So, you want to build a temple…

October 25 2020

2 Samuel 7:1-17

         After I got out of farming I was a custodian for a local Moravian church. The pastor of the church was a real character who I grew to enjoy. He was one of those people that you never were quite sure just what he was going to say or do next. I found this out when in my rounds cleaning the church I would find that some of the furniture and pictures in the church had these little plaques on that stated the families or the person who had donated the item to the church. What you have to remember is that this is a very old church having just celebrated their one hundred and seventy fifth anniversary. So there were a lot of things that have been donated over the years and because of the age of these donations the plaques on them start to come loose. So, when I first started there I wasn’t sure just what I was supposed to do with these plaques that were just hanging there by one screw, the other one lost somewhere along the way. I figured the pastor would have some idea what I should do to fix them so I went and asked him and his answer kind of caught me off guard. He looked at me and said, “Take and see if you can loosen up the remaining screw and when the plaque falls off take and throw it away. And oh, don’t tell anybody that you did it” I thought ok, not what I expected. He went on to justify why he told me to work on getting rid of these name plates telling me that when a person gives something to the church they shouldn’t give to draw attention to themselves but they should give to give honor to God. You know, I think he was on to something because that is a the Christian life in a nutshell isn’t it? Our life is supposed to be a life that has gone from where its all about us to where we are living a life where its all about God. To put it in terms that dovetail with todays scripture this means that life is not about what we can build for God but rather life is supposed to be about what God can build out of our life.

         In our scripture story for today we read about king David. The background to what we read is that David has become king over all of Israel and he has made Jerusalem to be the central place of his power. David has just brought the ark of the covenant and the tabernacle up to reside in Jerusalem. Now not only the throne but the tabernacle, the heart of Israel’s worship would be forever connected with Jerusalem.

         David has a royal palace built for him and his family in the heart of Jerusalem and one day as he is enjoying the beauty and scent of his cedar paneled home  he looks out and sees the tent of the tabernacle. David seems almost embarrassed that here he is living in some pretty rich digs and there is God residing in a tent. So David confers with the prophet Nathan and while David doesn’t come right and out and say that he wants to be a house for God Nathan understands that this is what on David’s mind. So, Nathan tells David to go ahead and do what his heart tells him is the right thing to do because it was obvious to Nathan and everyone else in Jerusalem that God was with David.Well, when Nathan got home that evening God spoke to him and told him that he should go back and speak to David again. God had a message for David which was this : Why would you build me house to dwell in ? I have not lived in a house since I brought the people of Israel from Egypt to this day but I have been moving about in a tent for my dwelling.In all places where I with all the people of Israel, did I speak a word with any of the judges of Israel, whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, saying, “Why have you not yet built me a house of cedar?” Now therefore, David, remember how I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people Israel. I have been with you wherever you went and have cut off your enemies before you. And I will make for you a great name, like the name of the great ones on earth. So, what God tells David is that he never really asked anyone to build him a house which you have to admit is rather curious. I mean in the world which David lived all the nations had their gods and these gods all had temples which were palaces where these gods could be worshipped and sacrificed to. Yet the God of Israel was different having only a tent which would be moved from place to place. As God himself pointed out, he is a God on the move, a God who can be found in Egypt where he rescued his people, a God who was with David there in the pasture field with the sheep as well as the God who was with David there on the battlefield giving David the victory over his enemies. In a way, what God is telling David is that there are dangers with building God a house because then people might come to believe that he is a God of that place instead of being a God of every place. Unlike the gods of other nations the God of Israel was not just the God of the nation of Israel but a God whose ultimate goal was to bless every nation on the earth. This idea too could be lost if Israel were to build a temple just like all the other nations had built their temples.

         What is so intriguing about what God has to say to David is that he is not so much interested in what David could build for him but instead what God was interested in is what he could build out of the life of David, First, God tells David that he would take David’s name and make it a great name throughout the earth. This promise of God echoes what God told Abraham found in the twelfth chapter of Genesis where God promised that Abraham would be the beginning of of a great nation and God would bless Abraham and make his name great so that Abraham would be a blessing to others. So this promise to David by God is continuation of the very promise God had made to Abraham. Yet God had much more that he was going to promise to David. God declared that he was going to build out of David a house, a dynasty of kings to govern over Israel. God assures David that it is his kingdom that will be made sure forever and it was the throne of David that would be established. Only when David understood all that God was promising him, only then did God disclose to David that it would be David’s offspring that would build God a house. And further, God tells David that he would be like a father to this offspring of David and his offspring would be to God like a son. This meant that when this offspring of David would commit iniquity, the twisting of the good they should know to do, then God, like a good father will step in and discipline them.

         Now, as we read what God is telling David we can’t help but me amazed at just what God is promising to David. God promises David that he would build David’s house, David’s dynasty of ruling Israel. We have to wonder just why would God promise such an outrageous future to David and his descendants? The best reason that is evident throughout the life of David is that David was man after God’s own heart. This doesn’t mean that David was God’s favorite. No, when we think about the heart we remember that the heart is the where the will of a person is found. So, to say that David was a man after God’s own heart meant that David was a man who willed the same things that God willed.In the sixth chapter of Second Samuel we read of how David worshipped before the ark of the Lord and it is recorded that David rejoiced and danced before the Lord with all his might. What this tells us is that when David worshipped God, he worshipped God with no thought of what anyone thought of him; David’s focus was fully on honoring God. This worship of God poured forth from his heart and it was this worship of David that honored God, that pleased God. God in return sought to honor David by promising to build him a house, a dynasty of kingly rule for David’s descendants. What we come to understand then is what is in God’s heart, his will, is that people would live life’s that honor and glorify his name and this is the life that David lived.

Well, sadly the descendants of David would not all be kings that would be people after God’s own heart. Many would lead Israel astray through their worship of idols and unrighteousness behavior. Finally, after years of warning by the prophets God had raised up, God did as he promised to do, he disciplined these kings as God had told David he would do. God used the nation of Babylon to punish the kings and the people of Israel forcing them into exile. The king of Judaea, a descendant of David was hauled off never to be heard of again. So, quite naturally God’s people wondered about the promise God had made to David. They knew God would remain faithful to his promise but they weren’t quite sure just how would God accomplish the fulfillment of this promise. Isaiah in the eleventh chapter, speaks of this hope writing of how out of the stump of Jesse, Jesse being the father of David, it is this house of David, his dynasty that has been cut down. Isaiah though foresaw how out of this tragic situation will come a branch, a life coming out of what all thought was dead. This living shoot would be the fulfillment of the promise God made to David, the beginning of the hope of Israel that one day, out of the house of David, God would anoint a king who would rule over an everlasting kingdom. This is what is behind what we read in the first chapter of Luke, when the angel Gabriel visited the Virgin Mary to announce to her that she was the favored one of God. Gabriel tells her that she would conceive and bear a son whose name would be Jesus. This Jesus will be great and he will be called the son of the Most High. Further, the angel Gabriel tells Mary that this son she will call Jesus, he would be given the throne of his father David and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and of his kingdom there will be no end. So, here we hear of how the promise of God would indeed hold true even after a thousand years have passed since God first spoke that promise to David.

