Saturday, August 8, 2020

Genesis 37:1–4, 12–28: The View from the Pit

 


Whew, where to begin, where to begin? Ok, so this coat. It would have been kind of amazing; colorful, elaborate, not to mention expensive coat. It would have taken quite a long time for someone to weave the fabric and then carefully fashion it into a coat. Think about the favoritism is shows for Jacob to not only have this coat made and then for him give this magnificent coat to just one (any one) of his 11 sons, not to mention the youngest. That is some serious favoritism there. But a story about favoritism is not a new story when it comes to this family. Favoritism is a generational familial problem. Jacob is showing favoritism toward Joseph in the in the same way Isaac had shown favoritism toward Esau. But then again the problem is goes back further than that to Abraham who showed favoritism toward Isaac while having Ishmael sent away.

 So this coat is a neon sign pointing at a problem that is already on fire. Then there is the fact that Joseph is at home while ALL of his brothers are far away working hard at the family business, which is apparently sheep and goats. Maybe that is where the thread for that extra-ordinary coat came from? I mean what was he doing at home in his fancy expressive coat, which was apparently too good to sully with labor, while everyone else is out working?

And although this passage does not mention them there is also this “little” incident with Joseph’s dreams and what they tell him about his future. All that is in that middle section of scripture we skipped in our reading this morning. Before he had the, “hey I am special and Dad’s favorite” robe, which was highlighted by the fact he was not expected to do the hard work of following the flocks and herds around along with his brothers, there were these “hey, I am more special than all of ya’ll dreams” which Joseph kept having as well.

Joseph has many of these dreams, all of them good, great if you are Joseph, but not so good if you are literally anyone else in his family, especially if you are one of his older brothers. In these dreams there is always an object, which represents Joseph, which is placed above a bunch, 11 to be precise, other objects, all of which bow down and show reverence and deference to the “Joseph” object. It does not take a special degree in dream interpretation to see what these dreams mean.

Joseph, being the wise, prudent, not to mention humble young man that he is he keeps these dreams to himself. No, he chooses to go around telling all his brothers about all these dreams. “It’s not just Dad who thinks I’m best, God does too.” And as we can all imagine that went over swimmingly. His brothers loved his dreams. I am sure they were their favorite thing about him. You know right up there with the way, whenever he was actually sent out with them to do work in the fields, Joseph would go back to dear ole dad and tell him everything he believed they were doing wrong.

So, with all that in the background, Jacob decides to send Joseph to go “checkup” on his brothers. As you can imagine, they are so thrilled upon seeing him, all dressed up in his “hey I am Daddy’s favorite” coat. They turn to one another and say, “you know what seems like a really good idea right now, considering that stupid coat he is wearing and all those dreams he keeps having and most especially since Dad has sent Joseph out here with the express purpose of going back to him and “sharing” with him how we are doing OUR jobs all wrong? You know what sounds like a good idea in light of all that? Killing him.” 

Lucky for Joseph, not all of his brothers are murder mad at him. One of them is just, “let’s throw him in a pit and leave him there” mad at him. So they go with the less murderous plan. They sit down eat lunch with Joseph; you know the lunch Joseph had brought to them and then unceremoniously throw him in a pit, with every intension of just leaving him there, to, you know, let whatever happens when you are left in the bottom of a pit in the middle of nowhere, happen. If you die in the desert and nobody sees you die, were you really murdered?

Lucky again, for Joseph, some Ishmaelite traders come by, and his brothers like the idea getting rid of Joseph and making money off it. So they decide to not leave him there, but to instead sell him into slavery. And so our passage ends, with Joseph walking off into the sunset bound hand and foot, a slave. And that is the end of our passage this morning. Yeah, isn’t God great?

Next week Joseph is at the end of his journey. He is a ruler in Eygpt, he is reconciled to his brothers, and reunited with his Father, who has believed him to be dead all these years. When sitting at the end of Joseph’s story it is easy to see God at work in his life. It is easy to see how God guided him and kept him safe, even throughout the worst things that are going on. When one can look back the whole of a person’s life God is easy to spot, God’s grace, God’s providence, how God redeems horrible situations, how God is there for us in our deepest valleys and how God walks with us through our sorrows. But the fact of the matter is that we do not live our lives looking back at the whole picture. We do not live our lives knowing how the story will end.

It is easy for us to brush aside what a dark terrible place Joseph is in right now, because we know that one day he will be a great man in Egypt, we know that one day he will make up with his brothers, we know that he will be re-united with his Father. But Joseph, when Joseph was at the bottom of that pit listening to his brothers talk about the best way to let him die, things did not look very good. As Joseph walked away bound hand and foot, he might have been glad that he was not going to starve to death at the bottom of a pit, but I am pretty sure he was still pretty upset about being betrayed by his brothers and being sold into slavery part. Things don’t look good from Joseph’s perspective, in fact things look downright terrible, I think the best thought he could have had that evening as he traveled farther and farther away from everything he knew and loved was, “well at least I am not dead.”  And simply not being dead yet, is a far cry from being alright.

I can remember a pit in my own life. I was 22 years old. I was half a continent from most everyone I knew. I was alone. I was sleeping on the floor of a half empty apartment and I could not see where my life could possibly be going. I was working 12 hours a week, as a custodian at a large Nazarene Church. It was the best job I could find. I had rent to pay, I had a car payment and after that there was not much left for food, as a result I was hungry pretty much all of the time. I can remember picking up half eaten lunchables from the kids at the church day care and carefully sneaking their leftover bits.

