Moisés: El traidor fiel de Dios (Éxodo 3, 1-15; 12 Pentecoste; 31 augusto 2014)

Moisés: El traidor fiel de Dios

Éxodo 3, 1-15
12 Pentecoste
31 augusto 2014

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA

 

This sermon was part of a service of welcome to receive six members of the community of Potrerillos, Chalatenango, El Salvador, and their guide and interpreter as a Sister Parish delegation.  They remained with us for ten days, staying with our families and enjoying shared activities.  Two versions of the sermon are included: one in Spanish, followed by its English translation. 

La lectura de hoy viene de una historia larga que cuenta cómo los Israelitas experimentaron la liberación de la esclavitud en el imperio egipcio y una vida nueva como el pueblo de Dios.  Más tarde en la historia habrá confrontaciones, plagos y el milágro al lado del mar. Es una historia dramática. 

Pero hoy hay solamente una zarza que quema sin consumiendose y la voz de Dios.  En lo que se refiere en la zarza, si Ustedes viajaran al monasterio de Santa Katarína en el Sinaí, los monjes pueden mostrarles la misma zarza.  Nuestra hija Elisabeth ha visitado ese monasterio y ha visto la zarza ardiente, sin las llamas.

Esto no es importante.  Lo que es importante es la presencia en nuestro cuento de cuatro personas: Dios, Moisés, los israelitas y el faraón.  Por supuesto, los israelitas y el faraón no están en el desierto con Moisés en el monte de Dios.  Pero están en el discurso de Dios.  Dios planifica que Moisés vaya a Egipto, frente al faraón y libere a los israelitas. 

El domingo pasado aprendimos que Dios elige acompañar a los esclavos, a los oprimidos, a los pobres y generalmente a los que no tienen el poder para conseguir una vida de suficiencia y dignidad por si mismos y sus familias.  Dios es siempre así. Siempre.   

Los israelitas fueron oprimido por el faraón y fueron forzados a hacer tareas duras y fatigosas.  Cuando la población de ellos continuaba aumentando, el faraón comenzó un genocidio contra ellos.  Gracias a la determinación y el coraje de su madre y la agilidad de su hermana María, Moisés fue liberado de milagro del edicto del faraón.  Como sabemos en esto podemos ver la mano de Dios.  Por eso Moisés es un milagro en si mismo.  Es un personaje muy interesante y por nosotros muy importante. 

La hija del faraón adoptó a Moisés y lo nombró.  Él vivía en el palacio de la princesa.  De origen era israelita.  Por su crianza y educación era egipcio.  ¿En verdad quién era él?  Tuvo que decidir. 

Cuando era jóven, así dicen las Escrituras Sagradas, «vió cómo un egipcio maltrataba a un hebreo, uno de sus hermanos.  Miró a uno y otro lado, y viendo que no había nadie, mató al egipcio y lo enterró en la arena.»  Cuando otros descubrieron el secreto de Moisés, se fugó a Madián donde estaba el monte de Dios, la zarza, la voz de Dios y su destino.

En efecto, cuando Moisés vió al israelita maltratado, el universo le preguntó, «¿Quién eres?  ¿Eres egipcio o eres hebreo?»  Y Moisés respondió, «¡Soy hebreo!»  Pero no es el fin del cuento.

Cuando Dios le habló a Moisés en la zarza ardiente de sus planes para liberar el pueblo de los israelitas, en efecto, Dios le dijo, «¿En verdad eres hebreo?  Los hebreos son esclavizados, oprimidos, y sin esperanza.  ¿Y tú, qué vas a hacer?  ¿Con quién vas a tomar una postura?  ¿A quién vas a acompañar?»  Y la respuesta de Moisés—aunque poco entusiasta—fue «Soy hebreo.  Voy a tomar mi postura con los hebreos.  Y con su ayuda será el liberador de mi pueblo.»

Al modo de Moisés, Monseñor Romero era un hijo de la riqueza.  Cuando él fue elevado como obispo, esperó una vida fácil y dulce, pasando el tiempo con buenas obras y con fiestas al aire libre con las familias de la clase alta.  Pero cuando su amigo Padre Rutilio Grande fue asesinado era como si él fuera Moisés viendo el maltrato del hebreo.  El universo le preguntó «¿Quién eres?  ¿Eres pastor y obispo de los ricos o del pueblo de El Salvador?»  Y él lo respondió, «Soy el pastor del pueblo.»

