11-19-17 Sermon Notes “A Way Out of No Way: Consecrating”

11-19-17 Sermon Notes “A Way Out of No Way: Consecrating”

(Sorry, no audio recording available here this week, but you can find it on our Facebook page)

   How many of you, when you sleep, dream on a regular basis?

Do you usually remember your dreams, or do they quickly go away when you wake? I’ve been fighting that cold I told you about last Sunday all week, and I’ve been taking NyQuil at night to help me sleep. 

And I’ve noticed that when I take cold medicine I dream more frequently, and also, that my dreams get really strange, you know, even kind of bizarre sometimes. 

   It is said by some researchers that our dreams are, in part, our subconscious mind working out issues we encountered during the day. Others suggest that they might include as well our mind dealing with our fears, our anxieties, and our desires. 

In our technology saturated world, it was no surprise when I encountered an article years ago comparing the dream-creating work that our brains do at night to a computer hard drive organizing and reorganizing bits of data, scanning and categorizing files, and repairing bits of damaged or corrupted memory. 

I don’t know, I just know that NyQuil makes my dreams all just a bit more vivid, just a bit stranger.

   There have been times when I’ve secretly wished that I would dream when I went to sleep. 

I’ve hoped to dream of my parents at times, especially on those important dates, their birthdays or the dates on which they died. While I can still remember their faces, their voices have faded from my memory after all these years - I can no longer hear them in my heads; 

I can’t remember the timbre or pitches of their voices when they talked, when they laughed. 

So, there have been times that I’ve wished that I would dream of them so that I could remember those things. 

I know some of you, when I’ve visited and talked with you after the loss of a loved one, have shared with me that you just wish you would dream of them, so that you could see them again. Dreams can be a very powerful part of our lives.

   Sometimes, though, when we speak of dreams we don’t mean what goes on in our minds during REM sleep. Rather, we mean things we aspire to or hope for. 

We might dream of our wedding day, or of a big promotion, or of hitting the lottery. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously shared a dream in a sermon in which he said he dreamed of a day when people would be judged, not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. 

I don’t know whether he actually dreamed that while sleeping, or if he was simply stating a desire, an aspiration. Either way, it’s an image, a desire that I would think we could all cling to, hope for.

   Joseph, the son of Jacob, was a dreamer. 

We heard his story a couple of weeks ago. 

He both dreamed and interpreted dreams, which sometimes got him into trouble but at other times saved his life and the lives of others. Before Joseph, though, I have to believe that Abram and Sarai, prior to the angel coming to them the first time, dreamed of having a family of their own, only to see their hope fade as they grew older and remained childless. Later, their dreams changed after that divine visitor appeared, rekindling the spark of that desire. 

We hear and read about dreams all through scripture, in both testaments, that shape or are integral to the story that we’re being told. Sometimes those dreams seem to come straight from God, other times they seem just like so much Nyquil-induced hodge-podge. 

   After four hundred years in slavery, but likely earlier than that, the Israelite people dreamed of freedom from Egypt. But when God heard their cries and sent Moses and they were confronted with the reality of what freedom entailed, the dream suddenly seemed more like a nightmare. In our reading this week, though, having been delivered through the sea to freedom, and while wandering in the desert, they have yet another experience with God. Following a column of smoke and fire in which God is present, guiding them through the wilderness, God leads them to a mountain. 

And God calls Moses to come up the mountain to stand before God on behalf of the people. And God tells Moses: 

“Speak to the House of Jacob, tell the People of Israel: ‘You have seen what I did to Egypt and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to me. If you will listen obediently to what I say and keep my covenant, out of all peoples you’ll be my special treasure. The whole Earth is mine to choose from, but you’re special: a kingdom of priests, a holy nation.’

   And we recognize some dream-like qualities here, right? God didn’t literally bring them out on eagle’s wings - God is speaking metaphorically here, and creates a vision. But God says that they are “a special treasure to God, a holy nation, a kingdom of priests.” A kingdom of priests? 

On a scale ranging from nightmare to sweet dreams that would have to be nightmare, right? 

In all of my dreams of what I wanted to be growing up, from policeman to astronaut to gangster and everything in between, I assure you priest (or pastor) never came up! Yet, here I am. 

   In this passage, God consecrates the people of Israel, to be a nation of priests, but what does that mean? 

To consecrate something means to set it apart, to bless it, to make it sacred. Note I said, “set apart,” not set above. Israel wasn’t elevated above the other nations that God had also delivered that we heard about before, they were set apart for a very specific role - to be a nation of priests. When a clergy person is ordained, it’s a form of consecration by the bishop. And contrary to how some think about the role of ordained clergy are not set above the laity within the church. 

