth Scripture’s prose or poetry and the life issues that people care about today. Taking that cue from Burke, I’ve become convinced that attentive study of links within a written work will lead preachers to the connection they hope to have with a listening audience.

That’s why this book is more than a theory of interpreting texts; it is a practical literary-rhetorical-theological pathway that leads to those connections. It traces the ways that “redemption rips through the surface of time” in biblical communication by looking for connections in three contexts: the internal structure of a written work, its links with the lived experience that gave rise to the work, and its ties with other texts in the biblical canon. As we follow these circles, we learn anew how a text written thousands of years ago holds out its message of life for today. This three-fold process is at the core of the book. Following an overview of the process in this chapter, each one that follows will introduce and demonstrate one of the steps:

1. Find the connections within a given passage by making an index.

2. Find the connection with the life issue by attending to identification.

3. Find the connections between this text and the rest of the biblical canon by tracing intertexts.

Or, borrowing more technical language from Burke, we do three kinds of analysis: statistical analysis of symbolic action within a passage, correlational analysis of the work’s symbolism (as it speaks of life experience), and intertextual analysis of common symbols and patterns threaded throughout the biblical canon. My goal is to translate and adapt Burke’s theory and method in service of biblical study for preaching and teaching. I hope it will help busy preachers work more efficiently and not burden them. Again, I’ll present an overview with an example of how it works in this chapter, but first let me explain how I came to do it this way.

STORY: HOW I LEARNED TO READ AND PREACH

This book is also a story of my own journey in learning to read and preach Scripture. Some of that learning happened in seminary, some as I stood in front of a congregation preaching, some as I sat listening to someone else preach (including twenty-five years’ worth of seminary student sermons). That’s how we learn, isn’t it? We study, we practice, we observe and critique. Glen Wiberg summed it up well in Housing the Sacred: What I Have Learned and Still Am Learning About Preaching. [Note 8] He included lessons taught by his listeners in different congregations. I could also say that some of the best lessons about reading came to me in congregations, classrooms, and preaching labs (strange term, that last one!). Here are some of the most important approaches I learned along the way.

Inductive Bible Study

Back when I was a student leader, and then later as a campus staff worker with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, I was drawn to its way of doing inductive Bible study. First, the Bible and Life program taught me how to take an overview of an entire book of the Bible by identifying major sections and giving them titles on a chart—I thought it was more meaningful (and fun) to draw a chart than write an outline. Next, I was taught to take a closer look at a chapter or part of a chapter; I learned how to give titles to paragraphs and find connections between those paragraphs. Using a handout listing the “Rules of Composition,” I looked for similarities and repetitions, contrasts, and cause-effect relationships.

Later, I participated in manuscript study of whole books, starting with Mark’s Gospel. The text was printed on 8½ by 11 sheets of paper, double-spaced with wide margins for notetaking. All chapter and verse numbers were removed along with any paragraph indentations. Our class worked individually and in group discussions, deciding where sections started and ended. It taught us to look at the flow of the narrative, and we enjoyed watching units larger than paragraphs reveal their relations. For example, I saw for the first time the way various characters in Mark’s Gospel embody the different kinds of soil in the parable of the sower (Mark 4:1–20). Our group dove in, poring over page after page, but we were also encouraged to read through the whole book of Mark in one sitting. We used Bible dictionaries to provide historical background and point out relevant connections with the Old Testament. For example, Mark has the disciples seat the crowd on the green grass just before Jesus, the good shepherd, feeds his sheep like the one in Psalm 23 (Mark 6:30–44). I strongly recommend inductive study as a first step in preparing to preach and teach. [Note 9]

Literary Criticism and Narrative Preaching

When I entered seminary, Robert Alter’s Art of Biblical Narrative and similar works by Adele Berlin and Meir Sternberg enhanced what I had learned of inductive study. Alter used key words to connect chapters and to critique the excesses of historical criticism. Berlin looked at plot, characterization, and point of view. Sternberg occupied a universe all his own, setting three emphases of history, rhetoric, and aesthetics in dynamic tension. Other literary critics talked about the worlds behind the text, within the text, and in front of the text to draw our attention to the drama taking place within the story. [Note 10]

At the same time, my preaching class worked through Eugene Lowry’s Homiletical Plot. We practiced writing sermons that tried to make an engaging pathway through some resolution of trouble. Drawing from African American traditions, Frank Thomas urged preachers to celebrate the gospel climax that comes with that resolution of conflict. Others suggested that sermons could take the form of a well-told story. [Note 11] Homileticians also integrated the insights of Alter and other literary scholars. Recently, Robert Bergen has written about preaching Hebrew narrative: “stories are murals painted on the inner walls of the human soul.” [Note 12]

