Sermon at Ames

Introduction

My name is Lewis

Grew up in the Annual Conference

Served in the conference as a pastor

Have gotten to know your staff

It is a joy to be with you in worship

especially as we dive into this story of Joesph

Many Character’s

There are a lot of character’s at play in our story today

Jacob, Joseph, his twelve brothers

But perhaps the character that I am most interested in is the robe that Joseph was wearing

When we read text’s critically we must ask what the non-human characters are doing in the story too

This story in Genesis appears in several manuscripts different details changed in each and the narrative is compiled and synthesized in our telling of the story, but the one common piece in all of them seems to be this robe that Jacob gives to Joshua

That tells us something about the importance of this gifted robe

about what it represents to Joseph and his brothers

About it’s symbolism and power

So what is this robe speaking to us in this text?

And what might it mean to be people that live into borrowed robes ourselves?

Prayer

O God may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be pleasable you our rock and our redeemer. It’s in your name we do everything and it is in your name we pray, amen.

Me - I began in borrowed robes

When I started out in ministry the first pastoral appointment that I served was just south of here at Ankeny First United Methodist Church

When I started there the custom that had gone before me was to not wear robes in pulpit

They were the church that supported me and grew me as a young pastor as I was begining to find my voice

Cinnamon told me that there were several boxes

I asked who they were from and they didn’t know

As I opened the boxes they were filled with pastoral robes I think 5 or 6 in total. A wonderful gift for a young new pastor.

At the time I was at a church where it was not a custom for the pastor to wear a robe so I had not invested in a set myself

Looked at the name and didn’t recognize it

Did some tracking down and eventually found the family member

They said that their wanted them to be used by a young pastor

I have learned through the years that this is actually a quite common practice among clergy to pass down robes to the next generation.

It wasn’t until later that I realized just how profound and symbolic that gift really was

As I talked to other clergy friends I came to learn that this was true of a lot of their experiences as well

That they began in borrowed robes

Symbolic of the ways that those that are in ministry begin as an echo of the voices that have nutured and cared for them

That young pastor in particular when they have not yet fully cultivated their own voice they try on the voices of those of their mentors

only to figure out that they need a bit of hemming in order to be a good fit for them

We begin in Borrowed Robes

An Episcopal Priest Nathan Kirkpatrick shares of a similar experience and writes

We all start in borrowed robes before we find our own

By it I think he is talking about more than robes

We all lay and clergy alike begin in borrowed robes

We begin our lives and our careers in a long story

Shaped by the stories that our parents taught us

by the communities that raised us

by the people that we call friends

by the myths that our culture brought us

By all of the things that make us.....us...

But yet we are not just a sum of all of our parts

We are not just a caserole of all of the communities and identities that make us, we are unique and beloved

Which is why the second part of the phrase is equally necessary we all start in borrowed robes before we find our own

This saying was definitely true of Joseph in our story

Joseph began in Borrowed Robes

Perhaps this idea of begining in borrowed robes

picking up from last week

Jacob and Esau – Joseph is Jacob’s son

Jacob becomes Israel

We can wrestle with God

“I have seen God face-to-face”

Jacob “deciever” could live openly and honestly

All of us have things that need to be emptied from ourselves

Jacob becomes named Israel

Israel has a total of 13 sons with 4 wives

The last wife was Rebbeca

Miracle baby

Golden child paradigm

small parenting tip if you have 13 kids and you make it very clear that one of them is your favorite....it will drive all of the siblings crazy!

so Jacob gives Joseph this coat

coat with sleeves is a more accurate translation

Only the working class had sleeveless coats so his dad was making a statement about his rulership

But we one day learn to live into our own

Joesph’s story is one of discernment

He might have been king, but not the type of king that others were expecting of him

He needed to learn his own voice and his own way

He needed to live into the crown that was being placed on his head

Joseph wore his coat in front of his brothers, he sort of rubbed it in a little bit

Joseph begins in borrowed robes, but this robe ends up really hurthing him

It becomes the thing that his brothers despise about him

On the one had he is trying to live up to his father’s expectations and on the other hand he is trying to avoid the resentment of his brothers and he seems to never be able to strike the perfect balance between the two.

leaning into only what others have given him got him nowhere

Beyond no where it brought him to a really bad place

but he doesn’t stay there....

the story of Joesph is long and difficult

he spends a great many years in slavery

becomes accusted falsy of a major crime

The garment that he receives is not quite the one that he will one day live into

You

One reading of Joseph’s story is that he is a dreamer that ever since he was young he had a dream to be king and he would stop at nothing to get there.

To me I don’t think that is quite fully accurate

most of Joseph’s life he doesn’t really look like he is “living the dream so to speak”

Instead I think Joseph’s story is one of discernment

Joseph’s story is really one of discernment – where God prepared and promised and would not delay to complete a work in him

Discernment is not about living our dreams, it is about recognizing the dream that God has for us

That is what makes us not just the sum of our parts

Not just the robes that we started out in, but the robes that we have found for ourselves.

Us

Discernment is not just an interpersonal work it is a communal one

So I leave you with this word of encouragement church

Go forth not to live your own dreams, not just to live into the expectations that others have set for you, but to

Go fourth knowing that we all start out in borrowed robes, but we will eventually find our own