Cuando las condiciones fueron de mal en peor, las voz de Dios en el campo ardiente de El Salvador le preguntó , «¿Si eres el pastor del pueblo, tú, qué vas a hacer?  ¿Con quién vas a tomar postura?  ¿A quién vas a acompañar?»  Y Monseñor Romero respondió, «Yo soy pastor del pueblo.  Voy a acompañar a mi pueblo.  Y con su ayuda voy a ser la voz de mi pueblo.  Voy a ser proféta.»

En los sucesos de nuestro tiempo la voz de Dios todavía nos pregunta las mismas preguntas: «¿Quiénes son Ustedes? ¿Con quién van a tomar postura?  ¿A quién van a acompañar?»

Cuando Monsanto exige al gobierno salvadoreño que no dé semillas de maíz a los campesinos y al gobierno estadoünidense que no dé ayuda con valor de un cuarto billon dolares, Dios nos pregunta, «¿Quienes son?  ¿Van a tomar su postura con el faraón en el edificio brillante que es su centro de operaciones, o con los campesinos?»

Cuando decenas de miles de niños salvadoreños, guatemaltecos y hondureños se fugan de la violencia y se encuentran temblando de frío en los suelos de los centros de detención, Dios nos pregunta, «¿Quienes son Ustedes? ¿Van a acompañar al faraón en su casa blanca que quiere solamente que los niños y niñas se vayan, o van acompañar a los refudiados?»

Estamos juntos como un paso pequeño de un viaje largo, esta congregación y nuestros amigos y amigas de Potrerillos.  Estamos juntos para decidir quienes somos. Estamos juntos para celebrar el amor de Dios y nuestra amistad.  Estamos juntos para escuchar mutuamente nuestras historias.  Estamos juntos para reír, llorar y cantar. 

Les amamos a Ustedes.  Damos la bienvenida a Ustedes en el nombre del Padre, del Hijo y del Espíritu Santo.  Amén.

Moses: God’s Faithful Traitor

Today’s lesson comes from a long story that tells how the Israelites experienced liberation from slavery in the Egyptian empire and a new life as the people of God.  Later in the story there will be confrontations, plagues and the miracle by the side of the sea.  It is a dramatic story.

But today there is only a bush that burns without being consumed and the voice of God.  As far as the bush is concerned, if you travel to the monastery of St. Catherine in the Sinai, the monks can show you the same bush.  Our daughter Elisabeth has visited that monastery and has seen the burning bush, without the flames.

This is not important.  What is important is the presence in our tale of for characters: God, Moses, the Israelites and Pharaoh.  Of course, the Israelites and Pharaoh are not in the desert with Moses on God’s mountain.  But they are in God’s discourse.  God plans for Moses to go to Egypt, confront Pharaoh and set the Israelites free.

Last Sunday we learned that God chooses to accompany slaves, the oppressed, the poor and generally those who do not have the power to secure a life of sufficiency and dignity for themselves and their families.  This is how God is.  Always.

The Israelites were oppressed by Pharaoh and were forced to perform hard and exhausting work.  When their population continued to grow, Pharaoh began a genocide against them.  Thanks to the determination and courage of his mother and the quickness of his sister Miriam, Moses was miraculously freed from Pharaoh’s edict.  He is a very interesting character and very important for us.

Pharaoh’s daughter adopted Moses and named him.  He lived in the palace of the princess.  By birth he was an Israelite.  By his upbringing and education he was Egyptian.  Who in truth was he? 

When he was Young, so say the Sacred Scriptures, “he saw how an Egyptian mistreated a Hebrew, one of his brother.  He looked both ways and seeing that there was no one, he killed the Egyptian and buried him in the sand.” When others discovered Moses’ secret, he fled to Midian where God’s mountain was, the bush, the voice of God and his destiny.

