Genesis 45:3‑11, 15
Luke 6:27‑38
I know that you will forgive the unpolished and rough nature of this sermon, because you have done that before. I wanted to finish my summertime exploration of the Genesis stories of Abraham and Sarah and their descendants this morning—and I had a nice little sermon about Joseph and his brothers going—but it was turned in new directions several times this past week—most recently just last night. Even so, I want to come back to that story because Joseph and his brothers speak to us and challenge us in these days.
This past week has been a study in contrasts.
Much of the week our attention has been fixated on North Korea, a country that Human Rights Watch calls “one of the most repressive authoritarian states in the world”—a nation that seeks “fearful obedience by using public executions, arbitrary detention, and forced labor.”
Their missile launches were quickly met with our president’s strong threats of fire and fury.
Then we watched over the past two days as the white nationalist torch-light parade on Friday turned to the deadly violence on Saturday in Charlottesville, Virginia.
As the violence increased through the morning yesterday, our president was silent. He was silent even as the former Klan leader, David Duke, announced that Charlottesville was a “turning point” for a moving that aims, as Duke put it, “to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.” The president was silent as the governor of Virginia declared a state of emergency.
Only by mid-afternoon did the president issue a four-minute statement that began: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence on many sides.” He then added for emphasis: “On many sides.”
On many sides? A White House spokesperson was not able to say what in the words or actions of the counterprotesters was bigoted or hateful.
One person put it this way: “Our country is one of free speech and open debate: about our policies, our priorities, the best solutions to our ills. The First Amendment applies to all, even vile white supremacists. But when it comes to accurately describing what they are and what they do, and when it comes to assigning blame — yes, blame — for the consequences of their actions, there aren’t many sides to the issue. There is good, and there is evil. There are those who represent our country’s values, and those who stand against them. There is domestic terrorism, and there are its targets.” [i]
Many Republicans were quick to condemn the white racists who gathered, ostensibly to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. Sen. John McCain released a strongly worded statement that said, in part: “White supremacists and neo-Nazis are, by definition, opposed to American patriotism and the ideals that define us as a people and make our nation special.” But as of this morning, such strong words condemn the white nationalism and racism on display were lacking from a White House that has shown itself quite capable of quickly using strong language when it wants to do so.
“You meant it for evil,” Joseph tells his brothers. “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.”
“Love your enemies,” Jesus tells his followers.
How can we even hear words like these this morning, let alone take them in or act upon them?
I am a Christian in part because our faith tells of God's reconciliation with the world in Jesus Christ. In that hope I find myself united with people who know distance from God, estrangement from others, and even a sense of separation from the best within our own selves.
As we heard last week in the story of Jacob and Esau, healing and reconciliation between people does not come quickly, nor does it always look the way we would want it to look.
A couple of months ago, after meeting with the president of China, our President said that after listening to him for ten minutes, he realized the situation with North Korea was complicated—“It’s not what you would think,” he said.
It is complicated. It is a long history. And we are part of that long and complicated history.
The Korean War resulted in the death of over 350,000 U.S. and South Korean soldiers, 600,000 North Korean soldiers, and 1 million Chinese soldiers. Additionally, the war created 3 million refugees and 10 million separated families. As you know, there has been a ceasefire for over 60 years but a final Peace Agreement has never been reached to bring closure to the Korean War.
It is complicated.
So, too, is our own nation’s long history of racism. Just yesterday, Jemar Tisby reminded white Christians that “from the Colonial era to the present day, white churches have helped build a society that privileges whiteness and denigrates blackness. In light of the white church’s involvement in creating and maintaining white supremacy, white pastors can presume that their churches are already part of the problem, intentionally or not. Christians and church leaders must ask themselves how much they have acknowledged their own history.”[ii]
It’s complicated—and we’d rather not look at it.
“Love your enemies,” Jesus says. We would like it if he had said something else. We would like it more if he had been less troubling and more “practical.”
