Preaching Peace

Year A, Pentecost9, Proper 15
August 14, 2011
By Thomas L. and Laura C. Truby
Genesis 45:1-15
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Joseph’s Healing Journey

I was disappointed when I discovered that the lectionary immediately moves us from Joseph sold into slavery, to Joseph, chief administrator under the Great Pharaoh, revealing himself to his stunned brothers. We don’t get to hear about how Potiphar, an officer in the army and the captain of Pharaoh’s guard, bought Joseph when he arrived in Egypt as a teenager. We don’t learn that Joseph soon demonstrates his remarkable administrative ability and quickly advances to the captain’s personal assistant, managing all his domestic affairs. Nor do we hear of how Potiphar’s wife, who desiring the hansom and dashing young alien, repeatedly tries to seduce him and each time he refuses her. His refusals frustrate her desire until it turns vengeful. She grabs his coat as he makes his escape and uses it to prove to her husband that his slave has violated her. Potiphar believes her lie and in a rage has Joseph thrown into prison.

We, the reader of the story, know that he is innocent and falsely accused. This, of course, reminds us of another story. Yes, the crucifixion of Jesus, the son of Joseph, several centuries down the road. In this, the Bible is unique. Usually the ancient storieshide the victim’s innocence and justify their death at the hands of the crowd like Oedipus in Greek mythology. But the Bible starts from a different place. It reveals the victim’s innocence. This theme, sprinkled throughout the Old Testament, reaches its apex in the crucifixionof an innocent man on a cross outside Jerusalem. In the Bible as a whole, this theme is more than a story, it is the unveiling of a mechanism that humans both depend on and are ashamed of—this is the mechanism revealed at the crucifixion. But back to our story!

In Pharaoh’s prison Joseph again quickly demonstrates his remarkable leadership capacities. Everything he touches turns out well and soon he is running the whole prison as a prisoner! A scandal erupts in Pharaoh’s inner circle and the cup bearer and baker are both thrown into prison. These are two of the most important positions in government because both werein charge of poison protection; one of the principle threats to ancient kings. The cupbearer protecting the king’s drink and the baker through protecting what he ate.

Both of the jailed officials have a dream and wonder about their future. Joseph interprets their dreams and correctly predicts who will be vindicated and who will be condemned. Two years of jail time later, when Pharaoh has a dream, the vindicated cupbearer remembers Joseph and Joseph is quickly summoned before the throne. Using the Pharaoh’s dream, Joseph predicts seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. That’s the story most of us remember from our childhood. Pharaoh accepts Joseph’s interpretation and immediately releases him from prison and places him in charge of gathering food during the good years in readiness for the coming famine.

Again we can see how Joseph is a precursor to Jesus. The text says that Joseph was thirty years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. How old was Jesus when he began his ministry?

Next, Joseph’s miraculous interpretation of dreams functions like Jesus’ miracles confirming his relationship to God. They show that Joseph is not an imposter.

Third, just as Jesus always pointed beyond himself to his Father, Joseph, even in front of the fearsome Pharaoh, tells him that it is not he who makes these interpretations possible but God who exists beyond and above them all.

Finally, there is the theme of Joseph’s improbable authority. Can you imagine an alien slave becoming like the “father to Pharaoh” the most powerful human on the face of the earth? Impossible! It is a faint echo foreshadowing Jesus who, though born in a barn in an out of the way place, becomes the King of Glory and the bringer of our redemption, the hinge pin upon which all history pivots. Clearly God has upset the normal course of things and provided a way through our human entrapment that we have brought upon ourselves!

With all of this as background we move into this morning’s Hebrew scripture text. “Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all those who stood by him.” After all these years the eleven brothers who betrayed him into slavery stand before him and he has changed so much that they don’t recognize him. The childhood dream that had caused so much dissention had come true. The brothers who hated him were now bowing down before him and absolutely in his power. He has all the cards and they have none. They didn’t even know who he was. Could there be a more perfect opportunity for revenge? What should he do? How should he play out his hand?

The first thing he does is to disarm himself before them. He removes all the sources of threat from the room by sending all guards, soldiers and officials out. Now it is just Joseph and the brothers. Then he lets his emotions show, weeping so loudly that everyone off stage heard it. They must have wondered what in the world was going on in there. And then through his tears he says “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?” The eleven brothers do not say a word. Joseph still doesn’t know whether his father is dead or alive. They are dumbfounded but the emotional wheels are turning. In their minds they each are thinking “Oh no—are we in trouble! We are in deep trouble. The brother we tried to get rid of now has us in his grasp and we are helpless to do anything about it! The underlying lie of our life has been exposed and we are the guilty. Wait till Dad hears about this. This is huge! This will change everything.”