In effect, when Moses saw the mistreated Israelite, the universe asked him, “Who are you?  Are you Egyptian or are you a Hebrew?”  And Moses answered, “I am a Hebrew!” But that is not the end of the story.

When God spoke to Moses in the burning bush of his plans to liberate the people of the Israelites, in effect, God said to him, “Are you really a Hebrew?  The Hebrews are slaves, oppressed and without hope.  And you, what are you going to do?  With whom will you stand?  Whom will you accompany?”  And Moses’ answer—although a little reluctant—was, “I am a Hebrew.  I will stand with the Hebrews.  And with your help I will be the liberator of my people.”

Like Moses, Monseñor Romero was a son of wealth.  When he was elevated at bishop, he expected an easy and sweet life, passing the time with good works and garden parties with the families of the upper class.  But when his friend Father Rutilio Grande was assassinated it was as if he were Moses seeing the mistreated Hebrew.  The universe asked him, “Who are you?  Are you the pastor and bishop of the rich or of the people of El Salvador?” And he answered, “I am the people’s pastor.”

When conditions went from bad to worse, the voice of God in the burning countryside of El Salvador asked him, “If you are the people’s pastor, what you going to do?  With whom will you stand?  Whom will you accompany?” And Monseñor Romero answered, “I am the people’s pastor.  I will walked alongside my people.  And with your help I will be the voice of my people.  I will be a prophet.”

In the events of our time the voice of God still asks us the same questions:  “Who are we?  With whom will we stand?  Whom will we walk alongside of?”

When Monsanto demands that the Salvadoran government not give corn seeds to the small farmers and that the U.S. government not give aid worth a quarter billion dollars, God asks us, “Who are you?  Will you take your stand with Pharaoh in the shiny building that is his operations center or with the small farmers?”

When tens of thousands of Salvadoran, Guatemalan and Honduran children flee from the violence and find themselves trembling from cold on the floors of the detention centers, God asks us, “Who are you?  Will you walk alongside Pharaoh in his White House who only wants the boys and girls to go away, or will you walk alongside the refugees?”

We are together as one small step of a long journey, this congregation and our friends from Potrerillos.  We are together to decide who we are.  We are together to celebrate the love of God and our friendship.  We are together to listen to each other’s stories.  We are together to laugh, to weep and to sing.

We love you.  We welcome you in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.

Crisis at the Border (Exodus 1:8—2:10; Proper 16A; August 24, 2014)

Crisis at the Border

Exodus 1:8—2:10

Proper 16A
August 24, 2014

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA

We become the stories we tell. And there’s a good reason for that.

The world is a very complicated place, a place that, just counting what we can see and hear and feel at any given moment, contains tens of thousands of objects. There are too many things and people to keep track of or even to notice all of the time, so we make categories for things and people, niches for everything we see and hear and feel, to make the world easier to navigate.

I suspect that all animals do the same thing. Of course that’s easy for me to say but impossible for me to prove, but it still makes sense. I think that cats, for example, have a few categories that help them sort out the world. Through the eyes of a cat, I imagine that there are 1) things that I can eat, 2) things that can eat me, 3) servants, and 4) everything else.

Categories help cats and us simplify the world into something manageable, something we can deal with. Categories get mixed up in another very powerful way of managing the world: story-telling. A story, a plot, a narrative line, helps us sort out the important things from the unimportant “noise.”  A story connects categories together into a whole that makes sense.

Story-telling is how we make sense of the universe. That’s true even for scientists who may imagine that story-telling and science don’t mix. Paleontologists have constructed a story, called evolution, to tie together the fossil evidence of long-vanished plants and animals. Cosmologists have a story, called the Big Bang, that makes sense of the movement of the galaxies and the universe’s background radiation and all sorts of other evidence.

We call ourselves homo sapiens, “wise or sane human.”  I wonder if it wouldn’t be better for us to call ourselves homo narrans, “story-telling human,” as John Niles suggests in his book by the same name.[1]  Story-telling is certainly what we do.

