Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, 2009

Text: Genesis 41:1a, 8, 14-40

The Rev. Jerry Kistler

St. Stephen’s Reformed Episcopal Church

Montrose, Colorado

“Out of the Pits, into the Palace”

Our Old Testament lesson from Genesis today began with these words: “Then it came to pass, at the end of two full years, that Pharaoh had a dream.” Two full years. Two full years since what? In the chapters that precede this one we read about how Joseph’s brothers envied and hated him because he was their father’s favorite, and because of Joseph’s dreams that God would one day make him their ruler - which he seemed to enjoy sharing with them a little too much. As a result his brothers grabbed the opportunity to sell him into slavery in Egypt and to deceive their father into believing a wild animal had killed him, while making a bit of pocket change for themselves in the deal.

So life’s pretty bad for Joseph. But then it gets worse. He rises quickly in his Egyptian master’s house, becoming overseer over the whole estate, only then, by a twist of fate – or better, by a twisted woman – to take a nosedive down to lowest level of Egyptian society. He gets locked up in one of Pharaoh’s dungeons to be left there till he dies. Then who knows how many years he’s in there before another couple of guys are sent down there – Pharaoh’s chief butler and chief baker – both of whom have dreams that Joseph is able to interpret for them. But then when what he says about both of them comes true, the guy who gets to live and be restored to Pharoah’s service forgets about him, and forgets his promise to try to help him get out of prison.

That’s where Joseph’s been for two full years– down in the dungeons of Egypt, separated from the love of his father, haunted by the hatred of his brothers, forgotten by his friends.

So where’s God in all of this? When life goes into the pits, isn’t that the question we ask? “Where is God in all of this?” Every time there’s a disaster the question people always ask is, “Where was God?” “Where was God on September 11^th, 2001? Where was God when the Tsunami hit south Asia? Where was God when Katrina and Rita ravaged the Gulf Coast? Philip Yancey wrote a book entitled Where is God When It Hurts? It’s a question people what an answer to. That’s why Yancey’s book has sold over a million copies.

The answer to the question of where God was when Joseph’s life literally went into the pits is succinctly summarized for us by St. Stephen in Acts 7:9, 10. “And the patriarchs, becoming envious, sold Joseph into Egypt. But God was with him and delivered him out of all his troubles, and gave him favor and wisdom in the presence of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.” God was with Joseph down in the dungeon. God was with Joseph when his life went into the pits, molding and shaping and transforming him by that experience to be the person He wanted him to be. To be the person who would have the faith, and the humility, and the strength of character, when God finally did exalt him, to use his power and authority not for his own self-aggrandizement, not to gloat or to take vengeance on his brothers, but to accomplish what had been God’s plan all along: to save the lives of the very ones who had sold him into bondage; to save the covenant line from extinction, and to ensure that the promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would not go unfulfilled.

But Joseph had some growing up to do, first. Joseph had some growing up to do spiritually, before his dreams could be fulfilled.

In Genesis chapter 39 we read:

“Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt. And Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him down there. The Lord was with Joseph, and he was a successful man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian. And his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord made all he did to prosper in his hand. So Joseph found favor in his sight, and served him. Then he made him overseer in his house, all that he had he put under his authority. So it was, from the time he had made him overseer of his house and all that he had, that the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake; and the blessing of the Lord was on all that he had in the house and in the field. Thus he left all that he had in Joseph’s hand, and he did not know what he had except for the bread which he ate.”

So now maybe at this point Joseph was thinking, “Okay, so this is the way it’s going to happen. This is the way my dreams are going to come true. I can see it all starting to pan out before my eyes. I’m going to rise up through the ranks by my wisdom and skill and become a high ruling official in the Egyptian government. Then I’ll travel back to the land of Canaan some day, perhaps as an emissary of Pharaoh on some royal business, and then….then my brothers will finally have to bow down to me.” Maybe he’s still just a little haughty about his gifts, and how they’d enabled him to become “a successful man.” And maybe he still interprets his dreams as meaning that one day he’d be able to “lord it over” his brothers. Perhaps it seemed to him that this was the way the Lord was going to fulfill his dreams.

But then suddenly, everything Joseph had striven for, all the gains he’d been able to make by his wisdom and skill - the total success story he’d become, rising from rags to riches – are in an instant completely wiped out, turning his dreams into a nightmare. I love the way Moses, the writer, Moses, makes the transition from Joseph the success story, to Joseph the framed and forgotten prisoner, in the second half of verse 6: “Now Joseph was handsome in form and appearance.” Yes, and then Potifer’s wife noticed that Jospeh was handsome in form and appearance. And you remember the rest of the story.

So continuing in verse 11: “So it was, when his master heard the words which his wife spoke to him, saying, “Your servant did to me after this manner,” that his anger was aroused. Then Joseph’s master took him and put him into the prison, a place where the king’s prisoners were confined. And he was there in the prison.”

We can imagine what Joseph is thinking to himself, down in that dark, dank place: “How could this be part of the plan? How are my dreams ever going to be fulfilled? Maybe they were just dreams, nothing more.”

