Wicked World, Wiley God ~ Genesis 50:19-21

¹⁹ But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? ²⁰ You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. ²¹ So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.” And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them. ~ Genesis 50:19-21

 

I was sad to learn this week that one of my favorite poets passed away – Mary Oliver. I love her poetry for its simplicity, deep spirituality, the celebration of nature and the exploration of pain and suffering. Her childhood was not a happy one - marred by neglectful parents and a horrific experience of sexual abuse that plagued her with nightmares even in her adult years. And yet her faith in God is everywhere apparent. And this mix of pain and wonder, of nature and of God, of dreams and nightmares, makes her the perfect poet as we finish with the book of Genesis which shares those same themes. In her poem, Uses of Sorrow, she writes:

(In my sleep I dreamed this poem)
Someone I loved once gave me
a box full of darkness.
It took me years to understand
that this, too, was a gift. ~ Mary Oliver

Another dreamer would agree. His name was Joseph. He was also a victim of poor parenting and childhood abuse, and shares Mary Oliver’s understanding. At the end of his life, he says to the brothers who gave him a box of darkness: “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? ²⁰ You intended evil, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. ²¹ So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.” And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them. ~ Genesis 50:19-21. What are the implications of such a perspective? How might we view the boxes of darkness that find their way into our lives?

          1.    Evil is real and hurts.

Joseph’s story, like Mary Oliver’s, doesn’t shy away from acknowledging real pain and naming darkness. From a family system of deceit, favoritism and violence; his is a story of particular generational pain which reverberates throughout Genesis. From brothers who wish to kill him, then choosing to sell him into slavery, being imprisoned for doing the right thing, then being forgotten in jail after he helps someone get free – his story bears witness of real, human “evil”. And while Joseph will acknowledge in the end that God was not thwarted by “evil”, he does confess that it was evil nonetheless. Evil, according to Scripture, is not a mirage, a trick, or a myth. Joseph’s spirituality is not some fantasy or name-it-and-claim-it kind of faith that denies a real struggle with pain, suffering and wickedness.

A God who works through evil doesn’t make evil good. We can call it out, rage against it, oppose it and pray for its end – as we have been called to do and are want to do. And it’s important to recognize that the Bible doesn’t give us a systematic theology of how God’s sovereignty works; rather, it gives us stories (in the plural) that illustrate two seemingly dissonant truths at the same time: 1. human beings have free will and are responsible for their choices and those choices can be hurtful, harmful, shameful, fearful and evil; and 2. that God is in control and determines our end.

This means that evil is a story we can tell in all its rawness and pain. One of the reasons people avoid church is that they can’t bring their stories of pain into this place. They feel like they can’t name the “evils” of their lives. I once met a woman who had been a recovering alcoholic and Christian for 13 years. I was broken-hearted to learn, however, that she also struggled with a life-altering tragedy of having a child who had been sexually abused by a relative. And I watched her weep as she painfully told me that she couldn’t talk about that at church but would go to AA and talk about it where others could accept her pain without embarrassment or glib advice. And I wept at the thought that evil couldn’t be named. Joseph wants us to know that it can and it should.

But friends, there’s also something quite powerful about Joseph’s statement – it’s not simply that evil can be acknowledged and that God is not thwarted by “evil” but that even when people do “evil” God provides. Evil doesn’t have the last word over our lives. Maybe you’re not Joseph – maybe you’re a brother. Maybe you have done evil to someone. And Joseph wants you to know that you too are not outside of God’s plan, as if God only loves victims. You can confess your evil, receive forgiveness, and hear the words spoken not once but twice, “Don’t be afraid.”

  

            2.    A hidden God is not an absent God or a powerless One.

It’s interesting to recognize how often God seems absent in Genesis only to appear in surprising ways. Timothy Keller points out that in Joseph’s story it’s sobering to count all the “accidents” and “coincidences” that had to happen for Joseph to become a slave in Egypt.

• ·       Jacob had to decide to send Joseph to see how the brothers were getting along with the herd (Gen. 37:13).

• ·       Jacob had to believe that his sons were grazing at Shechem (Gen. 37:12).

• ·       If he had known that they were in Dothan (Gen. 37:17b), which was quite a bit further away and much more rural, he would likely not have sent his favorite son.

• ·       When Joseph comes to Shechem, he runs into a stranger who knew where his brothers had gone and was willing to initiate a conversation (Gen. 37:15-17).

