Reading the Bible 33 Genesis 41: 1-36 – Dreams of Things to Come

There are times in our lives that it doesn’t seem that things will ever get better.  We hope that the trials and tribulations of our lives will end and better times will finally arrive.  However, days turn into weeks and the weeks pile up and nothing seems to change.  For those of us who believe that God is with us we wonder if He or She has forgotten about us.  All our prayers and efforts seem to amount to less than nothing; they seem to be a waste of time. 

Reading the account of Joseph in prison I can’t but think that Joseph must have felt that way in spades.  God seemed to be with Joseph from his earliest years.  God had given him the gift of dreams – big ones that seemed wonderful.  However, the way he used and misused that gift led him to his exile and a prisoner in a foreign land.  That gift had stood him in good stead while in prison and he had predicted the fates of his two cell mates to the despair of one and the joy of the other.  However, even that blessing did not appear to do him any good.  When this chapter in his story opens we find that Joseph has been languishing in prison for two years.

In my imagination Joseph would have pretty much given up hope when a minor miracle happened.  The Pharaoh was visited with disturbing dreams which none of his magicians and other assorted wise men could interpret for him.  This jogged the memory of Joseph’s former cell mate who had benefited from Joseph’s ability in dream interpretation and tell the Pharaoh about it. 

The rest as they say is history.  Joseph successfully interprets Pharaoh’s dreams predicts the good times and bad times ahead – seven years of plenty and seven years of famine.  Joseph shows that he has gained wisdom from his trials and knows that his ability to interpret dreams is a gift from God.  Joseph advises the Pharaoh to make hay while the sun shines and as we shall see the Pharaoh is wise enough to know wise advice when he encounters it.

Those two years as I say must have seemed like an eternity to Joseph sitting in his prison cell with no rescue on the horizon.  And it is a valuable lesson for us when we are in the midst of a dark period in our lives.  God is with us whether it seems that way or not.  Good times or bad; feast or famine; God is with us.

Reading the Bible 32, Genesis 40 - Dreams, God’s Forgotten Language

Reading the Bible 32 Genesis 40 - Dreams, God’s Forgotten Language

After Joseph’s good deed is punished he finds himself in prison.  However, God had not forgotten him and he had not forgotten God.  Joseph’s God-given gift of dream interpretation was with him still.  Previously the rashly shared prophetic dreams of his predominance in his family had set in motion the events which were still unfolding.  However, that same gift now opens a way to release him from his current prison.  He is able to interpret the dreams of his cell mates – the Pharos’s cupbearer and baker

Now the baker and the cup-bearer are in a difficult situation.  They have had what could be called today, big dreams.  However, they believed there was no one there to interpret them.  They held the common understanding that not everyone could interpret dreams.  That was the special purview of priests, magicians and other assorted wise men.  Joseph rebuts this piece of orthodoxy by assuring them that interpretations belong to God.  He goes on to correctly interpret the prophetic dreams of the two men to the joy of the cupbearer and the sorrow of the baker.

Today our culture has generally dismissed the understanding that dreams come from God.  This understanding was the norm in biblical times and continued in the life of the early church being upheld by such church fathers as Tertullian and St. Augustine.  The language of dreams that Joseph was able to understand through God’s grace, is something that our world has generally lost.  However, it is something that can and is being rediscovered and relearned.  Today it is not the secret purview of the magicians and wise-men self-proclaimed or otherwise. 

Dream interpretation and understanding can be taught and learned.  However, it is art as well as skill and it is a useful reminder to treat them as sacred object and that they are in the hands of the divine source of all wisdom as Joseph noted.  It is important to be open to the inspiration that can come when trying to understand dreams. 

May your dreams be fruitful and may you be open to the wisdom contained in them. 

 

Reading the Bible 31: Genesis 39 – Joseph’s Good Deed Does Not Go Unpunished

I question that comes to mind reading the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife is, why do bad things happen to good people?  We are told that God was with Joseph and he prospered despite the challenging circumstances he found himself in.  He came to Egypt in the poorest of poor circumstances - as a foreign slave.  Yet he succeeds against all odds.  The talents that God has blessed him with enable him to rise to a position of prominence in his master’s house.  He is a loyal and faithful servant and does not yield to temptation when his master’s wife tried to seduce him.  He ends up in even a worse situation than when he arrived in Egypt – in prison for his trouble. 

People have struggled with that question throughout history and many books have been written on the subject including books of the Bible.  With some trepidation here are a few of my thought on that eternal question.  Joseph seems to be beyond blame for the misfortune that befalls him in this episode of his story. Unlike his earlier treatment by his brothers which could be blamed in part on his hubris, he appears to be faultless when fate turns against him this time.  So apparently being in God’s favour does not guarantee that your life will be without problems and challenges and even misfortunes or the most serious kind.  

