Sunday, August 31, 2014

What's in a Name?

August 31, 2014
Exodus 3:1-15
1Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. 3Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” 4When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
7Then the LORD said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, 8and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 9The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. 10So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.” 11But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” 12He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.”
13But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” 15God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:
This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations.”


Sermon:  “What’s in a Name?”

I remember it vividly, when I first learned about the divine name of God.  (You know you’re destined to be a nerdy preacher when…”)

I was on a retreat with my campus ministry group from Texas A&M University.  We were a ramshackle bunch of Catholics, Baptists, Presbyterians and “others.” As part of that ministry, I spent nearly two years in college meeting before church every Sunday morning with a small group of fellow students discerning a call to the ministry.  We drank coffee, we studied scripture, we prayed, we told our stories.  And we accepted God’s call to each of us.  I wouldn’t be here without that campus ministry.

But I digress…let’s get back to when I first learned about God’s name in the Bible.  It started, like all good exploration of God, with a question.  I held up my Bible, noticing for the first time that, in the Old Testament, sometimes “Lord” was in all caps.  I asked our awesome campus minister Kyle about it: “Hey Kyle, what’s with these all caps “LORDS” all over the place? 

He responded quickly, “Oh, that’s just the tetragrammaton.”

Ah, yes, that.  At this point I think lots of people would have their eyes glaze over and just go hang out with the other college students.  But I was curious (nerdy minster-to-be, you see).

“What in the world is that?”  I asked.
“It’s the divine name of God – Yahweh.  Any time in scripture they’re referring directly to the divine name of God, it’s put in all caps.  This distinguishes it from any other use of the word “Lord” in the Bible.  This is the name of God revealed to Moses, called the “tetragrammaton” in Greek, meaning 4 letters.  Y.H.W.H.  Yahweh.”

You lost yet?  Well I was all sorts of excited about this revelation (plus I now had a pretty cool word to impress people with at parties).  I began looking through scripture for every time that divine name of God appeared.

Of course, it appears in a big way here in our Exodus passage this morning, when Moses is sent to liberate the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt.  Like all good exploration of God, it began with a question: “Whom shall I say sent me?” Moses asks God.  He can’t very well say a smoldering shrub sent him, can he?

God then reveals God’s name.  This is a big deal, y’all.  This moment of self-revelation by God doesn’t happen often.  God says, “I am who I am.”  This is the root of the word Yahweh (all caps LORD in our Bibles, remember), but our English unfortunately fails us miserably in the translation.

We’re pretty tense about tenses, you see.  For example: you will run, then you’re running, then you ran.  Past, present, future.  Hebrew’s a bit more fluid, so when God says “I am who I am”, God is actually saying, “I was who I was, I am who I am, I will be who I will be.”  Past, present, future, all in that one little word Yahweh.

Woven within God’s very name is a promise of constant presence for all time.  Like we talked about last week, names matter --  they are our legacy in this one, fleeting life.  God’s name matters, too.  God was, is, will be.   Like Moses, we’re given a glimpse of the true character of God.  And each time this word Yahweh appears as an all-caps LORD in our Bibles, God is revealing God’s character once more.

“The Lord is my shepherd.”  We all know it, right?  Well, that LORD is all caps, the name of God.  This is no lesser lord, this is the self-revelation of God, as a shepherd who leads us beside still waters, prepares a table of friends and enemies together, restores our soul.  This is who God was, is, will be.

Another favorite Psalm, 27:  “The Lord is my light and salvation, whom shall I fear?”  Yep, all caps again.  God’s name is light, freedom from fear and giver of salvation.  This is who God was, is, will be.

On to Isaiah, those words Jesus used, “The Spirit of the LORD God is upon me, Because the LORD has anointed me to bring good news to the afflicted; sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and freedom to prisoners; to proclaim the favorable year of the LORD And the day of vengeance of our God; To comfort all who mourn…”  You guessed it, the name of God once more, all caps.  God is good news, God cares for the broken hearted, the prisoner, the mourner, God sends us out as messengers.  This is who God was, is, will be.

