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Sunday August 14, 2005 - Proper 15, Year A

It all depends how you tell the story.

Once there was
a man called Abraham. And Abraham
spoke with God.
God told Abraham
to pack up his wife, his servants, everything that belonged to him
and head off into the unknown.
Abraham did what he was told,
and he and his wife Sarah
settled in the land we know as Israel.
And Abraham and Sarah had no children,
but then God spoke to them again
and promised them a child
and that child was Isaac.
Isaac grew up in turn,
and Abraham ent his servant to find a wife for him,
and the servant found Rebekah,
and Issac and Rebekah were the parents of twins,
Esau, born first, and Jacob, close on his heels.
And Esau and Jacob grew up, and Jacob proved himself to be a slippery kind of character, a trickster. He tricked his brother out of his inheritance, and he tricked his father into giving him a blessing, and eventually things became too hot for Jacob, and he escaped to his relatives, way back in the land that Abraham had come from. And when he got there, he fell in love with Rachel, the younger and more beautiful of his two cousins. And he made a deal with his uncle, to work for him in exchange for Rachel as his bride.
But when the wedding day came, the veil came off, and Jacob the trickster
had himself been tricked.
He was married to Leah, the older, and uglier
sister.
And so he made another deal with his uncle, and this time got to marry Rachel.
And then Jacob decided it was time to head home, to take his two wives and servants, and all his possessions — he was a wealthy man, because he in turn tricked his uncle out of many sheep — Jacob headed home with all this
to reconcile with his brother.
And it went fine. Jacob settled in the country his grandfather Abraham had migrated to, and had twelve sons. And it's there that the story we heard today in our Old Testament reading
begins.

Joseph
was son number 11. His mother was Rachel, Jacob's beloved wife, and it's no wonder that Joseph became a favorite of his father, over the other sons born to Leah and two concubines.
And Joseph played his father's favor
for all it was worth. He told tales on his brothers. He strutted around in the fancy clothes his father bought him. He told everyone about the dreams he had
that his parents and brothers would bend down and honor him.
Not exactly the sort of things
that make you popular with your siblings

And so it's hardly surprising
that one day, when Joseph was seventeen, he went to take a message to his brothers working out in the fields, and they decided to take their opportunity and get rid of him.
They were going to kill him, but just then
a bunch of traders came by, so they sold him as a slave instead. And dipped his fancy clothes in animal blood, and told old Jacob
that Joseph was dead.

Meanwhile, the traders took Joseph off to Egypt. He did well there, even as a slave, and as the servant of the captain of Pharaoh's guards, ended up running the household.

And Joseph
was handsome. So much so
that he caught the attention of his owner's wife. She took a liking to him and tried to seduce him;
when he resisted, she had him arrested for trying to rape her.
And Joseph
was thrown into prison.

But even in prison, Joseph did okay. He became the favorite
of the prison's chief jailer, and was put in charge of the day to day running of the prison. And while he was there,
two of Pharaoh's employees were thrown in as well, the chief cupbearer and the baker. And they became Joseph's responsibility.

And then one night, the cupbearer and the baker each had a disturbing dream. And they told their dreams to Joseph, and Joseph
told them what the dreams meant. The cupbearer
would be restored to his position with Pharaoh;
the baker
would be executed.
And it happened
just
as Joseph
said.

But of course, as soon as he was back in the royal household
the cupbearer
forgot all about Joseph. Forgot about him
until Pharoah
had a dream.

There were seven fat cows
and seven skinny ones
and the seven skinny ones
ate up the fat ones.
There were seven plump ears of grain
and seven scraggly ones, and the seven scraggly ones
ate up the plump ones.

And none of Pharaoh's advisors, none of his magicians, none of his wise men
could tell him what it meant.

And then
the cupbearer
finally remembered Joseph
who had been languishing in prison all this time. And Pharaoh sent for him
and Joseph
told him what the dream meant.
The seven fat cows, the seven plump ears of grain
were seven years of rich harvest.
The seven skinny cows, the seven scraggly ears of grain
were seven years
of failed crops.
And, Joseph said,
there will be seven years of plenty,
and seven years of famine. So use the time of plenty
to stock up supplies, and then you will have nothing to fear in the time of famine.

Pharaoh
was so impressed with Joseph
that he not only ordered him released from prison,
but put him in charge of the whole of Egypt. At the age of thirty,
whatever Joseph said
was done.

Time passed, and there were indeed seven years of fabulous harvests. And under Joseph's direction, the Egyptians stored up supplies.
And then came
seven years of famine.
And it wasn't just Egypt that was affected, but the whole of the middle East. But Egypt
was the only place
you could get food.

