Faith for the Journey

This will be the last week of the Joseph story.

I hope that you have enjoyed hearing it these past five weeks.

I have enjoyed preaching on it.

Every time you dive into a Bible story with depth you find something new about that story.

This time I noticed how much Joseph’s story of faith is tied to ours.

In the story of Joseph he experiences God much the same way that we do.

In the story of Joseph God is an important character, but God never actually shows up.

God is in the background.

God never appears to Joseph in a burning bush like he did with Moses, never shows up as three strangers like he does with Abraham.

God never directly talks to Joseph to give him advice or to comfort him.

Never tells Joseph directly that everything will work out and be OK.

Isn’t that the way that we experience God?

I don’t know anyone who has talked to God in a burning bush, or through a cloud.

All I know of over 12 years of pastoral counseling are people who have struggled to understand what God was up to in their lives but who carried on in faith.

We don’t hear too much in the story about what Joseph is thinking and feeling as things are happening in his life.

But we can imagine that Joseph at times must have been wondering what was happening.

He never knew directly that everything that was happening to him had some greater purposes.

Instead he trusts God and has faith.

Without hearing directly from God he simply keeps going, and believing.

And that how it is for all of us.

We never know when we are living through things how all the pieces are going to work out.

We never know what is in store for us.

We sometimes might wonder what God is up to, if God cares at all.

As we think back on Joseph’s story we see how God was at work in his life.

And through this story we can see the way God is involved in our lives.

We see that it starts with sin.

Much of our life is populated with sin, real sin.

Not some fake superficial version of it.

But with real things that we do to other people that hurts them.

And we experience the pain of that sin.

We experience the pain of broken relationships, missed opportunities, and broken dreams.

Because we are selfish, because we have been hard of heart, jealous, or simply mean.

I was telling the confirmands this week that one of the gifts of our faith is that we get to confess our sins.

We get to confess the real sins that we have done, or have not done.

We don’t have to hide behind the facade that we are “good people”.

But we get to lay bare our imperfections and brokenness before God and each other.

Because through confessing of sins we do experience the good news.

We experience forgiveness, redemption, and reconciliation.

Joseph also experiences difficult times.

We see him imprisoned unfairly.

We see him wait for over two years in a prison cell.

We all experience moments or times in our lives that are difficult.

We experience hardships out of our control.

What can we do in such times?

All we can do is grab onto God have faith, and pray.

It doesn’t seem like much of an answer.

But it is all we have.

That is how we experience God through faith in difficult times.

We also see that Joseph was given many gifts by God.

The most obvious of these gifts is that he can interpret dreams.

We see the gift of dream interpretation is what helps get him out of Jail.

It was his God given gift that helped him.

And we too experience God through the gifts that God has given to us.

Our gifts are ways that we contribute to our community and the world.

We also see God working through dreams.

Dreams in this story are pivotal to help the characters know what God wants of them.

We too can experience God in our dreams.

They are ways for God to tell us everything is going to be all right, ways for God to direct our future.

We also have dreams of what we want our lives to be like.

Those dreams can help us to step confidentially into what God has called us to do.

Our dreams are what we have that give us passion for the work we get to do.

We see that God ultimately works through forgiveness.

The story ends with another assurance that the forgiveness is complete.

Without forgiveness this family could not be complete again, and God’s future could not move forward.

We experience God in our own lives when we are able to forgive each other and move on.

The story ends with Joseph stating his faith that God will come and lead his people to the Promised Land.

Joseph in the end continues to have faith that God will be true to God’s word.

Joseph has nothing to base this on other than faith in God.

He has no evidence to suggest that God was going to lead them to the land promised.

We too have to ultimately have faith in God without any proof.

We will not get some magical moment when God shows up to map out every future for us.

In our lives this is how God works.

We can’t see it, but in faith we know that God is there for us on our journey.

God is offering us a hand on the way.

And all we can do is have faith that God’s hand is in it all.

God’s hand is in our sin, gifts, dreams, suffering, triumphs, reconciliation, and forgiveness.

