Monday, August 25, 2014

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.

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