Jesus would be the fulfillment of God’s promise to David, the true king who like David was a man after God’s own heart. As Jesus says in the fifth chapter of John, “I can do nothing on my own. As I hear, I judge, and my judgment is just , because I seek not my own will but the will of him who sent me.” So, yes, Jesus is a king like David, a man after God’s own heart the kingdom of Jesus was a kingdom which was very different from the kingdom David reigned over. We read  of this kingdom in the eighteenth chapter of John where Jesus has a conversation with Pontius Pilate. Pilate asked Jesus, “Your own nation and the chief priest have delivered you over to me. What have you done? Jesus answered, “My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, my servants would have been fighting, that I might not be delivered over to the Jews. But my kingdom is not from this world. Pilate said to Jesus, “So are you a king? Jesus answers, “You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the world-to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.” Here we discover that Jesus is the king but his is a kingdom unlike any other kingdom on earth. The kingdom of Jesus would come about not by might but by right, the rightness of the truth that he would speak to those who would listen. The power of this kingdom of Jesus is the power of the promise of God.  The promise given to David was proven to be true through the life of Jesus and it is this truth, a truth founded on the promises of God, this is what the kingdom of Jesus is all about. Jesus placed his faith in his Heavenly Father, the one who can raise the dead and bring into existence those things which do not exist and he placed no confidence in the flesh as a means to bring about his kingdom. Jesus our king died upon the cross and the worldly kingdoms rejoiced at their apparent victory. But three days later our king arose from the dead victorious over the ultimate enemy, death. The resurrection of Jesus proved the truth of God’s promise that his servant would not see corruption. This is the witness that the resurrection of Jesus bears witness to, the truth his kingdom is built upon.

What is interesting is that Jesus was more than just a king. As we recall, what David desired was to build God a house but God responded to David that he would build David a house, dynasty of kingly rule. Well God’s promise to David was fulfilled in the life of Jesus, he was the king of an everlasting rulership. But it turns out Jesus was not only king he was and is the very temple of God. In the second chapter of John we hear Jesus declare, “Destroy this temple and in there days I will raise it up. The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple and will you raise it up in three days? But Jesus was speaking about the temple of his body. What David could not possibly have fathomed is that the most glorious place where God desires to dwell is within the life of a person who is fully devoted to doing God’s will, a life anointed not with oil but with the Holy Spirit. This is what Paul writes about in the second chapter of Ephesians, “For through Christ Jesus we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens but you are fellow citizens and members of the household of God built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.”The earthly temple David desired to build, the one built by his son Solomon and rebuilt by Herod, that temple was destroyed in 70 AD. But the temple which has as its cornerstone Jesus our king, the fulfillment of Gods’ promise to David, this temple is an everlasting temple to the glory of God. This is the difference between what we attempt to build for God through our efforts and what God can build out of our life, something that is brought about through the promises and power of God. We must never forget that whatever we might think would be something great to build or do for God this is so insignificant compared to what God desires to build out of us.God wants to take us and and have us be built into his holy temple. This is the place where all strangers and aliens are welcomed into the house of God, a house where all are trusting in the promises of God who therefore have no fear but instead experience an abundance of love for all. This is the house that God loves to dwell in not just now but forever. Amen! 

Living On A Prayer

 October 18 2020

1 Samuel 1,2:1-10

         My youngest sister, Becky is married to John and they and when they were first married, Becky and John, like a lot of young couples, wanted to have a family. Unfortunately, they found that they had fertility issues which made having children of their own very difficult. We prayed for them and hoped that they might find an answer.They sought out the best medical help, fertility clinics all to no avail. So, they decided to adopt and that too was not without difficulty. Several times the child they were going to do adopt was at the last minute kept by their birth mother. Needless to say they grew very frustrated. Finally, they began to look at adopting from a foreign country and they ended up adopting two children from and orphanage from South Korea, a little girl they named Leah and a little boy named Max. Leah is now sixteen, a junior in high school and Max is fifteen, a sophomore in high school. They are just two really terrific kids, both run cross country, both very polite, wonderful children.

         Now, anytime I think about Leah and Max I can’t help but get choked up because of how Becky and John through their choice to adopt from South Korea have forever transformed the lives of Leah and Max. Where once they lived in an orphanage without much hope, now they are part of the American Dream. They have a great home, a mother and father who love them, they are part of a greater family with grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins all who love them dearly. And Becky and John have taken them to church where Leah and Max have been baptized and are growing in their faith. While it was very sad that Becky and John could bot have children naturally, it is not hard to see how God took their situation and used it to give a new life to two children living in South Korea.In a sense God answered their prayers for a family only he did in a way that none of us could imagine and God answered their prayer in a way that he could bring about faith in two young people who may not have had an opportunity to ever know him. 

         I couldn’t help but think of my sister and brother-in-law when I meditated on the story of Hannah. The desire to have a family is a timeless longing for every generation and it is no different now than it was then. What makes Hannah’s story so tragic is that on top of her grief of being unable to have children she also lived in a society that had no sympathy for women who were barren. This cruelty is voiced by the first wife of Hannah’s husband, Peninnah. Now, what is interesting is that Peninnah could give Hannah no sympathy even though as our story tells us they went often to Shiloh to worship and sacrifice to God. I guess Peninnah was no different than people today who also worship God but end up being no different because of the experience. It seems that the pull and influence of the culture that surrounds us has a greater influence on some people, an influence that is hard for even the worship of God to change. The reason why this is is that the society we live in just like the society Peninnah lived in has a culture grounded in the power of the flesh. This means that the strongest, the fastest, the smartest and the most fertile lord it over those who find themselves on the short end of the stick. Now, while these abilities of the flesh seem to make some people out to be greater than others, to give some people bragging rights, the truth is that this boasting of physical greatness is really done simply to cover up what every knows deep down and that is all of us are vulnerable. All of us are subject to being hurt at any given moment, all of us have experienced brokenness at one point or another and no matter how great some people think they are, the truth all of us have to face is that none of us get out of here alive. Rather than than facing the reality of our existence, some people would just make believe that by focusing on their supposed greatness they can forget their underlying weakness if only for a while.

         This weakness of our flesh is most pronounced in our inability to do the good that we know we should do. Peninnah’s cruelty towards Hannah displayed her weakness not her strength. Even though Peninnah was able to have children while Hannah was not, she was unable or unwilling to show Hannah some much need sympathy. As our story tells us, Peninnah grievously irritated Hannah, not just once but year after year, especially when they went up to Shiloh to worship God. Peninnah obviously felt that her fertility was a sign of God’s favor and Hannah’s infertility was a sign that God’s goodness did not shine upon her.  This is how the flesh can twist the blessings of God around and use them in cruel and mean ways to harm others instead of using those blessings to be a blessing to others. As Paul describes the problem of living by the flesh in the seventh chapter of Romans, “I know no good thing dwells in me, that is in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” This describes every person who lives apart from God, who lives without the Holy Spirit’s power. So we can understand that if the society we live in today just like the society Peninnah and Hannah lived in thousands of years ago, is made up of people unable to do the good they know they should do, then of course the result is going to be a cruel and violent world. This world is what Peninnah represents in our story.