You see, God wasn’t just content to tell Moses God’s name by writing it on a nametag with a sharpie (or a stone tablet with a chisel).  God gave a name wrapped in enigma (I was, am, will be), and then showed what that name meant:  people were freed from slavery, and provided for in the wilderness.  Promises of restoration were made when these people found themselves in an occupied land again.  Prophets were sent to bring the people back to God when they strayed away.  

God’s name is inextricable from what God does.  God’s nametag throughout scripture is story after story of restoration and salvation, challenge and faithfulness.  That is who God was, is, will be.

So why does this matter?  Why the big “tetragrammaton” word to throw around at parties, why the need to recognize that LORD in all caps means Yahweh, the divine name of God revealed to Moses at the burning bush?  What does that have to do with our faith today?

In a word: everything.  God could have said, “I was who I was” and spent a lot of time detailing to Moses all the ways God had made creation with ingenuity and care, or speak of how God used people like Joseph to bring salvation in times of famine and fear.  God could have reveled in the glory days gone by, and decided that enough was achieved.  God could have ignored the cries of the people of Israel in slavery and say, “Oh that’s really too bad, good luck with that.  But have you heard about what I used to do?  Man, I was good.”

Or God could have said, “I am who I am” and decide to act impulsively in the moment, a flash-in-the-pan God who performs with instants of inspired brilliance but then fades into irrelevance, refusing to do anything else.

Or God could have said, “I will be who I will be” and flippantly told Moses to just stay the course, support the status quo and trust that somehow, all would work out in some distant future.  (Just not now, because God was a bit too busy at the moment.)

But God said all three – am, was, will be.  And that matters because it means the God who led the Moses’ people to freedom, who was spoken of as a Good Shepherd who prepares a table for us, who was then most fully revealed in the person and work of Jesus Christ, is our God.  God has constancy unlike anything in this universe, but at the same time, works in new and surprising ways in our own time.  And God will be.  Oh, this might just matter most.

We do not know what the church will look like as we divide ourselves and young people leave us to our disagreements.  We do not know how we can hold fast to our distinctly Christian faith in a world of plurality in a way that is respectful, faithful and reconciling.  The church of 30 years from now might well look very different from the church of the past 30 years.  But God will be.

And if God will be, then there is always hope.  The hope that guided our ancestors in faithfulness and perseverance, the hope that sustains us in present days of doubting and uncertainty, the hope that will continue to draw future generations to their Creator, and gather them together in worship and service. 

Thank God that God was.  Thank God that God is.  But especially thank God that God will be.  For if God will be, there is always good news to share.  News worth all caps, worth sharing in our every action and word.  We do not always know who we are as followers of Jesus.  We do not always know how to seek unity and healing as a denomination, or even in our own families, for that matter.  But we do know God’s name, the name that binds us together for all time, past, present and future. 
What’s in a name?  Everything.


Amen.

Monday, August 25, 2014

The Women Who Were Named

Different renderings of Shiphrah and Puah (first from here and second from artist BBB).

Exodus 1:8-21
8Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. 9He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. 10Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” 11Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. 12But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. 13The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites. 14and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labor. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them.
15The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, 16“When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women, and see them on the birthstool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, she shall live.” 17But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live. 18So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this, and allowed the boys to live?” 19The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” 20So God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and became very strong. 21And because the midwives feared God, God gave them families.


Sermon: “The Women Who Were Named”

One of my good pastor friends once had a dog named Hallelujah.  He decided, finally, to simply call her Halle for short, partly because people kept thinking he was a bit odd, roaming down his street shouting “Hallelujah!”  The shortened name also came in handy when the dog would have an accident on the carpet, so he didn’t have to say, “Dang it, Hallelujah!” (or worse).  Another friend has a dog named Five Miles, so she can say she walks Five Miles twice a day.

