Untitled Sermon (1)

Brothers Estranged

A- Brothers Estranged

Joseph’s story, so far, has been very similar to the many stories we’ve seen before it. In many ways, Genesis is a repetition of the fall story from Genesis three played out over and over and over again, with no way to press the “stop” button. Adam and Eve sinned, and thus their relationship to God was broken, but also their relationship to one another. Man and woman became estranged, no longer able to share the kind of life they’d lived before. Then Cain and Abel play out the same story, but in an even more twisted way. We see Husband against wife, Brother against brother, Sister against sister, over and over again. Relationships shattered and broken, due to the sins of humankind.

Joseph’s story is no different in that regard. His brothers threw him down into the pit and sold him into slavery in Egypt. After many years, however, Joseph becomes content with his new life. He, in fact, would like to think he can forget the sins of his brothers. He’d like to think he can ignore the gaping wound left on his heart by the broken relationship he has with his family. In fact, after coming to power at Pharaoh’s right hand, Joseph marries a woman and has a son, who he names “Manasseh”. Manasseh, by the way, means “forget it”, as in “I forgot all that stuff that my brothers did to me. His next son he names “Ephraim”. “Ephraim” means “fruitful”, and Joseph explains that he called his son this because he has a good life here in Egypt now, and he’s not worried anymore about his father or his brothers.

The Brother’s Guilt

Well, just as Joseph was getting comfortable, guess who shows up? Joseph must have known, as we all know too well, that you don’t just forget these kind of things. And, as we quickly see, Joseph has not gotten over what his brothers did to him. He decides to play a trick on his brothers, which involved accusing them to be spies, and throwing them all in jail.

C- Quid Pro Quo

That may have been the end of it, if he hadn’t heard his brothers mention that they had a younger brother. Since Joseph had been sold off to Egypt, apparently his mother Rachel had had one more son, Benjamin. And, apparently, the Joseph’s brothers had not done to Benjamin what they had done to him. It was Benjamin who ultimately would change the outcome of the story, but we’ll come back to him in a moment.

Hearing about Benjamin, Joseph ordered his brothers (who still did not recognize Joseph) to return home and bring Benjamin to him. He would keep one of the brothers imprisoned in Egypt as collateral.

So Joseph gave his brothers some grain (that is what they’d come for, after all) and sent them back to Jacob’s house in Canaan. Unbeknownst to them, however, Joseph had also returned their money to their saddlebags, so the grain had not been paid for! This, of course, terrified the brothers.

I can remember my own mother’s horror when, in a similar situation, she looked in the back seat of the car to realize I was eating a candy bar she had not paid for.

Joseph’s brothers feared that, when they returned to Egypt, they might be accused of stealing the grain. And then the brother Judah says what they were all thinking: “What is this that God has done to us?” Being thrown in jail, the mishap with their payment for the grain, all of this must be God paying them pack for what they’d done years earlier to Joseph.

Quid Pro Quo

Judah had something right: God was in fact at work. Unlike the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, we never explicitly hear or see God in Joseph’s story. Joseph’s story is a bit more real-to-life, at least for most of us, in that God is working behind the scenes. Like so many of us, Judah was left to speculate about what God might be doing based on the flow of life around him.

This is, at the heart of it, what “theology” is all about. Judah’s proclamation gives us a stark view of his own theology of God. He believes that this God repays tit for tat. In other words, Judah has done wrong, and God can only repay him evil for evil. Judah and his brothers have a very one-dimensional view of the universe and the way that God works. They are doomed by decree of fate! There is no hope!

Indeed, if this is the way God works, we have very little to be hopeful for. If God is a practitioner of strict, rational justice, then Justice demands we pay for our sins. And we have all sinned, all have fallen short of the glory of God! So what hope is there?

Judah’s fears seem to be realized when the brothers finally return to Egypt. Joseph, it seems, was not done with his tricks. Instead of imprisoning them for not paying for the grain the first time, he invites his brothers to a feast. This would be the perfect time for Joseph to reveal who he really was, but it would appear that Joseph had more tricks in store for his brothers. After the dinner feast, Joseph sends his brothers back home, and this time he hides a silver goblet in Benjamin’s saddlebag.

As the brothers journey back home, an Egyptian servant of Joseph stops them, finds the goblet in Benjamin’s possession, and accuses him of being a thief. The brothers are dragged before Joseph once more, and this time he threatens to throw Benjamin in jail for stealing.

Again, Judah’s words reveal the kind of theology he holds about God. Judah begs Joseph to take him instead. His reason, however, is quite surprising. Judah argues that his father, Jacob, has already lost one son (who, ironically, is standing right in front of Judah without him knowing!). To lose the only other younger son from Rachel would be too much for the old man Jacob, and he would surely die. This is why Judah begs Joseph to take him instead.