         Hannah, on the other hand, represents those who have felt the brunt of this world’s cruelty and who in their weakness turn to God to find their strength. These are people who are honest about their vulnerability and weakness because they know that this forces them to rely solely upon God and his power. This is what Hannah did when she was distressed by her inability to have children turned to God in prayer. Her prayer was more importantly a vow, an oath where she told God, “O, Lord of hosts, if you will look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give your servant a son, then I will give him to the Lord all the days of his life and no razor shall touch his head.”  Now the language Hannah uses gives us clues that help us go deeper into what is going on here. Hannah calls herself a servant of the Lord. Many times when we read of how someone calls themselves a servant of the Lord people will often miss the significance and importance of this understanding. What is missed is that being a servant is something God desires of all who love him. We know this to be true from what we read in Deuteronomy, the sixth chapter, the thirteenth verse where we read, “It is the Lord your God you shall fear. Him you shall serve and by his name you you shall swear.” These three expectations that God has for those who love him, give us a thumbnail sketch of the life that differs from a life lived in the power of the flesh. This, I believe is what is signified by Hannahs understanding that she was a servant of God, that it was God alone whom she would serve. The word we translate as servant in our verse from Deuteronomy is the same word elsewhere translated as being priest, a servant of God’s in his house of worship. This underlying aspect of worship helps us to figure out the first expectation for those who love God which is that it is God whom we are to fear. Now, it would be easy to make a snap judgment and say that this means that we are to be afraid of God, to understand fear as meaning that God should scare us. This understanding kind of contradicts the whole idea that we are to love God with all of our heart, with love of our soul or life and with all that God has given to us. I mean just how are we to love with God with all that we are on one hand and on the other know God as being the one who scares and frightens us. It just a nonsensical idea. No, what we have to understand is that in the Hebrew language the word “fear” can have many meanings. If we look at other places in scripture where this word we translate as fear is used this meaning starts to become very evident. In Leviticus, the nineteenth chapter we are told that we are to revere our mothers and our fathers and to keep the Sabbath. The word used for revere is the exact same word translated as “fear” in the expectations God has for us. In the book of Joshua, in the fourth chapter, we read how God had exalted Joshua so that the people of Israel revered Joshua just as they revered Moses. In this scripture passage it wouldn’t make much sense to say that the people feared Joshua and Moses. So, we can see from just these few examples that reverence is a good way to translate what is otherwise translated as fear. To revere someone is to be in awe of them, to respect them. We revere God and respect him because we know that God is the Creator and sustainer of our world. More importantly, we know that God created us, that we are fearfully and wonderfully made and it is the very hands of God who has knitted us together in our mothers womb. So, our reverence of God is a reverence based on the realization that God is the origin of our life, our reverence then is a reverence of the sacredness of life. Life is not something maintained by our own strength, the so called strength of our flesh but rather life is gift given to us by God. It is his breath, his Spirit which is our life.It is this understanding that is the reason for our worship of God, the reason we find God worthy of all of our love because we know that it is out of his love that we are now alive. The people of Israel called this understanding that we know God as our Creator and sustainer of not only all of creation but our life specifically as being the faith known as emunah faith. This faith as we are told in Proverbs the beginning of wisdom. In other word this is where we begin our faith journey.

         Well, it is not hard to understand that if we revere God, if we know that he is the Creator and sustainer of life that we will also know that all we can be to him is a servant. If God has created our life and has given and sustained our life it would just seem odd to then take this life and use it for our glory instead of wanting to use this life for the glory of God. This is the understanding Hannah must have had when she prayed as a servant of God. The years of worship there at the tabernacle at Shilo had created in her emunah faith, a faith which knows God as the Creator of all and the one who sustains all. In light of this knowledge Hannah also knew that she was a servant of God. This was a servanthood molded after the priests who served at the tabernacle, those who offered up sacrifices on behalf of the people who came to worship. Hannah obviously understood her service to God in this same way because of her willingness to give her firstborn son to work forever in the tabernacle. This sacrifice was equivalent to the offering of the first fruits required every year from the people of Israel.Hannah understood that the first of everything belonged to God as an act of faith that if God received the first portion than he would abundantly provide more after that.

         It is Hannahs giving of her first born as a first fruit offering to God which demonstrates the deepening of her faith in God. While the people of Israel understood that people begin their faith journey with emunah faith, a faith in God as the the Creator and sustainer of the universe,  they also knew that this emunah  faith was only the beginning of a faith journey.  Emunah faith, a state of understanding about God, was to lead to bitachon faith, a state where we trust God. Bitachon faith is a confidence that the underlying reality in which we live is good because we know the God who created it is a good God. Bitachon faith is saying that we are relying upon God to watch over us and protect us. This is the faith where we take our burden, just like Hannah took what was weighing her down, and we place it in the hands of God. To do this means that we know that God loves us more than we love ourselves. It is knowing that God knows what is best for our own good. It is the faith that knows God always has my best interest at heart.

         It may be difficult for us to see the connection between bitachon faith and the third expectation God has for those who love him which is that we are to swear by his name. However, if you think what it means to swear by something we can begin to see that it means that we are stating that we have confidence in that which we swear by. To say that we swear by the name of God then means that we place the utmost confidence in the name of God. The name of God is the essence of who God is, it is his unchangeable nature, his glory. In the thirty fourth chapter of Exodus we read of how God revealed that he is a God who is merciful and gracious, a God who is slow to anger, a God who is abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness keeping steadfast love for thousands forgiving iniquity, sins and transgressions but who by no means will clear the guilty…” This is God’s unchanging character, his name and it is this name, this is what we can have absolute confidence in. This name is the reason we can trust God. This does not mean that everything we pray for we are going to receive but rather that whatever comes we can be certain that the God who is merciful and gracious, the God abounding with steadfast love and faithfulness has a reason for what he is doing.

         Hannah, in her prayer, showed that she had bitachon faith, a confidence in the name of the Lord. She was trusting in the God of mercy and grace a God of steadfast love and faithfulness to be the God who would look upon her affliction and remember her, the one God had created. Hannah laid her burdens in his arms knowing that this was the God who had her best interests at heart. As she knew the faithfulness of God she in turn would be faithful to him, vowing to not withhold her firstborn but rather she would give him up to be a priest of God. Our scripture tells us that Hannah prayed from her heart, that she spoke no words but prayed instead praying a prayer that was beyond words, a prayer of the yearning of the very depths of her soul. The high priest who saw her thought she was drunk but Hannah put him in his place explaining that she was not drunk just very troubled in her soul. She further told him to not regard your servant as a worthless woman for she had been speaking out of great anxiety and vexation. This was quite bold of her to speak to him like this, a boldness that perhaps came from the spirit of boldness, the Holy Spirit. In fulfilling what God expects of those who love him, being a person who has a deep reverence for God, a person who considers themselves a servant of God, a person who has confidence in the name of God, this was the kind of person that Hannah was. She was living the life God expects of all who love him. This life Paul would later call the life of the Spirit, a life characterized by boldness. This is how Hannah prayed, with boldness because of her certainty that God had heard her prayer. The result we are told is that as she went her way that the sadness on Hannah’s face was gone replaced by the joy of the Lord.

         Well, God answered Hannah’s prayer and she conceived and had a son Samuel which means “I have asked for him from the Lord”. And as soon as Samuel was old enough, Hannah took him to the tabernacle where he would live and serve before God the rest of his life.  Samuel would become one of the greatest prophets that Israel had ever known, the prophet who anointed first, Saul to be king over Israel and then later, Samuel anointed David to be the king of Israel.

         As we think of David being king over Israel it is not hard to have out thoughts turn to Jesus who was a king in the lineage of David. Jesus is the one who met those same expectations that Hannah met. As we read in the fifth chapter of John Jesus knew of his Father’s love for him, and he knew that his life had been granted to him by his Heavenly Father. Jesus also told his disciples that he did not come to be served but to to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many. And Jesus had confidence in His Heavenly Father, praying not my will but your will be done, going to the cross trusting that his Heavenly Father was the one who gives life to the dead and brings into existence those things which do not exist.  Three days later when Jesus stepped out of the grave the power of this faith of Jesus was seen by all the world. When Jesus ascended to his Fathers side in glory the Holy Spirit was given without measure to all who come to Jesus so that through the Spirit all can, like Hannah, revere and worship God, serve God to his glory and have exceeding confidence in God’s goodness allowing them to pray boldly just as Hannah did so long ago. This is the way that a world living in the power of the flesh can witness in us the greater power of a life that God expects. Amen

The Past and the Presence

October 11 2020

Exodus 32:1-20

         When our kids were in High School Jennifer and I used to go to a lot of football games every Friday night. We went not there because our kids were football players or cheerleaders but because our kids were band kids. Being band parents, the most important time of a football game was halftime; who won or lost was kind of inconsequential. 