Rhetorical Criticism

As a doctoral student in a joint program of a seminary and university, I heard that several of my colleagues were taking classes in rhetorical criticism to complement their work in biblical studies. I joined them and learned about the history of public speaking and ancient theories of persuasion. We read Aristotle’s Rhetoric and presented papers on Cicero and Augustine. I also learned that the emerging field of rhetorical biblical criticism started with Old Testament scholar James Muilenburg’s 1969 article, “Form Criticism and Beyond.” [Note 13] Muilenburg argued that we should not analyze Scripture’s history of composition (source criticism) or typical features (form criticism) without looking at what is unique in the text as it stands. He did not say that we should only look at the final form of the text, but he did claim that attempts to go behind that final form can only take us so far. Bernhard Anderson, one of Muilenburg’s students, wrote in tribute: “His essay opens up a new frontier for exploration,” noting its focus on the prophets and calling for rhetorical study of the Pentateuch. [Note 14] Muilenburg was not the first to speak about rhetoric in biblical study: one could look to Augustine in the fourth century, Judah Messer Leon in the fifteenth, and Eduard König at the turn of the twentieth. [Note 15} But Muilenburg did convince many of his students and contemporaries that rhetorical criticism highlights skillful composition in service of communication. Elizabeth Achtemeier used his approach in her book, Preaching from the Old Testament. [Note 16] In Cadences of Home: Preaching Among Exiles, Walter Brueggemann linked it with Paul Ricouer’s hermeneutic theory and Phyllis Trible’s feminist concerns. [Note 17]

I took additional courses in contemporary rhetoric and literary theory, producing papers on their relevance for biblical studies. [Note 18] I found that New Testament scholars studied the rhetorical handbooks current at the time when the Gospels and Epistles were written. Others adapted Aristotle’s strategies and searched Old and New Testament texts for arguments from reason, emotion, and the speaker’s character. [Note 19] It is a helpful approach, one I’ve used myself, but it seemed most applicable to speeches embedded in narrative or prophetic poetry. I thought something more was needed.

I was pleased to learn that Kenneth Burke had developed a method that could be applied to a wide range of communication events, including literature. As a poet, novelist, literary critic, and translator, Burke seemed equally at home in prose and poetry. His approach integrated my interests in literary analysis and rhetorical criticism, and I noticed that he often started his essays with an inductive close reading of a text. I adapted his approach for my dissertation and continued to work at it in subsequent teaching and writing. [Note 20]

The dissertation highlighted the importance of Joseph’s brother Judah for the story of Genesis and the story of Israel that begins there. It also showed how Burke’s criticism focused on the way literary form affects emotions and belief. He realized that writers use the ideas and views that an audience holds in common to achieve artistic effects. This idea of consubstantiality (literally, a standing together) is central to all that we will do in this book. Burke came to see that literature and its symbols were also a means for naming and coping with those shared situations. After examining the social nature of language with its inherent strategies of appeal and appeasement, Burke recognized that a writer does with literary art what all of us do with everyday communication. He became attuned to the process of identification at work in all use of language, as humans use their words to define their relation to their societies, its members, and themselves. A work of literary art, based upon that shared experience, can work a symbolic cure as both author and audience experience a transformation through the writer’s “medicine.” That’s an abstract, dense, and all-too-brief description, but I’ll explain more about these aspects of “Burke-work” (his playful term) as we go.

Putting It All Together: Teaching a Literary-Rhetorical Way of Reading and Preaching

Rhetoric informed the way I taught preaching to seminary students. In the first class, I used the five canons of invention, organization, style, delivery, and memory to introduce the components of good public speaking, followed by Aristotle’s three proofs from character (ethos), reason (logos), and emotion (pathos). Those elements of classical rhetoric appeared in the feedback forms that students would give to the preacher of the day.