And so it happened
that Joseph's father and brothers
ran out of food.
And because Egypt was the only place with supplies, the ten oldest brothers traveled there
to try to buy something. And while they were there
Joseph saw them
and recognized them.
But they didn't recognize him. After all, they had sold him as a slave when he was just a teenager. Twenty years later, it was hardly likely
that they would recognize the ruler that Joseph had become.

And Joseph decided to play a few games with them. First he threw them into prison for three days, accusing them of being spies. Then he released them, sold them food, and secretly put their money back in the sacks of food. And told them that he wouldn't sell them any more food
unless they brought their youngest brother with them. That brother was Joseph's full brother, the only other child of his mother Rachel,
and was precious to old Jacob.

So they went home, knowing that their father would not allow them to go back again and risk the life of his youngest child, that to go back would risk being accused of theft
for the money they'd found back in their sacks of grain.

But things got worse. Because soon
they had run out of food again. And this time they took the money fo the food they needed, plus the money that had been returned the last time, plus some gifts, and of course their little brother Benjamin. All in the hope that Joseph — not that they knew who he was — would be generous with them. And he welcomed them, and invited them to dinner, and Benjamin
was treated the best of all of them. And they still
didn't recognize
Joseph.

And when it was time to go home, they set off again.
But they hadn't gone far down the road
when Joseph's servants came after them, accusing them of stealing a silver cup. They said they didn't know anything about it, that if the cup was found in one of their sacks, then that person would go back to Egypt as a slave.
They were sure they were innocent.

But the servants searched the sacks,
and found the cup
in Benjamin's sack.
And the brothers pleaded with them, knowing that their father would never forgive them if his precious son Benjamin was left as a slave in Egypt.
But Joseph's servants were adamant. And so all eleven brothers turned
and headed back to Egypt.

And then, as we heard in our Old Testament reading today, they were brought to Joseph. Terrified, expecting the worst.
But Joseph couldn't keep up the pretense of not knowing them. He sent the servants away and revealed himself to his brothers. They expected him to still be angry at what they had done to him so many years before; instead, he forgave them, and welcomed them again as family. And when Pharaoh heard the story, he invited Joseph's brothers and father to join them in Egypt, and gave them the best land to settle on. And the story ended happily.

This is an important story, an essential one
in the overall story of the Old Testament. Because if nothing else, it tells us how it was
that the people of Israel, the people of God
came to be in Egypt
when it came the time of Moses,
time for God to rescue them,
time for the Exodus
that would forever define them
as a people.

But the story is important for other reasons as well.
Because it's a story
that has a lot in common with our stories. Perhaps not the details — none of us is likely
to be sold as a slave
or end up effectively ruling Egypt,
but there are bits and pieces
that you might have recognized as being like part of your life.

The story of Joseph
is long and complex,
and like many of the stories in the bible
we usually only hear little pieces of it at a time. If you were lucky enough to go to Sunday School regularly as a child, you might have heard the whole of Joseph's story, but for most of us, we only hear the highlights unless we decide to read it for ourselves in Genesis.
But the whole story is important. It's here that we get to hear the good and the bad
all mixed up together. Which is how it is in life.

Sometimes of course, it's tempting
to just focus on one or the other. If you take the story of Joseph and focus on the bad,
you end up with all the elements of a soap opera: avarice, greed, jealousy, sibling rivalry, sex, politics, palace intrigue. It has bragging, hatred, betrayal, forgetfulness, insight, anguish and guilt.
If you just take the good, there is love, forgiveness, luck, generosity, and blessing.
What you make of Joseph all depends
on how you tell the story.

It's the same in our lives. Sometimes
it feels like all that happens to us is bad. One disaster after the other, and we get depressed and wonder if things will ever get any better.
Or we just focus on the good and pretend everything is fine, and eventually when something so bad happens that we can't just ignore it
we don't know how to cope.
Telling our stories honestly
is important.
It helps us understand who we are, where we have come from and where we are going. Sometimes we discover unexpected strength, and unexpected blessing.

And in telling our stories, and even more importantly, listening to the stories of other people, the whole unvarnished truth,
we sometimes discover, as Joseph did,
that God works in unexpected ways.
God works in the good and the bad alike. It's not so much that God causes things to happen, as that God uses the things that happen to us
things that happen because of our choices or those of other people
or sometimes just bad luck, God uses those things
to work for good.
Of course, it doesn't always seem like that — when Joseph was sold as a slave or stuck in prison, I'll bet he wasn't too happy with God. But God did use those things, the bad as well as the good, to bless not only Joseph, but his whole family and eventually his whole nation, and the Egyptians as well.

God does work for good in our lives, even when it doesn't seem a whole lot like it. Telling stories like Joseph's
helps remind us of that, helps remind us
that there is always hope, always possibility, for those who trust in God.

Sermon ©Raewynne J. Whiteley 2005