“Oh Canada, For Goodness Sake”
Sermon Preached by
The Rev. Dr. Andrew Stirling
Sunday, June 26, 2011
Text: Genesis 50:15-21
I think the very first book of the Bible is one of if not the most important in the whole of the Canon. It is because it is so well read, and has been so carefully analyzed over the years. You speak of the Bible and immediately you say Genesis, the beginning. Genesis has undergone so much scrutiny and has been observed so carefully from theologians to scientists to philosophers and students of literature. You only have to mention Genesis and people know most of the story.
Yet as you read the Book of Genesis, there is something remarkable about it, namely that while it speaks about God, and it is clearly a book that begins with God as the Creator of everything, the God of the Book of Genesis is a god who appears to be in the shadows. The God in the Book of Genesis is incognito, hidden, not always revealed, and sometimes hard to understand.
There are stories that are told and there are manifold examples of God's activity, but even so, God still appears to be in the shadows. In many ways the Book of Genesis becomes for us a book that has relevance. For many of us, it appears that God lives in the shadows, that God is incognito. From the moment we get up in the morning to the moment we go to bed at night, God is in the shadows. God is there when we believe. God is there when we turn in prayer. God is there working but God appears to be hidden.
In dark times, in sad times, in times of uncertainty, God seems to be even deeper in the shadows. When we have lost a loved one, when we are uncertain about our own future, when we don't know what is going to happen health-wise or work-wise, God seems deeper in the shadows. It is almost as if God is, as one student said to me years ago, like The Phantom of the Opera. It is all about The Phantom, but the Phantom isn't always fully revealed. So it is with our lives. So it is in the Book of Genesis.
Does this then mean that our faith, because God often is in the shadows, is not real or powerful or lasting? By no means! Does it mean that because God is in the shadows in Genesis that Genesis has nothing to say to us about God? By no means! Even in the shadows of the Book of Genesis God is revealed through in a sense, a narrator, who tells the stories that we find in the Book of Genesis.
It is in these stories when we see the hand of God at work. Often though, we have to wait to the end of the story to see precisely what God has done. We have to look back to see the hands of God at work. It is not always apparent. In fact, on the contrary, it appears at times that God is absent. Only retrospectively does the God of the shadows of Genesis come alive, and nowhere does he come alive more than in the story of Joseph.
Our passage this morning is the very climax of the story of Joseph. It is hard to believe, but Joseph makes up almost one-third of the Book of Genesis. The story of Joseph and Joseph's family is amazing, and so it was a central story in the history of Israel.
Now, the story is a little weird. I know many years ago, when Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat had just come out, that I and a group of students decided to produce it in New Brunswick, using young people from churches all over the city who would come together at the Fredericton Playhouse. Frankly it was one of the worst shows that had ever been put on God's earth. It was appalling! But we did our best.
We sang Close Every Door and Any Dream Will Do with great enthusiasm, if not excellence. But you know something? When we had finished it all, we asked ourselves as religious people, what did we learn of God from Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat? Not a whole lot! It appears that some of the stories then are vague, and God is still somehow in the shadows, yet the story of Joseph in very simple terms is the most profound one.
You see, Joseph was the son of Jacob, and Jacob had other sons, and these other sons despised Joseph, because Joseph was the favourite son. Joseph, as you all know, was given a coat of many colours, and the brothers despised this, and so they pretended that Joseph was killed, put the blood of an animal on the coat, put him in a ditch, he was picked up by travellers and ended up in Egypt.
When he got to Egypt he did quite well for himself. He became part of the court. He was someone who was able to interpret dreams. We know that story well. He was well known. He rose to power. In an environment of great uncertainty and famine, Joseph was the word of wisdom, the word of guidance. And the very same famine eventually came back on to Jacob's sons, and they ended up through a convoluted story being back into the presence of Joseph.
They didn't recognize that this leader from the Egyptians was their brother. Finally he was revealed and the brothers were devastated when they realized that the one who had power over them is the same brother that they had thrown into the ditch many years before. When Jacob their father dies, after Jacob had been re-united with Joseph, they were really worried, because they thought that now that Dad has left the scene, they were in real trouble. “Joseph will unleash vengeance upon us, and put us in a pit” they thought.
