The readings for this Sunday were form Genesis 37, Romans 10, and Matthew 14.
BEGINNING THE STORY OF JOSEPH
Today at eight o’clock we celebrate the Baptism of Hank MacMahon. Hank has been a regular attender at the eight since his birth this year, and is very much a part of the eight o’clock worshipping community.
May Hank always know a welcome
By his Baptism, may Hank always know a welcome at the Lord’s Table.
We have the gift of many small children in this parish.
May Hank – may each one, may each person of any age -- always know that he is a part of the community God gathers around the Table of Jesus.
Growing up in that community, may Hank learn about God’s love for him in Jesus Christ – the boundless radiant light of God’s love given to him completely, nothing held back. And that nothing can separate Hank from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Nothing. Baptism is a great sign of the gift of union with Christ which nothing can break. Sometimes we lose sight of it, sometimes it seems there is only the darkness and fog – but the gift is always there of God’s presence with us and love for us in Christ.
Baptism is the great sign the gift of God’s presence and love has been given. This Feast of Bread and Wine is the great sign the gift is given to you and me and Hank and anyone here and now, on the way.
May Hank grow up knowing the Scriptures, knowing the stories of the Bible – that ancient collection of very different books, which I believe God makes use of to speak to us in contemporary ways. “The word is very near you” – Two of the basic principles of the English Reformation were (and remain) that the Bible be given into the hands of God’s people and written in the language understood by the people.
A story of betrayal and loss
On this joyous day of Hank’s Baptism it is something of a jolt that our first Bible story (Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28) is a story of betrayal and loss. But these are our family stories – the stories of the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, who, in the context of Genesis, were the first people to believe in God. Sometimes our family stories are not happy and sometimes mistakes are made. And the Word of God to us through these stories is a the word of redemption and forgiveness and resurrection. Today story is about a very great mistake, an evil act of jealousy and betrayal.
Joseph’s older brothers were jealous of him. He was the youngest son of Jacob, who was getting old. He was the son of Jacob’s beloved wife Rachel (the older brothers were the sons of other mothers). Jacob loved this youngest child and let his favoritism show. They sold him into slavery. They sold him to a passing caravan, who in turn sold him as a slave down in Egypt. And they cooked up a story for their father about how he was killed by an animal. And Joseph was gone.
This truly terrible story set in motion a whole series of events that would change the history of this family, and of world history, of our history as believers and Christians.
For the story tells how the Jewish people ended up living in Egypt. And then were enslaved.
And then God acted in history to save the people from slavery. God brought the people into freedom, and led them through the wilderness and finally into the Promised Land.
This was the formative story of Judaism, remembered at Passover.
We Christians remember it too, and remember how God acted in history in Jesus Christ to save all people, and to bring us into the Promised Land of life with God in him, here on our earthly pilgrimage, and at our end into the Promised Land of heaven.
And it began with today’s truly terrible story of a pack of jealous brothers letting their jealousy get the better of them, and selling the boy – aged seventeen we are told – into slavery.
And then in slavery, Joseph ended up in a slave jail. I pretend no expertise on Egyptian slavery, but I strongly suspect there is nowhere to go much lower than an ancient Egyptian slave jail.
The story took a surprise turn
Genesis tells us Joseph was thirty when the story took a surprise turn. Joseph spent from seventeen to thirty as a slave in Egypt. That was his education. I suspect it taught him a lot about survival.
The surprise was that another slave who had been in jail with Joseph, was a servant of Pharaoh and when Pharaoh told about being troubled with dreams, of having a bad time in the night, the slave suggested talking to Joseph. Who told Pharaoh plainly that what Pharaoh saw coming, and perhaps could not face, was famine.
And Pharaoh put Joseph in charge of getting the country ready for famine – setting aside enough food.
The New York Times printed on its front page last Tuesday a picture of a child starving in the famine of Somalia.
The Biblical ethic calls us – God calls us as disciples of Jesus -- to show compassion and mercy and try to help and feed the hungry.
The Biblical ethic – from the opening of this first book of Genesis – is that God made that starving child, God makes every human life, and every one ultimately belongs to God, and the human community, the church, the people of Israel, along with all people of good will have a responsibility to help. To do what is right and just.
Back home, Joseph’s father and brothers heard about Egypt having food and the brothers went down to ask for help.
And found themselves before Joseph. Joseph’s education between seventeen and thirty as a slave in Egypt and in a slave jail would have ensured that the person before them would have looked 100% Egyptian. “Assimilated” might not be the right word – “worked over” might fit the facts better. If you walk into the Egyptian exhibits at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago, there is a very tall statue of King Tutenkamen, the Pharaoh. When Joseph’s brothers came into the hall before their long lost brother, this is more or less what they would have seen before them.
Joseph eventually helped them – a story for another day -- and they brought the whole family down into Egypt. After the years went by, and Joseph had died and there was a new Pharaoh who had no memory of Joseph’s contribution enslaved the Jewish people.
And God sent Moses to stand before this new Pharaoh, and say “Let my people go.”
Words which would echo in American history. And remind us of a lawyer with a practice in Springfield, Illinois who would speak for freedom and against slavery, and lead our country through a terrible war between brothers into ending slavery.
We read this story at Easter
We read the story of the Exodus, of how God acted in our human history to bring God’s people into freedom, at Easter, at the great Vigil. It is a formative story of our faith and looks to the great story, the story for every day of baptism, the story of for every Sunday (for Sundays are always a feast of the resurrection), the Easter story – that story that God acted in human history by sending Jesus Christ to bring every one – no one left out – back to God, into life with God.
God calls us to trust in the presence of God with us, and the love of God for us – for you, me, each one. And to trust that at our end God will bring us home to life, held in the love we see in Christ.
(This sermon was preached by the Rev. Raymond Webster, Rector, in St. Chrysostom’s Church, Chicago, Illinois, on Sunday, August 7, 2011, the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost.)
The Gospel text is from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, and used by permission.
