(OK, so it's a little late for this, but it would make all kinds of sense if I'd post the sermon for the actual lesson in addition to the 'gap' material. I'll do some catch up this week for past gaps, but here is today's sermon. It is also to be found on the St. Alban's group page, so forgive the duplication if you've already been there or were actually in church this morning. It was a good day. Yummy food. Wonderful people. Thank you.)
This is the time of year for high school reunions. I personally know someone who is about to go to his fiftieth, and I remember my own school days when one day every year those old ladies would process into chapel carrying a banner with the date of a year from what seemed the stone age. They were as foreign to us as if they'd come from the moon. What I know now is that for them the halls and classrooms and playing fields were still populated by the young girls they had been, and that memory and identity are much more tangible, much more immediate than abstract thoughts.
We begin our lives with dreams. The future is a blank slate and we believe we have a basket full of shining opportunities. We have innumerable choices, we are told, and we are blessed whatever gifts and talents we have been given. We step out into our lives saying, “Watch out, world, here I come.” And then life happens.
The story of Joseph is one of the longest sustained narratives in the Bible. We've said before that there are many genres of literature in the Bible: fiction and non-fiction, history, law, poetry, drama. I'm thinking that the story of Joseph is just about as close to being a full-fledged novel as the gospels are. It is a long story, and today we read a chapter right out of the middle, which actually means practically nothing if we don't know what came before and how it all ends up.
Joseph is the eleventh of Jacob's twelve sons, and he is unabashedly the favorite. The ten big brothers sweat in the fields in the heat of the day while Joseph plays video games and wears his designer clothes. You know -- the amazing technicolor dreamcoat. And Joseph is obnoxious as all get-out. He lords it over the big brothers and brags about his privileged life. “I’m Dad’s favorite.” He was, and they all knew it. And to top it all off, he has the gift of accurately interpreting dreams. But not the sense to keep to himself the one about the sheaves of wheat, which shows those very same brothers bowing down to him in obedience.
No wonder they jump at the chance to get back at him when he comes out to the field to check on them. No wonder they rough him up. All those years of pent up anger come unleashed and they try to kill him, but then think better of it and sell him, instead, to slave dealers on their way to Egypt. They take than fancy coat, stained with blood, home to dad, who grieves over the loss of his beloved son.
So Joseph does end up in Egypt as the slave of an official named Potiphar. And Potiphar's wife, who is a cougar is nothing short of treacherous. All Joseph's dreams of lording it over his brothers and living his life of indulgence have met the brick wall of the unimaginable. When she tries to seduce him he refuses, and so she, too, uses his clothing to perpetuate a lie, and he lands in prison.
I can't help but think of Amanda Knox, whose fate we will learn this week. I can't tell you for sure whether she is innocent or guilty, but the evidence doesn't seem to support guilt, only the tragedy of being in the wrong place at a very wrong time. She appears to be a sweet young girl
who set of for a year of study in Italy full of dreams and romantic visions. She never expected to spend four years, let alone the rest of her life, in a foreign prison. However the story turns out, her life will be forever shaped by this experience. I do keep her and her family and the judges and jury in my prayers.
So here Joseph is, in a predicament he never could have imagined. If his sin was being an obnoxious kid, well, I'd say the punishment far exceeds the crime. But we all know that sometimes a seemingly inconsequential misstep leads us toward more dire consequences than it merits.
But there is a refrain in this narrative: The Lord was with Joseph. Clearly Joseph was a young man full of charm and intelligence, so the jailer gave him charge over everything in the prison. But it was still prison. The king's cupbearer and baker landed in the clink and confessed to Joseph the dreams they dreamed, dreams that foretold and resulted in the freedom of the cupbearer and the execution of the baker. Sadly for Joseph, the cupbearer neglected to tell Pharaoh of Joseph's God-given gift of dream interpretation for a long time, and Joseph stayed in prison. Still the Lord was with Joseph, and I imagine Joseph might well have said, “A lot of good that does.”I can well imagine Amanda Knox saying the same about the prayers that are being lifted up for her, and I wouldn't blame her a bit.
Many of us have had dark times in our lives. Times that seemed so bleak and despairing that short of getting lifted up out of the mess, we don't care that much who is praying for us or whether or not God is with us. All we care about is having the bad stuff end. Getting the cure or at least the remission. Bringing our beloved back to us. Getting our child out of trouble. Finding some money somewhere. Getting us a job. If God is God and God is all-powerful, you'd think God would lift a hand, wouldn't you? It's a fair question to ask.
But looking back at such times now, I can see that my greatest formation happened in the darkness of the metaphorical prison. I am not saying that suffering is good. I am not for a minute -- and I want you to hear me – I am not saying that God gives us suffering in order to teach us a lesson. I do not believe that. And I do not believe in a God who is dispassionate in the face of the suffering of God's beloved. But I do believe that in time God can redeem anything, even the worst that life has to throw our way.
Finally Joseph does get out of jail and interprets Pharaoh's dreams with the end result that Egypt is spared the effects of famine and Joseph is elevated to the highest post in Egypt. All Pharaoh has to worry about is what to have for dinner. And here is where those brothers come back into the story.
Famine has hit the land of Canaan, and they show up in Joseph's office, not having a clue as to who he is other than the official to whom they must bow and scrape – remember that dream? -- and offer whatever bribes they can come up with. Joseph asks after Benjamin, his baby brother, the only one who has not done him wrong. The story is long and convoluted at this point. You really will have to read it for yourselves, but eventually the whole family is reunited in Egypt,
and Jacob dies as an old man with all his sons around him, and Joseph still in the position of highest favor.
It is not a simple story. It is not a simple reunion. There is history between the brothers, bad blood, good reason for deep resentment if not vengeance. But something had happened to Joseph in that prison. Maybe it was the arrogance that got stripped away. Maybe it was that when it was all over he could see that God had indeed been with him all along and had tempered his willfulness so that when the moment came he could embrace his brothers and say, “God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth.” And eventually, “Do not be afraid. Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.”
The power of reunion has more than one dimension. If we’re talking about our own school reunion, of course it is about reengaging with old friends, reliving old memories and seeing how everybody is doing or how they turned out. But I think there is a personal side as well. And that is the bringing together of the different selves we have been. They were little girls playing hopscotch on the playground, then the the young mother, the competent business woman, the grandmother, and now the wise older woman who can look back at her life and see the pattern of it all, the patches of light and dark, and in seeing the whole of it, to know that it has meaning.
The story of Joseph and his brothers gives us a lens through which we can view our own lives, no matter where we are on our journey. It can alert us to looking for God’s presence where it is not evident, and in time, I hope, to seeing that God does intend all things for good.
Amen.
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