All Christians are called into ministry in our baptism, you, me, everyone sitting in this sanctuary and all other sanctuaries like this; we are all called, baptized into ministry, what is called the priesthood of all believers. Clergy, rather than being set above are simply set apart for very defined roles that require specific training and a different type of commitment. In much the same way Israel is set apart for God, to be consecrated, to be made sacred, to be different from other nations.

   How were they to be different? 

Well God had some ideas about that. 

Ten of them to be exact. 

Ten ideas or commandments about how to be a set apart community, consecrated to God. 

And these ten fit neatly into two that Jesus would later call the Great Commandments, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind, and with all your soul and with all your strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. 

   And we can see how the ten fit neatly into those two. 

The first four are about our relationship with God. 

The fifth is kind of a transition piece, and then the final five are about our relationship with one another. 

Love of God, love of neighbor. So let’s look at these ten and consider how in our context, we might understand them. 

   First, no other gods. It seems easy enough, but the 16th century reformer Martin Luther rightly points out that our real gods are whatever motivates us, drives us, inspires us, even owns us. So what are our other gods? Consumerism? Nationalism? Political philosophy? Militarism? Racism? Some other ism?

   No images of God? Well, scripture says we are made in the image of God, and we know that Jesus is the perfect image and revelation of God - so other creature-like images, whether of the Egyptian hieroglyphic variety or the Wall Street golden bull, the Democratic donkey, the Republican elephant, the American Eagle, or you name it, mislead when we put them above, or even on par with the one true God.

   Do not take the Lord’s name in vain? 

You know, I think God is less concerned about someone using God’s name as part of a swear word than with politicians and others, including church folk, who try to attach God’s name to things, ideas, beliefs, policies, political parties, that are not of God. 

Or with those who claim to be persons of great faith, when all evidence of their words and actions point to the contrary.

   Remember the Sabbath? We don’t know how to rest in God anymore. We’re attached to these stupid gadgets with a digital umbilical cord, that if we’re asked or expected to put them down - or heaven forbid turn them off - you’d think we were going to die. 

Sabbath on a Sunday doesn’t always work for people, but the day of the week is less important than the taking of sabbath time. We take Sabbath because God took Sabbath. As creatures made in the image of God these first four commandments model for us what living in God’s image is to look like, and we honor the Sabbath because it is the day God set aside for rest, for reflection, for thanksgiving. Our actions are to correspond with God’s actions, our character with God’s character.

   Then we move to the fifth commandment, which is 

a link or a bridge to the final five. 

The commands that govern the divine-human relationship in the first four are linked to those that govern our human communal relationship - Love of God, love of neighbor. So “honor your father and your mother” reflects not only the literal understanding of these words, but also the parental relationship that often serves as a metaphor for our relationship with God as parent. 

And like the first four, it is stated in a positive formulation, “do this,” rather than in the prohibitory language of the final five. So it’s important to recognize that the laws that govern the divine-human interactions are linked to those that govern human relationships. 

Our morality, our ethics of how we are with one another are grounded in our experience of how we are with God. 

   Don’t kill? Jesus spent a lot of time dealing with this one, explaining that anger is an interior kind of murder. And if there is anything in our culture as commonplace 

as Sabbath-stealing technology, it’s anger. 

In Bexley a few months ago, a Jewish family came home from synagogue to find swastikas painted on their garage door. Last year the family of a gay high school student in Columbus woke one morning to find hate language chalked at the end of their driveway. 

A Muslim high school student was shot and killed while walking home from school on the east side earlier this year. Neo-nazi and white supremacists feel empowered to parade through the streets waving nazi flags, confederate flags, and to shout hate from the highest peaks. 

And many do this while claiming to be Christian! 

Were we to revise/update the ten commandments for today, an easy one would be Thou shalt not kill. 

If Jesus was right (if?), then a revision would make it Thou shalt not hate! And as followers of Jesus Christ, we do not, we can not, defend hate. Ever. 

   At the same time, we are a society that accepts killing as normal and acceptable. We’re the only country in the world plagued by this overwhelming onslaught of mass shootings, one every day this year. 

But we’re also the only country in the world that allows such easy access to guns. As theologian and pastor Rev. James Howell wrote so eloquently, 

"Thou shalt not kill" wasn't [merely] an individualistic commandment, but God's way of creating a kind of community, a kind of nation where killing wasn't a thing; so what do we as the church, which is part of the nation, need to labor toward so killing [which is so rampant in America] is reduced?”

