Of All The Rotten Luck!
Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?”
But his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence.
Then Joseph said, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer.
He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt.
And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here;
For God sent me before you to preserve life . . .”
He kissed all of his brothers and wept upon them;
And after that his brothers talked with him.
(Genesis 45:3-5, 15)
A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on the 15th Sunday after Pentecost, September 17, 2006
(Volume 1 Number 13)
First United Methodist Church, 605 West Sixth, Mountain Home, Arkansas 72653
Three Rotten Luck stories for you. John Micofsky had come to regard his marriage to Maryann Kulpa as a mistake. “I can’t reach my potential with her around,” John thought. “My life will be enriched when her face is no longer in the family portrait.” That dream was realized on January 20, 1993, the day the divorce was finalized. The very next day, January 21st, marital ties legally severed, Maryann won the $10.2 million dollar jackpot in the New Jersey lottery. Of All the Rotten Luck!
Gary Tindle stood before California Judge Armand Rodriguez charged with armed robbery. With permission from the judge he went, with a guard, to the restroom. As the guard stood watch outside the door, Gary quickly sized up the situation. Spying out an opportunity, a glimmer of hope for escape, Gary opened a panel in the ceiling and scrambled into the crawl space. Just as he thought he had given them the slip, about thirty feet along his way to freedom from accountability, the ceiling panels gave way. Gary dropped back to the floor, right in front of the witness stand in the court where he was standing trial. Ah, what poetic justice! The guilty, packaged and delivered for judgment. Of All the Rotten Luck!
My third Rotten Luck story is not dissimilar. Ten brothers are insanely jealous of their youngest sibling. They don’t understand why their father favors this young man, Joseph. Worse, the brat seems to relish his position, dreaming of being honored at some future family reunion. The Hot-tempered Ten tire of little brother’s egotistical fantasies. “He’s pulling us down,” they whisper among themselves. “We can’t reach our potential with him around. Our lives will be enriched when his face is no longer in the family portrait.”
They wait for a perfect opportunity and, at last, far out in the wilderness, that golden moment presents itself. They can’t bring themselves to kill Joseph, although the vote was close. Instead, they sell him as a slave to merchants traveling an ancient Mediterranean trade route. “At last, we’re rid of our annoying brother. We’ll tell dad Joseph was killed in the wilderness by wild animals.”
Well, I hardly need to tell you that the plan goes off without a hitch. There is only one piece of evidence, Exhibit A, a bloody coat which the Ten Trusted sons of Jacob produce, but only after having added blood red to Joseph’s Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. It was all the proof needed for the conclusion that Joseph had met an untimely death.
It wasn’t Joseph’s blood, as you know. The Brothers Ten had smeared the coat with goat’s blood. Ah, if they had only had forensic analysis, swabs, and DNA testing back them. You CSI fans know what I mean. If only Grissom had been around 3500 years ago, carefully evaluating the evidence in a laboratory. Why, it would have saved Jacob a ton of grief. Yet alas, without these things, it seemed the perfect crime had been committed. Slim and none were the chances for retribution for these Ten Co-conspirators.
But like Maryann Kulpa, no sooner have the brothers divorced themselves from Joseph than he hit the jackpot. God blessed Joseph’s every move. “The LORD was with Joseph,” says Genesis 39, a refrain used not once, but four times. Joseph rose to prominence, becoming a favorite advisor to Pharaoh, an effective and beloved administrator of domestic economic policy, devising and implementing a strategy of agricultural production and storage that averted disaster during a time of famine.
And, just as Joseph arrives at the pinnacle of his prestige and power, guess who should drop in? None other than the Treacherous Ten. It’s been many years since their crime. The eastern Mediterranean region is now crippled by drought, the situation growing desperate for Jacob’s family. But there was a glimmer of hope. Egypt had grain. Joseph’s preparation for these crop failures placed him in the position of being the benevolent administrator of a sort of international soup kitchen. So the Pack of Brothers pack up their gear and set out for the Nile, now knowing what, not knowing who, awaited them at their journey’s end.
