SunAug142011
Scripture: Genesis 45:1-15
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.
Genesis 12-50 tells the story of Abram and the next three generations of his family. He and his descendants move from Haran into the land of Canaan, They lead a nomadic life, wandering around the land and eventually end up in Egypt.
Many of you will recall the last sermon Hamilton preached on June 26, before he began his summer vacation and study leave. He read from Genesis 22, the story of Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son Isaac, his only son, the son he had waited a lifetime for.
It was a challenging passage of scripture and Hamilton handled it well. If you missed it or would like to revisit it, you can read it or hear an audio version of it on our Fedchurch website. While I’ll not endeavor to repreach his sermon, the lesson I took away from it was that our relationship with God must be primary. If God occupies the proper place in our lives, we will be better balanced, our relationships will be healthier, we will be better workers, better neighbors, better parents, better spouses—in short, better people, because we have given God priority in our lives.
In my sermon on July 10, we jumped ahead to Genesis 25, which tells the story of Isaac’s two sons, Jacob and Esau. We looked at how they struggled with each other through much of their lives. Their relationship, marked by anger and hatred and deceit, deteriorated to the point where Jacob eventually had to flee the country for his life. It wasn’t until many years later that he returned and he and Esau were reconciled.
The lesson I endeavored to draw from that story was that God can take us, faults, failures, shortcomings and all; God can take us, with our dishonesty and doubt and greed and misplaced priorities; God can take us with our questionable past; God can take us, wounded though we may be and use us; that there is a role for us in making God’s will a reality in our world.
Today’s lectionary text comes from Genesis 45. It describes a moving scene of reconciliation, when Joseph, the eleventh of Jacob’s 12 sons reveals himself to his brothers in Egypt.
The story of their relationship to that point was a rather sordid tale, as you’ll recall. It began years earlier with friction between Joseph and his10 older brothers. Joseph is favored by his father, Jacob, who showers him with gifts, including a very nice coat. Andrew Lloyd Weber wrote a musical about it, entitled Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Joseph not only basks in the favoritism, but rubs it in, evoking the hatred of his brothers.
One day Jacob sends Joseph to check on his brothers, who are herding sheep in a distant community. When they see him coming, they plot to kidnap and kill him. Eventually they decide instead to sell him to a caravan of slave traders, who are passing through the area on their way to Egypt.
The brothers, in an act befitting their jealousy and hatred of Joseph, take his coat and dip it in the blood of a goat they have slaughtered. They concoct a story, telling their father Jacob that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal and show him the coat covered in blood as proof.
Meanwhile the fortunes of Joseph rise and fall in Egypt. He is sold to Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, who serves as captain of the guard. Joseph turns out to be an exceptional worker, well organized and likeable. Potiphar gives him increasing responsibilities, until he is virtually in charge of Potiphar’s household.
Then things turn sour for Joseph. A young and good looking man, he attracted the attention of Potiphar’s wife, and not in a sisterly sort of way. Over a period of time she attempts on numerous occasions to seduce him. Out of a sense of moral integrity and unwilling to betray the trust Potiphar has placed in him, he rebuffs Mrs. Potiphar’s advances.
One day Joseph finds himself alone in the home with Mrs. Potipher. Unwilling to take “no” for an answer, she grabs him and tries to force him into bed with her. In his endeavor to get away, he leaves his outer garment in her grasp. At that moment Joseph discovered what English playwright, William Congrieve, pointed out a couple of millennia later: “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”
Livid at being rejected, Mrs. Potipher tells her household immediately and her husband when he returns home later in the day that the Hebrew slave he brought into their home had tried to rape her. When Potipher hears her story, he is enraged and has Joseph thrown into prison.
Strange as it may seem, Joseph also prospers in prison. He finds favor with the chief jailor, who gives him increasing responsibility for running the facility. After awhile, though confined to the prison, he is more like an employee than an inmate.
Through a series of circumstances that occur while Joseph is imprisoned, his ability to interpret dreams is discovered. A couple of years later when Pharaoh has a troubling dream Joseph is brought before him to interpret the dream, He tells Pharaoh that Egypt is about to experience a seven-year period of plentiful harvest, and that will be followed by seven years of severe famine.
When Joseph suggests a plan of action to deal with the impending climatic disaster, Pharaoh is duly impressed. He elevates Joseph to second in command and gives him the task of overseeing the collection and storing of excess grain during the seven years of plenty, so that Egypt will be prepared for the seven years of famine.
When the famine hits, Egypt is prepared. Joseph has performed well and is charged with dispensing the abundant stores of grain that have been collected. The famine, as it turns out, is not only severe, but widespread. It affects countries far beyond Egypt, including the land of Canaan, where Joseph’s father, brothers and extended family live.