I had friends, some really good, really amazing friends, but I still felt so alone. I had support at the Seminary, but the circumstances which had brought me to this place, a short, abusive marriage and a looming divorce, put me in a very dark place. At the time I could not see my way out of it. How was I ever going to gain back the life I had once dreamed of?  Would I even still be able to be the pastor God had called me to be when I was 13?  I trusted, I leaned on God, but at the time, everything was dark, everything was scary and there seemed to be no redemption in my future. That was my pit. That was my trip to Egypt. It was a dark place, it was a difficult time, and as I was going through it, I could not see the way forward.

When we look at the stories of those whose lives are brought to life to us through the Bible we have the privilege of seeing their whole lives. Even if we don’t know how it ends, we can keep reading and we will find out pretty soon. It is always easy to see God at work, it is always easy to know that their trusting in God for the future paid off for them. But it is easy when we can see it all laid out there on a page or a couple of pages, someone’s birth, their struggles, their shortcomings, the various events which are recorded for us and it is clearly laid out how God worked in their life. We always get to see how it all turns out in the end.

Now at this point in my life, I have a husband, I have a family and I have been a pastor for the last 18 years of my life. I can look back and see how God was at work back then. I can see how God put people, just the right people in my life, at just the right time to help me through. I can look back and recall that day on the platform at KC First, after having cleaned the sanctuary, when Candy, my fellow custodian, handed me half her lunch, telling me I could eat it because she was not very hungry (at the time I believed her and was grateful but now I am sure she was lying so that she could give it to me without hurting my pride.) I know it was God at work, through her, when she looked at me over that sandwich and told me in no uncertain terms that I needed to give up my lonely little apartment come share hers. She was a great friend and a great roommate. There were other people too, there was Jennifer, who had been my best friend since middle school, who was also called into the ministry and who was also in Kansas City, and there was also Meri Janssen, Dr. Hahn, Dr. Coleson and of course and this nice young man named Mike.

I can see the hand of God in all of that. I can see how God used scripture to speak to me and guide me along, giving me the woman at the well to assure me of my calling and later teaching me through Corinthians that it was indeed “ok” for me to think about dating again, not to mention countless other passages that God gave me to help me make it from day to day.

God was there, in the darkness, in the deep valley of my depression. God’s strength, God’s guidance, God’s redemption, all there. I can see it so clearly now. I can see how it was all working out, how all that eventually brought me here to you this morning. But back then, sleeping on the floor, and eating the leftover scraps of children’s lunches, I could not see it. I was alone, and I was scared, and I was hurt and that was all I could see. In those months, I was Joseph, at the bottom of the pit, or traveling with the caravan further and further from home.

Now to be clear, God did not bring me to this dark point in my so that God could then build me up and work a redemption story in my life. God is not the author of sin or evil. God does not make bad things happen so that we can learn a lesson. That is not how God works. When it comes to the dark places in our lives, the places that are affected by sin, our own or that of others, the places where it seems evil might triumph, God can and does reach into those places to bring redemption, to bring wholeness, to bring healing where otherwise there might only be brokenness, hurt and pain but God does not cause any of these things to happen.

We can’t just open up the book of our lives and read to the end. We can’t see it there in black and white, how God is working, how God is redeeming, how God will work all things together for good, in the end. We are all like Joseph in this passage. We are right there in the middle of whatever is going on in our lives. We might not be in a pit, we might not be on our way to slavery in Egypt, but we are in the middle of some episode in our lives and my guess is no matter what that episode is, whether it is dark and scary or bright and cheerful, we don’t know how this episode, much less the culmination of our life is going end. We are just going through day by day, trusting and seeking after God in the good and the bad. We can’t see the end. We don’t know if we will one day be a slave, or thrown into a prison (well chances are most of us will not have those particular things happen to them). Neither do we know if we will one day be a ruler in Egypt or reunited with lost loved ones. We see life just as clearly as Joseph does here. And quite frankly you can’t see much from the bottom of a pit.

It is not always easy to stop in the middle of someone’s life and not read all the way to end. But sometimes it is good to stop and remember that they lived their lives just like we do, one day at a time. Their lives might look great and wonderful when you see them as a whole, but they had to live through the dark times in their journeys one day at a time. They had to sit there in the bottom of the pit and wonder what their fate will be, just like we do. They had to make the long hard journey as a slave into Egypt, not knowing what good could possibly come of this, just as we have to.

Right now we are in the middle of this pandemic. We were in a place where we were unable to meet in person as a congregation, but now we can. The hope is that we will be able to continue to do so, but we don’t know. We are in the middle. We can see some good things which have come out of this. We value our relationships with other people perhaps a bit more than we did before. As a congregation we started the Thursday evening Zoom Bible Studies where so many of us are learning and growing as we study the Gospel of Mark together. But there are countless other things which are not better right now, but we do not yet know what will happen in the end. WE are in the middle of the story right now. We do not yet know all the ways God is at work and will continue work to bring redemption, wholeness and healing into our lives, to our congregation or to our world.

We can’t know where we are going to end up. We can’t see the end of this story but we can know that trusting God is the best way through. You might not be able to see it from where you are right now, but God is at work redeeming even the worst situations in your life. God is at work bring wholeness and healing to our country, to our society, and to our world. God is there giving you strength and guidance and support all along the way. It just might be really hard to see from where you are right now, after all perspective is mighty limited when you are the bottom of a pit.

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