         Now, the only thing I played in high school was the radio. Jennifer, on the other hand was a big band geek so at least she could relate to the kids experiences of being a part of the marching band. For me though, I was always in awe of the band director. I mean every other teacher in school has at most thirty kids to teach but a band directors has more than one hundred students that must be taught a musical piece that is going to be performed before a stadium full of people. Not only that, but the director also has to oversee a myriad of different instruments which have different parts which all must perform together and in harmony. But if that were not enough, these same band members have to perform their parts in harmony all the while marching in step to a predetermined choreography in which the members all move about each other effortlessly because of the countless hours of practice. The band director has to do all of this and he has to do it with kids who range from freshman to seniors who are full of raging hormones and anxiety and stress that is the normal baggage of someone that age.So anytime I hear about a teacher griping about their job I want to tell them just be glad your not a band director.

         I was thinking about the many hats that a band director wears because in reading about Moses, I can’t help but see that he was a lot like a band director. I mean he was always trying to get this large gathering of former slaves to all go in the same direction, to get on the same page as it were so that the music of their witness might be harmonious with what they believed. These people of Israel at long last been set free but the big question now was now what were they to do with this freedom they were enjoying. They had heard Moses tell that the end game was to reach this so call Promised Land, a land of milk and honey but first they found themselves out in the desert, at Mount Sinai. Here, Moses was going to introduce the people of Israel with the God who had set them free in order to formalize their relationship.   

         What the people of Israel were beginning to know about this God who had set them free from their slavery in Egypt was that this God was a God of unbelievable power which induced in them a fear of his presence. They watched in awe and wonder as the wind swept across the Egyptian plain and caused the water to stand upright so that they could walk through the sea on dry ground. Over and over again on their journey the people of Israel had witnessed that this God was a God of unbelievable power. Then Moses brought them to this mountain, the mountain where God resided and there was thunder and lightning a thick cloud upon the mountain. The mountain was wrapped in smoke because God had descended upon it like a fire. The whole mountain trembled and shook and when Moses spoke to God, God replied with thunder. Can you imagine what must have been going through the hearts and minds of these former slaves who had experienced these unbelievable wonders of this out-of-this-world God? We have to at least try to understand how strange and unnerving all of this must have been to them in order to make sense of our scripture for today.  I mean we just cannot say that in the absence of Moses the people simply turned to idol worship, end of story. No, there is more going on here than meets the eye.

         The story of the golden calf begins when the people realized that Moses, who had gone up on the mountain, into that dense cloud and smoke, into the place of lighting and thunder and had not returned for over a month. It isn’t hard to understand their concern for all they knew, this God of sheer power had overpowered him. There just was no way to tell. They figured that they had waited long enough, it was time to begin the journey to that land Moses had told them about. The only problem is that they had no idea just where it was and the one who could ask God for directions was officially AWOL. So, the people turn to Moses’ brother, Aaron and ask him to make gods who shall go before us. Now, the word for gods used here is the Hebrew word Elohim and it is translated throughout scripture as either power or gods or judges. The idea that actually fits best in this situation is the idea of judge. What they wanted was something that would could bring the presence of this God who seemed so far off, so full of power that it was terrifying to think of him drawing close, to somehow bring him close enough that they could figure out, judge just which way to go next on their journey. This understanding that they were looking to make a footstool for God helps me to understand why Aaron went along with what seems like such an outrageous thing for the people of Israel to do. Aaron never saw the golden calf as an idol but rather as a means of divining the will of the God they were sojourning with in the absence of Moses. So Aaron wasn’t blatantly idolatrous but rather a little naïve and a whole lot stupid. 

         So, the people of Israel decided that they would take their jewelry, their gold earrings taken from their Egyptian masters on their way of Egypt and have Aaron create a calf out of the gold. Now it is no surprise that they chose a calf because back in Egypt their masters had worshipped a god in the shape of a bull. This god was called Apis and it was said to be a symbol of the king because it embodied the qualities of strength and fertility that a king should have. Perhaps this is why the people of Israel chose a calf because through the covenant they had made with God they came to understand that he was their king and they were his servants. Whatever their thought process, the wrongness of what they were doing never seemed to dawn on them. What they failed to comprehend is that you can’t use your past to figure out your future when your working with God. God demands that your past be just that, past so that you can be present with him.

         Well, once Aaron had the calf formed and shaped he announced the next day that on the next day there would be a feast. This feast was copied off the earlier feast that the people had celebrated with Moses written about in the twenty-fourth chapter of Exodus. There we read of how Moses built an altar and had also set up twelve pillars of stone to represent the twelve tribes of Israel. In a similar fashion, Aaron also built an altar but instead of building twelve pillars of stone, Aaron placed the golden calf. Now in Aaron’s mind he still thought this was a festival to the one true living God. He was worshipping in hopes that God would come and set his feet upon this bull he had created and in coming close might disclose just what his people were to do next. The problem was that not everyone thought like Aaron and when the people of Israel saw the golden calf and the sacrifices to it they were carried back to a simpler time when they lived in Egypt. The worship of the old symbols led them to relive the life of their old ways. This is the problem with not making a clean break with your past; your past takes over your present. This was to be a continual problem for the people of Israel. As we learn in the twentieth chapter of Ezekiel, God speaking to Ezekiel tells him, “On that day I swore to them that I brought them out of the land of Egypt into a land I had searched out for them, a land flowing with milk and honey, the most glorious of lands. And I said to them, “Cast away the detestable things your eyes feast on, every one of you, and do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt; I am the Lord your God. But they rebelled against me and were not willing to listen to me. None of them cast away the detestable things their eyes feasted on, nor did they forsake the idols of Egypt.”  As one person put it, “It took one day for Israel to get out of Egypt and forty years for Egypt to get out of Israel.” You see, they never really made a break with their past and so in the end, their past would end up breaking them. What started out as a supposed feast to God soon descended into an chaotic frenzy of evil that was typical of life in Egypt.

         The scripture as translated tells us that the people ate and drank and rose up to play as if they were going to participate in parlor games. This is another example where much is lost in translation. The word translated a play, the Hebrew word, letzachek, has as its origins laughter, which is why the idea of play might come to mind. But there are many reasons to laugh and some laughter admittedly is more sinister than others. When you look at where else letzachek is used it is in association with idolatry, adultery and murder. The Jewish scholars who have studied this word teach us that letzachek occurs when the boundaries of what is considered normal are broken. Immorality is a break in the acceptable boundaries of human relationships. Likewise, murder is taking the sacred life of someone else. And idolatry, of course is breakdown in boundaries of acceptable worship of God. This breakdown of barriers, the sins we know of as being transgressions, is what happens when people worship what God created instead of worshiping the God of creation. When God created our world he set in place boundaries for all that he created including his highest creation, people. This is what is lost in idol worship this idea of creation and a Creator. Idol worship operates in a world where nothing ever changes, time rolls around in a big cycle. How different it is when we know that God is our Creator and we are his creation. Now we know that God has created us for a purpose; we are not here by some blind fate. And if we know we have a beginning then it makes sense that we also therefore have a future, a fulfillment of the purpose God created us for. Creation also implies that there is an order to all that we see because without some order and definition to our world all we are left with is chaos and chaos described just what happened when the people worshiped the golden calf. All the acceptable boundaries were crossed, the purpose and high calling God created people to be was lost and forgotten.

