Today's Sermon

 

"Right Place, Right Time"

 

Genesis 37:23-28
Then they sat down to eat, and looking up they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, with their camels carrying gum, balm, and resin, on their way to carry it down to Egypt. Then Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him, for he is our brother, our own flesh.” And his brothers agreed. When some Midianite traders passed by, they drew Joseph up, lifting him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. And they took Joseph to Egypt.

Hello everybody, as most of you know, I am Ben, I am the son of Bethany, or as I like to call her, Ma B, and I am here today because I am supposed to share a sermon with you, or at least that's why I think I am here. You see, throughout the years I have been coming to Westminster, I have seen a few of my close friends come up to this pulpit and give a sermon. I did as any good friend would do and came and listened to them, gave them compliments on how well they crafted their metaphors and all the right things, but deep down?  Wow, I did not take it well. I was thinking to myself, why isn’t it me up there? Aren’t I the one who is the son of the pastor, the one who has gone to this church all his life? All these thoughts kept spinning around in my head over and over, and with each new friend who took the pulpit, I started to wonder if I had missed some meeting where everyone signed up to preach, but alas, it seemed never to be in the cards for me. It was always someone else, someone close to me, who got the accolades in a place where I thought I was the one in the spotlight. 

I wonder if this is what Joseph’s brothers were thinking. Here is this person whom I used to love, taking all the love and glory that was supposed to be mine. I think we have all felt this at some point. Working and working, trying to attain that final glory when someone else comes in and takes it from us. And yes, it stinks, it is painful, and sometimes there is nothing you can do about it. In our Bible story, the brothers chose revenge. To toss the one who had bested them into a pit. To consider killing their own brother just because he had taken their father’s love that they thought was theirs. This course of action may seem extreme, but how many of us have either thrown a loved one into a metaphorical pit, or been thrown into a pit by a loved one? When, instead of love, revenge is chosen, neither side of that equation is good. When you look down at someone you love whom you have just cast down, or on the other side, look up at one who has thrown you away out of spite, at this moment in our lives, and, in the Bible story, the questions are often the same - WHERE IS GOD?  Why is this happening to me? Shouldn’t the world be all sunshine and rainbows, not muddy pits of revenge? To those questions, I say - just wait.

What drew me initially to this Bible passage was not the revenge aspect of throwing Joseph in the pit, but actually the small bit of mercy that the brothers showed. The fact that even through the rage and the want to kill Joseph, they found mercy to spare him. Yes, I understand that it was to make money, but I still found it interesting that in the horrible scene that is laid out - brothers united over the hatred of their father’s favorite and united in the want for death - they could still find something within themselves to give Joseph another chance. They have stripped him of everything and left him with seemingly nothing, and yet I don’t see a tragic ending in this; I see hope. I see Joseph with a chance. 

There is a famous saying in the poker community that goes, “all you need is a chip and a chair.”  For those of you who don’t play hours of poker with your friends, this quote means that no matter how much you have lost, if you have an opportunity to play and even the smallest amount to give, you can come back from any situation. Joseph shows us that this can also be a life lesson. 

Think of it like this: God is always there for us; God always gives us a chair, no matter what we do. In this theoretical poker game of life, everyone has a seat at the table. The chips you have will go up and down in your life. Sometimes you might be doing all the right things, slowly making back everything, then someone might come along, make a good bluff, and you could lose it all, but hey! You still have a chip and a chair, which means you can still make it back. You see, when Joseph was at his lowest, he still had a seat at the table. God never takes that away from any of us.

Our second scripture reading jumps ahead in the story, and this is the climax, the pretty bow on the end of the story, where Joseph reveals himself as his brother’s savior. After his brothers left him in a pit with nothing and sold him off, Joseph is now in a position of power over his brothers. When Joseph was in Egypt, people noticed he had a gift for interpreting dreams.  He began to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams, and was able to predict and prepare for a coming famine.  Because Joseph’s brothers did not foresee the famine and had not prepared, they went to Egypt in search of food - not knowing they would encounter Joseph - and Joseph provided for them and forgave them. This is their interaction in Genesis 45:

Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive? But his brothers could not answer him, so dismayed were they at his presence.  Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God; God has made me a father to Pharaoh and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt.” 