I am troubled when I hear Jesus speak hard words about enemies and forgiveness. I am troubled when I hear him ask difficult questions about love.
Perhaps all of us would despair over the impossibility what Jesus says, we would stammer out our feeble answers to his searching questions, if it were not for the stories of reconciliation that we find in scripture. Here and there we find witnesses to the power of forgiving love and the ability of God to work for good in life.
Which brings us to the story of Joseph.
Do you remember this astonishing story?
Joseph was the eleventh of Jacob's twelve sons. Jacob loved Joseph and Joseph knew it.
Joseph was a dreamer who didn’t mind sharing his dreams with others. So he told his brothers “Listen. I had a dream: the sun and the moon and eleven stars were bowing down before me.”
Well those eleven stars—his eleven brothers—knew just how to respond to such a dream. They decided to get rid of this nuisance of a brother. You and I would probably want to do the same.
They took Joseph and threw him into a pit.
Then they sat down for some lunch.
While they were eating a caravan came by. And it occurred to them: why not get rid of Joseph and make a little cash at the same time. So they pulled him out of the pit and for twenty pieces of silver sold Joseph to a band of Ishmaelites on their way to Egypt.
Then they took Joseph's wonderful coat of many colors, dipped it in goat blood and brought it home to Jacob. “To bad about our brother, isn’t it, Dad?”
Well, none of this really worked out the way the brothers planned. Joseph ultimately became a leader in Egypt, second only to Pharaoh. It’s a long story filled with intrigue and blackmail and jail sentences. You can read it for yourself in Genesis, starting in chapter 37. Be warned, however, that, as with many stories in the Bible, it’s not really for children.
Anyway, Joseph could not only dream—he could also interpret dreams. So when Pharaoh had a dream about seven lean cows eating seven fat ones, Joseph saw that famine was on the way. Joseph suggested that the Egyptians stockpile food during seven “fat” years for the coming seven “lean” years.
During the famine, the sons of Jacob, hungry in Canaan, journeyed to Egypt looking for food. They find the leader Zaphenath‑paneah, the Egyptian name of their brother Joseph, who begins to get some revenge, playing a cat and mouse game with the boys, accusing their youngest brother of being a thief.
Revenge is sweet, we think. But it leaves a bitter taste.
This is the reality: The human longing for reconciliation is stronger than our desire for revenge. In response to yesterday’s violence, Barak Obama reminded the world of Nelson Mandela’s words: “love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.”
Joseph plays around with his brothers. But finally Joseph, weeping so loudly that the entire household of Pharaoh can hear him, tells the shocked and confused sons of Jacob: “I am Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt!”
It’s a great dramatic story. And we came in just at the best part.
With contact reestablished, Joseph is able realize God's purposes in all that has happened. He finds new power—not over, but alongside his brothers. His family is restored.
Reconciliation surprises everyone. It even surprised Joseph, I think. He is able to say once more who he is. And then there is a growing awareness of what all these years, all this suffering and treachery has meant: “God has sent me before you to preserve life.” Look, he tells his brothers. The famine in the land is going to continue for another five years. If I weren’t here, you’d all be starving. Egypt would be starving. So it wasn’t you who sent me here—in spite of your actions.
It was not you, but God.
Joseph’s game of revenge comes to an end. The guilty fear of his brothers begins to melt. The grief over these bitter years is resolved.
Such is the human hope for all relationships. Stories like this say it is still possible—not quickly, not completely. But there is the astonishing possibility of reconciliation.
Remember, of course, that love does not patiently accept abuse.
Joseph was reconciled with his brothers, but he did not jump back into that pit.
Martin Luther King, Jr. knew as well as anybody about enemies: he knew them as those who would bomb your home, threaten your children. And because he knew that he had enemies, because he would admit the presence of those who would do harm, he was also able to learn what it means to love enemies and show that to the rest of us. King said that love is understanding, redemptive, creative, good will for all. In loving, one seeks to defeat an unjust system rather than individuals who are caught in that system.