• ·       If Joseph had not met the stranger, or if the stranger had been less-than-friendly, Joseph would have never have gone to such an out-of-the-way place that his brothers could hide him in an empty cistern which would find him in the path of Ishmaelites traders, who made him a slave.

• ·       Even this last move – being sold into slavery – only happens because Reuben, the oldest who planned on rescuing Joseph, was absent at the time of the purchase (Gen. 37:29).

How many “coincidences” is that? It’s easy to lose count. But here’s what seems obvious: at any point, even one of those things not happening could have changed the outcome and thus kept Joseph from being sent to Egypt. And that act of betrayal, scheming, viciousness, would never have occurred. And then what would’ve happened? Enormous numbers of people would have died of starvation – and Jacob’s broken family system of pride, narcissism, and hatred would have continued.

“You intended evil against me,” Joseph told his brothers, using a Hebrew verb that traces its meaning to “weave.” “You wove evil,” he was saying, “but God rewove it together for good.”

I can’t pretend to offer an answer that resolves all the problems of reconciling a good God with evil. And the Bible itself never tries to clarify this fully. Instead, it uses stories because, as we all know, where propositions may fail, stories can succeed. The story of Joseph, therefore, can stand as a living treatise that you can trust. And here is the point: there is a purpose and narrator for your life. And the narrator is good. This doesn’t mean that bad really isn’t bad or that God is some great Puppet-master in the sky. No, you are free to rage against evil and call it by name. You are also free to make choices and your choices can impact others, powerfully so. Yet God is also sovereign and free and thwarts evil in surprising ways. I want you to entertain the thought that though you can’t always see the plot you can know the end. And the end is this: God works good.

God, the Master Weaver, stretches the yarn and intertwines the colors, the ragged twine with the beautiful yarn, the pains with the pleasures. Nothing escapes His reach. And the good news is that no event or person, not even yourself, gets to write the conclusion. God is the one who narrates, as Paul Harvey used to say, the “rest of the story.”

          3.     “When one cannot see, one can at least still know.”

The French writer Rene Daumal said: “You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.” ~ Rene Daumal

The challenge of evil, suffering and God’s providence is the challenge, if not impossibility, of seeing and knowing what God is up to. It is perhaps most striking of all to realize that if God had given Joseph the good things he was likely asking for in prayer, it would have been a terrible tragedy.

And that brings us back to Dothan. In Genesis 37 we learn that it’s Dothan where Joseph was grabbed by his brothers and sold into slavery.

Imagine Joseph, a teenager, at the bottom of a well: terrified, hungry, cold and afraid – imagine the prayers that he must have prayed, the tears he probably shed, the panic he must have felt. Just imagine. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen. He doesn’t understand how it’s all going to work out and even though that understanding will come with time – it comes only after sufficient heartache, anguish and pain. It seems, in that place, he is utterly alone in Dothan.

Many years later, Dothan has changed. It became the site of a good-size city where the prophet Elisha and his servant found themselves trapped, besieged by Syrian troops, a hit squad sent by the king of Aram to kill the prophet. In 2 Kings 6:15-17, we read:

¹⁵ When the servant of the man of God got up and went out early the next morning, an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city. “Oh no, my lord! What shall we do?” the servant asked. ¹⁶ “Don’t be afraid,” the prophet answered. “Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” ¹⁷ And Elisha prayed, “Open his eyes, Lord, so that he may see.” Then the Lord opened the servant’s eyes, and he looked and saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha. ~ 2 Kings 6:15-17

Now, we know that God was just as active in Joseph’s Dothan as God was in Elisha’s. The difference is that one was given the grace to see and the other wasn’t. Friends, when you can’t see you can still trust God, Joseph tells us. When you can’t see, you can at least still know that God is good.

“Trust God!”, Martin Luther King, Jr., shouts, amidst the evils of racism and oppression. “Trust God.”, Mary Oliver whispers, after an experience of terrible abuse. “Trust God.”, Joseph sighs, having been wrongly sent to prison for doing the right thing. “Trust God.”, cries Jesus, in the garden of

Gethsemane knowing that death is coming soon. And remember that we look at the cross where our Savior was wrongly accused, tortured, and murdered. And we say, “Behold, the salvation of our God.” 

This song closed the sermon: You Reign, Chris McClarney

To Serve Man: What is Creation all about?