I also continued to explore literary methods to use in teaching. During a sabbatical I studied the Amsterdam School of Old Testament interpretation with Professor Karel Deurloo and scholars with whom he arranged meetings (including some of his former students). [Note 21] I read Martin Kessler’s anthology of their work in English translation. It introduced their synthesis of historical and literary methods coupled with a strong focus on biblical theology. I regularly assigned Deurloo’s article on exegesis. [Note 22] Matters of theological interpretation and biblical theology became increasingly important for my work. I participated in the annual North Park Symposium on the Theological Interpretation of Scripture and co-taught a course based on Brevard Childs’s Biblical Theology of The Old and New Testaments. [Note 23]

Of all the courses I taught in Bible, communication, and homiletics, the most memorable and satisfying was “Biblical Preaching: The Story of Joseph and His Family.” I offered it as a meeting of biblical and homiletical studies with fifty percent of class time dedicated to each field. Students were introduced to literary and rhetorical criticism with a focus on current scholarship on Genesis, and they were asked to preach two sermons. The first was to be based on a story taken from Genesis 1–36, following the guidance of John Holbert’s Preaching Biblical Narrative. [Note 24] My purpose was to let the students work out how the narrative components of plot, character, and point of view could be translated into a story-shaped sermon. Feedback in debriefing sessions typically affirmed that students could remember these sermons better than most they heard. I followed up with a challenge to use storytelling to expound the text, to weave into a story what we usually teach as if we are lecturing. I also directed students to the Network of Biblical Storytellers International for more help with visualizing the details of the story, speaking from memory, and using voice, face, and body in delivery. The second sermon was drawn from Genesis 37–50 using any approach they chose.

Our textual work with Genesis 37–50 centered on their individual study of my own translation in manuscript format. The translation allowed me to use the same English word for repeated Hebrew words to catch some of the artistry of composition. [Note 25] Students read and marked the manuscript, researched the relevant articles and commentaries, then wrote up their discoveries in a weekly journal they brought to class discussions. Debates were energetic and fun. Was Joseph a victim of misunderstanding or a spoiled upstart when he told his brothers about his dreams? How is the story of brother Judah’s encounter with his daughter-in-law Tamar central to the story? Was Joseph kind or vengeful when he “tested” his brothers’ claim to be honest men? Did he show concern for the people of Egypt or capitulate to the powers of empire when he traded their money, lands, and selves for grain? Was the guilt of his brothers ever absolved, even after two declarations of forgiveness (Gen 45 and 50)? We also discussed how these texts should be interpreted for preaching. Can we draw insights for healthy relationships by looking at the movement toward redemption in the story? How are Joseph’s declarations that God sent him to Egypt to be brought to our understanding of divine sovereignty?

I asked class members to read articles I had written about Burke’s indexing and identification, and they are the basis for the first two chapters of the book (chapter three is new and integrates work I’ve done in intertextuality and theological interpretation). The class discussed Rein Bos’s proposal for tracing connections with the New Testament in We Have Heard That God Is with You: Preaching the Old Testament. [Note 26] Bos urged preachers to follow the patterns of New Testament citations and dedicated a chapter to “Biblical Theology.” I concluded the course by issuing a challenge I’d picked up from Terence Fretheim: “Would you commit to preaching from an Old Testament text once a month?”

In sum, I’ve learned much from various approaches to inductive, literary, rhetorical, and theological study of the Bible, and I believe that bringing them together with Burke’s theories and method will help preachers and teachers sharpen their focus on life issues. While there are books about using rhetoric to improve our preaching practice, [Note 27] this is a book about using literary-rhetorical criticism to read Scripture for preaching. Reading and preaching are not unrelated, of course. Burke noted Augustine’s commitment to teach Scripture by following its own literary-rhetorical strategies. [Note 28] I focus on biblical study to integrate the rhetoric of the text with the rhetoric of the sermon. [Note 29]

I also write in response to James Beitler’s concern about Christian communication: “using the language of twentieth-century rhetorician Kenneth Burke, members of Christian congregations tend to engage in rhetorica utens (rhetorical practice) without sufficiently engaging in rhetorica docens (rhetorical theory).” This situation leads, Beitler adds, to missed opportunities for witness and “hampers the church’s ability to critique and reform its own acts of proclamation. . . . ” [Note 30] In other words, without deep reflection on our practice of communication, we cannot improve it. In my experience, good theory leads to good practice, so to get us started, I’ll give a short introduction to how I adapt Burke’s method for biblical study followed by an example from Genesis 37.

METHOD: INDEX, IDENTIFICATION, INTERTEXT

In the mid-twentieth century, Kenneth Duva Burke (1897–1993) was hailed as a literary critic, “the finest in the world, and perhaps the finest since Coleridge.” [Note 31] That’s not bad for someone who never completed more than a year of college. Bored with his introductory courses at Columbia University, he convinced his father to set him up in a Manhattan apartment and save the tuition. There he survived on oatmeal and devoured the books he’d been wanting to read. [Note 32]