         This was the moment when God told Moses to go down for your people whom you brought up out of Egypt have corrupted themselves. Do you see how God wanted nothing to do with these people so they were now going to be Moses’s problem? God tells Moses that the people of Israel are stiff necked because this is a way to describe cattle who can not be led. What God is getting at is that they have worshiped a calf to the point that they are now acting like cattle! God understandably was furious after all, he had heard the cries of these people in slavery and had through a great demonstration of power set his people free. He had led them and cared for them and in the end they left him in the dust to go back to the old familiar gods. What saved the people was the intercession of Moses who first asked God just what would the Egyptians think if they had heard that the people of Israel were set free only to be wiped out here in the desert. And secondly, Moses reminded God of his promises that he had made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob that their descendants would become a mighty nation that would bring blessing to every family on earth. Now, I’m sure God already had thought of these arguments but what he wanted Moses to understand is that he was relenting from destroying Israel not because of anything they might do but he was acting toward Israel solely to protect his reputation and because he is a God who is faithful to his promises.. This is what we hear God tell his people in the ninth chapter of Deuteronomy, “The Lord your God is not giving you this good land to possess because of your righteousness, for you are a stubborn people.” Here we begin to understand that it is only God’s grace and mercy and not our righteousness that is the ground for our salvation.

         Well, when Moses came down Mount Sinai what instead caught his and Joshua’s attention was the noise coming from the camp of the Israelites. They couldn’t tell if what they heard was the sound of victory or the sound of defeat but most definitely what they heard was singing, the singing of songs of worship to a golden calf. Moses when he saw the calf and the dancing and the evil ways of the people of Israel was so angry that he threw the tablets upon which God had written the Ten Commandments upon the ground shattering them in pieces. This symbolically was what had happened to the relationship between the people and God. Our story tells us that Moses took the golden calf and ground it into dust and mixed it with water so that all who worshipped there might drink of it. This might sound like a strange thing for Moses to do but if you look at the laws recorded in Leviticus, what Moses did was similar to what was called for when a women was caught in an act of adultery. What Moses was conveying to the people of Israel was that in worshiping an idol they were cheating on the one who should have been their first love, the one true living God who had saved them and given them a new life as free people.

         Well, in order for this new life to work Moses realized that God could no longer just be the God on the mountain; God had to be the God near by, the God who placed his sanctuary in the midst of his people. When Moses went back up the mountain to get the second set of tablets with the Ten Commandments written on them, he asked God to reveal to him his glory. In the thirty fourth chapter of Exodus we read of how God passed behind Moses and we read that Moses understood God’s glory as being that he is the Lord, a God who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin…” It seems odd that these attributes would be what is God’s glory, but if you think about it it is because God is a God who is merciful and gracious, a God who is full of steadfast love and faithfulness this is why his presence, his glory could be there in the midst of his people to guide them and protect them. When Moses came down from the mountain he instructed the people to build the tabernacle, a place from where God could instruct his people about the proper boundaries and the what sacrifices would be needed when those boundaries are crossed. And there in the most holy of places there would be a proper throne for their king, the ark of the covenant, which would also be known as the mercy seat. Here the people would find forgiveness and renewal once every year at the festival of Yom Kippur.

         All of this pointed toward Jesus. It is no accident that John at the beginning of his gospel would write that Jesus came and tabernacled among us. Nor is it any accident, that Paul writing in the third chapter of Romans would say, “for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus whom God put forward as the mercy seat sprinkled with his blood to be received by faith.” When Paul was trying to think of an image of the atonement Jesus provided for us all he could think of is the top of the ark of the covenant where it is said that when sprinkled with the blood God would be able to descend into the most holy of places. This is what happened when the blood of Jesus was shed, he became the most holy place where God could descend and we could draw near to God by faith. No more, for us, is God a God of sheer power, a distant God as the people of Israel once thought but instead we can now know God as a God who condescends and draws near allowing us to have confidence and certainty that he is with us in Christ Jesus.This is what allows us to make our past be in the past so that we can live in the present in the presence of God. This is what sets our hearts free from all of that this world idolizes because the glory of God has filled the temple of our life and there is no room for any other love. May this be true of us now and always. Amen!

  

Under The Protection of God

 October 4 2020

Exodus 12:1-13, 13:1-8

         It seems like the coronavirus has affected every area of our life. So, it just makes sense, I guess that the upcoming holiday season will also be affected. I hadn’t thought about it much but this past week I was talking with Evelyn and she mentioned how this years Thanksgiving was going to be just a small affair and not the big gathering that her family traditionally has because of the fear of the coronavirus.As I thought about how this virus will now make us reconsider even holidays such as Thanksgiving it seems like this will also make us at least not take this holiday for granted. I mean Thanksgiving is kind of a strange holiday. It doesn’t involve the giving of anything or the celebrating of any one day in history. No, what Thanksgiving is known for is plain and simple, eating. It is a day when we get together as families to eat and not just eat but to eat turkey something we may only eat just once a year. Why do we eat turkey? We eat turkey because it s tradition. We may not be that fond of turkey meat but come Thanksgiving it is what will be the main course. Yet, Thanksgiving is of course more than just eating turkey with all the sides and perhaps pie for dessert. Thanksgiving is about family and it is about the stories and the conversations we have when we all sit down across from one another without a phone in our hands. And in the midst of our eating there with family remembering and sharing the stories that bind us together we also remember just what it is that we are grateful for and who is the one who deserves our gratitude for making all of it possible.

         As we begin to think about the Jewish holy day of Passover, I believe that this day has much in common with our holiday of Thanksgiving. There is, like our turkey, the one unchanging meat of choice in the roasted lamb. And Passover is about family just as it was on that first night of Passover. What connects this annual celebration of Passover with all of the other Passover’s that have been celebrated before is the telling of stories, specifically the story of how God miraculously saved the people of Israel from death. The story begins with a child asking “Why is this night different from all other nights?” The child is told of how they were slaves down in Egypt and how the lord our God took them out with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. They tell their children,  “If the Holy One, blessed be he, had not taken our fathers out of Egypt then we,  our children and our children’s children would have remained enslaved to Pharaoh.” This in a nutshell is the heart of their night of remembrance and everything that is said and ate that night is to help those who partake make the connection with those who lived through that first Passover night. They eat the unleavened bread as a reminder that their ancestors had to leave Egypt in haste and there was no time for even the bread to rise. They eat of the bitter herbs to recall the bitterness of the slavery Pharaoh had kept them. They eat of a mixture of fruits and nuts ground fine to resemble the mortar that held the bricks that their labor made into monuments to Pharaoh. So through the meal and through the telling of the story they remember and they understand that the struggle of their ancestors is their struggle to.