   And Howell continued,  

   “I blogged last year… on the futility of, after a shooting, good people saying "our thoughts and prayers are with"... whomever. My blog said it's time to stop the prayers and do something. The commandment, "no other gods," may also figure in this. Political ideology is modernity's idolatry, and the ideology of absolute gun rights has to be the [prime] example of this. [This is] 

perilous territory, but somehow, gently but strongly, this has to be named and exposed. [Paul’s letter to the] Philippians speaks of losing anything, even everything, for the sake of knowing Jesus — so what do we need to lose, to set aside, to be close to the Jesus who is grieved by [Sandy Hook, Charleston, Las Vegas, San Bernardino, Orlando, Texas and so many others] but also who is pleading with us to be a very different kind of people?”

   No adultery (in a culture where sex is used as a marketing tool, and where sex as impulse, pleasure and self-fulfillment, not to mention abuse, assault, and harrasment is all over the media)? 

Jesus said if you lust in your heart, you are an adulterer. There’s no condemnation there; just as in that moment in John’s Gospel, where Jesus encounters what John calls “a woman caught in adultery” and tells her accusers, all of whom are men, that the one without sin can cast the first stone. Note, there was no condemnation from the religious folks for the man caught in adultery, only for the woman. Echoes of which we hear today as women, and some men, find the strength to stand up and name those who have assaulted, molested, and harassed sexually - and they are attacked by those who would defend patriarchy. Adultery can be sexual in nature, but throughout scripture it is also used in parallel with idolatry, which ties this one back to the first two commandments as well. Maybe pleasure is our god, or patriarchy.

   No stealing? John Wesley said when we fail to provide overabundant charity to the poor that it’s theft. 

And we’ve also been told that since all that we have is from God, then the excess we store away, the food in our pantries, the clothes in our closets, belong to the hungry and the naked. Theft doesn’t have to be blatant or obvious. Greed is a form of theft as well. Policies that take from the poor in order to give to the rich are as much stealing as is armed robbery.

   No coveting? Coveting is the engine of capitalism! 

If it weren’t for wanting the newest, the latest, the glitziest, our economy would crash and burn. 

Have we made capitalism into a god as well? 

What did the President tell us to do in the immediate aftermath of 9/11? Go spend money, go buy something, go out to dinner, go to a movie. To covet is to worship at the altar of another god.

   So, this passage of scripture has become one of the most contested, politicized, misunderstood and often trivialized texts in scripture. Many Christians, misunderstanding Paul’s writings, take a negative view 

of the law; while other Christians loudly proclaim the commandments wanting them to be posted in public, in court houses, in school houses, but always in judgment of others, and rarely if ever for critical self-reflection. As Christians, why don’t we ever see people clamoring to have the Beatitudes displayed in public?

   But self-reflection is what is called for here, both with this passage and in our society. Because I believe that often, as we do with many passages of scripture, we weaponize these words when they were meant to bring freedom and liberation. When Jesus says ‘those without sin can cast the first stone,’ who among us can rise up?

 When our anger and our hate is murder, when our lust is adultery, when our consumerism, our racism, or our political ideology have become our god, who are we to judge another? And when the loudest and most public proponents of holding others to these standards are the ones who most clearly and publicly have violated them, what are we to say? 

   The path to freedom and liberation offered in this passage was well-understood by Martin Luther, who noticed the immense grace of God in each commandment. Certainly they stand before us as a mirror, revealing our sin — which then is the beginning of grace. There is mercy hidden in each command. 

God, in consecrating Israel, and through Christ us as well, in mercy liberates us from our burdens by declaring “You don’t have to have other gods. You can rest. 

You don’t have to covet. I’ve provided all you need. 

There is enough - even more than enough. 

You don’t have to live this life of hate, and fear, and violence - live instead, in me, as I live in you!”

   Brevard Childs says, “The intent of the commandments is to engender love of God and love of neighbor.” 

And it has been suggested elsewhere that in providing these commandments, God was casting a vision, sharing God’s dream, of what a community, a world centered in God’s love might look like. A world without competing ideologies, a world without damaging relationships, where all that we do and all that we are about was loving God and loving one another, reflecting the image of the God who created us. 

   James Howell shared in a blogpost that a song that he and his daughter danced to at her wedding helped him to rethink the Ten Commandments. “Somewhere over the rainbow…there’s a land that I dreamed of…Dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.” 