Following his early years as a poet, novelist, and literary critic, Burke formulated a perspective that finally developed into a philosophy of language he called logology. As he moved his focus from literature to language (a kind of rippling out itself), Burke stressed the rhetorical dimension of all communication: “Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric. And wherever there is ‘meaning,’ there is ‘persuasion.’” [Note 33] In sum, Burke’s career could be described as the study of “Language as Symbolic Action.” It includes his inventions of dramatism, logology, and the rhetoric of identification. [Note 34] Speaking in general of his method, he wrote:

The study is thus built pedagogically about the “indexing” of some specific “symbolic structure,” in the attempt to study the nature of a work’s internal consistency and of its unfolding. But in contrast with courses in “literary appreciation,” the generalizations at which we aim are not confined to a concern with the work’s “beauty.” Our question concerns its linguistic nature in general; and then, beyond that, the insight it may afford into man’s ways as a symbol user. [Note 35]

Always rooted in his analysis of literature, Burke’s rhetorical criticism sought to go behind the symbols of human relations to both understand and “purify” them. He wrote “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s Battle” to provide an “antidote” to Mein Kampf’s “poison” and prefaced his Grammar of Motives with the epigram Ad Bellum Purificandum (“toward the purification of war”). [Note 36] Rhetorical critic Barry Brummett said it well: “Kenneth Burke’s work was written some years ago but is evergreen in its constant usefulness for scholars.” [Note 37] And, I’ll add, those who preach and teach. Burke’s insights offer the biblical interpreter a practical approach to literary-rhetorical criticism, highlighting the ways Scripture facilitates personal transformation and corporate unity. I’ve distilled Burke’s wide-ranging method into three steps we can take in biblical study. They correspond to his three expanding foci of criticism: a writer’s text, whole body of work, and historical circumstances. [Note 38] I’ve changed the sequence to better fit a bipartite canon of sixty-six books.

1. What we can discover by looking at the work alone

2. What we can learn about life issues that gave rise to the work

3. What we can observe by combining the first two, looking at connections with a larger body of writing as “equipment for living”

These three circles lead us to three related steps we can follow in our reading, teaching, and preaching: Index, Identification, and Intertext. Busy pastors have asked how long this process will take. Of course, “mileage will vary,” but I recommend an investment of three to four hours. With practice, the perspective that informs each step will become a natural part of reading Scripture.

Make an Index

Print out a copy of the text and mark it up until you know it backward and forward. Write it out longhand if that helps you get to know it better. Circle and connect repeated words; write repeated occurrences of themes in the margins. The original languages repeat the same word root more than many English translations show, so if you have facility with Hebrew and/or Greek, read or translate to note key words. Look for conflicts and contrasts, movement and change. Inductive method gives titles to paragraphs and the passage. Literary study looks at plot, character, and point of view. What Burke adds is the search for the writer’s burden or “strategy of coping.” He claimed that study of a text’s literary features reveals its architecture; when we uncover that, we begin to see a text’s function through analysis of the form. I’ll explain more about that in Chapter 1, but for now it is enough to say that the writer’s rhetorical purpose will come to light as you note the connections within the work itself. Observing how the text is put together leads to why it was written. Chapter 1 will also give you a list questions to help you study.

Look for Identification

Burke’s great insight is that rhetoric works best when the communicator identifies with the audience’s outlook and interests; in turn, people identify with the communicator and message. Chapter 2 will unpack Burke’s idea of consubstantiality, the way human communications, especially written works of art like the narratives and poetry of Scripture, appeal to the common experiences we face in life. Or, put more plainly, we look for the life issue writers and readers share. He also believed those reader-writer links offer “strategies for coping” by which transformations in the written work become our own. Just about everyone has listened to someone tell a story or sing a song and said, “that’s my life up there.” Identification not only helps people listen better; it also makes our appeals for change in character or perspective more compelling. It impacts our sense of identity, who we are in relation to who we are with. In principle, identification is not complicated, but it is so pervasive it takes some intention to look for it and name the life issue addressed. We all know it’s possible to write a sermon without addressing the real issue that people care about. As I said earlier, those life issues are in the text waiting to be discovered.

Find Intertexts

If the Scriptures in all their variation tell one great story of God creating, calling, saving, healing, reconciling, and . . . (you can generate a long list yourself), then we can help listeners find their way into that story if we follow the ever-widening circles that move out from a single text through the entire Bible and into our lives. The Scriptures witness to God’s promises and acts in history, embodied in Jesus the Christ, risen from the dead. “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself ” (Luke 24:27, NIV). We demonstrate the importance of the Old Testament by showing how it enriches our understanding of the Messiah sent to the Jewish communities of Palestine. It moves in two directions: even as an Old Testament text points forward to God’s promised salvation, a New Testament text usually makes more than one glance back at the Old. Burke advised interpreters to look for connections in any writer’s collected works. Chapter 3 will show how you can use his insights about indexing and identification to find the biblical writers’ connections and discover some of your own.