God behind the scenes is involved in it all.

God is with us on this journey and like Joseph we know this only through faith.

I want to end by sharing a poem by Jan Richardson.

Some of you have heard it already as I have shared it at the start of a couple of meetings.

I share it again because in this Lenten season it has given me strength and comfort.

It has reminded me what Joseph knew and what this story teaches us.

That God travels with us on our path, and is the one who reminds us that we are beloved.

If you would enter into the wilderness,
do not begin without a blessing.

Do not leave without hearing who you are:
Beloved, named by the One who has traveled this path
before you.

Do not go without letting it echo in your ears,
and if you find it is hard to let it into your heart,
do not despair.
That is what this journey is for.

I cannot promise this blessing will free you from danger,
from fear, from hunger, or thirst, from the scorching
of sun or the fall of the night.

But I can tell you that on this path there will be help.

I can tell you that on this way there will be rest.

I can tell you that you will know the strange graces that come to our aid
only on a road such as this, that fly to meet us bearing comfort and strength,
that come alongside us for no other cause than to lean themselves toward our ear
and with their curious insistence whisper our name: Beloved. Beloved. Beloved.

Whatever your path is or has been this Lenten time remember that you are beloved, that God is walking with you.

May your faith in God continue to comfort and strengthen you on your path.

Amen

We Do Second Chances and I'm Sorrys

Last Sunday was the Oscars.

I love the Oscars.

Actually, I love movies.

I inherited that love from my mother.

It is something that we do together watch movies or talk about the ones we have seen that we think the other would like.

I was thinking about our story of Joseph and if it was a movie it might have ended last week.

Joseph having been sold into slavery, having been falsely accused and thrown in prison is finally vindicated, and given the post of second only to Pharaoh.

He was given a position of great wealth and power.

At that point you could roll the credits.

But this is not a Hollywood story about someone eventually overcoming difficult odds to make it big.

This is a story about family.

And this story can not end until the family is back together.

For that to happen we need to have forgiveness, reconciliation.

Forgiveness is one of those things that sound good on paper.

It is a lot harder to do in the real world.

But the story of Joseph is at the end of the day a story about forgiveness and reconciliation that allows a family to come back together.

In my sister house she has a wall hanging that says:

“In our home we do second chances, we say grace, we do I’m sorrys, we play hard, we do loud really well, we give hugs, we do love, we are family.”

It is a good mission statement for all families.

Because to be a family, in fact, to be in any relationship means that we have to forgive.

At some point in those relationships we are going to mess up.

The other person is going to mess up.

We are going to do something that hurts someone else.

Somebody is going to do something that hurts us.

We are going to be inconsiderate at some point.

And after that happens then we have to decide what to do next.

One option is to store up anger, to become resentful of the wrong that was done to us, and ultimately to cancel the relationship, to walk away.

It is an option.

But is it a good one?

We only get one family?

We are gifted with the people God sent us.

We don’t get to pick who those people are in our lives.

We don’t get to decide what attributes will go into our siblings, or our parents for that matter.

So if we walk away, and again that is an option, we lose out on that gift.

The other option is to forgive, to move on, to let go.

That in my opinion is sometimes the harder option.

We have to learn to trust again.

We have to let go of some of our pride.

What is interesting about the Joseph story is that Joseph chooses to forgive his brothers.

Forgiveness is a choice.

He could have gone another way.

Before the part of the story we read today Joseph is basically toying with his brothers.

Some might suggest he was testing them to see if they have changed.

But I think he is trying to decide if he will forgive them or not.

Our reading for today is that moment when he finally decides to let the past go.

And to see the past for what it was.

Yes, his brothers were wrong, they did him wrong, but good has come out of it.

There is food because of it.

God had plans beyond what he could have seen, or the brothers could have known.

“Now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life.”

Joseph’s forgiveness of his brothers is deep and in many ways unbelievable.

I wonder if we are capable of the same kind of forgiveness?

Would you be willing to forgive like Joseph does?

On the other hand it is necessary for our families to forgive.

