Framed!

Gossip. It's an ugly part of life. This is not a sermon about why you should avoid doing it; because I assume that you know the answer to that already. No, this is a sermon about how to respond when you are its target. We can take a lesson from Joseph, who was that kind of target during his life in Egypt.

Well, well, well. How the mighty have fallen! When we met Joseph last week (Genesis 37:1-36), he was daddy’s baby, a pampered pet in a beautiful technicolor dream coat. His brothers hated him for it, and for the fact that Joseph had ratted them out to daddy at least once. They didn’t dare to do anything to him until they got him alone in the sheep fields; but when they finally did, it wasn’t pretty! They ripped that coat right off his back; they threw him down into a dry well; and then they sold him to a caravan headed for Egypt. Joseph went from pampered pet to slave boy in one quick step. He must have done some pretty hefty thinking while he was traveling with that caravan, because by the time he arrived in Egypt, Joseph had changed from a spoiled brat into a responsible young man. An official named Potiphar bought him as a slave, and it didn’t take long before Joseph was running his whole household -- and running it well.

But there was trouble brewing (Genesis 39:1-23). Joseph was a very handsome young man: bronzed, buff, big soft eyes. I imagine that he looked something like George Clooney. (If you don’t like George Clooney, you can substitute any leading man that you prefer.) When Mrs. Potiphar got a good look at him, she decided that Joseph was too good to waste just doing the monthly budget – if you catch my drift – and she turned into a cougar. She ran after Joseph day and night until he finally told her, in so many words, to knock it off. He wasn’t about to sleep with the wife of his boss even though she was hot to trot! One day, though, she got Joseph alone in the house; and when she did, she threw herself at him. It was a very bad situation. Oh, he got away from her, but a woman scorned is a dangerous woman; and so she cried “Rape.” It was a classic case of “he said, she said,” and since “he” was a slave and “she” was the boss’s wife, you know who Potiphar believed. Joseph, who was absolutely innocent, was thrown into prison.

Have we ever been in Joseph’s place? Sure, we have! We may not have been in prison, but I’ll bet that every one of us has been the victim of a lie at one time or another. Of course, we usually don’t call it “being the victim of a lie.” We call it “being the target of gossip.” But it’s the same thing. A story starts, and the grapevine quickly takes it up. Phones start to ring. “Did you hear about Connie? Well, let me tell you…” The lady at the hairdresser’s shop passes it on. “Did you hear about Connie? Well, let me tell you…” Pretty soon, nearly everybody in town has heard it. “Did you hear about Connie?” “I sure did! Can you believe it?!” But the story about Connie isn’t true. Oh, it may have a kernel of truth somewhere way down deep; but more often than not, it’s a Mrs. Potiphar story. And the trouble is that Connie will have to bear the consequences of that story. She will be imprisoned in the judgements of her friends and neighbors just as certainly as Joseph was imprisoned behind iron bars.

And what does Connie do then? Well, she can protest that the story is as fake as the Loch Ness monster, but once a story gets going, it has a life of its own; and it’s as difficult to kill as the Hydra. Do you know about the Hydra? The Hydra was a monster of Greek myth; and it had a whole bunch of heads. You couldn’t kill it because if you cut one head off, two heads would grow back in its place. Mrs. Potiphar stories are just like that. When you try to kill it, it just gets bigger.

So Connie really has only two options. She can get angry about the story, rant and rave about how unjust it is, and vow revenge on the people who are spreading the story around. She can refuse to speak with them and refuse to be seen with them. She can even make up smear stories about the people who are smearing her. In other words, she can behave just like Mrs. Potiphar herself. But that’s not really a helpful response, is it? A much better response would be to admit that the story bothers her, but refuse to let it influence the way that she lives her life. She can go right on loving people, and caring for people, and doing what she can to be a good person regardless of what other people think. In other words, she can take the high road.