Everything does turn out for the best for Joseph as we will see in later episodes and there does seem to be God’s hand guiding Joseph through all that happens to him.  However, when we consider all the twists and turn in his story we can’t help be filled with wonder at how easily it could have turned to disaster and God’s plan would have gone unfulfilled.    

I don’t believe that God's caused Potiphar’s wife to attempt to seduce Joseph or to lead Potiphar to have him thrown into prison.  I do believe that God can be with us and we will still suffer the slings and arrows or life fortunes.  People will act in ways that God does not intend for us to act because of free will and evil.  Unlike Joseph’s experience in many cases the ends does not turn out as God intends for us.  However, we have the guarantee that God will be with us in our journey wherever that many take us through all its twists and turns. 

Our part in this is to be intentional in understanding God’s will for us and where the Holy Spirit is leading us.  The vagaries of life may intercede and work to oppose that plan just as we can make the wrong decisions in life; however, God will be with us on that journey.  Thanks be to God.

 

Reading the Bible 30: Genesis 38 – What is displeasing in the Sight of the Lord?

The account of Judah and Tamar (as the passage in my bible is headed) has been inserted into the story of Joseph.  We have left Joseph being sold as a slave to Potiphar one of the Pharaoh’s officials with Jacob is mourning his apparent death.    This passage could have been introduced with the phrase, ’meanwhile back at the ranch’.  We are now introduced to a new branch of the family.  Judah has married a Adulamite woman (who doesn’t happen to be named – not important in the narrator’s eyes apparently) and they have started a family.  We now have an example of family values of a different kind indeed. 

Reading the account of Judah and Tamar I must wonder how anyone could question that the bible must be put into context to be understood.  Here we have an account of a widow - Tamar being required by custom/law to have intercourse with her brothers-in-law - Onan; of a father (Judah) ‘going into’ h is daughter-in-law (Tamara)  through deception – Judah only thought she was a temple prostitute so no harm done; the practice of Onanism being established as a form of birth control (again with a sister-in-law).  Judah also righteously is going to condemn Tamara to death because she has ‘played the whore’ and become pregnant outside the bounds of holy matrimony (as they existed them) – no hypocrisy or double standard there. 

And what is God doing while all this is happening?  We hear that Er, Judah’s first born is put to death by God because he was evil in God’s sight.  We have to wonder what terrible thing he did to bring down God’s wrath on him.  I would hazard a guess it wasn’t something such as not upholding the family values of today judging by the fact that God doesn’t seem concerned by all the carryings-on in the story.  Soory, I spoke too soon.  God did also strike down Onan for his terrible act of not impregnating his sister-in-law so perhaps all was not well with Judah and his family.

Apparently cultural context does matter when we are considering how we relate to others and how God views what is good in his sight. 

 

Sermon Sept. 1, 2013, 14th after Trinity Luke 17:11 To Be Made Whole

One of the principles of reading and hearing the Gospel is that we should be surprised each time.  Now this may be a surprising statement to you.  After all we all have heard the four Gospels read in church all our lives or for many years in any case.  How can it be that we will be surprised when we hear a Gospel passage that we have heard many times before?   

I believe that this principle is valid because if we have ears to hear and eyes to see God’s truth will be revealed to us in new ways each time we hear the Gospel.  This will happen as we will be changed in some way each time we hear the Gospel proclaimed in our lives. This will not happen automatically.  As part of what God does in and for us it helps for us to be involved.  This may not be required but it does work better if we are open and to pay attention to how God is working in our lives and to listen and hear what the message is that God has for us and respond to it.   That is why there were many people when Jesus walked among the people of Judea who did not recognize Jesus as the messiah.  They were not open to his message.  They were not prepared to receive the truth he was offering - the truth of eternal life.

What then is the surprise for us in this Gospel message we have heard today?   You may have been surprised by any number of things in this passage.  It may be that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus then had his focus on what he knew faced him when he arrived in that place.  He was on his way to meet his destiny – everything that would be the culmination of all that he taught and had done in the last three years.  It could be that the lepers that he encountered only had to ask for mercy and they received it immediately.  Jesus did not always respond so quickly to those he encountered – such as the resurrection of Lazarus when he delayed responding to Lazarus’s’ death for two days.   It could be any number of aspects in this passage.  That would depend on your particular circumstances and how the Gospel speaks to you.

For me the surprise was that the tenth leper was a Samaritan.  Now I probably was aware of that previously but it had not made a lasting impression because it did surprise me.  Perhaps it is because this lesson comes directly after the story of the Good Samaritan and I preached on that passage last week at St. Alban’s in Souris.  You could say that this is the parable of the Good Samaritan part 2.

