God’s Providence and Human Plans Genesis 45:1-15, Psalm 133 “And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life.” Genesis 45:5 The Reverend Joanna Adams Morningside Presbyterian Church Atlanta, Georgia August 14, 2005

God’s Providence and Human Plans
Genesis 45:1-15, Psalm 133
“And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life.” Genesis 45:5
The Reverend Joanna Adams
Morningside Presbyterian Church
Atlanta, Georgia
August 14, 2005

Friday’s New York Time’s brought news of interest to the baby boom generation, whose eyesight isn’t what it used to be. Two of the biggest publishers of mass market paperbacks intend to use larger type and leave more space between the lines. A spokesman for Simon and Shuster emphasized that sales of romances, mysteries, westerns and thrillers are in decline because their traditional customers, born between 1946 and 1964, are moving into the bi and tri-focal stage of life and not because the reading public has lost interest in juicy page turners.

Whatever our age or stage in life, we humans love a good story. I am just back from a week at the beach where I polished off an average of a book a day, and that was with major cooking responsibilities and a house-full of family that included two grandchildren who wanted to be read to three times a day. I was thankful that in the evening, the children preferred DVDs over the written word. If there is anything you want to know about Snow White or the Heffalumps, just ask me. I am a walking encyclopedia.

Across the centuries, one of the all-time favorite stories of Jews and Christians has been the narrative of the life of Joseph in the Book of Genesis. The story pushes the boundaries of our understanding of what is legitimate to hope for in a broken world. It serves as a mirror, revealing the deeper realities that lie beneath the surface of experience. It is a home base around which the faith community gathers generation after generation asking, “Who are we?” and “Who is the God before whom we live and in whose providence human events unfold?”

If you went to Sunday School as a child, you couldn’t have missed hearing about Joseph as a boy and how envious his brothers were of him because their father, Jacob, had chosen Joseph as his favorite. Joseph had a coat of many colors made for him to distinguish him from the other eleven sons. You get the sense that Joseph wore that coat all the time. And if that weren’t enough to drive his brothers wild, Joseph made a habit of telling them about his dreams. A typical one featured the sun, the moon, and eleven stars bowing down to Joseph. In another, eleven sheaves of wheat fell before Joseph’s sheaf of wheat. Finally, the brothers had had it with Joseph. They threw him into a pit and then sold him to slave traders passing through Canaan on their way to Egypt.

That dramatic betrayal is just the beginning of the saga. Following close on the heels of murderous sibling rivalry come avarice, greed, sex, politics, and palace intrigue of the first order. Upon his arrival in Egypt, Joseph, who had been the most favored one in the land of Canaan, is sold as a slave. The buyer is a prominent government official named Potiphar, who becomes so impressed with Joseph that he makes him overseer of his house and in charge of all that he has.

Soon, however, Joseph is drawn into a difficult situation by Potiphar’s wife. She seeks his sexual attention. Joseph declines. She accuses him of propositioning her, and he ends up being thrown into prison. Once again, he lands on his feet, and what seems to be a bleak situation turns out to be a crucial turning point, not only in Joseph’s life but in the lives of all the people who lived in the ancient Middle East.

The chief jailer thinks Joseph is so wonderful that he puts him in charge of the whole prison. (You know people like Joseph. You love ‘em and you hate ‘em. Know what I mean? They make lemonade out of lemons every time. You’re glad for them but, good grief, there they go again!)
As far as I can tell, Joseph didn’t spend a minute making license plates while he was serving his time. Instead, he earned a big reputation interpreting other people’s dreams, so much so that one day, the Pharaoh himself sought Joseph’s assistance with a troubling dream, one which Joseph understood to be a prediction of a famine in the land seven years hence. Joseph recommended that food be gathered up during the good years immediately ahead, so that when famine came, Egypt would be prepared, and disaster would be avoided.

The proposal pleased the Pharaoh so much that he put Joseph in charge of the whole project and gave him a position second only to him-- Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense and Homeland Security all rolled into one. During the famine years, all the world came to Egypt to buy grain, including Joseph’s brothers. They had been sent by their father Jacob, who had been led to believe years before that his most beloved son had been torn apart by wild animals. When the brothers appeared before Joseph, he recognized them, but they did not recognize him. Never in a million years could they have imagined the unbelievable turn of events that had taken place since they had stripped their brother of his special robe and thrown him into the pit with no water.

After his brothers had bowed themselves before him with their faces to the ground and asked to buy food, Joseph played with them for awhile. First, he accused them of being spies. Then, he hid some of the palace silver in their knapsacks and accused them of stealing. Then, he couldn’t stand it any longer. In the scene we read earlier, he revealed his true identity. “Joseph could no longer control himself before all those who stood by him and he cried out, ‘Send everyone away from me.’ So no one stayed with him as he made himself known to his brothers. He wept so loudly that the Egyptians heard it, and the whole household of Pharaoh heard it… ‘I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?’ The brothers were too dismayed to say a single word, but that was alright because Joseph wasn’t nearly finished. He went on to try to absolve them from their guilt. ‘Don’t be distressed with yourselves. God sent me on ahead of you here to preserve life. Our family, the chosen people of the Lord, will not go on, generation to generation, without being wiped out by famine. It was God who made me a father to Pharaoh and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Now, why don’t you go get my father. In fact, why don’t you bring the whole family here so that we can live together and prosper together?’” And so it came to pass, but not before he had kissed all his brothers and wept upon them, and they had all talked long into the night.

Think of how tempting it must have been to Joseph to avenge the terrible wrong that had been done to him. He could have sent the brothers away. He could have killed them. He had the power. But he chose reconciliation over retribution. He chose to make peace with those who had mistreated him and thereby ensured the survival of the divine promise given to his great grandparents Abraham and Sarah to make of their descendants a blessing to all the earth.