Names matter.  Our names are the first thing we hear as infants, as we discover that our identity is found in that word.  Names matter in scripture, too.  But scripture was compiled from many oral histories and then written down by male scholars in a time when including women wasn’t as important. 

This is why we do not hear women’s names in the Bible nearly as often as we hear men’s names.  We see women described simply as concubines, servants or daughters.  We hear of the woman caught in adultery, the woman with a flow of blood, the woman at the well and the Caananite woman.  We never learn their names.

And so, when this group of men compiling scripture took the time and effort to name women, it mattered.  These were women of great significance: Ruth, Naomi, Esther, Mary, Mary Magdalene and Phoebe.  And Shiphrah and Puah.  Perhaps these aren’t the most beautiful of names (they kind of sound like a sneeze, don’t they?) but it seems their story is worth remembering.

Let’s look at why they might have been worth naming.  Here’s their story:  In Egypt, there’s a new Pharaoh in town and this guy’s never even heard of Joseph.  So, he doesn’t know a thing about the Israelite people—except that they multiply quickly.  In the beginning of today’s text, we find that Pharaoh decides to respond to the growth of this people with cruel and shrewd slavery.  Why does he feel the need to oppress these people?  (I’m so glad you asked.) 

In this text where words matter, his motivation centers around the tiniest of them: IF.  "Look," he said to his people, "the Israelites have become much too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country."

Pharaoh is terrified that the Israelites, in their great numbers, would, in the event of war, join his enemies and ultimately escape from him, making his economy collapse.  Pharaoh decided that the only way to prevent this IF from happening is for him to have total control over the Israelites and enslave them.  Broken with heavy labor and oppression, surely they would stop increasing and never be able to rise up against Pharaoh.  But this is not what happened. 

According to our text, the more the Israelites were oppressed, the more they increased in numbers.  This filled the Egyptians with what in Hebrew means “a sickening dread” and this dread of being oppressed themselves led the Egyptians to oppress the Israelites even more.  It seems Pharaoh’s actions are fueled by dread of them.  And remember, Pharaoh did not know Joseph or the ways of the Israelites, and so his dread is fueled by ignorance about this great booming people. 

He doesn’t understand them, so he fears them. 
Tragically, oppression turns to genocide, as Pharaoh’s dread takes even greater hold of him and he asks Shiphrah and Puah to kill all of the Hebrew males born in his realm.  But Shiphrah and Puah’s actions are not fueled by dread, or even by Pharaoh for that matter, but by their God, Yahweh. 

They did not fear Pharaoh—they feared God.  And this fear, we learn from the Hebrew, has nothing to do with dread and everything to do with reverence and honor.  Their righteous fear of God led them to resist the greatest power of their time, and to preserve the lives of the Israelites even if it meant risking their own.  It turns out, Shiphrah and Puah’s fear of God multiplied and increased an entire people. 

The courage of these two women paved the way for courageous acts by other women.  In the very next chapter of Exodus, we find this same courage to preserve life in Moses’ mother and in Pharaoh’s own daughter.  Moses’ mother saves his life by desperately sending him away in a basket on a river, hoping for a new life for him, and that new life is realized as Pharaoh’s daughter fishes him out of the river and adopts him as her own child.  Without the risky and resistant action of these women, including Shiphrah and Puah, there would be no Moses to lead the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt.

So yes, these women’s names are certainly worth remembering.  Their legacy of liberation and courage lives on here in scripture, but also in all places where women and men are doing extraordinary things to preserve life and follow God. 

What will our legacy be?  When our names are said…each one of us, what will we be remembered for?  Will we be remembered for being nice, polite Christians, who dutifully attended church each week?  Or will we be remembered for taking church to places of fear and oppression, showing the love of Christ when it risks all we are to do it, and trading niceness for authenticity, and safety for salvation for all? 

What will our name mean?  The answer to that question is quite simple, really.  Our name will mean what we make it mean.  What we decide to risk in following God above all lesser powers, in preserving life and proclaiming God’s salvation in our everyday acts of compassion and liberation: that is what our name will mean.  We only have this one name.  We only have this one life.  Like Shiphrah and Puah, let’s make it count. 