I don’t know what you dream of, I’m not always certain about what I dream of, but I think today’s scripture gives us an idea of what it is that fills God’s dreams. 

What would it be like to dream a life of holiness or sacredness or to dream a life of intimacy with God? Maybe in this season of giving thanks for all that God has given us, we can reimagine the Ten Commandments as God’s dream of such a life for us. 

And then as songwriter Richard O’Brien put it, 

“don’t dream it - be it.”

Amen.

11/12/17 - “A Way Out of No Way: Delivering”

11/12/17 - “A Way Out of No Way: Delivering”

   As much as I love movies, am entertained by movies, even find biblical and theological themes and images in movies, movies also do us a disservice in at least one way: we can never “unsee” what we see in a film. 

If we’ve seen “Gone With the Wind,” then our understanding of southern plantations, southern gentlemen, slavery, and the Civil War will always be shaded in one way or another by those images. 

If we’ve seen Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” we may never be able to pull the shower curtain closed and feel totally safe and secure again. And if we’ve seen Cecil B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments,” then we’ll likely never be able to imagine the scene from our scripture today in any way other than how he presented it sixty-one years ago.

   And that’s okay. It’s not my intent to debunk or challenge that presentation. In part because that’s not the direction of this message, and in part because, as I said, you can never “unsee” it once you’ve seen it. So I’m not going to waste my time with that. Films are for entertainment first and foremost, and that one is entertaining even if it does take artistic license, as films do.

   The book of Exodus picks up the story of the people called Israel about 400 years after the ending of Genesis. And you’ll remember that last week we told the early part of the story of Joseph, and how God protected both God’s chosen people and God’s covenant by being present in and with Joseph, and ultimately with his family. The covenant, to make Israel a great nation and to give them a land promised to them by God, had begun with Abram and Sarai and extended through Isaac and then to Jacob and to his twelve sons, who would become the heads of the twelve tribes of this growing nation. The latter parts of Genesis shared how Joseph was able to save his family and thousands of others from a famine that could have destroyed them and God’s covenant with them. 

   When we pick up the story today, though, Egypt is not the same place it was then. In no more than a generation or two there was no one left who knew Joseph, or how Joseph and Pharaoh had worked together to save their peoples. Institutional memory was gone, and with it went loyalty and relationship. Replacing it was fear, and entitlement, and oppression. 

As the number of Israelites increased - God said they would number like the stars in the sky - Egyptians became fearful of becoming a minority in their own country. In response the Egyptian under Pharaoh forcibly enslaved the Jewish people. You can almost hear the Egyptians crying, “Build that Wall!,” in order to keep the slaves from escaping. As their population continued to grow, even while in captivity, fear on the part of the Egyptians threatened to annihilate an entire generation when Pharaoh ordered the extermination of all the male Jewish children. Faced with the extinction of God’s chosen people, God raised up a new leader, a new prophet, to speak for and act on behalf of God and God’s covenant people.

   So the book of Exodus tells the story of how this people rose up. We learn how Moses was spared from the genocide imposed upon the Jewish people and how he grew to become the chosen leader of the people despite his murderous history. And about this second book of the Hebrew Scriptures, theologian Bob Stallman writes,

“Although the book’s title in Christian Bibles, “Exodus,” means “the way out,” the forward-leaning orientation of Exodus could legitimately lead us to conclude that the book is really about the way in, for it recounts Israel’s entrance to the Mosaic covenant that will frame their existence, not only in the wilderness wanderings around the Sinai Peninsula but also in their settled life in the Promised Land. The book conveys how Israel ought to understand their God, and how this nation should work and worship in their new land. On all counts, Israel must be mindful of how their life under God would be distinct from and better than life for those who followed the gods of Canaan.”

   So as we think about Exodus, the framing story of the people of Israel then and now, we should think of it as a story of deliverance out of slavery as well as into the covenant of God. The Joseph saga from last week showed God working quietly, protecting God’s people in subversive ways through Joseph and others. 

Through the God-given gift of dream interpretation Joseph was able to rise into powerful positions, first in the home of Potiphar and eventually in the home of Pharaoh himself, using human systems and his ingenuity to, as Cameron Howard put it, “provide safety, prosperity, reunification, and reconciliation for Jacob’s family.” 

   So last week’s protection becomes, four centuries later, this week’s deliverance. Exodus 14, with or without the movie special effects, shows God delivering God’s people, although there is nothing quiet about how God works here. As Cameron describes it, 

   “Horses’ hooves pound the dirt, the Israelites cry out in fear, the Egyptians scream in panic, the wind howls, and the waters churn in their great vertical walls. Add to that the pyrotechnics of the pillar of fire and cloud, and Exodus 14 describes a big, chaotic mess.” 