         My family and I have participated in this Passover observance which is called a seder meal. We have eaten the roasted lamb, tasted the bitter herbs and chewed on the hard and tasteless unleavened bread. Through this meal we too remember what it must have been like for these slaves who at long last were going to taste freedom through the power of God. Finally, the bitterness and hardship they once believed they would never would never see an end to was going to be over all because the God of their ancestors was listening to their cries and was moved to act on their behalf. As you eat this Seder meal you can’t help wonder just what that night must have been like, to be gathered in their homes, eating their roasted lamb, waiting with their sandals on, their staff in hand ready for the signal to go and then hearing the cries of their Egyptian masters as the first born children died in their arms. There in that night was felt deeply the tragedy of death and the hope of new life. Now, it may seem strange for us as Christians to partake of the Seder meal yet I believe that the Passover meal, above all the rest of the Jewish Festivals, is intimately connected with the story of Jesus. Without an understanding of Passover how could one make sense of John the Baptists outburst in the first chapter of John when upon seeing Jesus shouted, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” And it was the Passover meal that Jesus ate with his disciples on the night he was betrayed, the bread he broke and the cup he drank were part of the telling of the story of God setting his people free. So, it is not as if we can just dismiss this story of the night of Israels freedom from slavery as some past history that is no longer relevant. No, what was revealed on that night to the people of Israel on the night of their freedom pointed to the cross where not just the people of Israel but the whole world would at last be set free from the slavery of sin.

         So, we begin our look into just what does Passover signify by first explaining the strange name of “Passover”. It is called in our modern times Passover however in the Hebrew it is known by the word pesach. The reason that we call it Passover was that Tyndall, the early Bible translator, thought that this is what is meant by the Hebrew word pesach. Now it seems to fit somewhat when we consider that the angel of death passed over the houses of the Israelites because of the blood on the door posts but the word pesach was being used to describe God not the angel of death and it doesn’t make sense that God world pass over the house of those he was going to save. So, in order to understand this strange word pesach we need to look elsewhere how it was used and it is used in only one other place in the scriptures in the thirty first chapter of Isaiah, the fifth verse. There we read, “Like birds hovering so the Lord of Hosts will protect Jerusalem; in protecting it he will rescue it; in sparing it he will save it.” So, pesach is connected with thoughts of protection, rescue and salvation. Now, the Hebrew people did not like abstract concepts but rather used concrete examples to convey what they meant so this image of a bird hovering is important as a visual image of protection, rescue and safety. To our modern ears though a hovering bird is still hard for us to imagine so perhaps we can use something Jesus said to give us a clearer picture. At the end of the twenty third chapter of Matthew, Jesus as he approaches Jerusalem, cries out, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often I would have gathered your children together as. Hen gathers her brood under her wings and you would not.” I always thought that this was a strange image that Jesus uses here to describe his love for the lost children of Israel however when we understand that Jesus was coming to celebrate pesach and the image of the protection that pesach is to convey to us is a bird hovering, this image of a hen makes perfect sense. This is what God was doing on that night of his pesach, gathering his children under his wings, protecting them from the angel of death just like a hen gathers her chicks when she senses danger.

         With this understanding of pesach then we also become aware that God was not only setting the people of Israel free from their slavery on that night he was also revealing something about who he is. Here on the night of pesach God becomes known as savior, the one who protects and saves his people. Now, what is interesting is that God being savior is intimately connected with God being known as creator of the universe. The story of pesach recorded in the twelfth chapter of Exodus begins, “The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt….” What must kept in mind when we read this is that the early Jewish writers of the scriptures we read were so in awe of the name of God that they refused to write it instead inserting the word “Lord” wherever they found the name of God. What happens when they did so is that what God was trying to reveal about himself is lost in translation. As we read in the third chapter of Exodus, Moses inquired of God just what name should he use when people asked him who this God was that had sent him. God told Moses. “Say to this to the people of Israel, YHWH the God of the fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and of Jacob has sent me to you.” Now, we have to ask why this name of God is so important to the story? Well, when you study this name in the Hebrew language what you find is that it is actually three Hebrew words melted together. The three words are the word for the past, the present and the future. What this name conveys about God is that he is a God who experiences what was, what is and what will be all at once. Now, just trying to imagine what that must be like is a mind-blowing experience. Well, if you ponder a little more about the way God experiences time you start to realize that in order to experience reality like God does means that God exists outside, separate from our world. This just makes sense because God exists outside of time because after all he is the creator of time. 

         Now why God revealing himself as the Creator is so important to our story is that the Egyptians worshiped what God had created as their gods.They worshipped the sun, the rain, living animals all in the hopes that the power they saw in these things they worshipped might use that power for their benefit. Now the problem with these so called gods is that they were so unpredictable. You never knew when the rain god might show up or when clouds might hide the suns rays. So, to show the Egyptians how small their gods were, the one true living God, the God who exists outside of time, brought plagues upon them, plagues that were objects that the Egyptians worshiped, and through Moses, God told them when these plagues would happen. God was proving that he was God over their gods and he was a God who could do what none of their gods could do and that is he could tell when his power was going to show up in a mighty way.

         Now, God as the Creator had a different message for the people of Israel. As they pondered on this God who stood outside of their world, the one who created it they realized that he had a reason for creating this world, that he had willed this world into being. And if God had created the world on purpose and I am part of all God had created it just figures that God created us with a purpose in mind. This life we have is a gift given to us by the God who created us.This discovery just makes us want to find ways to express our gratitude to this God who created us.So, in this exchange of a life from God and the gratitude of our hearts back to God there is established a relationship. In this relationship, like in all relationships, there is an expected feeling of love for the one who gave us this most precious gift of life. This love springs from the knowledge that our lives are not some byproduct of cold, blind chance. No, there is a Someone who desires you and me to be here, a Someone who has brought us into this world, a Someone who gave us everything so that we could make something of ourselves here on earth. When our relationship with God is like this then it is not hard to understand what we read in the fourth chapter of Exodus, “The Lord said to Moses, “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, so that he will not let his people go. Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son and I say to you, ‘Let my son go that he may serve me.’ If you refuse to let him go, behold I will kill your firstborn.” This reveals to us that here is the beginning of our understanding of God as our Heavenly Father and knowing ourselves as his children. Israel would be the first-born, the first child of God who would be a nation of kingly priests who would like a first-born in most families, an example to the children who would come later.

         So, as we come to this pesach night we must also see it as the night when the first-born child of God, the nation of Israel was born. For this birth to happen meant though, that they place their faith in God, doing what he instructed him to do. God told the people of Israel to take a sheep or a goat and for three days tie them outside of their homes. Now why is this significant? Well, sheep and goats were one of those things that the Egyptians worshipped as their gods. So, the Egyptians would have seen that the people of Israel, their slaves, had taken what to them was an object of worship and displayed them in front of their homes. That would make the Egyptians wonder just what they were up to wouldn’t it? Well, imagine their surprise when on the fourth day they watched as this object of worship was slaughtered and its blood smeared across the doorposts of the homes of these slaves. What an act of defiance! The message was clear, Egypt and its influence stops at the door. Within this home the God who created everything is the God who is worshiped and obeyed. The blood cried out that these people were pledging their allegiance to their Heavenly Father; no longer would Pharaoh demand anything from them. Inside of their homes on that fateful night they would not just be gathered together as a unified people they would be more importantly be gathered beneath the wings of God, held safe within his arms from which no one could snatch them. Thus they could begin to see the connection between knowing God as our Creator and also understanding God as our Savior.

