(If you are wondering where the reading comes from throughout August and September, we will be following an adapted Narrative Lectionary.)
Hebrew Bible: Genesis
45:1-15 (NRSV)
Then
Joseph could no longer control himself before all those who stood by
him, and he cried out, “Send everyone away from me.” So no one
stayed with him when Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And
he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of
Pharaoh heard it. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my
father still alive?” But his brothers could not answer him, so
dismayed were they at his presence. Then Joseph said to his brothers,
“Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your
brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be
distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for
God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in
the land these two years; and there are five more years in which
there will be neither plowing nor harvest. God sent me before you to
preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many
survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God; he has made
me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all
the land of Egypt. Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus
says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt; come down to
me, do not delay. You shall settle in the land of Goshen, and you
shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s
children, as well as your flocks, your herds, and all that you have.
I will provide for you there—since there are five more years of
famine to come—so that you and your household, and all that you
have, will not come to poverty.’ And now your eyes and the eyes of
my brother Benjamin see that it is my own mouth that speaks to you.
You must tell my father how greatly I am honored in Egypt, and all
that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here.” Then he
fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, while Benjamin wept
upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and
after that his brothers talked with him.
Sermon:
Let
us pray:
Patient teacher, we
give you thanks for all the ways you guide us,
especially for the
examples of those like Joseph who show such forgiveness and
compassion even in the face of violence and betrayal.
Guide us today. May
the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts
reorient us so we
can live lives overflowing with love
as Joseph did.
Amen.
Last
week I gave you all homework. Raise your hand if you did it! For
those of you who either weren't here or forgot, the homework was to
write down every day this week one blessing you received and one way
you were
a blessing throughout the day. We have been reading the past two
weeks about God's promises to us through characters like Noah and
Abraham. God told us that God blessed Abraham so he would go and be a
blessing. Honestly, I found the homework more difficult than I
expected it to be. While I can easily find ways I have been blessed,
choosing a way I was a blessing felt uncomfortably like bragging. It
also reminded me how even as a pastor, my days can too easily be
spent without putting myself out there to really be a blessing to
strangers. I don't know if that was your experience. But such
difficulty reminded me that maybe I am a little hard on some of these
ancient figures from the Old Testament. This call God has placed on
our lives to be a blessing to others is not easy even without the
added complications of conflict we see in Genesis alone.
The
book of Genesis, the first book of the bible, is, frankly a
depressing one. God created us and called us good. Then we sinned in
the garden and had to leave. Then Cain killed Abel and things went
totally downhill into a chaotic, violent, ugly mess until the flood
came. But the destruction so upset God that God made a rainbow to
remind us that life is too precious. But even with the rainbow and
the new start, we continued to mess up. God showered blessings upon
Abraham, but Abraham still lied and cheated. And God's whole promise
to Abraham was that Abraham would be blessed so he could be a
blessing! But Abraham had even more difficulty with that call than we
do--- and so did his descendants. Jacob, his grandson, lied and
cheated and encouraged violence within his own family by the way he
valued some sons and wives and devalued others. The ugliness rivals
Game
of Thrones,
for those of you who watch the show or read the Song
of Ice and Fire series.
To
look at our history as a people of faith through the bible story
alongside our own struggles to be a blessing...it is all a little
depressing. All God asked is that we show each other a little love, a
little compassion, and instead we are greedy and self-serving or even
just lazy. Brian D. McLaren, a pastor and public theologian, writes
that “[t]he book of Genesis would be a tragic epic of despair,”
that indeed would give us little hope for our own situations, if not
for the end of the book: the story of Joseph.1
(Some
of you were probably wondering when Joseph would be coming in here!)
His story really begins in chapter 37 of Genesis, the first son of
Jacob's favored wife and so Jacob's favorite son. Now Joseph, as much
as I will praise him later in my sermon, is not perfect by any means.
He is one of those annoying kids who doesn't realize how pretentious
he is. I'm glad my sisters aren't here in worship this morning or they would tell you that I used to be(am?) a lot like Joseph in this way. He tattles on his brothers, he has dreams about his whole
family bowing down to him and he doesn't keep said dreams to himself.
He prances around in ostentatious clothing, which, in his defense,
was his father's fault for buying him the fancy coat. But as annoying
as he was, and as insufferable as his father must have been fawning
over him, no one deserves the treatment that his brothers give him.
Joseph's
brothers are classic bullies. They are obviously hurting, but instead
of trying to break out of the cycle of hurt, they choose to hurt
someone else instead. Joseph. They throw him into a pit, speak of
killing him, but then decide to sell him into slavery. Afterward,
they soak Joseph's fancy coat in blood and go to their father,
allowing him to believe his beloved son was dead. This is a horrible,
heart-wrenching story. And poor Joseph, as though his life wasn't bad
enough, he tries to live as ethically as he can as a slave and still
finds himself wrongly imprisoned!