These fugitives from an unrequited crime had long ago assumed that they had successfully slipped away from accountability, but they are about to drop into the courtroom of the one who is chief witness, prosecutor, judge and jury all wrapped into one. The ceiling of providence has for years been sturdy enough to hold these unrepentant brothers above the courtroom of judgment as they slithered in the cramped crawl space of their guilt, but the timbers of that ceiling now splinter under the weight of their crime. And so it is that the Clan of Ten drop right in front of the witness stand of the most powerful administrator in Egypt. Ah, what poetic justice! The guilty, packaged and delivered for judgment. Of All the Rotten Luck!
Joseph recognizes his siblings. How could he forget? These men comprise his Ten Most Wanted list, from top to bottom, Alpha to Omega. But the Brothers Ten have not recognized Joseph. As an Egyptian official of Pharaoh, he seems no mere man, certainly not the young man they had last seen being dragged from a pit. The man standing before them has an Egyptian name, is dressed as Egyptian royalty. No, they couldn’t have guessed it was their brother.
What now? Surely the fuse to Joseph’s righteous indignation is lit. The reader braces for the inevitable fireworks. How we love such stories! Like the Count of Monte Cristo, Joseph will be the hero who rises from the cruel injustice of the dungeon to enact vengeance. Oh, how sweet is revenge. The reader braces for the spectacular explosion.
But the expected eruption of Joseph’s anger doesn’t occur. Perhaps it is merely delayed. “Okay,” the reader thinks. “A delicious twist this is, wonderful drama! Clearly, Joseph is toying with these Ten Doomed Traitors as a cat would tease its prey.” Indeed, Joseph does, at first, keep his identity secret, orchestrating a plan to find out about his younger brother Benjamin, the one brother not privy to the brothers’ plot. But for my purposes this morning, I want to streamline my retelling of the Joseph narrative to the moment of truth in Genesis 45, the moment when Joseph clears the room of his Egyptian entourage, in order to reveal himself to his brothers. “I am Joseph,” he says. “Is my father still alive?”
Those words must have fallen like a sharp ax on his unsuspecting audience. The Ten Stunned Fugitives can’t muster a word, “so dismayed were they at his presence.” Put yourself in the brothers’ shoes. The next few seconds must have been like eternity. Repressed memories now relentlessly pulsate, growing more vivid with each memory being replayed in their minds. The pit. The coat of many colors. The killing of the goat. The warmth of the blood on their hands as they smear the coat with blood. The guilt which stung their hearts as they heard their father’s anguished cries, cries which they could have relieved with the truth they refused to tell. Now they hear the words, “I am Joseph,” and these things were as if they had occurred yesterday. Guilt is now freshly mingled with surges of sheer terror. “Surely,” the Ten are bound to think, “the execution order will be the next, the last, thing we hear. Checkmate. Joseph, our younger brother, has justly won.”
But when Joseph speaks, he issues no execution order. “Come closer to me,” Joseph says. “What is this we hear in Joseph’s voice?” the brothers think. “Can it be kindness? Surely not. Surely this is a well-studied plan of revenge. Our brother Joseph must be savoring the sweetness of revenge by sipping it like a fine wine rather than gulping it in a single swallow.”
Joseph continues. “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt.” At last! The indictment has been read. The crime has been named in court. Surely Joseph’s next words will pronounce the well-deserved, long-awaited sentence of death. Ah, but Joseph’s next words confound the imagination. The awful drumbeat justice, which has risen throughout this narrative to a crescendo, now ceases abruptly and is replaced by the soft melodies of mercy. “Now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life . . . so it was not you who sent me here, but God.”
I don’t know how long after the crime Joseph seethed with anger, dreaming of revenge. Days? Months? Years? Perhaps Joseph would gleefully have shed their blood if providence had dropped these Ten into his lap even a single day sooner. But on this day, Joseph shows mercy.
How does one explain such a magnanimous act? Joseph’s generosity, I think, rests upon his unwavering belief in providence, an optimism borne of trust. “God sent me before you.” As dark and disorienting as this valley was, Joseph maintained a sense of God’s presence. Make no mistake. Joseph had much about which to be bitter. Who could blame him should he “put on garments of vengeance for clothing, and wrap himself in fury as in a mantle” (Isaiah 59:17)? But vengeance was not a becoming garment upon this royal man. His shoulders were worthy of finer materials. He wore a coat brilliant with hues of mercy.
