10 August 2008

So, here we are again at another sermon. Seems like the week just flew by. And, once again, I am drawn into the narrative from the Hebrew Bible. There were so many ways I could have taken this passage. And if I could only get the music from "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" out of my head now...

Pace e bene,
Gerry

Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28

Don’t you hate it when a good story gets cut off mid-narrative? There you are, on the edge of your seat, ready to find out what happens next. The tension is building. The hero or heroine is in a fix. Will he or she get out of it? How will she do it? Does he have a chance?
And then, it’s over. Well, not exactly over, but it’s finished for the time being. Come back next week to find out if Pauline gets off the railroad tracks before the train comes along in the old movies. Stay tuned tomorrow to know if Wilma’s amnesia will prevent her from recognizing Rocco and pinning the murder of her half-sister, Giselda, on him or will he convince her to marry him, in a modern-day tv soap opera. Just when you’re salivating for the denouement, just as you’re ready for some release from the stress of not knowing what comes next, just when you think you’ve figured it out, then, wham, whoever is telling the story stops, leaving you cold. Of course, on tv and in the movies, it’s to get you coming back.
But you’d think whoever puts the lectionary together would be nicer, don’t you? They put these readings together for us to follow every week; a scripture from the Hebrew Bible, a Psalm, a reading from the letters and other books at the back of the Christian Testament and a Gospel reading. If you pay attention, you might notice that sometimes the readings flow from one into another; where this week’s reading leaves off, next week’s often picks up.
But one has to wonder what that group of scholars (or whoever puts together the lectionary readings) was thinking when they selected the verses from Genesis that we heard this morning. Was there some glee in their band knowing that the story we were to hear would be just like those early “Perils of Pauline?” Did they envision us sitting here and thinking, “what happens next?!?” Did they know that we would be on the edges of our seats wondering about poor Joseph?
Now, we do have to give them some leeway, those constructors of the lectionary. They do have a tremendous job to do. They have three years to the cycle of scripture readings. That’s it. And then it goes back and repeats itself. So that’s 156 Sundays they’ve got to work with. There’s no way they’re going to cover the entire Hebrew Bible in 156 readings. Not without enormously long readings on some Sundays. So stories do have to be broken up. Parts of stories and entire sections have to be, and are, left out. For instance, even in today’s reading, we skipped eight entire verses. But we’ll get to that in a minute.
But they did leave us hanging in this narrative at the end. What’s with that? We remember Jacob, perhaps, from last week’s reading. He was the wrestler we heard about. Well, now time has passed and Jacob, also known as Israel, is enjoying his family. And we meet Joseph, one of Jacob’s sons. But not just any old son; his favorite son. Out of the dozen sons Jacob fathered along the way (of course, the daughters don’t really count), Joseph stood out in his father’s eyes.
Now, I am not a father and am therefore wary about giving advice in regards to parenting, but… Well, let me ask you, those of you who are parents: even if you have a favorite offspring; even if you realize that fact that out of the two to how many ever children you have one of them has a most specialest place in your heart; do you tell your special one, that paragon of offspringdom, that he or she has attained that ‘most favored’ status in your life? And, not only that, do you tell this golden child’s siblings that they’re second rate? That they are all well and good as offspring go, but really, they just don’t stack up when measured against you-know-who? And furthermore, do you show your deeper love, affection and admiration for this special child by purchasing showy and expensive garments, which will proclaim to all the world the favored status of said progeny? Well, do you? I thought not.
Joseph was indeed Jacob’s favored one. Joseph’s brothers, who seemed to be a difficult lot to deal with in the first place, did not like this fact, it appears. Joseph, as we know not only from the Bible, but also from musical theater (so it must be true) was given by his Dad a beautiful coat; a multi-colored coat, if one pays attention to Andrew Lloyd-Weber and Tim Rice; an embroidered robe, with sleeves even. It was the fashion talk of all around those parts for a time there.
Now it wasn’t just the coat or the ‘favorite son’ status that were a problem. In the verses that we didn’t hear this morning is a recounting of how Joseph kept having dreams. He’d have these dreams and then describe them to the whole family. That doesn’t sound so bad in and of itself, but Joseph’s dreams didn’t help family harmony. Because he kept dreaming, in these fantastic metaphors involving wheat sheaves and astral bodies, that his brothers were going to bow down to him and pay him homage. And Joseph, apparently, did not hesitate to recount his dreamtime superiority. Right, just what a jealous sibling wants to hear from this coat-wearing, Dad-favored brother.