We make our stories and then we bend our experiences to fit our stories. If facts don’t fit our narrative, we tend to reject the facts. With our stories, we build a map so we can find our way in the world of hard objects you can bump into. Like all maps, our stories have to fit the world pretty well. If we don’t have a story to explain how to behave around moving cars, our lives are likely to end badly, or at least suddenly. But maps have to simplify the world. A map that shows everything can’t be folded and a story that includes every detail can’t be carried around in our heads and hearts.

I say all this as an introduction to the story in our text from Exodus. Today’s reading is part of the long narrative arc that tells the story of the earliest history of the Jewish people. It’s an origin story. Our origin stories are especially important because they are stories that we tell ourselves to explain ourselves to ourselves. They are stories that explain who we are and how we came to be. They create a world for us to live in. They tell us what our place in that world is and how we should act.

What I’m going to do this morning is to trace this part of the larger story.

I’ll start with a warning. Our story this morning is told from the perspective of the Israelites, an oppressed people, the underdogs in their struggle with Egypt, an established and oppressive regime. It strips bare the lies and pretenses of power in the interest of justice and liberation. To the extent that we have embraced false stories—and how could we have avoided that, since the false stories are part of what we call common sense?—in order to live comfortably with the events of, say, the Texas border or Ferguson, Missouri, we will find this story uncomfortable.

Our story begins by telling us that there was a new pharaoh, one for whom Joseph and his family were nobody special. The Israelites were strangers to this pharaoh, they were Others. This was foreshadowed when Jacob’s family came to settle in Egypt. Joseph arranged for a visit with Pharaoh, the one who knew him, in order to find a place where his family and their livestock could settle. He instructed his brothers that when Pharaoh asked what they did for a living, they should reply that they were shepherds as their ancestors had been, for—and this is important—“all shepherds are abhorrent to the Egyptians.”  They are given the land of Goshen, empty land that is useless to Egyptian farmers, so that the Egyptians don’t actually have to live right with them, because “shepherds are abhorrent to the Egyptians.”  I suppose it didn’t hurt that the Israelites would serve as a buffer between the fertile Nile valley and the wandering desert tribes.

In this way Israel became a foreign and despised, if useful, presence in the midst of Egypt. They remained unassimilated; they didn’t blend in. They were resented.  I’m sure the nice people said, “Those people are Egyptians now, they should act like Egyptians! They should learn our language, dress like us, and make their living as farmers like decent people?  Why do they insist on their own ways?”

As all empires do, the Egyptian Empire put power before people. Joseph—remember what a jerk he was?—used the years of famine in order to increase the empire at the expense of the people of Egypt. When the people needed grain, he sold it to them. When they ran out of money, they sold themselves into slavery to Pharaoh. When the famines were over, Pharaoh owned not just the land of Egypt, but the very bodies of the people of Egypt, the Israelites included.

It is a peculiar thing, but it’s true, that masters fear their slaves, the strong fear the weak, oppressors fear the oppressed, in spite of the fact that anyone from the outside can see clearly that the masters, the strong, the oppressors have most of the power. Nonetheless they are afraid of their victims. Masters fear a slave rebellion above everything.

The Israelites had numbered only seventy when they went to Egypt.  When they began to grow, that growth was perceived as a threat. They were forced to labor as slaves. The Empire that claimed to own their bodies used those bodies to build the warehouse cities of Pithom and Rameses. But those bodies continued to multiply. And so did Pharaoh’s anxiety. He blamed the Israelites and began a policy of genocide. The newborn baby Israelite boys were to be killed at birth.

But this policy is frustrated by the Israelite midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, who it turns out, have some power after all. But behind their acts of resistance, Pharaoh’s policy is frustrated by the character who does not figure into Pharaoh’s plans. Pharaoh has his priests and his religion, the United Church of Egypt. The gods of that religion all support the Empire because the Empire honors them. But there is a God who is not part of that or any imperial system and this God does not side with Pharaoh, or his underlings, or any of the nice people. Oddly, this God sides with the weak, the oppressed, the enslaved, in short, with those abhorrent shepherds the Israelites.

