Dreams and Pits of Racism - Sermon for Lectionary 19 Aug 13 responding to the events of Charlottesville

Sermon:

Text:  Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28, Matthew 14:22-33
    

Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ who holds us up.

            I want to address the things that happened in Charlottesville over this weekend, where racism was seen, violence was inflicted, and innocent death occurred. To do so I want to use our Old Testament lesson. We start a new generation’s story this week. We only get little bit of it though, Joseph’s story is nearly a quarter of Genesis, from here to the very end, chapters 37-50, but we only have this week’s text and next weeks to look at his story. Which means a couple things, we can’t go into as much detail as I’d like, so I highly recommend reading the other passages yourselves at home. Of all the sections of the Old Testament, Joseph’s story is nearly a small novel or novella, there’s betrayal, mistrust, passion, falls and rises, and finally a reuniting.

            Today we start by meeting Joseph. He is the second youngest of Jacob’s sons, the first born of Rachel, Jacob’s favorite wife, and so is the favored son of Jacob. Jacob dotes on him, tells the other sons to their faces that Joseph is the favorite, gives him an ornate robe, sometimes called a long robe with sleeves, but most commonly called the coat of many colors.

 The first section of this passage deals with why his brothers don’t like him, even hate him. It starts with Joseph ratting his brothers out about their shepherding abilities, and then that coat, they don’t have fancy coats, their father likes him more. It says, “They hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him.”

There are then two sections that are skipped over in our reading, Joseph has two dreams, in one a set of 12 sheaves of wheat are in a field, when all of a sudden Joseph’s wheat stands up straight, while the others all bow to his. Then he dreams of the sun, moon and 11 stars all bowing down to him. Now, a normal person might have these dreams and think about them themselves, wow, I might be the one in power at some point. But, Joseph being so full of himself not only has the dreams, but he then tells everyone about them, hey brothers! Listen to these dreams I had about how much better I am than you, and how you will serve me! Not the best of tactics when they already hate you a little bit. And so, the brothers finally snap, they go too far. They think, hey, here he comes, let’s kill him and say some animals did it. The two oldest though, Rueben and Judah, say, no, let’s just put him in a pit, and then when some Ishmaelites come by, they decide to sell Joseph into slavery and get rid of the problem child. And that’s where the passage ends.

It’s hard to find Good News in a passage like this, there is no gospel message, no good news message, no God saving Joseph, not in this part, we will see the finale of his story next week. Like other passages, it is simply a tale, one where the Good News of God is seemly not present. In this section, all we find is anger, arrogance, the threat of violence, and then the horrific, the selling of a brother into slavery. There are things we can draw out though.

In the story of Joseph, the main thread is dreams. Who Joseph is, what makes him him, is his ability to dream and know what dreams mean. But, throughout his story, people will often not like these dreams, his brothers hate him because of it. It is why they try to kill him, to end the dreamer, vs 19. Here comes this dreamer, come now, let us kill him and throw him in a pit.” But, the dreamer is not ended there, the dream never leaves him in his life, and more importantly God never leaves him.

It’s interesting to me that in this first section about Joseph’s life, we see very little of what he’s thinking and how he’s feeling. He’s thrown into a pit and we don’t even hear a mention of pain, and he’s sold to slavery and we don’t have a word of complaint or anguish. And yet they must be there. In those moments, terror, fear, dread must fill him. Betrayal, shock. How could my brothers do this to me? How could they abandon me to such things? How could they be so cruel, so evil.

Am I alone now? Am I abandoned?  And as we shall see in his story, no he is not. Joseph’s story is a story of pits. He is in the pit in this section, he will be in prison, he will face the trials of seducement, he will be nearly executed, and yet each time God will brings him out of the pit.

I see in Joseph the feelings of Peter from our Gospel lesson. There is a storm around him, and he finds himself sinking, and then finds that God in Christ already has grasped him, keeping him from drowning.

            There are pits in our lives. Places where we find ourselves trapped, pits of our own doing, those caused by others, even those caused by our own loved ones. Places were it’s so dark we can’t see what the future will hold. Storms where everywhere we look is fear, places where we want to hold to Christ, but fear does not let it be so. Pit’s where it’s not that we can’t reach the top, we can’t even see the top. Where it seems like abandonment. But, God does not let go.

I see pit in our country dug deeper the last few days, especially from the actions of some in Charlottesville, Virginia, where hateful, racist, evil language and violence was perpetrated by people who claim to be American and yet hold every ideal opposite of what our country states it stands for, by people who claim to be Christian and yet act out in ways so very opposite of Christ’s teachings, putting plowshare to sword, insulting and defiling God’s creation plan of all being in the image of God. Racist talk, the claiming that one people is lesser than another, denies God’s claim that we are all God’s Children, that in God’s image we have been created.

We are called to stand up and address that racism and hatred, violence and oppression and say, no, that is not right, it is evil and cannot be.

In the hours and days since this moment I have felt that fear of Peter, that fear of Joseph, and my fear is nowhere near the fear felt by blacks, Jews, Muslims, and other minorities singled out by such racist terminology. Where they feel like they are in the midst of a storm they did not create, a pit they were thrown into, and when we feel this way, when we feel like we are in those pits, those storms. God meets us there. God reaches out to us.

We cannot walk on water, we cannot climb the pit. But through Christ the water will not cover us, the pit will not devour us. Through Christ we can work to counter and remove the stain to racism from our country.

            A seminary professor of mine used the quote, God came deep, deep down to us in Jesus. When we talk God becoming fully human, fully God in Christ, it’s not oh, Jesus did some living, it’s Jesus went into the very darkest things with us, Christ walked through the same storms we do, entered the same pits we do. Christ died the same death we do. There is no where we can go, Christ has not been.

            Whatever you face, today, tomorrow, next week, what you have faced, trials, temptations, fear, grief, loss, Christ has always been there, and will always be with you. Christ walks with you as you work to bring out the ideals of this country, that all people are created equal.

            Our text ends with Joseph not knowing what the future holds for him, but knowing that God is with him through it. Peter’s ends with him knowing that Christ will lift him out of any sinking waters. Such is our future, we cannot know the future beyond that we have already been loved, claimed and saved through Christ our Lord. But, like Joseph, we can see dreams and reach for them, dreams like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jrs. Where all God’s Children can sing together, Free at Last, Free at Last, thank God Almighty we are free at last.

That’s how we live our lives, knowing that pits cannot contain us, storms cannot kill us, for Christ is with us.

-->