Thanks be to God who was and is and will be, to Jesus Christ who is Lord of all creation and to the Holy Spirit who inspires us with courage and bravery today and all our days, amen. 

Losing Control

August 17, 2014
Genesis 45:1-15
1Then 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. 2And he wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it. 3Joseph 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.
4Then 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. 5And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. 6For 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. 7God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. 8So 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. 9Hurry 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. 10You 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. 11I 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.’ 12And now your eyes and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see that it is my own mouth that speaks to you. 13You must tell my father how greatly I am honored in Egypt, and all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here.” 14Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, while Benjamin wept upon his neck. 15And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him.


Sermon: “Losing Control”

I’d like you to close your eyes for a moment.  Think back on your life.  Think about a time that was most challenging.  Can you picture it?  Feel that uneasy sensation in your stomach, the discomfort of it?  Now, sitting in that moment, I want you to think about where God was in it.  Was God directing those events?  Was God watching from the sidelines?  Where was God?

Okay, you can open your eyes.  A big question isn’t it: where was God?  Most of us tend towards one of two directions when it comes to God’s work in the world and our life.  God looks like a puppet master, carefully directing everything from what time we woke up this morning to what lights we’ll get caught in tomorrow.  God orchestrates every moment, from the horrific to the delightful, like a chess player carefully working out moves and countermoves in the game of our life.

Or, we see God very differently.  We see God as a Champion of Free Will, who sits in the stands munching popcorn, hoping we’ll use our own creativity and talent to get a home run, but refusing to intervene in order to make that happen.  God is a spectator, watching with avid interest, but so protective of free will, that God doesn’t do anything.

Many people see God in one of these two ways: puppet master or spectator.  Looking back at that moment of challenge in your life I asked you to consider, you might find that you saw God more as one of these than the other.

Reading the story of Joseph’s family, at first, it sounds like pure puppet master stuff. 

“…don’t be distressed or angry…God sent me before you to preserve life,” Joseph tells his brothers.

And the puppet master works those strings, guiding Jacob to make Joseph a fancy robe, guiding Joseph’s brothers to be jealous.

God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors.”

The puppet master moves Joseph from a pit, to Egypt, to the high council of Pharaoh.

“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.”

At this, there’s great applause, and God the great Puppet Master takes a well-earned bow. 

So life, it seems, is one well-planned-out moment of divine calculation following another, leading us to the one exact place we are meant to be, to the one exact life we’re meant to live. 

But what if Jacob had never spoiled one son above the others?  What if Joseph’s brothers had killed him like they initially planned instead of selling him into slavery?  What if Joseph had never used his gift of interpreting dreams to work his way to the top of Egypt’s political power?  What if there hadn’t been a famine, and what if Joseph’s brothers hadn’t come to him for help?  And the biggest “what if” of all: what if Joseph hadn’t forgiven his brothers, and revealed himself to them, and saved them from certain starvation?

Puppet shows are fun, y’all, but there’s no room for “what if’s” in them.

And life is absolutely chock full of “what if’s.”  What if your family never decided to settle here?  What if you never met that person who became your partner in life?  What if you never got that job, or answered that phone call, or took that turn?  What if I never happened to glance at a teeny church called Cameron on the Presbyterian Church call search website, one among thousands?  What if?

If God is sovereign, which we believe God is, then surely God’s whole plan for salvation can’t be undone by a few “what if’s.”  If God is sovereign, then surely God can choose to work in this world and our lives in any way God would like.  In this text of Joseph, we do not actually see a puppet master God.

We see a sovereign God who chooses to work in the realm of human decisions.  Or as Walter Brueggemann put it more eloquently:
“This narrative affirms that the arena of human choice is precisely where God’s saving work is done.”

And so this narrative of Joseph, this story of a broken family finding healing again, takes the notion of God as puppet master and the notion of God as spectator and collapses them both.