As you didn’t hear my sermon last week I will summarize what I said about Samaritans.  They were close relatives of the Jews.  However, there was no love lost between those two branches of the family.  They were engaged in a family feud that ran long and deep.  You know what a family feud can be like – it can be very nasty.  The Samaritans claimed to be direct descendants of the Northern Israelite tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh, who survived the destruction of the Northern Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians in 722 BC. 

They continued to identify themselves as Israelites rather than descendants of Judah - or Jews.  They did not worship at the Temple.  There were in effect despised and seen as outcasts and not part of the chosen people of God.

So this man that Jesus heals has one strike against him.  The second strike is of course he is a Leper.  Lepers - those who suffer from leprosy - were also considered ritually unclean.  They could not participate in the religious life of the community and they would contaminate anyone they came into contact with.  They   could not worship at the temple.  They remained outcasts until they were healed of their leprosy – which was not the same as the disease we know today.  According to the Levitical code there were many things that made someone unclean such as a woman who was menstruating, or coming into contact with a corpse, or  anyone with a skin condition such as psoriasis which was considered Leprosy.  Someone who was unclean remained so until a priest declared he or she no longer suffered from the condition.  Therefore this Leper was doubly unclean – doubly an outsider and outside the covenant with God.

The next thing that was a surprise to me is the declaration by Jesus when the Leper returned to give thanks to Jesus for being healed of his leprosy.  Did you note what Jesus declared?  Well it easy to missed.  He declared, ‘Arise, go thy way, thy faith has made thee whole.”   Note that he did not say that the Leper was healed or cured – he said the Leper was whole.  All the lepers were healed of their leprosy.  They were made clean and Jesus sent them to the priests to fulfill the requirements of the law and enable them to reenter the life of the community fully. 

The central issue here is what does it mean to mean to be whole?  For this leper who was doubly outcast – a Samaritan and a leper – it meant that God’s grace was also available to him.  He was just as much a part of God’s kingdom – he was as much able to receive God’s grace as was any Jew.  He was whole because he saw that to live fully as a child of God he must know – truly know in his heart and mind and soul that he is loved by God and that love was shown to him through the person of Jesus Christ.  At that point he had been in today’s language saved.  We know that he knew that because he showed that in his action.  He showed that through the gratitude that he expressed spontaneously not on the instruction of the priests and not following the example of one of the other lepers.  He acted because he could not do anything else.  That expression of gratitude flowed from his very being.  It was an essential part of who he now was.

What does all this mean for us?   If we are to be able to live a life a gratitude  - to have a life that will truly be one that is grateful for all that God had graced us with  - we must truly believe in our hearts that that is true.  Does that mean that we despair if we don’t truly feel that at present and therefore that there is nothing I can do?  No – as I said at the beginning of this sermon – we can have ears to hear and eyes to see what God has done for us.  We can see and hear how God is working in our lives.  We can see and hear the evidence that we are children of God and that as His beloved children we have Jesus as our savior and redeemer.  We can respond to that.  We may not fully believe that but when we respond we will begin to see and hear the truth of that.  It does not have to happen is one great event as it did with the Leper.  It can happen little by little. One day it will be as natural as breathing.  Gratitude will be an integral part of who were are.  Thanks be to God.

Evangeline, A Love Story for the Ages

Lorna and I went to see Evangeline at the Confederation Centre in Charlottetown on Saturday.  It is a new musical by Ted Dykstra.  It was recommended to me by a friend/relative which I can now thank him for and pass on the recommendation to others.  I am generally not a great lover of musicals but this is definitely the exception that proves the rule (I'm not a great fan of that expression either but this exception proves the rules as well).  The music was enjoyable and fit well in the context rather than being an excuse for singing which I find doesn’t always happen (e.g. Les Misérables the movie).  The production was of high value with the set being simple but effective using projections on a back screen which included maps of the journeys of the hero and heroine.  I even enjoyed the dancing which says a lot –not being a fan of dance usually - including the liturgical kind.  The acting and singing were exemplary (again unlike Les Misérables)

The story is adaption of the epic poem of the same name by Longfellow which recounts the long attempts by the two lovers Evangeline and Gabriel to reunite after being separated tragically on their wedding day.  The lovers’ story is backgrounded by the events around the expulsion of the Acadians from Nova Scotia by the British to various places in the United States.  The lovers search is a life-long event which is made all the more tragic by many times their paths almost meet.  Gabriel dies in Evangeline’s arms in the final scene with the being not a dry eye in the house.  I was not really familiar with the events around the expulsion of the Acadians so it gave me a great introduction to that unfortunate part of Canadian history  - we can always blame it on the British so our Canadian holier than thou virtue is intact.    

I hope you do get the opportunity to take in a production in the future.  I definitely recommend it and trust it will be mounted in other venues in the future or it could be an excuse to come to beautiful PEI. 