That is not what happened. On the contrary, when seeing the state of his brothers, even though they invoked their father's name as a rather low thing, he forgave them, and he made this incredible statement:” Am I God? No! But what you planned, God intended it for good. “And so, we are told, the brothers were saved, and so by virtue was the nation of Israel. One act of forgiveness! One sign!
What does this tell us about God? And why should we look at this story on a week when we celebrate Canada Day? It is because the story of Joseph reveals to us that the God of the Bible is the God of goodness and the God of reconciliation. What is fascinating about this story of Joseph is that Joseph's banishment, Joseph's being thrown into the pit actually created an opportunity for God. By throwing him into the pit these brothers started a story that would eventually unfold revealing the reconciliatory power of God. In this one evil moment, God was able to do something great.
A great Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggermann, in commenting on this very passage said the following: “The story of Joseph, which features a well hidden God, seldom visible in the narrative, culminates with this affirmation as Joseph addresses his brothers, ”˜Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good in order to preserve a numerous people as he has today. “ Brueggemann goes on:
As the narrative stands, it is only in retrospect that the narrator can determine God's powerful intentionality and that it has been good, not only through the vagaries of experience, but through the malicious intent of the brothers. In this usage, God's intention is a counter intention that persists to override and defeat the deathly plan of the brothers. It is important that the affirmation that takes place at the end of the narrative or even Israel cannot know this certitude until it looks back on what took place.
Brueggemann is absolutely right. Here the “hiddenness” of God is revealed in the power of reconciliation. The whole purpose of the Book of Genesis is to show in a sense that God created the world and it was good, but the world fell from grace because of sin. God sought to redeem and to save and to reconcile that which was broken. In other words, the hand of God's goodness was at work even in the appalling example of the brothers throwing Joseph into the pit, but was there in the end to forgive and to redeem that which was broken.
Some time ago, I heard an incredible witness by someone who works for World Vision. It is actually being recorded in a number of their documents. It is about a young man who was born into a family from Rwanda. In the 1950s, during the terrible civil war in Rwanda, many of the people fled to Uganda, but when they got to Uganda, they realized that much was still wrong.
The story of this person called Jeffery goes on as follows. Jeffery said in an interview, “In 1981, my father joined Museveni struggle to liberate Uganda, and a year later he died. I suddenly found myself a totally independent child, until the Reverend Kefa Sempangi won the confidence of a group of street children, and attached them to him. He convinced us to move into a home, and he would establish us as schoolchildren. “You see, young Jeffery, even though he had left Rwanda as a Rwandan refugee, had arrived in Uganda, and his father was trying to change the government in Rwanda and Uganda. His father was taken from him. His mother was killed, and Jeffery was left on the streets.
Then an amazing thing happened. When this minister brought him in and educated him. When he graduated, and this is the most amazing thing, he returned to Kampala, the capital of Uganda and made efforts to help liberate the people of Rwanda in 1994. Eventually, he returned to Rwanda four years later, and he wanted to save the people, the people from whom he was virtually given birth. He said that he realized the plight of the children in Rwanda, and he could identify with them. He could speak their language. He could understand them, because he himself had been a street child in Uganda.
Then he said, and this is the incredible part, “ Maybe, as a child, I was put on the street, like Joseph was put into the pit in order to save Israel, and in my instance it was to save Rwanda. “ He understood that even in the plight of his people and the struggle of his nation, where there has been some of the greatest violence in the last 50 years and where hundreds of thousands of people have been slaughtered, he was able to identify with the people on the street, because he himself had been a street person. Just like Joseph, he had been thrown into fear and like Joseph was able to rise out of his troubles, and was able to forgive.
In Jeffery's case in Rwanda and in Joseph's case with his brothers, who do they acknowledge as the source of their power, who they see as having been working on their behalf? Who was the redemptive power? Who reconciled? God did! This witness and this reconciliation was not just for an individual. A lot of people think that the Christian faith is just about our salvation and our love of God and our final destination. Well, it is about all those things, but it is not just about all those things. It is about people trusting in God. It is about the nation. Clearly, in Joseph's case, it was a whole nation that was saved. The 12 tribes of Israel became the 12 tribes precisely because they were saved at the hands of Joseph. The dream of Abraham that the nation would bless all the other nations was fulfilled because of the reconciliation of Joseph. This is an amazing moment in the history of the world.