In this story that is so full of surprises, I see Joseph mirroring the way God is with the world. How does Paul put it in II Corinthians? “In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.” God had a choice. God had the power. God had every reason “to reject the wayward human family,” but instead, God loved them and forgave them and restored them by identifying with them completely, even to the extreme of suffering and dying with them and for their sake. The “them” I am talking about is us!

Joseph is a mirror through whom the light of God’s grace shines. Jesus is the sun and the moon and the stars. He is the light. In him, we see the fullness of God. Here is the question, though. Was it God who nailed Jesus to the cross, or was it the Roman soldiers? Was it God who threw Joseph into the pit, or was it his envious, angry brothers? Was it Joseph’s good heart that saved his brothers or God’s compassion at work? In the story we have before us today, human action and divine providence converge, but in ways that become clear only in retrospect.
The word “providence” literally means “to see ahead,” but in actuality, divine providence reveals itself in hindsight. In Christian theology, the doctrine of providence refers to hidden, constant, sovereign intentions and actions of God at work in, through, and in spite of human actions and intentions. Our forefather John Calvin wrote, “From the knowledge [of providence] follows gratitude of mind for the favorable outcome of things, patience in adversity, and freedom from anxiety about the future.”

Providence does not say that God controls all things. Providence says that God is at work in all things, the good and even the bad. In Joseph’s story, the brothers’ murderous intentions, the slave traders’ cold and inhuman business deal, the attempted seduction by the wife of an Egyptian poobah are all drawn into God’s great plan in order to serve the purposes of grace.

Providence says that when everything appears to be lost, there is more going on than what you can see. Providence says that human destiny is under divine control, the good and the bad, the gains and the losses, all of it useful to God.

Providence says that God is acting, not only in our own lives, but in the broader realms of culture and society. We cannot see it fully, but don’t you sense it in a more hopeful way than in recent years? Jim Wallis has returned to Washington following his national tour of town hall meetings talking about “God’s Politics, Why the Right Gets it Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It.” He is shouting from the roof tops his conviction that God is acting in a new way. For the first time the world has the knowledge, the technology, and the resources to end extreme poverty as we know it, he writes. All that is lacking is the political and moral will to do it. He sees faith communities as the catalyst for generating the moral will. In June there was an amazing procession of religious leaders from almost every faith tradition in America in a service at the National Cathedral focusing on poverty and hunger. If Joseph and the Pharaoh could end hunger thousands of years ago, why shouldn’t we be able to do it now? God is bringing people together. God is giving the know how and the foresight. God is acting in history with mercy and through human wisdom and compassion. How do I know that? Because the Bible tells me so. Why would God stop being God now?

Oh, this business of success and failure. Who can say finally which is which anyway? I think of how Jesus was born in a stable because the door to the inn was closed to his mother and father. I think of how on the night he was betrayed, Jesus prayed to God in the garden of Gethsemane to remove the cup of suffering that he was about to drink. “Yet, not what I want but what you want” be done. (Mark 14:36) I think about how he was mocked and scorned and crucified, and how, in his willingness to give up control, he gained the ultimate victory over death and sin. I think about how his living Spirit is still on the loose in the world, pushing us, pulling us, lifting us up to see new horizons.

In his biography of Martin Luther King Jr., Taylor Branch likes the story of when Martin Luther King received his doctorate from Boston University and was invited to preach a trial sermon at a little church in Montgomery, Alabama. At the same time, he was invited to preach and be interviewed by a larger, more prestigious church in Chattanooga, Tennessee. After his sermon in Chattanooga, the congregation met and voted not to call Dr. King. Too inexperienced, they thought. It turned out that the Montgomery church was willing to take a chance on the young man. He accepted the call. Three months after King’s arrival in Montgomery, a woman named Rosa Parks got on a bus in Montgomery, and when the driver instructed her to move to the back of the bus, she refused. All kinds of upheaval erupted as a consequence, and the minority leadership of Montgomery did not know to whom to turn, so they turned to the new young preacher over at Dexter Avenue Baptist to lead the crusade that became the Civil Rights Movement in America.
Let me close by returning to the personal for a moment. Sisters and brothers in Christ, I do not know the estrangements in your life, but I imagine that you, like Joseph, have a few to deal with. I certainly do myself. I do know that hatred and bitterness will never make you happy or satisfied. I do know that the world God is building has no use for revenge. Whatever resentment you are holding on to, let it go today. I do know that there are a few good people at Morningside who can’t get over things that happened in the past. Let it go today. Reconciliation is not always possible or advisable, but forgiveness always is, by the mercy of God. So is a fresh start. Look at all the times Joseph had to reboot, but he kept dreaming and trusting that a divine hand was at work in each new chapter life offered up. And don’t you see that it wasn’t just Joseph’s life? He was put where he was and given the gifts he was given so that he could be a part of something that was greater than himself.

Here’s the last thing. You’ve got to love what God did with Joseph. He started out as a smarty-pants young man who loved to tell people how great he was, and he turned into the kind of fellow who could say to his brothers when they were begging for his forgiveness, “Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God?” The final work of grace is to make us gracious.
To God be the glory yesterday, today and forever. Amen.

Notes:
1. William J. Willimon, Acts, The Interpretation Series, John Knox Press, 1988.
2. Fleming Rutledge, Help My Unbelief, Wm B. Eerdmans, 2000, p. 247.
3. Pat Conroy, My Losing Season, Doubleday and Co., 2002.
4. Paul Achtemeier, Roman, Interpretation Series, John Knox Press, 1985.