You see, God created human beings with extraordinary powers of choice.  We can choose what to eat for breakfast, whether we will look past a stranger or smile, whether we want to stay still or move, whether we want to change or stay the same.   And then we get up tomorrow, and a whole new multiplity of choices present themselves.  And if we believe that God is really sovereign, then God is in and through and behind them all.

If we choose this way, God is there.  If we choose that way, God is there.  If we choose to love, God is there in that vulnerability.  If we choose to hate, God is there, in the uneasy feeling in the pit of our stomach that we’ve not done the right thing.  If we choose to retaliate, God is there, in the emptiness and grief.  If we choose to forgive, God is there, in the hope and the risk. 

Choices are the fertile soil of life from which God’s salvation springs.  This isn’t to say it doesn’t matter what choices we make: we see in Joseph’s story (and in our own country) that choices are a matter of life and death, of salvation or starvation for our souls and bodies. 

But why do we choose what we do?  When I read this text again and again, I found myself wondering what caused Joseph to choose to forgive his brothers.  And I kept coming back to the beginning of it:

“Then Joseph could no longer control himself before all those who stood by him, and he cried out…”

Joseph lost control, and with it, he lost his need for revenge and retribution.  He lost control, and couldn’t help but reveal his true identity – not high official of Pharaoh, but Joseph, a son and brother – to his family.  He lost control, and couldn’t help but see the way God had worked together the messy and troubling details of his life to bring salvation, not just for him, but for so very many, even those who had sought to bring him harm.  He lost control, and told his brothers to let go of the past.  He lost control, and hugged his little brother Benjamin, and he wept. 

If this text is going to teach us anything about the sovereignty of God (which I think it’s trying to), it is that sometimes, it’s okay to lose control.  Sometimes, it’s absolutely essential that we do.  Because you see, Joseph didn’t just lose control of himself in that moment.  He also lost control of God.

He cut the puppet strings lose.  He took God off the bench and saw God in the crazy game that was his life.  God was always sovereign in Joseph’s life, but Joseph unleashed his own need to understand everything.  He let go.  He stopped trying to make God bend to his need for revenge.  And as a result, he saw his brothers, and they saw him.

Joseph chose to see God in ways he hadn’t before: for that moment of naming what God had done in his life wasn’t just a revelation for his brothers, it was a revelation for him, too.  He needed to see God’s hand in his journey, and so he did.

God’s sovereignty was revealed to Joseph and his family in a new and refreshing way.  Or as Brueggemann again put it:
“The sovereign character of God’s purpose can create a real newness, a Genesis, a…freshness which negates the past, redefines the present, and opens futures.  It is that sovereign quality which permits the family of Jacob to begin again.  In our time, where conflicts have raged so deeply, so long (e.g. Northern Ireland, Palestine, South Africa – [we might add Ferguson, Missouri]), we find it hard to believe in the possibility of newness.  The future seems only a replay of the past.  But this narrative makes a tenacious counter-affirmation.”

So God’s sovereignty is perhaps not puppetry and perhaps it’s not an idle spectator sport.  God’s sovereignty is newness where only the old has been.  God’s sovereignty is life where only death has been.   God’s sovereignty is hope where only despair has been.  God’s sovereignty is light where only darkness has been.  God’s sovereignty is peace where only division has been.

Do me a favor: let’s try this again.  Close your eyes once more.  Picture that time of trial and hardship (perhaps you’re even in it now).  Now, look at how that time brought something new and different in your life.  Look at how that challenge changed you.  Ponder how that time shook you up and unsettled your understanding of God, yourself and the world.

Okay, you can open your eyes.  Let’s return to that question: Where is God in our life?  Where is God in this country, in this world?  The truth is, we cannot always say.  For God is sovereign, and we are not.  But we can at least say this: if God is anywhere (which God is), then God is in the new.  God is in the change.  God is in the seemingly insignificant choices we make, and in the life altering choices, too. 