Burke used all three practices in his critical work, so I’ll offer just one example from his Rhetoric of Religion to illustrate. In the Confessions, Augustine described his conversion from secular rhetorician to Christian bishop as his move from the “selling of words to the preaching of the Word.” Burke then noticed that similar terms appear in other works, On Christian Doctrine (De Doctrina Christiana) and On the Teacher (De Magistro). He also noticed that Augustine traced his movement from “perversion” to “conversion,” both based on the Latin “vert” (to turn). The similar terms show his change of life direction from a self-seeking trader in words to one who speaks out of love of God. In the Confessions Augustine meant to break with his past as a rhetorician, but in those other writings he argued that preachers and teachers can and should use rhetoric as found in the Scriptures. Therefore, as readers identify with his turn from self-advancement to discipleship, they follow his path toward reclaiming rhetoric to preach and teach the Word. [Note 39]

The three circles of index, intertext, and identification help us find the connections already present within a given text, between other writings, and in the common ground of identification with life experiences. This roughly corresponds to Burke’s argument with the literary critics of his day: we don’t just study a poem or novel in isolation, or just in relation to the writer’s time, place, and circumstances. Rather, we look at all of it, especially watching for ways a writer tries to resolve an issue that often is much like ours.

I’ve tried to do something similar in my reading, teaching, and preaching from Genesis 37–50. Because the chapters are interrelated, the story of Joseph and family is especially suited to show how the concentric circles of text, historical context, and intertext relate to one another. Over a century ago, Hermann Gunkel observed how the chapters look like an interwoven wreath, unlike the episodic accounts of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Fretheim and other contemporary scholars compare Genesis 37–50 to a short story or novella that moves through an extended plot of crisis and resolution. Brodie adds that this more complex style is fully integrated within the larger narrative of Genesis. It draws together themes of providence and reconciliation. [Note 40]

EXAMPLE: GENESIS 37

Imagine the scene: A group of men stand in a circle looking down into a hole in the ground. There is not much light flowing into the cistern, but they can see the face of a teenaged boy looking up at them. He is quiet now, probably hoarse from the yelling and screaming he did when the men—his brothers—stripped him of his fancy coat and put him down in the pit. [Note 41] They were going to kill him. They saw him coming from a distance and said, “The Lord of Dreams approaches,” remembering that his dreams always involved lots of bowing before him: eleven sheaves, eleven stars, eleven brothers. They got the picture. “Let’s kill him and throw him into one of the cisterns. . . . Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams” (Gen 37:19–20). [Note 42]

The eldest brother, Reuben, stepped in and tried to save him. He modified their plan: yes, throw him into the pit, but don’t kill him, he said in three different ways. He did not tell his brothers that he hoped to sneak him back to their father. The scene changed when the brothers looked up to see a caravan of traders on their way to Egypt. Another brother spoke, adding one more change to their plan. “What profit is there if we kill our brother and cover up his blood? Come on, let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites, but let’s not lay our hand upon him, for he is our brother, our flesh” (Gen 37:26–27). The storyteller adds that his brothers listened to this brother whose name was Judah.

Index

When we make a list of repeated or emphasized terms, we see that this last statement is important. Judah’s brothers listened to him; literally in Hebrew, “they heard him.” Adele Berlin, in Poetics and Interpretation of Biblical Narrative, noted that a subtle word play highlights the force of Judah’s words. When eldest son Reuben “heard their plan,” he proposed a modification, but when Judah modified it again all the brothers “heard him.” The change from the singular to the plural form of the verb indicates the shift in power, showing that Judah’s words were more effective. [Note 43]

As the story of Joseph and his family unfolds, Judah keeps emerging as leader among them. Judah appears four times as a speaking character in the story; in three of those four appearances, his speeches persuade his listeners to act in ways that will prevent death in the family. Judah persuades his brothers to sell Joseph into slavery rather than kill him (Gen 37:26–28). Later, Judah convinces his father Jacob to release his youngest son Benjamin so the brothers can buy grain and save the family (Gen 43:3–13). Finally, Judah asks his disguised brother Joseph to enslave him instead of Benjamin to avert his father’s death from grief (Gen 44:16–34). With one significant exception in Genesis 38 (that we’ll examine in chapter 2), Judah’s words move those around him to action that saves life.