It was my younger sister’s 40^th birthday party on Friday night.

We are close now.

But when we were in high school we fought a lot.

Mainly because she didn’t like being late for school, and I didn’t care.

I was really mean to her at times.

A friend of mine would drive us to school and we would torture her.

It was not nice.

She could have held it against me all my life.

I have heard stories of families that don’t talk to each other for much less then what I did to her.

She found a way to forgive me.

Because of that we are family.

Not because we are perfect, but because of forgiveness.

Because we do “Second chances and I am sorry.”

Joseph found a way to forgive his brothers.

He found a way to put it in a larger context of God’s plan.

He found a way to see good through the bad.

Can we?

What are those relationships in your life that went sour because you couldn’t find your way to forgive?

When we do forgive we become more than we could have imagined.

We find ways to grow that we never would have believed.

We find peace and well being.

We find wholeness.

And most important spiritually we find God, because it is God who ultimately forgives all sins.

It is the God we know in Jesus Christ who calls us all home, to be part of the party.

Jesus told us that God is like the foolish Father who allows his child to run off and spend all of his inheritance.

And then foolishly run after him and embrace him, throw a party for him.

God is the foolish parent who goes after the older son and begs him to come into the party.

God is the one who forgives our foolishness, our hardened hearts, with grace.

Our world today is filled with hard words and lots of hard hearts.

And what we need now if we are going to remain a family is forgiveness.

It is no small thing.

It really is an unbelievable thing.

Forgiveness holds us together.

And if our human family is going to not just survive, but thrive we need to do second chances and I’m sorry.

We need to come into the party and rejoice with each other.

We need to weep with each other over what we sometimes do to one another.

We need to embrace and kiss each other.

We need to see the bigger picture and trust that God has a bigger plan, so maybe we will not be so petty about the little things.

Forgiveness is the key to it all.

I hope in this season of lent you will forgive.

I hope that your movie ends not with you being vindicated with wealth and power, but with forgiveness and reconciliation.

So that we might all be family and party together.

Amen

These Dreams!

This week was vacation week on Monday my wife was away with a friend at her cancer appointment.

I told the kids we would go to the mall in Nashua.

Something we had never done that I thought might be fun.

My son had a dream that he bought an action figure from the star wars show “Rebels”.

He told me he didn’t know if the toy existed but he had seen it in his dream.

Sure enough they had the exact toy he saw in his dream.

One time my daughter lost her I-touch.

She had a dream that it was in the seat cushion of a chair in our house.

Sure enough it was right there.

I am actually surrounded by dreamers.

My wife is always having very strong vivid dreams.

In fact, I sometimes get in trouble for things I do, or don’t do, in her dreams.

Which is really unfair because I have a hard enough time doing the things I am supposed to do in real life, and now I have to behave in her dreams too.

Over the years because of my wife I have changed my thoughts on dreams.

I am not as quick to dismiss them as unimportant.

Dreams are significant pathways to our deepest fears, hopes, and thoughts.

According to clinical psychotherapist Jeffrey Sumber “Dreams are the bridge that allows movement back and forth between what we think we know and what we really know.”

But according to the story of Joseph they are more than that even they are pathways to God communicating with us.

Dreams are ways that God gives us important information.

In today’s part of the story it is God who sends Pharaoh a dream about a famine that is coming, and about how to avoid it.

It is odd because all the things about Pharaoh’s dream speak to him from Egyptian gods.

The Nile for the people of Egypt was an important spiritual place.

The Nile was life itself.

Out of the river comes gods.

Cows were considered gods in Egypt.

Pharaoh’s dream was not merely his subconscious talking to him.

It was his gods telling him something.

What he would find out was that it was the God who was really talking.

On top of this Pharaoh by Egyptian standards was considered a god.

So when other gods speak Pharaoh should be able to tell what they are telling him.

But he can’t understand it.

He is disturbed.

Finally, Joseph tells him that it is not little gods telling him something, but God.

The one true God, the God of the universe who made the Nile and cows.