That’s what Joseph did; and he impressed even the prison warden with his strength of character. The end of today’s scripture tells us what happened when he did. “The warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison, and he was made responsible for all that was done there.” (Genesis 39:22) Mrs. Potiphar’s lies may have put Joseph in prison, but because he had learned to take the high road – not to return evil for evil – although his life took a nasty detour, it wasn’t ruined entirely.

We are called to take the high road, too; because that’s what Jesus tells us to do. It is inevitable that we will be victims of misunderstanding, or jealousy, or even hate at some time in our lives. But it is NOT inevitable that we respond in kind. Our whole Jewish-Christian tradition tells us not to return hate for hate. Rabbi Jonah Pesner, the Director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, wisely advises, “Our world is full of darkness, so we respond with light.” We can be part of the light that shines even when we are targets of Mrs. Potiphar’s darkness. A poem that Mother Teresa hung on the wall of her home in Calcutta is worth remembering. It said, in part:

If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.

If you are honest and sincere, people may deceive you. Be honest and sincere anyway.

If you find serenity and happiness, some may be jealous. Be happy anyway.

The good you do today will often be forgotten. Do good anyway.

Give the best you have and it will never be enough. Give your best anyway.

In the final analysis, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

Dreamers

Dreamers can be irritating. They can't seem to accept the world the way that it is. Joseph was a dreamer like that. In this sermon, I take a look at Joseph the dreamer -- and at all dreamers who turn the world on its head.

Talk to any teacher for more than a few minutes and you’ll hear about the student who’s a real problem. There’s one in every class: a student who doesn’t pay attention, who doesn’t follow the rules, who insists on doing his own thing. Oh, I’m not talking about the nonconformist with blue spiked hair, a nose ring, and a tattoo that goes all the way down his arm. I’m talking about the daydreamer. You know who they are. It’s the girl who stares vacantly out the window while the teacher is talking and the boy who never gets his homework done because he’s too busy doodling on his note paper. Daydreamers would rather watch flies than swat them. They get caught up in wondering what it would be like to see the world like a fly does: through big green, multifaceted eyes. Sometimes we wonder whether daydreamers are even on the same planet as the rest of us! They ask such off the wall questions. It can be really irritating at times. For example, after a high school teacher has just concluded a very nice lecture on the digestive system of mammals – just ask her; she’ll tell you how much work she put into it – some daydreamer will ask, “Why do we have to eat animals? Don’t they have feelings, too?” Dreamers just won’t accept the world the way it is!

Joseph was a dreamer. He was the youngest of 12 brothers: the runt of the litter. And because he was the baby of the family, daddy always liked him best! Joseph got all kinds of things the other boys didn’t get – like that beautiful coat of his, for example. Why, it was fit for a king! That alone would have made his brothers jealous; but on top of it, Joseph was one of those irritating dreamers! His dreams took the comfortable world of his brothers and turned it upside down. First Joseph dreamed about sheaves of wheat. In his dream, his brothers’ sheaves all bowed down to Joseph’s sheaf. That was bad enough. But then he had another dream that was even worse!  In that one, the sun, the moon, and the stars all bowed down to Joseph! What did his brothers say to that? I’ll tell you what they said. They said, “You fool! We’ll never bow down to you!  You’ll be bowing down to us because we’re older than you are – and everyone knows that the older brothers are the one who have all the power in the family! Who do you think you are, anyway?” No, Joseph’s brothers didn’t like his dreams one bit; because those dreams predicted that this kid – the runt of the litter – might end up being more important than they were.

That’s the trouble with dreamers. Instead of just accepting the way things are, they insist on dreaming about the way that things might be. The late Bobby Kennedy captured it beautifully when he declared: “Some people see things as they are and ask why. I dream things that never were and ask why not.” But that can cause some major problems. When we dream things that never were, we step on the toes of people who want to keep things the way they are right now! The ones who have power aren’t about to share it with any dreamers! That’s obviously how Joseph’s brothers felt, because they tried to get rid of him! One minute, Joseph is looking for his brothers so he can report back to their father; and the next, he’s sitting at the bottom of a dry pit with no way out! Can’t you just hear his brothers taunting him?  “See, Joseph: this is where your dreams will get you! Watch us bow to you as we’re looking at you in that pit!” Only the intervention of his brother Reuben kept him from being slaughtered like one of the sheep in their flock. That’s what happens to lots of dreamers.

