As Jacob is dying, Joseph bows his knee to his father,
reversing the image from his dream. It
is a tender moment between a father and his favorite son who were separated
from one another through no fault of their own.
Was there any doubt that Jacob would play favorites with both these children
and with Joseph in the end. Joseph
presents his children in birth order to receive the blessing from Jacob and yet
the old man crosses it up, blesses the younger over the elder, just as he had
done in his own life. He took his
father's blessing away from his elder brother, he now also blesses the younger
son, Joseph, over his brothers with an extra inheritance, and blesses Ephraim
over Manasseh. That's just Jacob being
Jacob.
There is a parallel here in this Gospel reading with John 4,
the Samaritan woman at the well. Here,
Jesus has fed the multitudes the day prior and now they come seeking again that
bread and Jesus refuses, pointing them to something more, the bread of heaven. Their hunger is aroused and they respond,
"Sir, give us this bread always."
In Samaria, the woman didn't understand He was talking about spiritual
things when He spoke of water and she responded to his offer, “Sir, give me
this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.” She continued the conversation and received
what she truly sought, these are more material in their needs, while Jesus is
promising true bread, Himself.
Jesus was pointing to the bread that satisfies, the bread of
which Isaiah wrote, "Why do you spend your money for that which is not
bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?" Paul reminds us
that we must not spend our lives gratifying the desires of the flesh. Our problem is we are all, at heart,
materialists. We see with our eyes and
we want what we can experience with our senses.
We fail to live at the level of Spirit, that which makes us different
from everything else in creation, God's gift of His own Spirit to us. Adam and Eve became materialists when they
took and ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, believing material
things could provide spiritual wisdom and insight. The entire advertising world revolves around
the promise of fulfilling a desire if we will only get this material thing. We need to see with spiritual eyes to know
good and evil. Maybe, in the end, Jacob
saw that way, Ephraim endured and Manasseh did not and the well Jacob
apparently dug in that land he gave to Joseph enduringly produced water all the
way up to the time of Jesus and does so today.
No comments:
Post a Comment