Joseph realizes that their guilt and shame-laden terror has rendered them speechless and so he says, ‘Come closer to me.’” That is the last thing they want to do. “Are you kidding, come closer?” Everything in them wants to run. But what choice do they have?

He again tells them who he is but this time references his identity to them. “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt.”I am Jesus whom you crucified says Jesus when he meets his disciples after the resurrection. Do you see the parallel? In the crucifixion humanity is caught condemning an innocent man—who turns out to be God’s Son. And this turns out to be what we have done since the beginning of time—namely, temporarily keeping the peace between us by shifting the blame to whomever is vulnerable.

This is why many years before, when the eleven brothers first threw Joseph into the dry well, they where able to eat together in peace. In fact, it isthe next sentence after they have done it, in the text of Genesis. Their peace was built on excluding Joseph. Temporarily all of the tensions between them had been thrown into the well with Joseph. In this world there are only two ways of having communion. We will either commune around excluding some victim or we will commune around the Excluded Victim—and it is the latter that we did last week in our worship.

“I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt.” He knows what they have done. He remembers. He is fully aware. This is not going to be swept under the rug!

And then Joseph makes the same move that Jesus made. “And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life.” This is the same as Jesus, after his resurrection saying “do not be afraid. It had to happen this way. It is all part of a bigger plan wherein God changed what you meant for evil into something creative for good. God sent me before you to preserve life.” “God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3:17) Jesus’ mission was to preserve life, not destroy it. Do you see the connection?

Does Joseph show us the character of God? Is Jesus like Joseph? Is the Gospel of Jesus contained and hidden in this first book of the Bible? Are we in the position of the eleven brothers who are both exposed and forgiven like Joseph’s brothers or the eleven disciples?

Joseph’s only desire was to provide for his family in the land of Goshen. The land of Goshen was a place of provision, welcome and abundance. Joseph wanted his brothers to hurry back to their father, their wives and families and bring them all to this place of plenty in the middle of the famine that was destined to continue five more years. Is that God’s desire for his people? We have a home in Goshen. It is a place where our cravings find satisfaction and we can settle down knowing we are children of God.

The famine that is our contemporary culture will continue. We are not half way through it. But relief has come and it comes from outside our selves. It comes as grace, as food that satisfies, as reconciliation and as forgiveness.

There is a kind of baptism that ends today’s text. It is the sprinkled water that convinces Benjamin and the eleven that Joseph has forgiven them. “Joseph 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.” They reconcile!

Joseph baptizes them with his tears and they believe. Is God like that? Amen.

Year A, Pentecost 8, Proper 13
August 7^th, 2011
The Rev. Tom and the Rev. Laura Truby
Matthew 14:22-33
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The Raging Storm of Our Own Making

“Immediately he makes the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismisses the crowds.” According to Matthew, Jesus has just finished feeding all the people, 5000 men plus women and children, who had gathered in a remote place where Jesus had been trying to get to in order to get by himself. I think he is still hurting inside, still needing to think through and pray about the death of John. While his heart had gone out in compassion toward all the lost and bewildered people who also were stunned by news of John’s sudden murder by Herod; now he needs to be compassionate toward himself. He had given them soul food so that they are all filled to overflowing, but now he must attend to his own needs. He has to get by himself and pray; there is an urgency about it. He doesn’t even want his disciples around. Have you ever felt like that–you just need to get by yourself so that you can pray and think? There is something he has to work out with his Father. The death of John has chilled him to his core, and he had put that aside in order to serve all the famished people, but now he has to get by himself and pray through what John’s death will mean for him.

The scene, I think, foreshadows Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane where he again wrestles with himself and prays deeply to his Abba about what lies just ahead. There are no words powerful enough to describe the intensity and profundity of the encounter so there the writer says Jesus sweats great drops of blood.

Here, in the early stages of his coming to terms with what he must do, “he makes his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side.” Their constant chattering and bickering with each other distracts him from listening to the still small voice of God. Jesus is like a parent with life changing issues to figure out who sends the children to their grandmother in order to clear a space to think and pray.

Once he gets the disciples dispatched, he next dismisses the crowds. “I love you but go home,” he says. “I need some time by myself.” It doesn’t say that actually but that’s how I would say it.