It is not enough to simply believe that love will prevail in the world—especially an anemic, passive love that overlooks the wrong—the evil—people do. We are called to actively resist the evil that we have encountered. We will not give into it and we will not imitate it. We will hold fast to our ideals in the face of the enemy.
And yet we are surprised when Jesus tells his followers—when he tells us—to pray for our enemies.
We are invited to learn to pray for those we dislike and avoid, for those we hate and fear, for those who hate us. Such prayer shifts our attention from all the things others have done to us or neglected to do that wound and enrage us. Such prayer focuses on what it is in ourselves that permits others to acquire power over us—the power to put us in the hell of anger, or dismay, or insecurity, or fear.
We pray—if we can—that God's goodness will be placed at the center of their actions and attitudes. We pray that God's goodness will work there and flourish.[iii]
To pray for enemies, to keep in honest contact with those with whom we disagree, who have hurt us, shatters the world and creates something new. Engagement makes a break with the past so that something else can happen.
If this happens at all, it happens not by our strength but by God’s. For God is able to bring about a “genesis”—a new creation out of all the sin and separation and disobedience. God’s purpose—in all things—is for well-being of creation. God’s purpose is for our life and the life of the world. Affirming that purpose, we hold on to our hope for reconciliation.
In most of the story of Joseph and his brothers, God is hidden. There are no flashy miracles, no trumpeting angels, no voices from the heavens. We find only ordinary human beings going about very typical actions of hurting each other—pretty much what we find in our own lives.
God is hidden. But God is at work for God’s purposes in spite of, through, and against every human effort. God does not manipulate human beings created for freedom. Still—to Joseph’s great astonishment—God is at work in the actions of Joseph and his brothers. And if God is at work in them, then, could it also be that God is at work in us and through us as well?
And if God is a work in and through us, could it be that God is at work still in our nation and in our world?
In hidden ways, the sovereign God continues to work in the world. For if we can claim—at least by faith—that God is working for well-being, for good, then maybe we can come to a new way of responding to all the events in our lives and a new understanding of all who have hurt us.
Joseph was a dreamer. He dreamed of power gained and used, of his family saved, an empire fed. At the end of his life he would say: “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.”
Joseph lived his life between the dream and the disclosure. So too, do we. We look toward reconciliation, we hope in its restoring possibility. With that vision, in that hope, let us continue to work and to speak.
We share stories such as that of Joseph and his brothers to remember that, yes, by God’s grace, reconciliation happened—at least once. We share stories about the cross and resurrection to remember that, yes, by God’s grace, reconciliation still happens today.
And that brings us around to the question of Jesus once more: “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you?”
If those words sound as judgment to your ears, as they often do to me, take heart. Certainly there must be some credit even for the love that we show simply to those who do love us—for love is to be treasured anywhere it is given or received.
The point, however, is this forgiveness and reconciliation are great works of the human spirit. As they did with Joseph, forgiveness and reconciliation bring out the best in us even though they might reveal our shadow side as well. They require time, human contact, and a continuing desire for the good.
Yes, there are times when forgiveness and reconciliation are heartbreakingly close and do not happen. And because we are fallen people in a fallen world, there are times when we can’t imagine forgiving and reconciling. Still, we dare to engage in such a great works because God works for good.
God works for the good of the world.
God works for the good in your life.
God works for good in human relationships.
Continue with that great work in your life.
Yes, even in your life, God is at work for good.
[i] https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2017/08/12/there-are-only-two-sides-to-charlottesville-trump-is-on-the-wrong-one/?hpid=hp_no-name_opinion-card-f%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.d3e5c6d1884d
[ii] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/08/12/after-charlottesville-will-white-pastors-finally-take-racism-seriously/?utm_term=.32fbf834fe11
[iii] Primary Speech, Ann and Barry Ulanov