Eventually, this story will lead us to the great deliverance of the Israelites, to the covenant, to the land of promise and all the rest. These are remarkable events, but to me even more remarkable is that in spite of this oppressive system, the pervasive presence of Pharaoh’s security apparatus, and a policy of genocide, there is Moses. Born to a Levite couple, Moses’ mother hid him for three months and then found a loophole in Pharaoh’s orders. Every baby boy was to be thrown into the Nile. So Moses’ mother made him a basket that she water-proofed. Then she put Moses in the basket and put the basket in the river, fulfilling the letter of Pharaoh’s order while ignoring Pharaoh’s intent. Then, in a wonderfully subversive turn of events, Moses’ sister who isn’t named in this passage, but whom we know to be Miriam, prods Pharaoh’s daughter into rescuing her brother and then arranges for her mother to be paid for raising her own son!  Well done, Miriam! 

And behind and in and through all of these events the barely glimpsed figure of God stands with the oppressed and exploited slaves, the resisting victims of a genocide in progress. Later on in the story we will learn more about this God who has a strange but passionate commitment to justice. Later on in the story we will witness this God who lives in solidarity with the weak. But to those like us who know the story, there are already hints enough. The power of oppression will be broken. The empire will lose. The weak will win.

In ancient Egypt, at the southern border of the United States, in Ferguson, Missouri, God stands with the enslaved, the weak, the oppressed, the despised, the Other.  God’s decision is already made.  All that lies with us is to choose to stand with God or not.

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 444 Castro Street, Suite 900, Mountain View, California, 94041, USA.

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[1] John D. Niles, Homo Narrans. The poetics and anthropology of oral literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999).

Joseph and His Brothers (Proper 15A; Genesis 45:1-15; August 17, 2014)

Joseph and His Brothers

Proper 15A
Genesis 45:1-15
August 17, 2014

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA

It was one of those funerals that every pastor dreads.  It was bad enough that the deceased was only seventeen.  Death is never easy even when children are burying parents in their old age.  There is something perverse about parents burying their children.  In the days before good obstetric care it wasn’t at all unusual to lose children at birth, in infancy or earlier childhood.  But Joseph was no longer a child—he was seventeen and past those dangers.  But not past all dangers, apparently.

This was a “blended” family.  This was common.  It was even usual that Jacob had two wives, Leah and Rachel.  They and their respective children—eleven sons and one daughter—were gathered together and it was clear that they had blended in the same way that oil and water don’t.  Joseph was the son of Rachel.  Rachel was clear deeply stricken.  Leah could barely suppress a smirk, as if a long score had been at least partly settled.  There was even something strange about the names—the youngest son was Benjamin, which means “son of the right hand.”  His name implied that he was a favorite and would be Jacob’s principal heir, even though that place should have been occupied by Rueben, Jacob’s first-born.

There was something else, too.  The story about how Joseph had died didn’t really hold together.  There was only a coat covered with blood and a vague story about Joseph having been killed by a wild animal.  When the brothers who claimed to have discovered the coat told the story they averted their eyes and Rueben looked like he was biting back an angry rebuttal.  It all looked very suspicious.

The family in fact had a culture of rivalry and treachery.  Leah and Rachel, Jacob’s two wives, were sisters.  Jacob fell in love with Rachel, not Leah, and arranged with their father Laban to marry her.  Laban wasn’t about to marry off the younger of the two sisters and get stuck with the older who had, as Jane Austen might have put it, “lost her bloom.”  So he made sure that the wedding reception did not lack for wine and substituted Leah for Rachel in the honeymoon suite.  Jacob figured it out in the morning, but done was done, so Jacob, if he wanted Rachel, would have to take Leah, too.

This was no bargain for Leah who for Jacob doubtless always represented Laban’s treachery.  It was for this reason, says our text, that God favored her with sons—four of them in rapid succession: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah.  Rachel, Jacob’s favorite or not, lost status with every birth.  So she offered her slave Bilhah as a surrogate.  Bilhah bore Dan and Naphtali.  Not be outdone, Leah substituted her own slave, Zilpah, who bore two more sons, Gad and Ashar.  Leah herself wasn’t finished, though, and gave birth to two more sons—Issachar and Zebulun—and a daughter, Dinah.  Finally, Rachel had two sons of her own body, Joseph and Benjamin.