   In fact, if we think back to the beginning of Genesis, the chaos of this scene might remind us of the chaos described before God began the creative process. 

God is creating here, as well, but this time begins with a people and a promise rather than empty-handed. 

The people aren’t seeing that though. What they see, or think they see, is that they’ve been abandoned by God and led into the wilderness by a mad man. 

“Weren’t there enough graves in Egypt that you took us away to die in the desert?” they demanded. 

“Leave us to work for the Egyptians! Even that would be better than dying out here!” 

   And in the midst of this chaos, as the people are literally running for their lives as the Egyptian army chases them down, what Moses said to them must have struck them as the rantings of a delusional denier: 

“Don’t be afraid. Stand your ground, and watch the Lord rescue you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never ever see again. The Lord will fight for you. 

You just keep still.”

   Don’t be afraid! Stand and watch! Keep still! Are you crazy? they must have thought. But then, what to their wondering eyes should appear, but Charlton Heston, saying “no, do not fear.” Sorry, I told you that you can’t unsee it.

   But what comes next, and what Moses tells them next, are both unbelievable. As Cameron describes it,

“Given this chaos, Moses’ instructions to the terrified Israelites are all the more remarkable… As they were being chased down by the most technologically equipped fighting force anywhere around, the Israelites were surely inclined toward fight or flight: resist or run, sure, but keep still? What good will that do? 

Their mandate from God here is neither to fight nor flight, but to witness: to observe God’s power and might. God will do all the fighting for them.”

   Thought of another way: this isn’t their fight to fight, this is God’s. This is God acting to deliver God’s people, again, in much the same way that God had acted through Moses in the first thirteen chapters of Exodus to get to the edge of the Red Sea in chapter 14. The people had seen and believed, then forgotten and become fearful. Moses’ challenge to them to stand still and watch as God delivers them is supposed to put to rest any remaining concerns that they might have about the power of God compared to that of Pharaoh.

And what power they saw.

   In verse 10 we’re told that the people of Israel “looked back and saw the Egyptians marching toward them.” But in verses 30 and 31, that immediately follow today’s reading it says, in verse 30, “Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore,” and in verse 31, “Israel saw the great work that the LORD did against the Egyptians.” 

In verse 10 the Israelites feared for their lives, but in verse 30 they “feared the Lord.” As Cameron points out, “When they stood, saw, and kept still, they believed.”

   And he goes on,  “If the Joseph story showed us everyday miracles, the exodus story shows us a once-in-a-lifetime (even once-in-a-millennium)  miracle. In many ways it is the miracle; Exodus 14 just might be the most important chapter in the entire Old Testament. The story of God’s deliverance of the Israelites from Pharaoh’s army at the Red (or Reed) Sea is the bedrock of the covenant relationship between God and Israel.”

   The story of the Exodus, though, isn’t just the stuff of a good story or even an epic movie. The Exodus is the over-arching or framing story, what is called the meta-narrative, of the entire Hebrew Bible. Later in Exodus, when God gives the Ten Commandments to Moses, God says  “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:2-3). 

   The people of Israel have been freed in order to worship and serve God by keeping God’s commandments. And the reminders are found in Leviticus, in the Prophets, the History, the Writings and in the Psalms. The deliverance of the people of God, is THE standard, the non-negotiable, the guide stone in all of the Hebrew Bible as well as the Christian Scriptures as well.

   For followers of God through the way of Christ, the story of the Exodus reminds us of the power God has to defeat oppressors and deliver the oppressed. Exodus images were a powerful reminder of God’s power and promise of deliverance during the Civil Rights battles of the 20th Century; “We Shall Overcome,” the theme song of anti-segregationists, suffragists, and others who called on the name of God in the midst of their battles for basic human and equal rights. It is the core of what is known as “Liberation Theology” that has developed among oppressed peoples around the world.

   Lest we think that God’s work through Christ is the first or the only way God has ever sought to deliver God’s people, we should remember that God has been delivering God’s people throughout history, both recorded and primordial. From the waters of the flood, from famine, from slavery in Egypt, from Exile in Babylon, God’s modus operandi has always been one of deliverance. 

And as we shared a couple of weeks ago, that deliverance was not limited to only the Israelite people. 

God delivers all people.