The Joseph narrative does capture the imagination, doesn’t it? Whether an Andrew Lloyd Weber musical or a Stephen Spielberg film, the story always captivates. It could have been simply a story of revenge, a wronged hero rising from injustice to vanquish the elusive enemy. Yet, somehow, Joseph was able to rise above circumstances, to rise above blame, to wear garments of compassion rather than those of wrath.
A woman once came to her pastor with a problem. She was angry with a man in her community who had wronged her. The two, once close friends, were now polarized. They would not speak. They lived in a small town and could not avoid seeing each other, but there was no sign of reconciliation. No attempt to apologize was made by the man. The pain had gone on for weeks, and now she sat with her pastor and said, “I just have to forgive him.”
The pastor played devil’s advocate. “Why? He’s admitted no wrong. He’s not apologized or sought forgiveness. He’s shown no interest in repairing the relationship. Why forgive him?”
She said, “Pastor, I cannot stand the anger anymore. My stomach is in knots. I can’t sleep at night. I’m afraid I’ll bump into him downtown and I hate the tension that causes. I have to forgive him just for me, even if not necessarily for him.”
She experienced a wonderful by-product of forgiveness. It is the method of choice for stress reduction. Forgiving one another, even if only one-way forgiveness, is wonderful therapy for the spirit. Whether acknowledged by the second party or not, forgiveness is liberating. It is simply more healthy to forgive than to resent. And the foundation of one-way forgiveness is to trust God’s providence, to have a firm belief that God offers peace despite any misfortune or injustice.
No, I don’t know how long Joseph allowed his heart to harbor hatred and anger. I want now to quote our own accomplished author, Rita Billbe, in an excellent essay titled Forgiveness Practice which she has written and submitted to Guidepost. Sharing it with me, she and Mike have given me permission to share a part of it this morning. In the wake of a tragedy caused by the irresponsible actions of another which shattered her family’s dreams, Rita speaks of the initial “anger that was scratching at my heart with savage abandon,” and of her three year “Journey up the hill of forgiveness,” a journey which she writes, cannot be accomplished while “dragging the chains of anger and hatred.” She speaks of forgiveness in increments, in percentiles, forgiveness that gradually, to use her words, “softened the scabs of my soul.”
When I read Rita’s words, I thought of Francis Bacon, who wrote, “The one who studies revenge keeps his wounds green, which would otherwise heal.” Joseph’s wounds healed as his conviction became stronger that he was ultimately in God’s hand, that he could live in peace, and even joy, in the moment in which he found himself. This conviction allowed him to rise above the circumstances, to rise above blame and bitterness.
Rita ended her essay with just such a moment of profound, inexplicable peace, rising above the circumstances and rising above bitterness. “One morning in the fall, I awakened to the words, ‘come into his heart, Lord Jesus.’ Did I dream the phrase or did the voice that makes no sound speak to my innermost being? I believed the latter. At last, sounds were more musical, colors more vibrant, tastes sweeter.” These, I suggest, are the garments which Joseph wore, the garments befitting royal shoulders, the vibrant colors of the coat of forgiveness.
Corrie Ten Boom compared the providence of our lives – fortunes and misfortunes -- to embroidery. No matter how beautiful the art, one sees only a tangled mess on the underside. As long as Joseph’s eyes were on the tangled mess of his brother’s evil intent, he could harbor anger and bitterness. But when he looked in faith at the final product of providence, he was able to see God’s beautiful embroidery.
God moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform,
He plants his footsteps in the sea, and rides upon the storm.
Ye fearful saints fresh courage take, the clouds you so much dread.
Are big with mercy and shall break, in blessings on thy head.
Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust him for his grace.
Behind an angry providence, he hides a smiling face.
Blind unbelief is sure to err and scan his work in vain.
God is His own interpreter, and he shall make it plain.
(William Cowper, 1774)
“Hope For Those Whom Life Has Cheated,” a sermon by Rev. King Duncan in Dynamic Preaching, Volume 10, Number 10, page 21.
Paul Harvey’s For What It’s Worth, edited by Paul Harvey, Jr., Bantam Books, 1991, page 70.
A sermon by Rev. P. Thomas Wachterhauser, “Forgiveness: The Other Sermon,” delivered at First United Methodist Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Date unknown.
“Forgiveness Practice,” an (as yet) unpublished essay by Rita Billbe, telling the story of her journey to forgiveness in the wake of the tragic death of her son, Shawn, who was killed in an accident caused by a drunk driver.