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. ² Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. ³ And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. ~ Genesis 1:1-3

²⁶ Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” ²⁷ So God created mankind in his own image,in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. ²⁸ God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.” ~ Genesis 1:26-28

⁶ When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. ⁷ Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves. ⁸ Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. ⁹ But the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?” ¹⁰ He answered, “I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid.” ~ Genesis 3:6-10

My kids were retro t.v. watchers, they get it from there mother. The more vintage, black and white, over-the-top acted the better. We own, for example, the entire series of the original Twilight Zone. In one of those episodes, aliens come to earth seeking to be our friends and to end global woes: war, famine, disease, poverty, etc. While many world leaders remain skeptical they are put at ease when cryptographers initially break through the alien’s language, noting that there premier book is titled, To Serve Man. Soon, humans are volunteering for trips to the aliens' home planet, which is said to be a paradise.  In the meantime, with the Cold War ended, the code-breaking staff has no real work to do, and continue to work on translating the book. At the end of the episode, the main character is boarding the aliens’ spaceship. As he mounts the stairs one of the cryptographers runs into the scene in great agitation and cries: “Mr. Chambers, don't get on that ship! The rest of the book To Serve Man, it's... it's a cookbook!” 

As we begin our series on the Pentateuch, I want to recognize that for many of us, these five books can feel all-together strange – written in a strange language from a a far-away place and time that for all practical purposes can feel very alien. But Jesus read these books and referenced them often to speak of God, himself, and love of others. A repeated phrase spoken by Jesus to his opponents was, “Have you not read . . . ?” And yet many of us feel a bit nervous – How do we read these books? Are these books “to serve man?,” so to speak, “to help people?”. Are they truly “to assist us” or are they there “to make of us a meal”? And I want to help you understand that it’s the former and not the latter. So that’s why my sermons will join the conversation to help point us toward their purpose. This is not a cookbook nor a scientific treatise about how things were created but a theological explanation about who God is, who we are (as human beings and our relationship to creation), why we were created, and what the problem is.

       1. Who is God?: the quiet, generous, and delighted One.

Most people are surprised to learn that Genesis was not the first book of the Bible written (it was most likely assembled during the Babylonian captivity). It was also not the first or only creation story in the ancient Near East. The oldest

written creation story was the Enuma Elish. It was the literary and cultural backdrop for the Genesis story and critical to know about it because it was the story that Genesis sought to overthrow. It told of a polytheistic world in which parent gods gave birth to children resulting in a conflict between the two (the parent gods determine to kill the younger ones because they are too loud). The parent gods were led by the mother god Tiamat while the children were led by Marduk. After a vicious battle, Marduk slays Tiamat cutting her into two with arrows to create the earth and the moon. The major background of creation in the Babylonian world was that creation came through conflict.

When we read Genesis, with the Enuma Elish in mind, one is struck by the quiet and orderliness of God’s creation activity. There is no cosmic battle, no chaotic fight, no monster god, no gods at all, save one. And this God peacefully speaks creation into existence. Moreover, God does so with an effervescent delight of an artist who revels in creation’s beauty – repeatedly admiring its goodness.

So God doesn’t create out of any chaos, or violence, nor any need but simply out of delight. Why would that matter? We can trust this God because he isn’t lonely, bored, or abusive but the source of our lives, even giving us his breath. We can trust this God because he has no need to be manipulated or appeased. We are told what God’s aim in creation is; and it is an aim directed entirely towards the benefit of ourselves and the rest of creation. It is in no way a selfish purpose. The world and everything in it, according to Genesis, exists because God’s peaceful, creative delight and unconditional

generosity. The theology of God and God’s creation was best summed up by a Jesuit priest who on people’s birthday would give them a card in which he would write: “God created us -- because he thought we’d enjoy it.” It was not for delight that human beings were created in the Enuma Elish, however. After Marduk slays Tiamat, it tells us, human beings were then made out of the blood, guts, and spit from other gods to “serve the gods” so that the “gods might be at ease.” So, if God doesn’t need us – is delighted out of freely creating – then what are human beings and why were we made and who are we?