Identification

How did he do it? Going back to that first scene in the wilderness, we see that Judah’s short speech to his brothers effectively undoes firstborn Reuben’s plan in three ways. First, Reuben’s words were negatively charged with the “no” of prohibition: “do not take his life, do not shed his blood, do not lay a hand on him.” The words remind us of Abel’s blood crying out from the ground and God’s accounting for human bloodshed (Gen 4:10; 9:5–6). Judah uses only one negative in his echo of Reuben’s plan, “Let’s not lay our hand on him,” but the rest of his reasoning is new and positively charged: “What profit is there in it anyway?” The caravan has added a new factor to the equation and Judah uses the change to shape his proposal. Second, brotherly language is used both for and against Joseph here: “our brother” is spoken twice. Murder is wrong because he is one of the family; Reuben used no such argument. Ironically, Judah’s use of words about brotherhood further unites the brothers against the favored one, even while it saves his life. Third, Judah’s plan accomplished what the brothers intended from the start; it got rid of their despised brother Joseph. Reuben’s plan left things unfinished; Joseph was still in the pit, still a problem to be dealt with. Judah made it clear that they could remove Joseph, keep their hands clean (so they thought), and put some silver in their purses.

Note also that Reuben’s plan ultimately separated him from his brothers. He planned on acting alone to save Joseph, and only the narrator knows that Reuben has any concern for his father. Judah shows no such concern, but instead stands with the brothers’ desires. As Burke put it: “Communication cannot be satisfactory unless the matter discussed bears in some notable respect upon the interest of the auditor.” [Note 44] He unites the brothers against their father, whom they later deceive with Joseph’s torn and bloody coat. As hatred of Joseph unified them against their father before his arrival, now they are unified in their crime and coverup. Judah’s persuasive skill has made him a more effective leader than Reuben. [Note 45]

Looking more closely then, we notice that Judah has been doing more than speaking positively or offering a better proposal to his brothers; he stands with them, speaks to their interests, shows what they have in common, and in so doing unites them in a common purpose. This creation of a like-minded community of purpose by means of language is how Burke thought of rhetoric: “the use of language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation among beings that by nature respond to symbols.” [Note 46] And this rhetorical act of speaking to the interests and shared experiences of one’s audience Burke called identification.

To learn what the story of Judah, Joseph, and their family has to tell us about communication and preaching, we will look for two different acts of identification. We first watch for identifications that are made within the story between characters and then look for the ways in which audiences are asked to identify with the concerns of those characters. Put another way, we look at characters who influence other characters, but we also consider how the story works its influence on reading and listening audiences (Chapter 2 looks at Judah’s use of identification when he stands before Joseph, second- in-command of Egypt). That influence in turn shapes listeners’ sense of identity, both individual and collective.

Intertext

Finally, after we have used the index to notice key words and phrases and then analyzed the dynamics of identification, we can trace any intertextual relations between this story and other Scriptures. A good concordance can help here, but so does a habit of broad Scripture reading (as we’ll see in chapter 3). Setting aside biblical references to the tribes named for the twelve brothers, I find three important connections.

Psalm 105 retells the story of Israel, beginning with the covenant promise of land to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Then comes the story of Jacob’s family.

16 He called down famine on the land
and destroyed all their supplies of food;
17 and he sent a man before them—
Joseph, sold as a slave.
18 They bruised his feet with shackles,
his neck was put in irons,
19 till what he foretold came to pass,
till the word of the Lord proved him true.
20 The king sent and released him,
the ruler of peoples set him free.
21 He made him master of his household,
ruler over all he possessed,
22 to instruct his princes as he pleased
and teach his elders wisdom. (Psalm 105:16–22 NIV)

God “sent a man before them,” an echo of Joseph’s words, repeated three times at the story’s climax: “God sent me” (Ps 105:17; Gen 45:5–8). The preservation of Egypt and the nations from famine is indirectly acknowledged. Jacob’s sojourn in Egypt is one of many wanderings through which God preserved Israel (cf. Ps 105:12–15).

In Acts 7, Stephen uses Joseph’s rise to argue that often God works outside the borders of Israel: “The patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt; but God was with him, and rescued him from all his afflictions, and enabled him to win favor and to show wisdom when he stood before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who appointed him ruler over Egypt and over all his household” (Acts 7:9–10 NRSV). In both Psalm 105 and Acts 7, suffering is redemptive as Joseph explained to his brothers: “But God sent me before you to place you as a remnant in the land and to preserve you alive, a great deliverance. So now it was not you who sent me here, but God! He has made me father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and ruler of all the land of Egypt” (Gen 45:7–8).