The children inherited Leah and Rachel’s rivalry.  Jacob had waited a lifetime for Joseph’s birth.  By the time it happened it was a surprise.  Like a lot of long-awaited and unexpected children, Joseph was spoiled.  In fact, by the time he was a teenager he was, well, let’s be honest, a jerk.  While his brothers were out tending their flocks, putting up with the heat and the danger, Joseph was preening himself back at the tents.  Joseph gave him a special coat.  The Hebrew isn’t very clear.  It might have been a coat with long sleeves or it might have been, as traditionally understood, a coat of many colors.  In any event, while Reuben, Simeon and the others were wearing clothes from Wal-Mart, Joseph was strutting around in his coat from Hart Schaffner Marx.

Joseph was a dreamer, but it seemed that his dreams were always about himself.  He was never slow to tell these dreams to his brothers.  He had a dream in which all of the brothers were binding sheaves at harvest time.  Joseph’s sheaf stood upright and the sheaves of his brothers bowed down to his.  In another dream he claimed that the sun and moon and eleven stars came to bow down to him.  He loved to rub his brothers’ noses in this stuff.

Like I say, he was jerk.  With the possible exception of Benjamin, his brothers hated him.  So when they were out in countryside with the sheep and goats and saw him walking toward them, wearing his Hart Schaffner Marx coat, they decided to be done with him.  “Let’s kill him and throw him into a pit,” they said.  Reuben resisted this idea, “Let’s not kill him; let’s just throw him into a pit.”  This may not have been inspired by any mercy or love for Joseph.  The particular pit had no water in it.  Left alone, perhaps Joseph would have died of thirst, but the brothers would not have actively killed him.  So perhaps Reuben was simply being fastidious.

Joseph, stripped of his coat, was in the pit.  Was he weeping, was he crying for mercy, was he begging?  We don’t know.  We know that, whatever he was doing, it didn’t prevent his brothers from sitting down and having lunch.

Now it happened that a caravan was passing by, so Judah got the bright idea of selling Joseph into slavery.  They would get some money.  The caravan would take care of disposing of their jerk of a brother.  And so the other brothers agreed.  They killed a goat and dipped the Hart Schaffner Marx coat into it.  They concocted their cover story and they went home.

Sometimes grief brings out the best in us and sometimes it brings out the worst.  Families in grief tend to show their fault lines.  The brothers may have been rid of Joseph, but if they thought their stars would rise in Jacob’s eyes, they were sadly mistaken.  If it was hard to compete with Joseph while he was alive, when he was dead it was impossible.   Jacob’s other sons receded into the mist of Jacob's grief and his world became flat and gray.

In the meantime, Joseph’s life had taken an amazing turn.  His dreams it turned out were true glimpses into the world’s unfolding reality.  That is, they foretold events.  This was a useful skill.  His Egyptian owner, Potiphar, recognized Joseph’s managerial abilities and put him in charge of his household.  That is, until the whole thing with Potiphar’s wife.  The text says that she attempted to seduce him and when he refused her advances she accused him of attempted rape.  I won’t pretend to know what happened in this classic case of “he said, she said.” Potiphar threw him into prison where his dreaming continued.  He foresaw the release and return of honor to Pharaoh’s cup-bearer and the execution of Pharaoh’s chief baker,both fellow prisoners.

When Pharaoh himself had dreams that baffled him, his cup-bearer remembered Joseph the dreamer.  Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams—there would be a great famine all through the region.  Careful planning would prevent the destruction of the kingdom.  Pharaoh wisely put Joseph in charge of everything to store surplus grain and prepare for the lean years to come.

The famine wasn’t confined to Egypt.  Palestine, too, was stricken and Jacob’s family as well.  So Jacob sent all of his sons, all except Benjamin, down to Egypt to buy grain, so that his family could eat and live.

Joseph was receiving the petitioners come from all over the region to buy grain from Pharaoh when whom should he see in line but his brothers.  There they were, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, and Zebulun, the very ones who had thrown him into the pit and sold him into slavery.  He was the last person they would have expected to see and so, naturally, they didn’t see him.  And, too, he spoke through an interpreter.  But he recognized them and he saw his chance. 

He had them in his power and he intended to make them squirm, to make them pay for the way that they had treated him. 