If the call of Abraham, which I referred to last week is about God's call, then Joseph's lessons is reconciliation and forgiveness for his brothers. Why? It is because the nation of Israel is to bear the light of God's word of reconciliation and of redemption. It was to reject sin and stand for righteousness. It was to be a source for healing and restoration and reconciliation. Oh, we know it didn't always live up to it. We know that Israel has had a rocky road. After all, it is led by human beings in all their fallible nature. Nevertheless, the purpose of Israel is to reveal the God of reconciliation and of righteousness.
The Christian Church and The New Testament highlight that very point. It talks about the Church as the “New Israel. “ It talks about it as a nucleus according to the reconciliation and redemption of God. It points to Jesus Christ. When God is no longer in the shadows, He comes in the flesh; here God is no longer incognito, but has come in person.
Still, the story of Joseph and the history of Israel and the story of Jesus are part of a continued desire by Almighty God to restore and to redeem and to save humanity. It is a marvellous story of how an entire nation and an entire people should bear witness to this truth. This does not mean that the Church is always perfect anymore than Israel was always perfect. It simply means that the Church bears witness to God revealing himself as a source of light to the nation and to our nation.
There is something more, and that it that the goodness of God that we find in the story of Joseph is a message for all time, and it is a message for all nations. I am concerned, and I am sure all of you share my concern that rather than seeking the God who has been in the shadows, our world and our state and many countries push God further back into the shadows.
I think one of the phoniest debates and dichotomies that have ever been set up are those between Church and State. It is more palpable in the United States than it is here, but even so, I see certain ignoramuses up here still using the same debate as if it is a way of explaining that in fact the State and the Church should remain separate.
I cannot disagree. You know, in all my years in ministry and I don't know if Dr. Hunnisett and other ministers here would agree, I have never heard one single minister, one single church, one body of the Church ever say that it wants to supersede the State or take it over or impose itself upon the State. Have any of you? Is that your desire? Do you want to become the State? Do you want clergy to run the State? God forbid! We can barely run our own households and this Church, for crying out loud!
It is a silly argument! But the purpose of the argument is not that the Church ever desires to replace the State, but that the State wants to replace the Church. It wants the path to the final say. It wants to claim to speak pro deo as if it were God, and that its opinion on moral and legal and spiritual issues is the only one that really matters, because it is born of a democratic foundation.
It is a falsehood. The purpose of the Church, and I might reiterate the purpose of Israel, is purely and simply to proclaim the Word of God to itself and to the State. “Am I God?” said Joseph. No! Is the Church God? No! Does Joseph speak the Word of God to his brothers and forgive them? Yes! What does the Church do? It proclaims the Word of God to the world pure and simple.
There is no role for the State to silence the Church, because the Church simply desires to speak the Word of God. Any time that any institution throughout the ages has tried to push God and God's Word back into the shadows, it has failed. .
In a wonderful book, Beneath the Cross of Jesus, by Leonard Griffith, (who has preached in this church many times), he tells an incredible story of a Korean boy who lived in Philadelphia. He wrote a letter to Pusan and on his way to the mailbox 11 thugs with steel pipes met him, beat him up and killed him. Philadelphia was in outrage! The newspapers covered the story. People were upset that the “City of Brotherly Love” had become the “City of the Beating of a Little Child.”
They wanted revenge. They wanted the perpetrators of this to face execution. They wanted an end to this. It was the late 1950s. His parents were very devout Christians and they wrote a letter to the people of Philadelphia:
Our family has met and we have decided to petition that the most generous treatment possible within the laws of your government be given to those who have committed this criminal action. In order to give evidence of our sincere hope, contained in this petition, we have decided to save money to start a fund to be used for the religious, educational, vocational and social guidance of the boys when they are released. We have dared to express our hope with a spirit we received from The Gospel of our Saviour Jesus Christ who died for our sins.
The power of reconciliation! The power of redemption! The power of The Word of God! The power that is greater than all the nations, because it is from God! Amen.