          2.  We are embodied, equal, image-bearing keepers.

We are embodied beings. One element of the creation of human beings is that all parts of us are created by God as very good. And that we are created as embodied, spiritual beings which has a number of important implications. We read, for example, in chapter 2:7, “⁷ Then the Lord God formed a human [ha-adam] from the dust of the ground [ha-adamah] and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being (nephesh).” The Hebrew is playing on some words. A comparable expression might be “the human was formed from the humus.” It speaks to the interconnectedness of all human beings and all creation – we come from the same stuff. There is no better or worse clay, no platinum version over against basic mud. And we all have life because of God’s breath. What’s so interesting, however, in the Hebrew is that the word translated as “living being” in the NIV is the Hebrew word for soul. So your soul is not some separate part of yourself, some better version or truer aspect of who you are. Rather, it is body and breath, God’s breath, that make a soul, a living being. Your body then is spiritual, can connect with God, and we should reverence our own and the body of others. Jesus’ own teaching in Matt. 25 will make the powerful assertion that when we honor the bodies of others, we honor him. And when we dishonor the bodies of others, it is him we wound. And so the Genesis story tells us that we are all the same, all “image-bearers” of God. Once again, this is an astounding claim in the ancient world. In the ancient world, only kings bore the image of the gods. But in Genesis, all of us do, and we do so as embodied beings.

So we are equal beings but this equality is also quite extraordinary – not simply being a part of what it means to be human but also in our social relationships between the genders. And here again, we must be careful to pay particular attention to the words of the Bible itself. As we heard Helen read in Genesis 1: 27-28, notice that there is no differentiation between male and female, no separate, gendered tasks or roles. Both are made in the image of God and both are given the same job description, the same tasks. Furthermore, as the story repeats and the adam is created first with Eve out of the rib, some have tried to suggest that this shows a hierarchy but there are two important caveats. First, it’s hard to argue that being created from a part of the man entails subordination for the woman unless you want to argue that the man’s being created from the ground makes him subordinate to the earth. Secondly, these same people have argued that designating the woman as “helper” in Genesis 2:18 means she is subordinate to the man. However, this also doesn’t seem correct because this word “helper” is most often used in the Old Testament to describe God.

We bear God’s image because we were meant to be keepers. One of the clear points of the beginning story is that human beings are given “dominion” over creation by God. And in our current context it’s easy to hear that in very negative ways. But Genesis 2:15 helps clarify that dominion or power-sharing looks like. The adam, we are told, is placed in the garden to “till and keep it.” It’s true that some have understood such a mandate to mean that we can do whatever suits us best with the world God has made. But that word “keep [shamar]” doesn’t reflect that at all. In fact, the word is often translated as “guard,” “take care of”, or “look after.” In Numbers 6:24, Aaron offers what will become one of the most quoted blessings in scripture: “The Lord bless you and keep you; ²⁵ the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; ²⁶ the Lord turn his face toward you and

give you peace.”’ The word “keep” in that verse is shamar. So our relationship to creation is to mirror God’s relationship with us – that’s what it means to bear God’s image. It’s a responsibility to safe-guard creation as God’s co-regents. We bear God’s image when we care for creation as God cares for us.

          3.    The problem is a great divorce.

Four relationships of mutual trust are broken with the entrance of sin: 

• our relationship to God (“Where are you? . . .  I was afraid” 3:9-10), 

• our relationship to others (The woman you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate it. ~ 3:12), 

• other relationship to ourselves (“I was naked and hid myself.” ~ 3:10), and 

• our relationship to all creation (cursed is the ground because of you . . . thorns and thistles it shall bring for you” ~ 3:17-18). Everyone in the story is alienated from everyone else. Sin appears as power that once us alienated and alone.

One last remark. It’s easy to read the Genesis story as if it is God who curses us. The language certainly suggests it but I believe this is a mistake (e.g. in the same way that reading other portions literally would, God walking, God not knowing what’s happening in Sodom, etc.). First, the text is not in the literary style of a curse and does not use the typical formula of biblical curses. Second, the word “curse” appears in a passive participle form, which can also be read as a description of the natural consequences because of actions (“Because you had done this you are cursed”). Finally, if God was truly the author of the curse then it challenges the whole logic of redemption. If redemption is the vanquishing of a curse that God imposes then why do we need a redemption story at all, why can’t God simply lift it?

Creation is the beginning of a larger story. A story with twist and turns, surprises, and horrors. And these ancient, beginning stories offer a tale which names reality (we see the broken relationships) and offers us God’s intent. And that intent was not servitude, or violence, nor subordination but delight, equality and relationship - love. So if God intended all that? How should we then live? If God created the world with a sense of delight – how should we see our world? If God created us with bodies and breath and calls that a soul – how

should we treat our bodies and the bodies of others? If God established a relationship of equality between the sexes, what should a Biblical relationship between the sexes look like? If God seeks to love us, work with us, care for us – all of which we encounter in the first few pages – then how then should we live.

If God cares for all that God has created – so will I. Let's worship together with - So Will I (click on the title to hear our response to the sermon)