   The prayer that Jesus taught his disciples, The Lord’s Prayer, includes our plea to God to “deliver us from evil.” The apostle Paul reminds us that in Jesus Christ we are delivered from sin and from death. More than UPS, FedEX, or the Post Office, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Moses, Miriam, and Jesus is in the delivery business. That same prayer also pleads that “God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” When we think that our life is so chaotic, that our world is so messed up, that our economy is so one-sided, that our politics is so divisive, that nothing can save us, we find ourselves, like the Israelites, running in fear from the Powers that Be. 

But God invites us to stand firm. 

   In the midst of the Civil War, the bloodiest war in U.S. history, President Abraham Lincoln famously prayed, not that God would be on our side against an army of brothers and sisters who prayed to the same God, but that we might be on God’s side. That is, that we were attempting to align ourselves with God’s will, not that we were trying to co-opt God to our will.

WE are the people of God and there is nothing that 

we cannot do when we are on the side of God. 

We are called to bear witness to the power of God and 

to the desire of God to return the world to wholeness. And the role to which we are called is to be the hands and feet, the workers of God’s miracles in the world. 

    As Bob Stallman so pointedly reminds us, 

   “The book of Exodus opens and closes with Israel at work. At the onset, the Israelites are at work for the Egyptians. By the book’s end, they have finished the work of building the [Lord’s] tabernacle according to the Lord's instructions (Exod. 40:33). 

God did not deliver Israel from work. He set Israel free for work. God released them from oppressive work under the ungodly king of Egypt and led them to a new kind of work under his gracious and holy kingship.”

   As readers and hearers of this sacred story, we are called to join the Israelites in their witness to God’s delivering victory: to stand firm, to see, and to believe, and then to be about the work of bringing to fruition God’s will, on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

11/5/17 Sermon - “A Way Out of No Way: Protecting”

11/5/17 Sermon - “A Way Out of No Way: Protecting”

   One of the many phases I went through as a kid in thinking about what I wanted to be when I grew up, besides an astronaut or a policeman, was the time when I wanted to be a gangster. This desire was initially inspired by the comedy action film, “The Doberman Gang,” about a couple who, after a failed bank robbery attempt, train a gang of Doberman Pinscher dogs to pull off the heist for them. The dogs, all named after famed gangsters, were trained to commit this crime without hurting anyone, which, I thought, was ideal. 

In fact, so inspired was I by this idea at that point as a 12 year old, that when a stray cat that we had adopted as an outside pet had a litter of kittens, 

I named them after gangsters as well: Bonnie and Clyde, Pretty Boy Floyd, Babyface Nelson, and so on. The effect, as you can imagine, was not nearly as menacing.

   About this same time, author Gay Talese released his true story account of the Bonanno crime family in New York, titled “Honor Thy Father,” a 4” thick paperback that I devoured when it came out. The real clincher for me, though, was Mario Puzo’s novel, “The Godfather,” originally released in 1969, before I had reached my gangster phase, but that was released in paperback when the Francis Ford Coppola film adaptation came out in theaters in 1972.

   “The Godfather” is one of my all-time favorite movies. 

I couldn’t tell you how many times I’ve seen it. In fact, the original film is considered one of the greatest films of all time, having won the Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Actor for Marlon Brando, and Best Screenplay in 1973. And the story was so good, the movie-making so strong, that the sequel, “The Godfather II” also won Best Picture in 1974 - the first and maybe only time a sequel has been named best picture. 

   “The Godfather” is the saga of a mafia crime family, the Corleones, in New York City in the 1940s and 50s. Brando plays the aging head of the family, the Don, and the story focus on how the other crime families want to begin moving into drugs and narcotics to make money, but that the Corleones resist, happy to make their money off gambling, extortion, and their protection racket. In a power struggle among families that turns into war, the patriarch, Don Vito Corleone, is gunned down and nearly killed, prompting the revenge killing of a mobster and a crooked police officer by Vito’s recently returned war hero, and favorite son, Michael. 

   Played by Al Pacino, Michael, until the attack on his father, had found his way clear of the “family business” by enlisting in the Army during World War II. 

After some twists, turns, and an escape to another country, a series of events precipitates a changing of the guard in the Corleone family, elevating the reluctant youngest son Michael to head of the family, the new Godfather, over his older brothers, the hot-headed Sonny and the weaker sniveling Fredo.