Is it any wonder then that this band of brothers decided that they had had quite enough of this berobed dreamer? Sibling or no, they began to plot. And just about that time, unwitting Dad sends Joseph off to the back forty to help these brothers with the sheep. Yep, Jacob unknowingly provides the initial tension for our story.
Of course, we heard what happened when Joseph got there. Fortunately, Reuben, the eldest brother, seemed to have some heart because he convinced his brothers not to kill Joseph on the spot. Instead, they tossed this 17-year old dreamer down a dry cistern while they figured out what to do and went back to eating dinner.
And then, watching some Ishmaelites, one of the tribes in that region, wander by with their camels in tow, someone in this fraternal company realized that there just might be money to be made in this situation. Ah, greed; always a good element to add to a story because every hearer can identify with it. Sure, we feel sorry for our hero, Joseph, and can imagine him down at the bottom of that well without food and drink, wondering what good the dreams he’s had are and what is going to get him out of this predicament, chilled to the bone because they’ve taken his coat from him and far from the protective sphere of his father. But the desire for some silver; for some shekels; some drachmas; for some rubles, rials or rupees; for some cold, hard cash; that desire, even yearning, is known, recognized and understood across time, culture and geography. Greed is something we all experience and is truly a universal language.
So for twenty shiny pieces of silver, the brothers get rid of the dreamer who has plagued them and who has stolen the affection from their father that was, after all, rightfully theirs. We can see them counting it over and over and dividing it up amongst themselves, as Joseph is led off to Egypt.
And that, right there, at that one suspense-filled moment in ancient near eastern history, is where they leave us. Oh great. You know it can’t be the end of the tale. You can tell that there is more to Joseph’s story, even if you haven’t seen Donnie Osmond capering about on stage, even if you haven’t read Genesis before. Because stories just don’t go like that. Every story has a beginning, a middle and an end. Even the most novice of writers and storytellers knows that. And we can tell that this story, the one we heard today, is clearly not at the end.
And we don’t like that, do we? We like endings and we prefer happy endings. We’re accustomed to happy endings, or at the very least endings with all the loose threads tied up. Not a story in which the guy we’re rooting for, even with all his faults, this dreamer is enroute to…to…to what? Egypt, that much we know. And right now, that’s all we know.
But how are we to make a moral out of half a story? All good stories have morals—some message that rewards us for at least sitting through the telling of the story. Right? But with half a story, in which the hero seems defeated and evil appears to have triumphed, what’s the point? I ask you, what indeed is the point?
Well, the point is that this is half the story. It’s not over yet. I’m not going to tell you how it does come out and what Joseph has to go through to get there. Some of you probably know already anyway. If you don’t, you’ll have to pick up a Bible and pick up where we left off this morning.
But here we are in the middle of Joseph’s story and we have to make some sense out of it, don’t we? And here we are in the middle of each of our stories and we have to make some sense out of it, don’t we? Because our stories aren’t done. Our stories aren’t over yet. Like Joseph, we’re wanderers and dreamers. We’ll end up, who knows where and who knows how. We’ll be tossed in pits and we’ll be betrayed by people we think we can trust and greed is going to enter in somehow and affect us.
But we don’t know the end of the story…not yet, not now. And we have to live with that. We have to deal with the uncertainties of life and just when we’re wandering around admiring our new apparel that shows how loved we are and dreaming of a bright future, we find ourselves in a pit or tied to a camel or learning that we’re worth a few pieces of silver.
You know, someone else in this Bible of ours ended up being traded in for a few pieces of silver. Circumstances were different from this narrative about Joseph and his brothers, but the two stories are not that far off from each other really. In both, someone trusted got paid to sell someone else out. Of course, I’m talking about Jesus and the money that Judas received for turning him over to the authorities. And that story, well, that story we do know the ending. We know that Jesus was killed but that the resurrection brought him back and that he lives and lives and lives. In fact, he lives in each of us, in our half-stories so far and in our futures yet to come.
And that is what makes sense out of our stories to date; incomplete though they may be. This Jesus, whom we find living out our stories for us, invites us into eternal life with him. It doesn’t matter where we are in our stories, we do know the ending. Unlike poor, young, frightened, powerless Joseph, tethered to some Ishmaelite’s camel headed east, we can see ahead and know some peace. Our God lives in and through us and will continue to do so, long after our stories have indeed ended.