We do not need a puppet, and we do not need a spectator.  We need God-with-us, a God who sits down in our messy humanity as Jesus Christ and empowers us to make our own choices, choices of forgiveness and life.  And we need a God who, whatever we choose, chooses to bring us newness and hope, even when it seems like all hope is lost.  God did it for Joseph and his brothers.  God still does it for us. 

Cut the puppet strings.  Open your eyes to the work of God, and choose to see God, not watching and waiting, but active and moving in our midst, even now, especially now.  Amen.

Sunday, August 10, 2014

What Are You Seeking?

Image Source
August 10, 2014
Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28
1Jacob settled in the land where his father had lived as an alien, the land of Canaan. 2This is the story of the family of Jacob.
Joseph, being seventeen years old, was shepherding the flock with his brothers; he was a helper to the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives; and Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. 3Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he had made him a long robe with sleeves. 4But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him.
12Now his brothers went to pasture their father’s flock near Shechem. 13And Israel said to Joseph, “Are not your brothers pasturing the flock at Shechem? Come, I will send you to them.” He answered, “Here I am.” 14So he said to him, “Go now, see if it is well with your brothers and with the flock; and bring word back to me.” So he sent him from the valley of Hebron.
He came to Shechem, 15and a man found him wandering in the fields; the man asked him, “What are you seeking?” 16“I am seeking my brothers,” he said; “tell me, please, where they are pasturing the flock.” 17The man said, “They have gone away, for I heard them say, ‘Let us go to Dothan.’” So Joseph went after his brothers, and found them at Dothan. 18They saw him from a distance, and before he came near to them, they conspired to kill him. 19They said to one another, “Here comes this dreamer. 20Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams.” 21But when Reuben heard it, he delivered him out of their hands, saying, “Let us not take his life.” 22Reuben said to them, “Shed no blood; throw him into this pit here in the wilderness, but lay no hand on him” — that he might rescue him out of their hand and restore him to his father. 23So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the long robe with sleeves that he wore; 24and they took him and threw him into a pit. The pit was empty; there was no water in it.
25Then they sat down to eat; and looking up they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, with their camels carrying gum, balm, and resin, on their way to carry it down to Egypt. 26Then Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? 27Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and not lay our hands on him, for he is our brother, our own flesh.” And his brothers agreed. 28When some Midianite traders passed by, they drew Joseph up, lifting him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. And they took Joseph to Egypt.

Sermon: “What are you seeking?”

I have relived that day numerous times in my mind.  It’s not unusual for a person to ask for directions.  And it’s not unusual to tell them the way to go.  What is unusual is when telling them gets them thrown in a pit and then sold into slavery.

But I’m getting ahead of myself – I haven’t even told you who I am.  I’m the old shepherd fella who was working in Shechem the day that Joseph got lost looking for his brothers.  Of course I knew who he was before he even spoke – that colorful robe of his wasn’t exactly wallflower apparel.  I also knew a bit about his family.  Now, no family is perfect, we all know this.  But those brothers seemed to always be at odds. 

I’d heard that Joseph was, in a word, strange. 
He had an air of superiority about him.  He was a bit of a dreamer, too, and his dreams always seemed to make him come out on top and his brothers seem foolish.  And, perhaps he was a few crayons short of a box, because he actually told his brothers about his dreams.  They didn’t like them one bit.  And then, again perhaps he was a few fries short of a Happy Meal, because he didn’t work as hard as his brothers, but reported to his dad Jacob about how they didn’t work hard enough.  He was particularly tough on his half-brothers Dan, Naphtali, Gad and Asher. 

So, everyone in the area knew of these strapping young brothers, and of the tension between them.  But all families have tension, like I said.  I never knew it would turn violent.  If I had, I certainly would have told Joseph in his fancy robe to go another way.  Hindsight is 20/20, I suppose.

I told Joseph that his brothers had mentioned something about going to Dotham, some 13 miles away.  And off he went.  I never saw the poor boy again.  But of course, news travels pretty fast, and I heard what happened.