That God was telling Pharaoh something very important.

That God was sending a message that Pharaoh needed to hear in order to save his people.

God talked to Pharaoh in a dream.

I was just thinking that we probably don’t talk about this enough in our spiritual life together.

We don’t share our dreams.

We don’t share what we think God is saying to us through those dreams.

I know I don’t because when that does happen to me, and it has happened to me, I don’t want people to think I am crazy.

I can tell you that at least once a year I have a dream about not being prepared on Sunday morning.

I have a dream that I can’t find the pulpit, or I show up to church not expecting to preach and someone looks at me and says, “Well aren’t you going to say something.”

Part of it is my own fears about weather what I have to say is good enough or well thought out enough.

Also, it is my own anxiety about being prepared.

But maybe it is something more?

Maybe God is telling me something about the importance of what I say.

Maybe God is telling me that preaching is a sacred duty that needs to be taken seriously with good preparation and with something good to say.

You see I think we dismiss our dreams too easily if we don’t look for the possibility to what God is telling us.

Those dreams that we wake up and say, “Wow that was weird.”

Perhaps has more to it than meets the eye.

Dreams can make us look at situations differently help us to uncover what is really going on beneath the surface.

Some dreams are more obvious.

Shortly after my Dad died I had a dream about him.

It was on the 9^th hole of the golf course we would golf together at.

That hole curves to the right, but straight ahead there is a rock.

He was sitting on that rock.

He told me, “I am good. Tell your mother.”

I want to share with you a dream I had once that really affected me.

I was in my first call as a pastor.

I had been at the church for about two years.

I wasn’t really happy there.

I was thinking of leaving.

One night I had a dream that I was floating above the narthex of the church watching people come in to worship.

Everything was black and white.

An angel appeared and told me that everything was about to change.

She then took me through the doors of the narthex into the sanctuary.

As soon as she opened the door the Church became colorful.

I looked and saw every kind of person singing and dancing (in a Lutheran kind of way) giving praise to God.

Black, white, Hispanic, middle eastern, African, German, Swedish, carribean, people in wheel chairs, old people, young people, middle aged, gay, straight.

It was a wonderful beautiful worship the kind you think happens in heaven.

It could be argued that it was just a projection of the type of congregation I hoped we would someday be.

But I took it as a sign from God that I was meant to stay there longer.

Things were happening to make that vision possible.

I don’t know if it ever looked exactly like that (there was no dancing for example) but it did come close at times.

I believe that dream was God speaking to me.

I believe that God speaks to you in your dreams too.

I hope we can be attentive to what God is saying.

I hope we can share those dreams together.

Now let me offer some advice about interpreting dreams.

That is important.

Because we could make our dreams say whatever they want.

One, like Pharaoh seeks out others to help you understand what you saw, or experienced.

The next morning I told Vicki about my dream and we together worked on what it might mean.

Two, this piece of advice comes from my wife.

Dream interpretation doesn’t necessarily mean that everything in that dream will mean something.

We don’t have to go out and buy a dream dictionary.

What is most important is how you felt during that dream.

What emotions did it bring up?

Fear, joy, love, hope, sadness.

Start with your emotions.

I woke up from my dream filled with joy at what I had seen and had more hope that it could be possible.

Finally, our dreams have to be in context of what we already know about God.

God speaks to us in our dreams when we can hear God’s voice that tells us about important things that show God’s love to us.

In Pharaoh’s dream Joseph could see that God would not want people to die during a famine.

Joseph knew God’s steadfast love.

The God that Joseph knew was a God that was there for him all those years he spent in prison.

At worship on Wednesday my son Charlie said, “It was like God had been planning for this for fifty years.”

Indeed the God of steadfast love that Joseph has come to know is the context for him being able to interpret Pharaoh’s dreams.

And just like God spoke to Pharaoh through a dream.

God can speak to us.

Our dreams can help us understand our past; discern what to do in the future, how to live now.

Most of all we can see in our dreams God’s hand loving guiding us towards God’s future.

Amen