Sermon for January 21, 2007
JOSEPH: GOD
BROUGHT GOOD OUT OF EVIL by Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz |
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Scripture: Genesis 50:15-20 from the Good News Bible 15 After the death of their father, Joseph's brothers said, "What if Joseph still hates us and plans to pay us back for all the harm we did to him?" 16 So they sent a message to Joseph: "Before our father died, 17 he told us to ask you, "Please forgive the crime your brothers committed when they wronged you.' Now please forgive us the wrong that we, the servants of your father's God, have done." Joseph cried when he received this message. 18 Then his brothers themselves came and bowed down before him. "Here we are before you as your slaves," they said. 19 But Joseph said to them, "Don't be afraid; I can't put myself in the place of God. 20 You plotted evil against me, but God turned it into good, in order to preserve the lives of many people who are alive today because of what happened. The Bible character we look at today has a story that sounds like it could be a soap opera plot! We can see in the story some very familiar plot ingredients: family jealousy, struggle for power and position, sibling rivalry, feelings that daddy always liked you best, attempts at sexual seduction, executions, a national hunger crisis, and a story of forgiveness and reconciliation! And all this happens not on afternoon TV this week but about 3600 years ago. Look at your time line in your bulletin with me. We see the date for Abraham at around 1700 BCE. Abraham is the great-grandfather of Joseph. The sequence is Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and then Joseph. Joseph is one of twelve sons born to Jacob. Joseph and his younger brother Benjamin are the only ones whose mother is Rachel, the favorite wife of Jacob. Benjamin does not come along for a while, so Joseph is very obviously the favorite son of Jacob and his brothers can see that! Jacob favors this young son so much that he has a special coat or robe made for him—one with many colors, some versions say—thus the origin of the musical title, Joseph and the Technicolor Dream Coat. Joseph got to stay home and be a daddy’s boy even up to the age of 17, while his brothers did the hard work of shepherding in the fields. If that favoritism were not enough, Joseph was a dreamer who had these unusual dreams about his siblings and he would tell his brothers about them. He dreamed that he and his brothers were harvesting sheaves of wheat in the wheat field except Joseph’s sheaf of wheat stood up and the sheaves of his brothers bowed down to him! Just imagine that you had a sibling like that who was always saying, Let me tell you my dream about how smart and good I am and how you bowed down to pay your respects to me! Many of us can remember growing up with siblings that we got so angry with one of them that we thought for an instant that we wished they were dead; we didn’t want that for long but at least the fleeting thought passed our mind. Well, in this family it was more than a fleeting thought! There was much jealousy and even hatred in this family— intense enough that one day when Joseph came into the fields with a message for his brothers they decided to kill him and tell the father he had been attacked by an animal. One brother intervened and they only threw Joseph into an old well for a while until they saw a passing caravan and decided to sell him as a slave for twenty pieces of silver. The caravan took Joseph with them to Egypt where Joseph became a slave to a high ranking official named Potiphar. Apparently Joseph was a decent young man and a hard worker because Potiphar quickly put Joseph in charge of all of his household. The Bible says Joseph was a good looking and well-built young man and he attracted the attention of Potiphar’s wife who tried on many occasions to seduce him. Joseph always resisted her saying it was not right and he did not want to betray the trust of his boss. She became so frustrated and angry that one day she accused him of rape and he was arrested and jailed even though he was innocent. Does this story sound familiar yet? In jail, he met two employees of the Pharaoh who needed Joseph to help them discern and interpret the meaning of their dreams. They were the Pharaoh’s baker and the Pharaoh’s wine steward. Joseph told them what the dreams meant—that one of them would be released and the other executed. He was right and finally the one who was released back to the Pharaoh remembered to tell the Pharaoh about Joseph’s ability with dreams. The Pharaoh had a troubling dream and needed someone to discern its meaning. Joseph was brought before him and predicted from the dream that in Egypt’s future there would be seven years of great harvests and then seven years of severe famine in which people would die from hunger. He told the pharaoh that if they planned wisely during the years of plenty and saved the extra grain, the country would be able get through the famine years. They began to store up the grain and the pharaoh was so impressed with young Joseph’s abilities that he put Joseph in charge of the whole country and made Joseph second in command only to himself. Joseph was thirty years old. He ruled wisely and when the years of famine set in, Egypt was prepared—so well prepared that the government could sell grain to people not only from Egypt but from surrounding regions as well. And this is where we meet Joseph’s murderous brothers again. They come