But verse 21 tells the whole story: “But the Lord was with Joseph and showed him mercy.” God was with him, transforming him, humbling him, making him a man of proven faith, so that when he was finally released from prison, and when Pharaoh himself addressed him and said, “I have heard it said of you that you can understand a dream to interpret it,” Joseph’s immediate response was, “Yeah, that’s right. I have this great talent to be able to interpret dreams!” No, that’s not what he said. He said, “It is not me; God will give Pharaoh an answer.”

You see, it took all those years of suffering and hardship to make Joseph fit the role God had shown to him in his dreams. But God was there with him, down in that dungeon, working out his purpose for Joseph’s life.

The apostle James writes, “Count it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be perfect [or mature], lacking in nothing.”

Where is God when it hurts? The mature answer of faith is: He’s there in the pain. He’s there in the hardship, like a master stone carver, chiseling away our hard edges, and molding our character.

The life of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn somewhat parallels the life of Joseph. Solzhenitsyn served in the Russian army during World War II where he rose to the rank of captain and was twice decorated for bravery. But then his whole world came crashing down when, on Feb. 8, 1945, he was arrested for having written a critical remark about Stalin in a letter to a friend – referring to him as “The Boss,” or in other words, “The Mob-Boss.” Sentenced without a trial, he spent the next eight years going from one frozen labor camp to another. His book One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, for which he received the Nobel Prize for Literature, is semi-autobiographical, reflecting his own inhuman experiences in the gulags. But Solzhenitsyn says it is was there in the gulags, through that terrible inhumane experience, that he came to the life of faith, so that when he was finally released from prison in 1953, his character had been so honed by his experience that his writings began to exert a profound moral and spiritual influence on soul of the Russian people, an influence that I believe at least contributed to the fall of communism. God was with Solzhenitsyn in the gulag.

But one of the things I find so fascinating about Solzhenitsyn is his view of the West, his view of our culture as having no soul because we have not had to suffer. In his famous commencement address he gave to the graduating class of Harvard University in 1978, he spoke these profound words:

“Today, well-being in the life of Western society has begun to reveal its pernicious mask…Should I be asked whether I would propose the West, such as it is today, as a model to my country, I would frankly have to answer negatively. No, I could not recommend your society as an ideal for the transformation of ours. Through deep suffering, people in our country have now achieved a spiritual development of such intensity that the Western system in its present state of spiritual exhaustion does not look attractive…. A fact which cannot be disputed is the weakening of human personality in the West, while in the East it has become firmer and stronger. Six decades for our people and three decades for the people of Easter Europe; during that time we have been through a spiritual training far in advance of Western experience. The complex and deadly crush of life has produced stronger, deeper and more interesting personalities than those generated by standardized Western well-being. Therefore, if our society were to be transformed into yours, it would mean an improvement in certain aspects, but also a change for the worse on some particularly significant points. Of course, a society cannot remain in an abyss of lawlessness as is the case in our country. But it is also demeaning for it to stay on such a soulless and smooth plane of legalism as is the case in yours. After the suffering of decades of violence and oppression, the human soul longs for things higher, warmer and purer than those offered by today’s mass living habits, introduced as by a calling card by the revolting invasion of commercial advertising, by TV stupor and by intolerable music.”

Profound and challenging words, indeed! But if Solzhenitsyn was right, we can understand why the Bible says over and over that suffering is a spiritual training ground. We can understand why James says, “Count it all joy, when you encounter various trials.” God is with us in our trials. God is with us when our lives go down into the pits. As a matter of fact, if you can hear it, God is the one who brings our lives into pits. He is a sovereign God. All things happen according to His purposes for our lives. As the Psalmist wrote, “You have laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in the depths… You have afflicted me with all your waves. You have put away my acquaintances far from me; You have made me an abomination to them” (Ps. 88:6-8). Remember what Joseph said to his brothers we he finally revealed himself to them. “It was no you who sent me here, but God.” God sent him down to Egypt as a slave. God made Him Potifer’s prisoner. God sent his life down to the pits. But God sent Him into the pits in order to raise him up to the palace.

That’s what God’s purpose was for Joseph’s life. And that’s what God’s purpose is for our lives. God let’s our lives go into the pits that we might be humbled, that we might stop relying on ourselves, on our own wisdom and power, and to learn to rely on Him alone, so that He might exalt us to the highest position one can achieve in this world: to the place of a person of faith – a person who has faith in God and in His Son, so that we might be exalted with Him to the heavenly palaces. Remember that Jesus’ life went into the very pit of death, on account of which God has highly exalted Him and given Him the second seat in Heaven. And the promise is if we trust him, even when our lives go down in the darkness, we will be raised up to sit with in heaven. St. Paul says we will be glorified together with Him, if indeed we suffer with Him (Rom. 8:17).

And so again, as the Psalmist writes, “I waited patiently for the Lord; And He inclined to me, and heard my cry. He also brought me up out of the horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my steps. He has put a new son in my mouth – Praise to our God” (Ps. 40:1-2a).

You know, there’s a great old hymn in our hymnal that concludes with these words:

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take;

The clouds ye so much dread

Are big with mercy, and shall break

In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,

But trust him for his grace;

Behind a frowning providence

He hides a smiling face. +