This triumph after a loss reminds me of an old story some of you may have heard before about a farmer. It goes like this - 

There once was a farmer whose horse ran away. All his neighbors expressed their sympathy, saying how unfortunate it was. The farmer simply replied, "Maybe." The next day, the horse returned with seven wild horses. The neighbors all congratulated him, but again, he said, "Maybe." Later, when his son tried to tame one of the wild horses, he ended up breaking his leg. All the neighbors lamented this misfortune, but the farmer replied, "Maybe." Eventually, a war broke out and soldiers came to recruit young men for war, but they did not take the farmer’s son due to his injury.

Look back at the beginning when Joseph was in the pit. He thought he was dead; he thought that he was going to be killed by his beloved brothers, but do you know what God said? Maybe. God knew that there was more to his tale. When your life is in a pit and everyone around you is saying how low you have gotten, that you have run out of your luck, that you don’t have any more chips on the table, do you know what God says? Maybe. This isn’t maybe as in I don't know, this is maybe as in it is all in the perspective of life. MAYBE you are down on your luck right now, or MAYBE you are in the exact moment you need to be. MAYBE you are seated at the table at the perfect time to use the skills that you have been given. MAYBE the ones who threw you in the pit you are in will be the very ones you will help save. 

What about the highs, though? Sure, maybe being at a low is where we are right now, and God is with us no matter what, but it would be so much easier to live life if we never had hard times. Why can’t everyone just be at the top all the time? Why do we need to have what seems like eternal ups and downs? If I knew the answer to that, they’d pay me to be here.  I do believe that God always has something greater in store than we will ever know. As God showed with Joseph, God is like our chair, supporting us through all our ups and downs.  If you were never at your lowest, you would never understand what it means to overcome challenges with God’s help. If you have never had anyone help you out of hard times, you would never know how important community is. In your lowest moments, you become the greatest learner. 

There is a quote that I found out is not actually from the Bible, but is inspiring nonetheless, that goes, “God gives the toughest battles to the toughest soldiers.” But I think it should be tweaked to say, “God supports through the toughest battles to foster the greatest learners.” Joseph was a great learner. He sat in that pit looking up at his brothers, not because God thought he was tough and could take it on. But God knew that with God’s help, Joseph would learn what it felt like to be at the breaking point and be able to help his brothers when the time came. God doesn’t give us hard challenges because we can take the blow and shrug it off; no, God walks with us through the hard battles that we wind up in, and, waaaaay further down the road than we can see, we will remember the struggle we faced and use the skills that we learned to help those around us. It is a continuous cycle of learning and helping one another. 

At times, it may seem like non-stop work, always having to learn and teach over and over, like God’s informational sock puppets, but that is why we are here now. Take a moment and look around you, yes, please look at every single person here, because we are all on different parts of our own very special journey with God. Some of us are in the pit right now. Some of us may be in a time of learning and growing. Some of us may be like Joseph at the end of the story offering help to those in need. I bet more than a few of us have no clue where they are in this cycle, but I can tell you that God is with you. Wherever you are in your journey, especially if you are tired of the constant struggle, know that the spirit has brought us together in this place. No matter what, we are never alone. Especially if you are in the pit right now, I hope that you are feeling comforted and supported by God's love and the love of this community

If I have learned anything from coming to church all these years and hearing different sermons, it is that I could have stood up here, sung a song, and sat down, and two things would have happened. One, you would all come up to me and say how great it was because you are all very kind people, and I love you all for that. But two, is that you all would have gotten a different meaning out of what I said, and I find that so interesting. So I hope that whatever you heard today, you will remember God’s loving presence with you always. Amen.