to Egypt wanting to buy grain so they can survive and they have to meet with Joseph to make this transaction. Many years have passed now and he is surrounded by the trappings of power and he looks like an Egyptian—probably even walks like an Egyptian—so they don’t recognize him. He sells them the grain but not until he finds out about their family/his family. He learns that his old father Jacob is still alive and that he has a new brother, Benjamin born to the same mother Rachel who was Jacob’s favorite wife. Through some trickery he sends them all back with the food they need but also with the same money they had brought to buy it with. Later on they have to return but Joseph has told them not to return without their youngest brother. They have great trouble doing this because old Jacob does not want young Benjamin to go anywhere after the disappearance and supposed murder of Joseph, but finally he consents. Joseph is then able to see all of his brothers at once when they return, though the brothers still do not know who he is. He sends them back toward home with grain and with hidden money in their bags but also hidden in the bag of the youngest is Joseph’s silver cup. Before they get too far toward home, Joseph’s guards arrest them for thievery and they are brought back cringing before Joseph. And there he cannot keep up appearances any more. Weeping, he tells them who he is and they are dumbstruck. He arranges to send them back for all the rest of the family including old patriarch Jacob. The family comes and settles in Egypt and has plenty of food and shelter and there is peace and reconciliation and harmony—until Jacob the patriarch dies. What happens then? The brothers are still feeling guilty and uneasy and what they wonder is— Now is Joseph going to kill us because of what we did to him? They come to him again and ask for forgiveness and Joseph, weeping tells them that he has no remote idea of taking revenge on them. He says something that foreshadows a verse from the apostle Paul in Romans: Joseph says, “What you intended for evil God was able to turn into good.” He does not deny the evil and murderous intentions that were in their hearts, he just says that God is big enough to take even those worst of intentions and bring good out of that. And the story ends again with reconciliation. I read the story again—fourteen chapters in Genesis—and it is such a moving story I got goose bumps a couple of times. And I have read it many times before. What can we learn from Joseph about character? Let’s be honest about what he does as a teenager: he would have been very hard to live with — always telling you about his visions and dreams of power and glory and how small you are in those dreams and visions! He was pampered and precocious. He was a daddy’s boy who got treated with favoritism. AND... after he became a slave in Egypt in the household of Potiphar, he quickly earned that official’s trust and gained respect and power. He had the integrity and ethical good sense to resist the sexual temptation in front of him. He would be a good example for anyone in power who was faced with sexual temptation including a former president of our country. In jail, he earned respect and trust. The pharaoh came to see his wisdom and his good sense. And, he is not only smart and wise, he is able to feel. On several occasions when he is relating to his brothers, he is overcome with emotion and has to excuse himself so he can be alone with his tears. One of those occasions is when he learns that his father is alive and well and that he has a new brother whom he has never met. Even though his family has mistreated him, he still feels very connected to them and is emotional about them. One of the other occasions when he is overcome with feeling is when he sees his brother Benjamin for the first time. He has to excuse himself to weep and then to pull himself together. I can understand that. I would feel that way upon seeing a brother whom I had never met. Or many of us would be emotional if we had been separated from a parent and could see a father after not seeing him for many years. That is the other occasion the Bible tells us when Joseph is overcome with emotion. Joseph is able to cry when he needs to; he is not cold and unfeeling. He is able to express his feelings. That is something many of us men need to be freer to do. This capacity to feel deeply and to be open about it is a character trait I admire in both the current President Bush and in his father, George H. W. Bush. Finally Joseph makes a very important statement of faith at the end of the story after Jacob has died and the brothers come to him very afraid that now he will take revenge. He refuses to take revenge. That is a very important example. He refuses to take revenge. He had all the power and all the reasons to take revenge but he did not. We have been reading about the dangers of taking revenge the past two weeks in the mishandled execution of Saddam Hussein when part of the critique of that execution has been that this got handled as a revenge killing. Joseph refused to take revenge and then gives us the insight that God is great enough to take an action that was only intended for evil—the selling of a brother into slavery—and bring something very good out of that. That is the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and it is the God of Jesus whom we gather to worship and thank today and every week. Let us trust in that God to bring good out of evil in our lives and in our world. Amen |