But
still Joseph does not break, and eventually he becomes Pharaoh's
right-hand man. God gives him the power to interpret Pharaoh's dreams
of a coming famine, and Pharaoh gives him the power to prepare and
prevent starvation. And soon, Joseph's own brothers find themselves
in Egypt at Joseph's own feet pleading for a little food to ward off
starvation. They do not know who he is, but he knows exactly who they
are. And then something amazing and beautiful and hopeful
happens.
Joseph, remembering the blessing of his father's love, looking at the
blessing that here he was a slave who rose to prominence, looking at
the blessing that in the midst of famine Egypt had plenty--- Joseph
becomes a blessing. In McLaren's words, “Joseph refuses to imitate
the hatred of his rival brothers. Instead, he returns to the
imitation of God whose will, Joseph knows, is always benevolent.”2
He shows us that we aren't doomed forever to keep on messing up and
failing God's call to love our neighbors, to bless one another. He
shows us that what God asks of us is actually possible, even in the
worst circumstances. He forgives his brothers. He feeds them and
cares for them and reunites his family.
Now,
Joseph's brothers committed a egregious sin. It would not do anyone
any good if Joseph just saw them again and welcomed them in with open
arms. He was abused by his brothers! But when he saw his brothers
again, he was safe, in a position of power so that, if his brothers
refused to repent, he would not have to worry about them committing
another violence against him. Also, because they did not know he was
their brother, he was able to scare them a bit, to see if they would
treat their brother Benjamin badly as they had treated him so badly.
But he saw they had changed. They were no longer bent on violence and
destruction. And so they were able to receive the grace he offered,
to receive the blessing.
I
read a story once about this kind of compassion and blessing in the
face of sin. It is a story from South Africa. I know not many of you
are familiar with South African history, but you may remember hearing
the term “apartheid” before. The government of South Africa, run
by the white minority established apartheid, officially introduced in
1948. Apartheid is a word that means “apartness,” and was a
system of violent racial segregation not unlike Jim Crow in our
country. In it, however, people of color were not considered to be
citizens at all, did not deserve any rights at all, and so most
services like medical services were inferior to those for whites.
People of color were to be constantly reminded of their so-called
inferiority, and they lived in constant fear of violence at the hands
of their white oppressors.
When
apartheid was finally overthrown in the 1990s, leaders like
Archbishop Desmond Tutu came up with a creative and life-giving way
to bring justice to the country that would allow them to acknowledge
the human rights abuses that were committed while breaking the cycle
of violence. They established the South African Truth and
Reconciliation Commission to bear witness to, record and in some
cases grant amnesty to the perpetrators of crimes relating to human
rights violations, as well as to determine reparation and
rehabilitation.
There
are many amazing stories about the commission, and I will share one
with you today.
In
the days of apartheid, seven youth were killed by the South African
military in an ambush. One of the men who participated in executing
the youth, who were lying wounded on the ground, testified before the
Commission. In the room were the mothers of these young men. After he
finished testifying, the mothers were asked if they wanted to say
anything. The spokeswoman for the group of mothers said that they did
want to speak. She turned to the young man and said, “You are going
to listen to our anger. Sit there and listen.” One after another,
these mothers spoke of the pain they had suffered. Then, after all
had finished talking, one of the mothers turned to the man, who was
totally crushed, and said, “Come here. Come here; let me hold you.
Let me forgive you. I have no son, now. But I want you to be my son,
so that you will never do these things again.”3
Like
Joseph, these women did not say to the men that what they did was
okay. But rather than returning violence with more violence, they showed
love. They blessed the man who had sinned. And that blessing helped
him turn away from sin. That blessing gave him hope.
So
today I want you to remember that as difficult as being a blessing
can be, as difficult as breaking cycles of violence and poverty and
apathy and sin can be, repentance is possible. Let us go forward from
this place and chose not to return sin with more sin. Let us go forth
from this place like Joseph choosing to be a blessing even though it
may be difficult.
1Brian
D. McLaren, “How the Doctrine of (Un)Original Sin Can Help
Christians Be Less Sinful,” Why Did Jesus,
Moses, the Buddha, and Mohammed Cross the Road? Christian Identity
in a Multi-Faith World
(New York: Jericho Books, 2012), 112.
2Ibid.
3Thomas
Porter, “The Last Supper: Naming the Conflicts and Giving Bread
and Wine,” Conflict and Communion Reconciliation and
Restorative Justice at Christ’s Table,
ed. Thomas Porter (Nashville, Tennessee: Discipleship
Resources, 2006), 23.