Who's the Samaritan in Your Life

Sermon August 25, 2013

13th Sunday after Trinity - Luke 10: 25

The parable of the Good Samaritan is certainly one of those well-known passages from the bible - know well by people of our generation anyway.  The danger with a well-known passage such as this is twofold (if not more).  First when we are listening to it being read, we are likely to not pay attention.  We will think, Oh yes – the Good Samaritan – that’s a nice story – I’ve have heard it so many times that I certainly know this story.”  And so the listener doesn’t listen and if you don’t listen – you don’t hear what God is telling you.  Well, that the first danger – the one you have to pay attention to.

The second danger is for the preacher.  The congregation listening to the Gospel may say to him or herself after she has stopped listening, ‘I’ve heard quite a few sermons on the Good Samaritan.  I wonder if this preacher will say anything new or will it be the same thing I’ve heard before?”  That’s the danger for me.  Will I be able to say something that will reveal a new perspective on this word of God? Or will it be the same old – same old. 

As the hymn says, it is an old, old story of Jesus, of Jesus and his love –  a story that he is telling us.  One of the principles of the Gospel is that it should surprise us every time we read the Gospel.  If we read it with fresh eyes and listen with fresh ears it should surprise us because we will be different people from the last time we read it and hearing the Word of God should change us.  So I am going to read it again and see if you can hear it again for the first time…..

Was there anything that surprised you when you heard it this time?  Was there anything that you hadn’t heard before?  Well, one of the things that I became aware of when I read it a few days ago to begin to write my sermon is that it is really in three parts – three acts.  The first act sets the scene.  We have the person coming to Jesus to ask him as question.  The second act is meat of the passage – the parable that Jesus tells to make his point to those who are listening.  The third act is the climax – the message – the truth that Jesus want us – the listener to hear and inwardly digest.

In act one the thing that stands out in this reading is that the person who approaches Jesus is a lawyer.  Now, if it weren’t for this passage I wouldn’t have thought that there were lawyers in Jesus day.   I would have thought that issues of law would have been handled by the priest and other religious people.  But here we have a lawyer asking Jesus – a rabbi – a teacher for his view on the law.  Jesus turns the question on the questioner - a good Socratic method and answers a question with a question – in this case a question of law.  Jesus takes the game to the lawyer’s home court.  And the lawyer answers in good lawyerly fashion – with a summary of the law.  Jesus – the good teacher affirms his student – applauds him and tells him that if he does what the law says- loves God and his neighbour he will live.  These are the two great commandments we recite at the beginning of the service.

All well and good.  It could have ended here.  But Jesus has engaged him and drawn the lawyer into his sphere.  The lawyer now asks the question Jesus intends him to ask, “Who is my neighbour?”  Jesus now has him fully engaged – just as we should be if we are listening.  Well, who is our neighbour?  Jesus draws the lawyer and us further into his realm by the cast of characters in the story.  Who are the players – the characters in the story? ….

Well we have the traveler – who is not identified – but we assume that he is a good Jew.  We have the priest and the Levite – good upright Jews and of course the Samaritan – the hero.  Who else?  Well let’s not forget the thieves (we don’t know how many of them there are – but more than one).  And finally – well we have the inn keeper. 

The scene is set by the traveler being preyed upon by the thieves.  Of course he is travelling in dangerous country.  The audience – the lawyer and others will automatically identify with the traveler.  He is a citizen who has to travel in dangerous country – probably a familiar experience for people in Jesus time – travelling was not a pleasant and safe undertaking like today – well perhaps like it used to be until recent times.  The listeners could all picture themselves in the traveler’s shoes.  The dramatic event happens – the traveler is robbed and left for dead – a dramatic but not a surprising turn in the story.  Now here comes the twist.  Two upstanding God-fearing holy people come along and pass by on the other side.  These are the associates of the listener – the lawyer – good upright Jews.  People like him.  He can imagine that very well happening – and he is probably filled with righteous anger.  What happens next?  Well our hero comes to the rescue.  But another twist to the story -the hero is a Samaritan - you can almost hear the intake of air as the lawyer gasps in surprise.  A Samaritan!  Shock and horror – a despised outsider – he’s the one who comes to the rescue of the good Jew.  The Samaritans who are almost as bad as Gentiles.  Perhaps even worse – they are the poor cousins to the Jews who did not worship at the temple and were basically part of a family feud that was long and deep.  There was no love lost between the children of Judah and the Children of Samaria. 

No love lost and yet this is the neighbour who showed mercy and love   - the example that the good Rabbi Jesus held up as a paragon of the law.  The question for us today is - who is the Samaritan in your life?  Who is the one who you as a good upright person hate to have come to your recue?  Who would you hate to have save your life?  Who would be the last person you would want to owe a debt so great that it could not be repaid?

That is the Samaritan in your life.  That is your neighbour.  That is the one who showed mercy to the good Jew.  That is the one Jesus - our Saviour and Redeemer tells us we must love if we are to receive eternal life.  Amen.