“Who are you?  Where do you come from?  Prove that you aren’t spies!”  They tried to offer an account of themselves, that they were twelve brothers.The youngest had stayed behind One of them was, in their words, “no more.”

“Well, then, to prove that you are who you say you are, all but one of you will stay in prison until the one brings the last son.” And he had them arrested and let them stew in jail for three days.  Then he summoned them and told them that only one need remain as hostage—the others must go and return with the youngest son.

The brothers conferred among themselves.  “We had this coming,” said Reuben. “Didn’t I warn you not to harm Joseph?  You wouldn’t listen and now we have to pay the price.”  Joseph picked Simeon as the hostage and let the others go, filling their bags with grain and placing each brother’s money back in their sack.

When the brothers discovered the money they were terrified: somehow their payment had not been made and they were therefore thieves.  How could they return to recover Simeon with this hanging over their heads? 

Jacob was freshly grieved—in effect he had lost another son, for there was no way he would risk Benjamin, the only other son of his favorite wife, the “son of his right hand.”  Going back to Egypt was out of the question.

Except that the famine continued and it was return to Egypt or lose all of his sons and their families as well. So the nine brothers and Benjamin took the original money and more besides and made their way down to Egypt once again to face the wrath of Pharaoh’s governor.

In front of Joseph they tried to explain about the money.  Joseph brushed their excuses aside, “Do not be afraid.  God must have put it there.”  And Joseph had Simeon brought out to them.  Joseph asked about his father and had Benjamin introduced to him. 

Now all this time Joseph’s charade was getting harder and harder to maintain. But maintain it he did.  He had the brothers’ sacks filled and the money replaced.  He had his own silver cup placed in Benjamin’s sack.  All this, of course, was unknown to his brothers.   He sent them on their way but sent his own steward to accuse them of stealing his silver cup.

When the steward caught up with the caravan, he made the accusation.  The brothers answered that, if the cup were found among them, the possessor of it would become Joseph’s slave.  Sure enough, it was Benjamin’s sack that held the cup.  The brothers were beside themselves: this would certainly kill their father with grief.

They went back once again to Joseph and Judah offered himself and his brothers as Joseph’s slaves.  Joseph said, “No. I am a fair man.  Only the thief will suffer.  The rest of you may go.”

Then Judah told the story of his father’s loss and his own promise to bear the guilt if he failed to come home without Benjamin.  Judah offered himself in Benjamin’s place.  Judah who had sold his own brother into slavery offered to buy his brother out of slavery with his own freedom.

In that moment something happened to Joseph.  He had devised a plot line for himself and his brothers, a plot line of sweet revenge,but he could no longer play the role that he had assigned for himself.  It was clear that, whoever his brothers had been years before, they were no longer those people.  And he was not who he had been either.  His heart, bound in iron to the past and all its resentments, could no longer contain the man that he had become.So his heart was broken open.

“I am Joseph, your brother!” he cried.  “Is it really true that my father is still alive?”  His brothers were terrified into silence, but Joseph’s turn was complete. “God’s hand has been in all of this—how else would I have been in a position to save the lives of all of our family?  Do not trouble yourself with the guilt that you have incurred.  Instead, go quickly and bring my father and all your family, for this famine has just begun.”

So it was that these brothers, once bitter enemies, were reconciled.  Joseph’s dreams came true, but not in ways that any of them could have imagined. 

This is the story that you and I have fallen into, my brothers and sisters.  We can, none of us, see the outcome of what we do, nor the outcome of what others may do to us.  What others intend for evil may turn to good.  Such is the power of God’s grace.  That is what the cross tells us.

Joseph burdened his brothers with gifts—his brother Benjamin most of all—and sent wagons to bring their families.  He sent them back to Palestine, back to their father.  Jacob could not believe his ears.  Joseph alive?  Joseph the governor of Egypt?  All that he had lost had been restored and more, if the brothers’ story could be believed.  “But when they told him all the words of Joseph that he had said to them, and when he saw the wagons that Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of their father Jacob revived.  Israel said, ‘Enough! My son Joseph is still alive.  I must go and see him before I die.’” And that’s what he did.

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