As our sermon
series continues, “Six Bible Stories You Thought You Knew,”
we find ourselves this morning at the emotional climax of the great
story of Joseph and his brothers. Let me review the story just briefly,
as we prepare our hearts and minds to receive the sacrament on this
great celebration of World Communion.
Another descendant of Noah,
Joseph was the eleventh of Jacob’s twelve sons and the first-born
of Jacob’s favorite wife, Rachel—this is another one of
those wacky “family values” stories! Anyway, that made
Joseph his father’s favorite and all those of you with siblings
know just how dangerous that kind of dynamic can be in a family. Moreover,
Joseph had dreams that revealed to him that he would become more powerful
than all his brothers. Jacob gave his favorite Joseph a beautiful,
special coat of many colors. By that time, his brothers hated him
so much so that the scripture says that they “could not speak
with him peaceably.”
It gets a lot worse before
it gets better in this family. One day out in the fields, the jealous
brothers conspire to kill Joseph. They strip him of the coat, throw
him down in a deep pit and leave him with to be devoured by wild animals.
But instead, when a caravan of Ishmaelites come along on their way
to Egypt (remember Ishmael??), they see an opportunity for profit.
They sell their brother into slavery for thirty pieces of silver.
The brothers tell their
father Joseph is dead. Instead, once in captivity, Joseph is sold
again, this time to Pharoah’s guards. And there, he prospers…learns
the language, takes an Egyptian name, and uses his skills, including
his gift of interpreting dreams, to carry him all the way to the second
highest office in Egypt. And all the while, Joseph stores up grain
in warehouses for the famine he knows is coming. Ah, a cunning, powerful
man with access to the most precious resource—not oil in that
day and age, but grain.
Just as Joseph had foreseen,
severe drought comes and famine spreads across Egypt and Canaan. Many
come to Joseph for food. Even old Joseph sends ten of his sons to
Egypt to buy grain, never realizing, of course, that they would be
negotiating with their own long-lost brother. When they come into
the court, Joseph recognizes them right away, but they do not recognize
him. Through all their subsequent bargaining and trickery, Joseph’s
heart is breaking. He goes off again and again to weep. He weeps so
loudly, the scripture says, that the Egyptians heard it, the whole
household of Pharoah heard it.
Finally he says
to his evil brothers “Come closer. I am your brother, Joseph
whom you sold into slavery in 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…It was not you who sent me here,
but God. Go now and tell my father to come to me, and to settle here.”
And then he and his brothers wept and wept together and later, they
talked with one another.
This is one of
the most beautiful stories in the whole Bible of relationship restored,
of enmity overcome, of hatred and bitterness put aside and left behind.
And it all because Joseph chose to make it so. He chose to see how
God could work through all that jealousy, betrayal and deceit to bring
good out of evil intent. He chose to see that God longed for unity
to be restored in that family and among those brothers. He chose to
open up his heart and let the tears wash away his anger. Joseph chose
to let God create something new. He knew that the grain they so desperately
needed to feed their hungry stomachs could become the grain that could
feed their hungry hearts as well.
This story shows us that
all those who are able to have confidence in God’s providential
care can find the grace and courage to love even their enemies. And
this is because, as the Bible reveals to us over and over again, God
is always at work behind the scenes, in ways not immediately discernible
to us, always at work to preserve life, to bring life out of death,
to do the things that make for peace. And when we trust this, when
we put all our trust in God, when we believe with all our hearts that
God is doing this work even now, as did Joseph, working in and through
us to make all things right and new—then lo and behold, new
things indeed happen. They seem like miracles. But the hand of God
has been in it all along.
Indeed, we can even say
that God does not ever intend for us to have enemies. Jesus commands
us to love them, to love those we have come to call enemy. And as
soon as love begins to replace fear and hate in our hearts, they are
enemy no more.
Today as World Communion
is celebrated by some 2.1 billion Christians around the globe, we
pray to discern God at work behind the scenes to bring unity out of
our brokenness and discord. For if God can restore unity even unto
Joseph and his brothers, so God can heal all the brokenness in the
church in our day.
Today, we are painfully
aware that Protestants and Orthodox Christians and Catholics are not
able to come together at the one table of our Lord. Our theologies
and rules and ancient enmities still divide us one from another in
this most precious sacrament.
And as we worship this
day, we confess all the ways in which our theological differences
keep us divided from one another, among and within our denominations—evangelicals
and liberals, progressives and Pentecostals and so forth. We acknowledge
as well those rules and customs across the church that allow ordination
of some but not all who are called and chosen by God. And we confess
that around these church-dividing issues we are so estranged that
we sometimes find it impossible to speak with one another peaceably
about our differences so that further schism now threatens even the
impartial unity that currently exists within the Christian family.
Closer to home, these same divisions sometimes divide our own families
as well. I grew up in a family where if you weren’t a certain
kind of Baptist you were most likely going straight to hell. And though
we laugh about it now, it was pretty painful and confusing as a kid,
and there were some falling outs that never did get repaired amongst
some of those many brothers and cousins.
You see, on many levels
in the church, in our families, in our hearts, we are as needful now
of God’s reconciling love as were Joseph and his brothers so
long ago. Yet on this World Communion Sunday, while we grieve these
divisions, while we weep over this brokenness within the Body of Christ
itself, we do not despair. We do not give up hope. For God is at work,
in ways we may not be able to see or discern or understand or comprehend.
God, through the Holy Spirit, is working even now, to make real Jesus’
prayer that we might be one, as he and the Father are one.
Just as Joseph had the
power to envision and live into a new future, so we, too, may choose
to act in ways that restore relationship and overcome all division.
For as Paul wrote in 2nd Corinthians, God has given us the ministry
of reconciliation. God has given us eyes to see that in Christ, the
old has passed away and everything has become new. God filled our
hearts with love, entrusting the message of reconciliation to us,
making us ambassadors for Christ himself.
As we prepare to receive
the Holy Sacrament this day, may God work within us, that through
us, a new church and a new world might be born.
Amen.
©Patricia
Farris, 2007. Permission is given for brief quotation with attribution.
All other rights reserved.
"Joseph
and His Brothers"