Grace to you and peace, from a God who stays with us in our best days and in our worst. AMEN.
For the last few weeks, and other times as well, when we hear a scripture text, I’m always wanting to encourage us to put ourselves into these ancient stories. Which character are you? Who are you relating to this time, that you here this story? How are you connecting? That’s always good to do, and we do it again today as we hear and reflect on a bit of Joseph’s story and the ongoing saga of God’s holy and not-so-holy people.
But today, I’m going to suggest we look even more at God’s role in this great narrative, and in your life too. You see something interesting happens with God’s voice in this story today, that’s different from most stories in Genesis previous to this one (now in Chapter 39), and that is that God’s voice is silent. Do you remember how God was always talking to Adam and Eve, and Noah, and Abraham and Sarah? But here God becomes more of the silent backdrop. Would be a pretty dull story without a backdrop, but God nonetheless does not speak in this this story.
There’s a new hymn set to an old tune in our hymnal called “Oh God Why are You Silent” (703) in our Lament section of the hymnal.
There are times in our lives where it seems that God is not speaking too...and we sit with Joseph in prison. [pause]
There are times when we are just trying to do our best, trying to be upstanding -- not perfect -- but trying to be moral and honorable, and then someone grabs us by the cloak, maybe even makes a completely false accusation about you, and suddenly, you find yourself locked up. [pause]
Let me give you a little back story on Joseph: he was not always this upstanding character that we hear about today. Joseph was a brat. When he was a little boy, he had these dreams that all his brothers and his mom and dad were all bowing down to him. It’s one thing to have a dream like that, it’s another to go tell everyone about it. And still his dad was unashamed to call Joseph his favorite son -- gave him a coat of many colors. So his brothers actually wanted to kill him...except one of them Reuben, who said, “Let’s not kill him, let’s just sell him to these slave traders passing by. That’s how he got to Egypt from Israel in the first place.
Walter Bruggeman’s commentary on Genesis:
Joseph’s story is summarized by Romans 8.28 -- “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” -- which is not to say that all things that happen to us are good, just like all things that happened to Joseph (and even that Joseph did) were not good. A cocky, handsome, little brat, suddenly chained up and being forced to trudge across the desert to a completely strange land? Once free, but now forced to work for a top executive in a place you don’t even care about? And yet we see God’s covenant to Abraham working out as Joseph’s blessing became a blessing for those he encountered (vs. 5: “the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake”).
God has blessed you -- which (as I said last week) doesn’t connote having wealth, like many use it to mean -- God has blessed you by naming you “my beloved child” (Hunter today). So how are you going to be a blessing for others, even when you get chained down? Joseph was a blessing and brought blessing to others, even when he was chained down, even when he was working as a slave, even when he was in prison, even when he started out as a snotty little hot shot.
This is one of the great stories in the bible about redemption, and it really reads like a novella, so we can’t cover the whole thing on a Sunday morning. And even though God’s not speaking with a megaphone loud and clear to our latest main character [I’m pointing at you], that doesn’t mean God’s not there with you and Joseph.
In our best days and in our worst, God goes with us. God, through Jesus Christ, gives us the strength, hope and courage to get up, and shine our light for this world, even if we’re behind bars. Our blessing from God shines through the bars! Even the bars of addiction, or self-loathing, or self-absorption, or fear, or depression, or grief, or pride, or even shame. God has blessed us to be a blessing, even and especially in valley of the shadow of death. And God is with us everywhere we go.
I was at certain Irish pub one time, listening to music and enjoying a Guinness or two into the night: And this 75-year-old woman comes in to dance -- I’ve see her both times I’ve been there. Almost immediately you wonder if she’s a little nuts. She wars funny hats, has a big shoulder bag, and mismatched clothes. It’s both inspiring and distracting.
During the intermission, I got to chat with the Irish fiddler, who’s got red hair, in her 50‘s and has been playing in this house band for years. And after thanking her for great playing, and chatting a bit about Ireland, I asked her about this dancing lady. “Oh, that’s Yoshi,” the Irish fiddler tells me. She’s Japanese, and she lost her husband to cancer about 5 years ago. She comes in here to dance and sing five nights a week, from 9pm to 12am (used to come in six night a week). My perspective kind of changed, and then I say, “That will be sad day when one day she stops showing up.”
And then this Irish fiddler tells me that she is Yoshi’s emergency contact. Yoshi has made this Irish fiddler her emergency contact. And I realize that this is a little family.
I didn’t mention that this pub is in Las Vegas -- a seedy, shallow, superficial, broken, dirty, lost, forsaken, drunken, empty, sorrowful city. Right there on the Las Vegas strip. A little glimpse of blessing, of light, shining through the bars, the prisons that confine. [pause]
And God never said a word. But God was there. AMEN.
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