What the brothers have forgotten, it seems, is the dream God shared with Joseph so long ago. And, more than that, they had forgotten the promise given to their ancestor Abraham. They looked at their aging father, and they feared the death of the last bearer of the promise. Judah could not invision himself as a promise-bearer as well. He could not dare to think that God may carry on the promise through him, and could not dare to think that God might be fulfilling that dream given to Joseph at that very moment.

Judah’s God was a fatalistic God. The God of brutal justice, who returns violence for violence, evil for evil. Such a theology of God leaves us with no hope.

Lord Have Mercy

Judah’s father Jacob, however, seems to have been just a little better at theology than Judah. Just before the brothers had returned to Joseph with their younger brother Benjamin, Jacob sent them off with a prayer, saying “May God Almighty have mercy on you...” Lord, have mercy!

Jacob, it seems, held out hope that God might not be the cold-hearted judge that Judah made him out to be. Jacob held on to hope that there may be room for mercy in God’s heart.

As it turns out, there was. Judah and the other brothers no doubt deserved to be locked away for life, if not executed, for what they had done. They had sold their own brother into slavery for a few coins. They had lied to their own father, and grieved him deeply. Justice demands that they see punishment.

And yet, after Judah begs Joseph to throw him into prison instead of Benjamin, something surprising happens. Joseph sends away the Egyptians, and finally reveals that he is their long-lost brother. Not only that, but Joseph declares:

And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. 6 For 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. 7 God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. 8 So it was not you who sent me here, but God;

What you intended for evil, God intended for good.

What kind of God does that? Certainly not the one Judah had in mind.

Judah and the brothers had in mind that Joseph would want to repay them for all the evil they had done to him. They believed that God was acting to punish them for all of their past sins. But something truly wonderful and mysterious has happened: Joseph did not cling to the past. God did not cling to their past sins. Instead, the past was set aside by God, and Judah and the brothers were invited to put that pitiful past behind them as well, so that they may live life anew. So that the gap between brothers would be healed, and the gap between man and God would be healed.

D- Lord, Have Mercy

Repent!

If that isn’t a picture of the Gospel, I don’t know what is. Joseph’s brothers were sinners. Terrible sinners, and they no doubt deserved whatever punishment came their way. But God, instead, wiped all of that away. This was so hard to incredible, that years later, Judah and the brothers still couldn’t quite believe Joseph and God had truly just forgotten about the past. They were still somewhat afraid that it might all be a horrible trick!

Such was not the case, however.

But such a gift is not given lightly. In fact, while this gift of forgiveness was no doubt undeserved, it did require something from Judah and the brothers: repentance. What caused Joseph to show mercy to his brothers? It was no doubt because he saw, in Judah’s willingness to sacrifice himself for Benjamin, a drastic change in Judah’s direction in life. Judah had come to deeply regret the things he had done, not only in word, but as was demonstrated before Joseph, in deed as well.

God offers us undeserved mercy and forgiveness for our many sins. Yet this too, requires repentance. The nature of grace is such that it requires us to first recognize our need for it. We cannot accept pardon for a crime we’re not willing to admit we committed!

Through Jesus Christ, God has offered grace and mercy and freedom from sin to all. But before Jesus declared “the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand,” he first commanded “Repent!” The Greek word there implies not only a change of heart or mind, but a total change of direction. In other words, repentance involves for us more than simply saying “I’m sorry”, but it involves actually making amends, working to restore what we damaged, taking action to show that we regret our mistakes.

As Jesus walked the ancient streets of Jerusalem, he did something no other rabbi at the time would have dared to do: he sat down to eat at the table with tax collectors, prostitutes, and the worst of sinners. Jesus was willing to forgive these people all their sins, he sat at the table as if their past had no weight at all on the present. Yet, he did not leave them to their sins. Instead, he charged them “go and sin no more”.

Many today take the Gospel for granted as a “get out of Hell free card”. The grace offered to us through Jesus Christ has been distorted and cheapened into something it is not. It has been portrayed as a “cheap grace”, the kind of grace I can freely receive, with no effort at all on my part. The kind of grace that washes away the guilt on the outside of the sinner, but has no real change on the heart.

The good news of Joseph’s story is that we worship a God who truly can do anything he so wishes. Judah thought, wrongly, that God was constrained to follow some legal code. That his destiny was set in stone, because God has to work according to human laws and logic. Hear the good news: that’s not how God works. God has the freedom to be merciful to whom he wants. God has the power to bring good out of human evil. God has the power and the freedom even to bring good out of evil humans, if they choose to let him.

Had Judah remained the same kind of person he’d been before, he may never have known what all God can do. But Judah faced his sins, he acknowledged his need for forgiveness in both word and deed. And in facing and grappling with his sins, Judah discovered that God could, in fact, simply wipe them all away.

The New Revised Standard Version The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector

9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ 13 But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ 14 I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”