   At one point later in the film, Michael reluctantly sends Fredo to Las Vegas to head up their hotel and gambling operations there and to force a deal to purchase a hotel that the Corleones want to own so that they can move the entire “family business” from New York out west. Michael, in Vegas to close the deal, finds that Fredo had been living it up on the family dime and had become “buddy buddy” with the very competing mobster that he was supposed to be strong-arming. And he quietly seethes as Fredo defends both the other guy against the family as well as the “roughing up” he received at the hands of this competitor. And in a very powerful scene, Michael abruptly dismisses the other mobster with a demand to name their price, an inherent but unspoken “or else,” - the proverbial “offer that he can’t refuse.”   

And then, turning on his brother, Michael delivers one of the classic lines of the film, “Don’t EVER take sides against the family in anything every again.”

   In thinking about our biblical story, I couldn’t help but be reminded of many scenes in this film. And you’ll recall we left off last week with Abram and Sarai having been promised by God that they not only would have children in their old age, but that their offspring would be vast, and a blessing to other nations and to the entire world. And so to move from there to where our story picks up this week, we need to fast forward a bit.

   Abram and Sarai, having received a name change by God to Abraham and Sarah, do in fact have a son, Isaac. Abraham also fathers another son, Ishmael, by his wife’s servant - more on that later.  Isaac, in turn, has two sons, Esau and Jacob, whose storyline, in some ways, is also reflected in the Godfather films. Jacob, the younger son who stole his older brother’s birthright, through various machinations that you can read about in Genesis, ends up having twelve sons from four different mothers. 

   And scripture makes clear that Jacob favors one son, Joseph, over the others. Knowing that, and being either unwise or juvenile, Joseph plays it up among his brothers, ratting their misdeeds out to their father while gloating about dreams he has of them bowing down to and serving him. All this while wearing the fancy, colorful coat that their father had given to this “favorite son.” 

   As you can imagine, this didn’t sit well with the others, so the brothers begin to plot against Joseph, going so far as to consider killing him. Persuaded not to do that, they choose instead to take his colorful coat, rip it into shreds, cover it in blood, and tell their father, Jacob, that the golden boy had been killed by wild animal. Then the brothers sell Joseph into slavery to a group of passing Ishmaelites who were headed to Egypt. Did you catch that? The brothers, basically telling Joseph, “don’t ever take sides against the family,” sell Joseph to the descendants of Abraham’s other son, Ishmael. In effect, they’ve sold their brother to their cousins. And it is after Joseph is in turn sold to Potiphar, Pharaoh’s chief officer in Egypt, that our story picks up today.

   The story of Joseph is one of the longest narratives in the Old Testament. And as such, we can’t tell his entire story today, I encourage you to read, or re-read, it for yourself. There are a couple of themes that emerge in that reading. The first of these is the idea of human unfaithfulness that emerges throughout at least the early parts of the story. 

   Bible scholar Rolf Jacobsen points out some examples, writing, 

 “Why is Joseph a slave in Egypt at the start of chapter 39? Because Joseph's brothers have been unfaithful -- they have betrayed him by mugging him, stripping him, selling him into slavery. And just to dress their betrayal up for dinner, so to speak, Joseph's brothers take Joseph's clothes and present them as false witness to their father, saying that Joseph is dead.”

   And Jacobsen continues in this vein, “Why is Joseph in prison at the end of chapter 39 -- even though he has caused Potiphar and his house to thrive? Because Potiphar's wife has been unfaithful -- she betrayed her husband's trust by seeking to lie with Joseph, then betrayed Joseph when he denied her. Potiphar's wife takes Joseph's clothes and presents them as false witness to her husband, saying that Joseph tried to rape her.” And finally, “Why is Joseph still in prison at the end of chapter 40 -- even though the chief jailer entrusted all of the other prisoners to Joseph's care? Because the cupbearer, whom Joseph saw would be freed from prison, was unfaithful to Joseph: ‘the chief cupbearer did not remember Joseph, but forgot him.’”

   So, as we read the saga of Joseph, we mustn’t be in too much of a hurry to get to the “good parts,” the “happy parts.” It was in the suffering that he endured as a result of the various acts of unfaithfulness on the part of so many, in his family and elsewhere, that “Joseph the spoiled brat” transforms into “Joseph, head of the family” by the end of chapter 50. So, when you read these stories, spend some time with Joseph as he contemplates the betrayal at the hands of his brothers. Consider the implications of being treated as a piece of property to be bought and sold against your will to whomever desires to own you. Consider what it must be like to face accusations about inappropriate activity, sexual or otherwise, in which because of your race, gender, or status, you are assumed to be guilty. These ideas are as real and newsworthy today as then, and if we don’t take the time to consider the real world ramifications of this kind of human unfaithfulness then we don’t really open ourselves to learn what these lessons can teach us about life and faith.