Joseph did find his brothers.  He was a dreamer, but his dreams didn’t prepare him for what happened next.  They wiped that persistent smug smirk off his face, ripped his resplendent robe off of him and were going to kill him.  Reuben spoke up with a word of mercy – if you can call being thrown into a pit mercy.  They threw him in a pit and were going to leave him for dead. 

You can tell how much these brothers acted on pure angry emotion, because they kept changing their mind on what to do to him.  Some Midianite traders passed by and Judah convinced his brothers to sell him into slavery instead.  What’s worse: being left in a pit all alone or being sold by your family as a belonging for the rest of your life to a taskmaster?  I don’t know.  But the latter was Joseph’s fate, and he was taken down into Egypt. 

Oh and the story of Joseph in Egypt goes on in amazing ways, but I don’t want to talk to y’all about that today.  We all want to skip to the happy endings of stories, don’t we?  We’d rather gloss over the troubling details on the way to happily ever after.  Not today. 

Today, I want to think about what could cause brothers to hate each other so much.  Was it jealousy that made Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery?  Many have said so.  But I think that answer is just too simple.  Jealousy isn’t a strong enough feeling to cause someone to wish another person, especially someone of your own flesh and blood, dead, in my book.  But fear?  Oh fear can be just that destructive. 

I don’t think Joseph’s brothers acted out of jealousy; I think they acted out of fear.  They were afraid his dreams would come true, and they would have to bow down to him like sheaves of grain bowing down to a greater stalk.  They were afraid his smooth-talking ways would make him wealthy and prosperous, while all they had to look forward to was a life of sheep herding.  But mostly, I think they were afraid that their dad loved him more.

When a child doesn’t feel loved, they are capable of all sorts of destructive behaviors.  I’m not making excuses for Joe’s brothers, I’m just saying how things are.  If a child doesn’t feel loved, they have very little to lose.  They might try to distract themselves from that emptiness with amusing addictions.  They might try to prove their invincibility to themselves by bullying and tearing others down.  They might try to create a world where love doesn’t exist, so they don’t feel they’re missing anything.

Add that to the pack mentality that happens when people in a group feel threatened and afraid, and you have a recipe for disaster.  And that same disaster doesn’t just play out in families like Joseph’s.  The same dynamics -- of not feeling loved by anyone, of letting fear guide actions and reactions – play out on a national and global scale of “get them before they get you.”

I know I’m just an old shepherd in Shechem, but I’ve seen this same dynamic play out again and again.  Of course I wish I’d given Joseph the wrong directions and maybe he would have been spared from his suffering.  But in reality, his brothers were always going to retaliate against him, and nothing I could have done would have stopped it.  They didn’t feel loved.  They were afraid of his strangeness.  And they acted as a pack, whipped into a frenzy by that fear.

But I have to believe that such a cycle of violence can be stopped.  I have to believe in a world where brothers and sisters will seek each other’s shalom – wellbeing – above their own, even if that kindness isn’t reciprocated.  I have to believe that God did not create human beings to fear and tear down one another, but to be a global family. 

We’ll never be a perfect family, and we’ll always be seduced by pack mentalities driven by fear, but I hope that we will figure out how to belong to each other.  I hope we will figure out how to love even if we don’t feel loved.  I hope we will figure out that people who are different – just as Joseph was – are not a threat to those of us who think ourselves “normal.”  I hope we will figure out that revenge never really makes anything better.

These are just the musings of an old shepherd.  But I do thank you for listening.  In the end, yes, it didn’t really matter which directions I gave Joseph to find his brothers.  But what matters is the direction we give all of our children. 

There really are only two paths, two ways to go:  we either move towards our fellow sisters and brothers in this human family, seeking their welfare and shalom, or we move away from them, letting fear and division dictate our actions in violent ways.  Left or right.  Towards one another (and thus towards God) or away from each other.  Perhaps I’m just a shepherd who’s a few sheep short of a flock, but I think in life it is actually that simple.  Which way will we chose to go?


Amen.