         The death of the firstborn of Egypt while tragic, serves to yet convey the truth of those who refuse the hope offered to them by the God who created them. The night of pesach teaches us that the future God is bringing about belongs to those who know themselves as his children. To be a child of God means that we, in front of a watching world put to death the idols this world worships, what John in his first letter describes as being, the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and the arrogance of our possessions. These as John writes are of a world that is passing away; only those who do the will of God will abide forever.The place where we abide is beneath the safety and protection of the wings of God. This is what we witness when we look upon Jesus on the cross. As Paul writes in the eighth chapter of Romans, “God sent his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as a sin offering condemned sin in the flesh…”The sin of our flesh is our weakness and vulnerability which creates in us anxiety. In our anxiety and fear we seek to feel whole and safe by taking what God has created and worshipping those as a means of overcoming our hopelessness. Our flesh uses the law, and power and violence to protect ourselves, a hostility that was the force behind the words, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Jesus refused to allow his flesh to rule in him choosing instead to allow the Holy Spirit to offer his life up to his Heavenly Father as a perfect and pleasing sacrifice. On the cross, the blood of Jesus was shed, flowing down the cross, the very doorpost of heaven. There Jesus put to death his life in the flesh, the very root of every idol the watching world worshipped. As Paul wrote in the fifth chapter of his first letter to the church at Corinth, Jesus most assuredly was our Passover lamb.Jesus went to the cross knowing that there is no safer place, no better place of perfect protection than under the wings of God held fast there in his love. It is there, held in that love, that our anxiety and the fear that is rooted in our weakness and vulnerability, is dealt with once and for all. Jesus, hanging by nails upon the cross was a stark image of weakness and vulnerability yet the truth of his experience was not fully known until three days later when he arose in power stepping out of the grave more alive than ever. Jesus could be weak, opened up to the hurts of this world because he had faith that his Heavenly Father was the one who had the power to raise the dead the power to bring into existence that which does not exist; in other words he had faith that his Heavenly Father was the Creator of all, a creation that would find life at last through Jesus. This is why we know Jesus as the Lamb of God who took away the sins of the world for by this same faith of Jesus we too are set free from the sins of the flesh, free to live a life serving our Heavenly Father with the life received through his Spirit. This is what that pesach offering was pointing to so long ago on that dark night in the heart of Egypt. May we, like the people of Israel, remember what God has done to set us free so that we might live for his honor and glory as his children. Amen!

O, Brother where art Thou?!

 September 27 2020

Genesis 37:1-34, 50:15-21

         It is always interesting to see who people have as their friends on Facebook. One of the surprising friends that my wife has on Facebook is Donny Osmond. She follows his fan page. Just recently she was singing “Go, Away Little Girl” which interestingly enough was so popular when it debuted that it knocked Paul McCartney out of the top ten songs of the week. So yes, Jennifer is a die hard Donny fan. She knows that he likes to wear purple socks, she went and saw him perform at the State Fair and when the first season of the Masked Singer she knew immediately that the voice coming from the participant dressed like a peacock was most assuredly Donny Osmond just from the sound of his voice. She also knows, like many people do, that Donny made the transition from teenage heartthrob to serious Broadway performer when he starred in the leading role of Jospeh and the Technicolor Dream coat. This play is a musical with the music composed by Andrew Lloyd Weber. Donny performed the role of Joseph nearly two thousand times over a six year period of time so needless to say a lot of people must know something about this guy called Joseph.

         So, yes, the good thing about Jospeh and the Technicolor Dream Coat is that it has brought the story of Joseph into the realm of mainstream culture. I imagine that there were quite a few people whose first exposure to the story of Joseph and his brothers was through this play and not through reading the Bible. That might be a good thing for at least they have heard something from the scriptural story but what is missed is that this story of Jospeh is part of a larger narrative. In fact, the story of Joseph is a hopeful ending to a story which began with the tragedy of the first humans disobedience followed by the death of their son at the hands of their other son. If we stand back and look at the book of Genesis as a whole what we see in the beginning is the death of Abel at the hands of his brother Cain and at the end of Genesis we find Joseph, who was made out to be dead by his brothers, doing the most unthinkable thing, forgiving them, and being reconciled with them. One more thing that must be observed when we stand back and look at Genesis is that where the story changes is with the introduction of Abraham and Sarah. A big buzzword these days is the word “pivot” and the story of God and us pivots, it turns a new direction that moment that Abraham listened to the voice of God left his family, his neighbors and his country to follow the lead of God.In the story of Joseph, the great-grandson of Abraham, we learn of the outgrowth of the faith of Abraham. What we find is that Abraham’s family has held onto the faith that he once had and made that faith their very own. In Joseph’s life we find that this faith has not only personal implications, it is not just Joseph and God walking merrily through life but instead the faith of Joseph has a profound affect on the relationships he has with his brothers. This stands in stark contrast with Cain who not only killed his brother Abel but he unleashed an ongoing plague of hatred and violence into the world. We read about Cains descendants at the end of the fourth chapter of Genesis where Lamech, out of the lineage of Cain states, “I have killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain’s revenge is sevenfold then Lamech’s is seventy-seven fold”. No forgiveness here just holding on to the need for vengeful justice for generations. It is when we know that our story begins this way that we can then be amazed that at the end of the story we hear Joseph willingly forgive his brothers who had sought to kill him. If we just isolate the story of Joseph and don’t see this story as part of a larger drama we miss what the power of a generational faith in God is able to do. Instead of killing, hatred and vengeance we now have forgiveness, reconciliation, and unity among the family. What we have then is God’s vision, his hope for the rest of his story. It’s as if God is saying. ‘Do you want a glimpse of where this story is headed then look here at the story of Joseph and his brothers.” This story then is to make us curious as to just how does our faith in God result in us being merciful to those who have not or will not show us the same mercy we are willing to show them. This is what we should be on the look out for as we take a look at the story of Joseph.

         Our story of Joseph begins in the thirty-seventh chapter of Genesis but to fully grasp the family dynamic that lurks beneath the surface we can’t forget the story surrounding Jacob, Jospeh’s father. Jacob was cheat, pure and simple. He cheated his brother Esau out of his birthright and had to get out of town because of what he had done. He ended up at the farm of Laban his uncle. There he fell in love with Laban’s younger daughter Rachel. However, what Jacob did not know was that Laban himself was also a cheat and when Jacob had worked seven years in order to marry Rachel what he found is that Laban had switched out Rachel and had replaced her with her older sister Leah. So, Jacob had to work seven more years in order to marry the woman he actually loved. Now why is all of this important? Well, Joseph was Jacob’s firstborn son to Rachel, the women he had always loved and wanted to marry. The rest of Jacob’s sons were from either Leah, or the servants of Leah and Rachel. So, the favoritism that Jacob showed to Joseph has its roots in the love Jacob had for Joseph’s mother, Rachel.

         Now if this favoritism wasn’t bad enough, Joseph doesn’t do himself any favors either. When we are told in our story that Joseph was pasturing the sheep with his brothers what the original text says is that Joseph was shepherding his brothers while shepherding the sheep. So, Joseph is kind of like that annoying older sibling who thinks it’s their God given duty to play Mom or Dad when Mom or Dad aren’t around. The only thing is that Joseph is not older; he’s younger which makes his attitude all the worse. On top of that Joseph is a tattle tale hurrying home to tell Dad all the stupid things his brothers did when they were supposed to be watching the sheep. It’s easy to understand why Joseph would be the way he was because Jacob’s affection for him was so blatant.  Yet it is one thing to love one child more than the rest; it is another thing to create a symbol of that love for the child to wear every day. This is what Jacob did when he made Joseph the famed coat of many colors. The reason why this coat was such a big deal was not so much that it was colorful but more that this was a coat that the sleeves went down to Josephs hands and was long enough to go all the way to his feet. So this was a coat that wasn’t made to work in. Do you see where this is going? When Joseph received the coat he moved up to management; no more laboring for him.So not only was the coat a gesture of Jacob’s love for Joseph it also demonstrated Jacob’s love for Joseph by excusing him from doing all the chores Josephs brothers had to do.