   A second theological theme present in the Joseph saga, and the one that I want to focus on in the setting of All Saints Day, is that of God’s presence and activity in the midst of suffering. We understand that God is present with Joseph early in life through the dreams and the gift of interpretation that he has been given. And while Joseph is never described as a prophet, in these acts we see prophetic gifts displayed and are reminded of Jesus’ words centuries later that a prophet is never accepted in their home town, nor we might add, within their own family. Nevertheless, the theme of God’s presence with Joseph is made clear in several verses from our reading today:

"The Lord was with Joseph [in slavery], and he became a successful man" (Genesis 39:2a),

"His master saw that the Lord was with him, and that the Lord caused all that he did to prosper in his hands." (Genesis 39:3)

"The Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love" (Genesis 39:21a)

"The chief jailer paid no heed to anything that was in Joseph's care, because the Lord was with him; and whatever he did, the Lord made it prosper." (Genesis 39:23)

   So we’re told explicitly of God’s presence with Joseph in his suffering, and we also understand that God is present with him through this gift of interpretation of dreams, about which he confesses in the next chapter, 

“Do not interpretations belong to God?” (40:8). 

With age comes wisdom.

   Joseph, through the suffering he endures both from his own immaturity and the unfaithfulness of many people around him, has come to understand that God is with him on this journey, and he and we begin to recognize that that presence is leading towards a particular end or purpose. And as Jacobsen puts it,

   “God's presence is not merely, well, a presence. 

Rather, God's presence makes a difference. God meets Joseph in his suffering, but God does not leave Joseph there. God enters into Joseph's suffering in order to bring Joseph out of it, to another and better place…and in the process, God blesses others through Joseph. Not only does Joseph prosper and thrive -- but through God's presence with Joseph and the [resulting] blessings, others are blessed: First Potiphar and his household, later the chief jailer and all those in prison, and finally Pharaoh and all of Egypt. In the end, even Joseph's brothers receive blessing -- through Joseph.”

   That is, we see the promise made to Abraham - that he and Sarah and their descendants were blessed to be a blessing to all the world - had been fulfilled. 

And to connect this with how we started, it is almost as though Joseph, having turned the tables on his brothers, in a grace-filled but not vengeful way, tells them “don’t ever take sides against the family.”

   In the broader scope of the book of Genesis, Joseph's story brings the "family" story of Abraham and Sarah to a culmination. In Genesis, the people who God elected in order to be blessed to be a blessing are a family. This family has grown from a childless old couple into a fairly large, extended family -- but they are still a family. When the Book of Exodus starts, the family has become a nation. . . but that story is for next week.

   So what are we to take from the story of Joseph on this particular Sunday, All Saints Day? Well, we are reminded that even in the midst of suffering, of loss, of sorrow, God is present with us. In those times when we hurt, when we feel abandoned, God is there. God doesn’t bring the sorrow, but God doesn’t abandon us to it either. God doesn’t will pain, but God helps see us through it. God has surrounded us with family, with our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters in the faith, to lift us up in faithfulness. And as a family, as a church family, our responsibility is to be faithful to one another as God is faithful.

   God never promises us that a faithful and faith-filled life will be one without suffering or without loss. God promises to protect us from ever having to bear it alone. In this past year, we have lost five sisters in faith. We remember and celebrate them today. And we celebrate God’s faithfulness to them and to the promise that God made to them, as we celebrate God’s presence with us in their loss.

   Jacobsen reminds us that “God's presence with those who suffer and the way God works almost never seems fast enough for those who are suffering. 

The psalm writers usually scream, "HOW LONG, O LORD!?"  Some people in the tradition have said that, 'God's timing is always the best time,' but this never seems the case for those who suffer. Even after the fact, many who have suffered wonder why God could not have acted more quickly.But nevertheless, the biblical promise is that God meets us in our suffering. And God does not leave us there. God meets us in suffering and moves us to what one psalmist called more "pleasant places" (16:6). And in the process, God will bless others through us.”

   Those we remember today were blessed, and knew it. 

And in knowing them, living with them, loving them, we too are blessed. God’s presence knows no limits, God’s love has no boundaries of time, place, or space. 

We know and take comfort that God was present with these, our sisters, as they transitioned from this life to the next. And we know that we can trust God’s promise, that as God blessed them and is present with them even now, God also is present with and blesses us - that we might be a blessing to all the world. May it be so. Amen.