Joseph’s brothers make two trips to Egypt in search of grain. He recognizes them immediately on their first trip, though they do not know him. Conversing with them through an interpreter, he finds out that his father Jacob is still living and he has a younger brother, Benjamin, born after Joseph was sold by his brothers.
Wanting to meet Benjamin, Joseph accuses his older brothers of being spies. He then detains Simeon, telling the rest that they must go back home and return with Benjamin to win Simeon’s release. Joseph sends them back to Canaan with a plentiful supply of grain and slips the money they have given him back into their grain sacks.
When Jacob hears of Joseph’s request, he resists sending Benjamin with them, fearing he will lose another son in addition to Joseph. Eventually the continuing famine forces a return trip to Egypt and the brothers refuse to go without Benjamin.
That brings us to today's passage, when Joseph finally reveals himself to his brothers. They are justifiably terrified, fearing the worst. Joseph is in a position to exact revenge.. Yet he does not do so. He receives them as brothers. He embraces and forgives them.
Then Joseph says an amazing thing to his brothers: “Do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life.”
A Three-fold Lesson about Providence.
The lesson that Joseph discovered was a lesson about the providence of God. It was a three-fold lesson. Joseph learned first of all through his experiences, through all of his experiences, that God was always working.
The Apostle Paul wrote in his letter to First Century Christians in Rome:”We know that all things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to God’s purposes.”
That is not to say that everything that happens to us is good. It wasn’t good that Joseph’s brothers hated him enough to want to kill him; then sold him as a slave for 30 pieces of silver. It wasn’t good that Potiphar’s wife first tried to seduce Joseph and then orchestrated his unjust imprisonment, when he rejected her advances.
Did God will the actions of Joseph’s brothers and Potiphar’s wife? Absolutely not, but God was working in both of those situations to accomplish God’s purposes.
A second part of the three-fold lesson Joseph learned was that God’s work is not always easy to see. Cut off from home and family, consigned to slavery in a foreign land, betrayed by a member of the family he was endeavoring to faithfully serve, languishing in prison—Joseph learned what Jesus would later experience, when he prayed from the cross, the words of Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.“
One of the lessons that Joseph learned through his many experiences was that, though he may have encountered some dark places in life, though he may have felt very much alone and abandoned, he was never alone or abandoned—even in the most dark and desolate times. In the middle of it, it was difficult to see. From a different, later vantage point it became much clearer.
If not now, one day we will have a clearer understanding. “Now we see through a glass darkly,” the Apostle Paul wrote, “but one day we will see clearly.
And finally, an equally important lesson Joseph learned was that God’s work is always rooted in God’s love for us. I was struck by the account of Joseph being thrown in prison by Potiphar, after his wife falsely accused him of rape. “He remained there in prison,” the account from Genesis tells us, “but the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love….”(Gen 39:21).
ILLUSTRATION: The Silver Refiner
There is a verse of scripture in Malachi 3:3 that says: "God will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver."
One day a group of women in a Bible study came across the verse and wondered what it meant. One of the women offered to find out about the process of refining silver and report back to the group at their next meeting. That week she called a silversmith and made an appointment to watch him at work. She didn't mention anything about the reason for her interest beyond her curiosity about the process of refining silver.
As she watched the silversmith, he held a piece of silver over the fire and let it heat up. He explained that in refining silver, one needed to hold the silver in the middle of the fire where the flames were hottest to burn away all the impurities. The woman thought about God holding us in such a hot spot; then she thought again about the verse that says: "He sits as a refiner and purifier of silver."
She asked the silversmith if he had to sit there in front of the fire the whole time the silver was being refined. The man answered that yes, he not only had to sit there holding the silver, but he had to keep his eyes on the silver the entire time it was in the fire. If the silver was left a moment too long in the flames, it would be destroyed.
The woman was silent for a moment. Then she asked the silversmith, "How do you know when the silver is fully refined?"
He smiled at her and answered, "Oh, that's easy -- when I see my image in it"
"God will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver." When I was a student at Nazarene Theological Seminary in the early 1970’s, Dr. William Greathouse, the president of the seminary, taught an introductory class on theology each year. He used to quote a little poem that I’ve never forgotten. It went like this:
I’m a person God is making,
Like a statue, God is shaping,
God is changing me, correcting.
God’s intent on my perfecting.
Joseph experienced the fire of adversity and through it all learned that God was watching over him. Even when he couldn’t see or feel God’s presence, Joseph came to believe that a loving, compassionate, caring God was at work in his life, protecting, perfecting employing him in the task of bringing about God’s will in the world.
Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step." May we learn that lesson as well.