         Now when you take all of what we know about the relationship between Jacob and Joseph it is easy to understand why we are told that Joseph’s brothers hated him and could not talk peaceably to him. Well, that just makes sense. But as the story goes along its as if we are being told, wait, that’s not all, there’s more because not only was Joseph annoying he also had weird dreams and wasn’t afraid to talk about them. Joseph had a dream about sheaves of wheat and how all the other sheaves of wheat came and bowed down to Josephs sheaf of wheat. The dream of course required very little interpretation; as Joseph’s brothers asked him, “Are you indeed going to reign over us?” Can you understand why the story says that they hated him even more than they did before. And if that was not enough Joseph again has another dream. You would think he would have just been smart to keep it to himself but no, he has to talk about it. In this dream, the sun, the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to him. The sun and moon being his mother and father and the eleven stars his brothers. Now it was Jacobs turn to come unglued as he asked Jospeh, “Do you think your mother and I and all your brothers are going to come and bow down before you?” So, when his Dad becomes upset this is when you know Joseph is just one of those people that people love to hate.

         Knowing all we know about Joseph, it is not difficult to understand what comes next. Joseph’s brothers decide to act on their hatred of him and plot to do Joseph in. They were going to kill him until brother Reuben stops them pleading instead to just throw Joseph into a pit. This is an important way to phrase this because in the Bible a pit was another term for a grave. While they in all reality did not kill him they very symbolically had thrown him into the land of the dead. Well, unsure as to what to do with him next, as fortune would have it, slave traders show up and they sell their brother Joseph into slavery in the land of Egypt. So we see in Josephs life this downward turn of his life from being the top dog in the house of Jacob to being desired dead by his brother. From having dreams of reigning over his family to ending up a slave. From living the high life at home in Canaan to going to the unknown land of Egypt. The question is just how will Joseph deal with what has been dealt to him? How will Joseph handle the hatred he must feel that came from the hatred of his brothers?

         Well, it seems as for a little while Joseph did all right for himself. He was sold to a man named Potiphar. What is interesting is that Potiphar, an Egyptian, could tell that God was with Joseph and that it was God who was the cause of Joseph’s success. Joseph was put in charge of Potiphar’s house and we are told that Potiphar had no concerns except what he wanted to eat. And all could have been great for Joseph if it hadn’t been for Potiphar’s wife who took a shine for Joseph.  Joseph refused her advances  telling her that he could not do such a wicked thing and sin against God. Well, Potiphar’s wife just wouldn’t take the hint and one day she came after Joseph again this time tearing off Joseph’s outer coat. Have you begun to notice that coats are a theme in this story? Well, she made up a lie about Joseph. She used the coat he left behind as evidence that it was he who had come unto her and not the other way around. Potiphar, when he found out, was furious and had Joseph thrown into the king’s prison. So, once again another descent for Joseph from a slave to a prisoner. Yet despite this dark moment in Joseph’s life there was a bright moment because we learn that God was with Joseph and God showed Joseph his steadfast love and God gave Joseph favor with the keeper of the prison. Just like when Joseph was at Potiphar’s house, the prison keeper put Joseph in charge of the prison and the prisoners.

         It was while in prison that Joseph earned a reputation as a man who could interpret dreams  knowing that it was God not his own abilities that enabled him to understand these visions that others had. Now why this was important was that one of those people that Joseph  had interpreted their dream ended up working for the Pharaoh, the king of Egypt.  And when the Pharaoh had a dream that no one could figure out and needed someone to interpret it, Josephs friend from prison remembered Joseph. Pharaoh called for Joseph and Joseph came and listened to Pharaoh’s dream about seven fat cows and seven starving cows and Joseph told Pharaoh that there would be seven good years of plenty followed by seven years of the wort famine the world has seen. Joseph also knew that this situation was fixed by God and it was God who was going to bring it about. Now while Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dream he went even farther explaining to Pharaoh just what he should do to weather the coming famine. During the good years the Pharaoh should appoint overseers who would see that the surplus grain was gathered and stored up. In this way when the famine came there would be enough food so that people would not perish.

         Well, needless to say Pharaoh was impressed but what Pharaoh of course needed to know next is just who could he put in charge of implementing this plan that Jospeh described. Pharaohs exact words were, “Can we find a man like this in whom is the Spirit of God?” And when Pharaoh phrased it like that it just makes sense that he would choose Joseph to be in charge because it was Joseph whose life demonstrated that God was with him. So, Joseph ends up going from the depths of prison to being the second in command of all of Egypt.

         In all of what has happened to Joseph we have to wonder if his attitude has changed toward his brothers. Well, when Joseph married and had children we find that he named the first one, Manasseh, which means God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house.The way Joseph is dealing with his past is to forget about it by embracing the new life God had given him. Yet to forget about your hardship and the ones who brought that hardship upon you is not really dealing with it. The hurt is always going to lurk somewhere below the surface. We get this sense from what Joseph named his second son, Ephraim which meant, God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction. Even though Joseph has prospered he still hangs on to the fact that he has been wronged. It was those wrongs that had brought him there and that could not be forgotten no matter how well life turned out for him.

         One thing Joseph was always keenly aware of was the fact that God was always present with him. He had a knowledge that it was God who was always watching over him. Joseph also understands that God is using him to save lives through his plan of storing up excess grain in the years of plenty. Yet, what Jospeh fails to do is to see beyond himself and understand that it is God who has orchestrated all the events of Joseph’s life in order that through Joseph’s life the lives in his world might be saved. Joseph has to come to this understanding in order that he is at last able to forgive his brothers.

         What this story of Joseph reveals is that forgiveness is bound to a right understanding of God and life. Cain who brought forth life through the grain he grew attempted to manipulate God with a sacrifice in order that in return God might be persuaded to give increased abundance to Cain’s crops. When Cain found out that God doesn’t play those games,  and Cain was angry and took his anger out on his brother Abel. Fast forward to the story of Abraham and we find a person who unlike Cain has a right relationship with God one where Abraham loved God with all of his heart, with all of his life and all of his resources. This right relationship is one where we place our lives in the hand of God to be used by God to bring life to the world. This is what it means to be a blessing, something God promised that Abraham and his descendants would be to all the families on Earth.

         Joseph finally became aware that God was using his life to give life and preserve life when during the famine Joseph’s family showed up in Egypt. In the forty fifth chapter of Genesis, we hear Joseph tell his brothers, “Do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life.” Only when Joseph had this understanding was then able to say with all sincerity that he forgave his brothers of the sin they had committed against him. It is not hard, in the light of the cross, to see that these words of Joseph helps us understand Jesus. Jesus with his dying breath could whisper, “Father forgive them for they know not what they do” because he also knew that he went before us in order to preserve life. Jesus offered himself through the Holy Spirit as the once for all perfect sacrifice, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus knew that God could take his life and use his life to be a ransom for many. Only with this understanding can we fathom our forgiveness and know that Jesus forgave us because he came to give life and preserve life not demand our life as a right of vengeance. This is how the story of Joseph gives us a glimmer of hope that one day in the fullness of time, the way of Joseph would one day be the way of all people on Earth. As we think about Joseph and his forgiveness of his brothers we need to consider how we are doing forgiving those who have wronged us. Have we forgiven them as Christ has forgiven us. May we not forget that God’s mercy is solely for those who are merciful. To his honor and glory Amen.!