Finally it’s his time and he goes up the mountain to pray. This had been his objective all along. He stays there into the night. He is on a personal retreat. His soul is agitated; in need of calming. He looks at things this way and that, he adds up what he is seeing and feeling, he thinks about John the Baptist and how his life has ended; and all the time he is praying. He brings his inner storm to God. He asks God for help, both in figuring out what to do next and then help in actually doing what he has figured out. It will take courage and wisdom beyond his own. “Abba, please help me. I won’t be able to do this unless we are together. I will need your strength.”

While Jesus is praying on the mountain the disciples are getting into trouble in their own external storm. “By this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them.” All night they had rowed and strained against heavy waves and a strong wind that blew from the northwest. They are in deep water far out on the lake and their situation is beginning to look desperate. Now their souls are churning, their brows sweating, and their faces tense as they fight through wave after wave. They don’t have time to think about anything beyond their own survival. The night seems to last forever. Have you ever felt like the disciples in that boat? Do you feel a bit that way now? Most of us, I suspect, have been there with them.

At four in the morning, when things seem bleakest, just as the dawn begins to break, Jesus comes walking toward them on the sea. Jesus has resolved his conflict, he has embraced the movement toward his destiny, his Abba has answered his prayers and Jesus walks above the waves. He does not sink into the raging water; it’s foaming and frothing does not reach him.

In all ancient writing, turbulent water, the deep, the flood, symbolize human chaos and calamity. They represent those things we most fear. What happens when things get out of control and all hell breaks loose? What happens when human beings can’t get along and they seem swept up in a power beyond reason and rationality where their only desire is to frustrate each other even if it threatens destruction on all? This is the deep, this is the human storm; this is the situation humanity finds itself in. We are in the midst of a huge storm and we are far out at sea. Wave after wave assault us—but the waves are of our own making. The waves are generated by our desires that cannot be calmed. They swirl and foam as we longingly look at what we think the other has and want it for ourselves thinking it will calm us. It will not. It is another delusion that stirs the water all the more.

Psalm 69 is the cry of those in the boat before Jesus arrives walking on water. It says,

“Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck. I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me. I am weary with my crying; my throat is parched. My eyes grow dim with waiting for my God.”

Jesus comes walking above the swirl of desires that have engulfed them and threaten them with death.

“But when the disciples see him walking on the water, they are terrified, saying, ‘It is a ghost!’ And they cry out in fear.” They had never seen anyone walk on the sea. It was so contrary to their experience that they misidentifywho it is. They fail to see that it is their leader, Jesus and think it a ghost. Ghosts are terrifying creatures representing death and they exist only in our imaginations. They mistake the Bringer of Life for the harbinger of death. Does this not foreshadow the crucifixion where again wemisidentify the Bringer of Life for the bringer of death and kill Jesus thinking we are doing what God wants?

Jesus knows they cannot understand who he is now, that will come later, after he has completed his mission and been raised from the dead, just like he now rises above the swirling waters. (Do you seehow his walking on water foreshadows his resurrection?) But they can’t understand that now and so, “Immediately Jesus speaks to them and says, ‘Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” Can you feel the fear drain out of you when you hear these words? “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” Jesus, the comforter has come. He is here to calm the storm. Strangely, he will calm the storm by allowing himself to be submerged in it.

The waters of our wrath will come up to his neck and then sweep over him. He will sink into deep mire where there is no foothold. He will be weary beyond all weariness and his throat will be parched while we will respond with cruel vinegar. His eyes will grow dim and his God will not rescue him. More in number than the hairs of his head will be those who hate him without cause. Many will accuse him falsely and gather to destroy him.

Do you see how I have used Psalm 69 to describe the crucifixion of Jesus? This is where our storm engulfs him. It is how he calms the storm.He allows it to overtake him and then from inside it he asks his Father to forgive us for stirring up the very storm in which he is dying. He becomes the scapegoat, the Lamb of God, the one forsaken so that we can both see what we do and yet, see that even what we do, does not separate us from his love.

Peter, taking the risk of believing Jesus, wants to join him. “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.”

Come, Jesus replies. “Come!” Come through raging waters to the calm of my presence.

I will stop here for this is the invitation communion offers us today.

Communion gives us an opportunity to come and shed our distorted human desire and in its place take into ourselves the pure desire of the Son for his Father. We can share in Jesus’ desire to do his Father’s will by sharing in the body of Jesus broken for us and the blood of Jesus shed for us. When we do this our eyes are lifted above the chaos of human scrambling and we find our focus on what nurtures each of us and all of us together.

This focus delivers usfrom the raging storm of our own making.

Amen.