Finally, a less obvious but important intertextual connection appears in Jesus’s parable of the tenants. The words “come let us kill him” (Mark 12:7) are an exact duplicate of Genesis 37:20 in the Greek Old Testament, and they appear only there. Alert readers can draw a parallel between the vineyard owner’s son, rejected by the tenants/religious leaders, and Joseph, rejected by his brothers. The parable ends with a citation of Psalm 118:22– 23, “The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes” (Mark 12:10–11 NIV). Thus the parable looks forward to the triumph and vindication of Jesus the Son, not only with reference to the psalm, but with a citation about Joseph, raised from slavery to the highest office in Pharaoh’s court. In medieval manuscripts, pictures of Joseph pulled from the pit and the resurrection of Jesus were set side-by-side. [Note 47]

These intertestamental links help us answer the “so what” question: “Where is God when all of this trouble comes?” It is a question asked by many biblical figures, including our Lord; he prays in the garden knowing he has been betrayed by another Judah, asking if his story could go another way (Matt 26:36–44). He asks again in his cry from the cross: “Why have you forsaken me?” Jesus’s citation of Psalm 22:1 directs our attention to the whole psalm and its confidence in God’s victory. [Note 48]

Where is God in this story? Well, Joseph is not dead. His story can continue. Tragedy has been averted, and we who know the whole story come back to it again and again for assurance that God is not absent from the muck of pits we know. We learn to look for God, present in all of life, especially where God seems to be absent.

Putting It Together: Life Issues

What are the life issues in Genesis 37? Division, jealousy, hatred, violence, persecution. The big life issue is the trouble that comes at the hands of those who wish us ill. We are not surprised to see the brothers unite against Joseph and their father. But we may not be prepared to see Judah unite them in a decision that keeps Joseph alive. “He is our brother, our flesh.” It did not stop them from getting rid of him, but neither did it leave out the human virtues of compassion and mercy. The Christian doctrine of common grace says that where those acts of kindness are, so is God.

Taking a wider view to include the end of the story, we remember that the brothers’ desire to be rid of Joseph eventually leads to reconciliation. Ironically, his dreams of lordship are fulfilled when they bow before him in Egypt (Gen 42:6; 50:18). Joseph lets his dreams go, along with their past wrongs, when he asks: “Am I in the place of God? You meant evil; God meant good” (Gen 50:19–20). As Terence Fretheim put it: “Sinful behaviors do indeed frustrate the divine purposes in the world, but they do not, finally, stymie them.” [Note 49]

And, just as Joseph was “sent to preserve life,” so Judah’s persuasive skill as leader contributes to this story of God’s salvation. It is why Judah becomes a prominent character, so much so that the next chapter is about him, not Joseph (Gen 38). His final appeal before the disguised Joseph gives voice to character transformation, in him and the whole family (Gen 44). As a result, Judah and Joseph each receive more words of blessing than their brothers at Jacob’s deathbed (Gen 49). Attending to both main characters connects this family story to the larger story of Israel, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Many sermons cover the whole story with a focus on Joseph, drawing encouragement from the family reconciliation as a response to the intentions of God. One of my favorites is James William McClendon’s “After the Funeral.” It concludes: “For when we forgive, we share God’s reconciling work on earth; when we forgive—Jesus says—we know ourselves truly forgiven.” [Note 50] Even so, I’d like to pay closer attention to the texts that feature Judah to watch these dynamics from a different angle. Closer reading helps us see more of the richness. Here in this one scene, the index helps us see the details of Judah’s more effective intervention. Identification unifies them around a common purpose to save life, one that is not far removed from the purposes of God. The larger intertexts of the Genesis story and its echoes in the New Testament remind us that God has always been at work amid human short-sightedness and sin. Of course, I don’t mean to excuse the brothers’ crime, but our identification with the life issue of conflict and betrayal moves us to look for these sorts of movements of grace when we experience them in our own lives.

Could we have arrived at these insights without Burke’s approach? Perhaps—this way of interpreting texts incorporates others and is not intended to supersede them. But by emphasizing close reading of texts in their larger contexts while keeping a lookout for identification’s strategies for naming and coping with life issues, we can be confident that our reading is letting the text have its say.

References

1. Cockburn, “Cry of a Tiny Babe,” in Cockburn and King, Rumors of Glory, 383.

2. Barton, Preaching Through Time, 1–11.

3. Casey, Toward God.

4. Satterlee, “Preach Jesus, Not Oprah,” 25–38.

5. McKenzie, Novel Preaching.

6. Schlafer, Playing with Fire. See also Schlafer, “Plotting a Journey of Surprising Recognition,” 77–91.

7. Galli and Larson, Preaching that Connects.

8. Wiberg, Housing the Sacred.

9. Grahmann, Transforming Bible Study, introduces InterVarsity’s approach. It was inspired by Robert Traina’s Methodical Bible Study; the original version, published in 1952, is still available. An updated edition includes a Preface from Eugene Peterson, one of Traina’s students: Bauer and Traina, Inductive Bible Study.

10. Alter, Art of Biblical Narrative; Berlin, Poetics and Interpretation; Sternberg, Poetics of Biblical Narrative. Literary study is not limited to narrative: see Alter and Kermode, Literary Guide to the Bible and, more recently, Mangum and Estes, Literary Approaches to the Bible. For an introduction to the “three worlds,” see Tate, Biblical Interpretation.

11. Lowry, Homiletical Plot, and Homiletic Beat. Thomas, They Like to Never Quit Praisin’ God. A summary of the narrative preaching movement comes from McClure, “Narrative and Preachers,” 24–29.

12. Bergen, “Hebrew Historical Narrative,” 16. See also Ellingsen, Integrity of Biblical Narrative, and Mathewson, Art of Preaching Old Testament Narrative.

13. James Muilenburg, “Form Criticism and Beyond,” 1–18.

14. Anderson, “New Frontier of Rhetorical Criticism,” xviii.

15. Augustine, Teaching Christianity; Messer Leon, Honeycomb’s Flow; König, “Stylistik, Rhetorik, Poetik.”

16. Achtemeier, Preaching from the Old Testament.  

17. Brueggemann, Cadences of Home, 57–61.

18. Koptak, “Rhetorical Criticism of the Bible,” 26–37.  

19. For an overview, see Schlimm, “Biblical Studies and Rhetorical Criticism,” 244–75. Martin, Genealogies of New Testament Rhetorical Criticism, presents critical appreciations of five pioneers: Betz, Kennedy, Wuellner, Schüssler Fiorenza, and Robbins. See also Howard, “Rhetorical Criticism in Old Testament Studies,” 87–104.  

20. Koptak, “Rhetorical Identification in Galatians 1:13—2:14,” 97–115, and “Identity and Identification in Lamentations,” 199–215.

21. Koptak, “Preaching from the Prophetic Books,” 22–26.

22. Kessler, Voices from Amsterdam; Deurloo and Venema, “Exegesis,” 3–14. Deurloo’s writings in English are available at http://www.kareldeurloo.com.

23. Koptak, “Preaching Lawfully,” 145–49; Childs, Biblical Theology.

24. Holbert, Preaching Old Testament, and now see his Telling the Whole Story.

25. I followed translation principles used by Fox, Five Books of Moses.

26. Bos, We Have Heard.

27. An excellent one comes from Hogan and Reid, Connecting with the Congregation.

28. Burke, Rhetoric of Motives, 74–75; Augustine, Teaching Christianity, 12.27–28.

29. Camery-Hoggatt, “Rhetoric of Text, Rhetoric of Sermon,” 161–76.

30. Beitler, Seasoned Speech, 4.

31. Hyman, “Kenneth Burke at Seventy,” 69.

32. Selzer, Burke in Greenwich Village, 10–11.

33. Burke, Rhetoric of Motives, 172.

34. Burke, Language as Symbolic Action, 16. For introductions, see Rueckert, Kenneth Burke, and Crafton, “Dancing of An Attitude,” 429–42.

35. Burke, Symbolic of Motives, 275.

36. Kenneth Burke, “Rhetoric of Hitler’s Battle,” 191–220. The epigram Ad Bellum Purificandum (Toward the Purification of War) appears in Burke, Grammar of Motives.

37. Brummett, The World and How We Describe It, 5.

38. Burke, Philosophy of Literary Form, 22–25.

39. Burke, Rhetoric of Religion, 49–51.

40. Gunkel, Legends of Genesis, 80–86. Fretheim, “Genesis,” 592. Brodie, Genesis, 351–52.

41. The following expands on parts of my article, “Rhetorical Identification in Preaching,” 11–18.

42. Scripture translations are by the author except where marked.

43. Berlin, Poetics, 119.

44. Burke, Permanence and Change, 37.

45. Gitay, “Role of Rhetoric,” 112–48.

46. Burke, Rhetoric of Motives, 42–43.

47. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Gospels, 43–44; Anderson, “Joseph and the Passion,” 198–215.

48. Perelmuter, Siblings, 14.

49. Fretheim, “Genesis,” 601.

50. McClendon, “After the Funeral,” 3–8.