You may remember Martin Luther King, Jr. He had a dream, too.  He had a dream that one day, blacks and whites would be treated equally in our country. During his life, of course, that wasn’t yet the case. African-Americans in that time had few opportunities and not much hope that things would ever change. And powerful people wanted to keep things just the way they were. But Martin Luther King had a dream; and he talked about it in a speech that he gave shortly before his death.

I have a dream that one day, even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice… (and) oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Yes, indeed, Martin Luther King had a dream. But he wasn’t as lucky as Joseph. He was killed because of his dream. Being a dreamer is a risky business.

The prophets of ancient Israel were dreamers, too. And it wasn’t any safer for them than it was for Joseph or for Martin Luther King, Jr. Micah dreamed of a people who did justice, loved kindness, and walked humbly with their God. Of course, nobody much listened to him. Amos dreamed of a country where the rich shared their wealth with the poor. The people he talked to told him to go back where he came from. Jeremiah dreamed of a world in which God’s teaching is written on the hearts of every single person! They threw him into prison. And then, of course, there was that rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth. He was the biggest dreamer of all! He dreamed of a world that he called “the Kingdom of God”? Maybe you’ve dreamed about that, too. In God’s kingdom, everyone is fulfilled and at peace. Relationships are whole there. There aren’t any misunderstandings or arguments or grudges. There aren’t even any power struggles! That’s because in God’s kingdom, God has all the power, the way it should be now. You all know what happened to Jesus.  He was even more of an irritation to the powerful people of his day than Joseph was to his brothers. Jesus was slaughtered, killed just like a sheep from the flock.

But it’s a funny thing about dreams – they often refuse to die. The dreams of the prophets aren’t dead, and neither is the one that Jesus dreamed! All of us who call ourselves Christians are still dreaming about it – about the Kingdom of God where everything is as it should be. And I hope that we share that dream with everyone around us, just like Joseph shared his dreams with his brothers. After all, why would we want to keep this beautiful dream to ourselves? And we should be working on making that dream a reality every chance we get. Oh, we know that the Kingdom won’t arrive completely until God puts it in place at the end of time. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t work towards it now! We know what kinds of things stand in the way of that dream: greed and manipulation, hate and oppression, violence and selfishness and injustice. If we believe in that dream, we should be speaking out against all of those things, even though dong that won’t win any popularity contests. But it will make us faithful Christians.

Ah, yes – the dreamers. What irritations they can be! But thank God for both dreamers and for their dreams! Their imaginations are not limited by what they see around them. May we join with them in catching a vision of the world as it might be: transformed by grace and ruled by love.

Such a Time as This

Last Saturday, we were horrified at the events that took place in Charlottesville, Virginia. This sermon is a response to the hate-inspired violence there.

There are often times in our lives when we just have to do what needs to be done. During those times, we have to drop everything and take care of business! Fortunately, most of those times don’t involve anything that’s really important. This summer, for example, Fred planted 52 tomato plants in our side yard. We put them in late, so they aren’t bearing yet. But lots of little tomatoes are setting on; and when they ripen – and they will ripen all at the same time; tomatoes have a habit of doing that – then we will both need to drop everything else and deal with all those tomatoes. We’ll have to eat them, freeze them, can them, or give them away. If we don’t, they will rot on the vine and be wasted. Now, if we don’t use them, no harm done (except that next winter, I will wish that I had canned some of them). But there are other situations that are much more serious than lots of ripening tomatoes. Esther was in one of those situations (Esther 4:1-17). Not only her own life, but the existence of the entire Jewish community was threatened by the king’s edict. She faced a terrible choice: approach the king without being summoned, and risk being put to death; or die with the rest of the Jewish community. In the end, her courage saved her own life and the lives of all her fellow Jews.

Now, we’re not in a situation like that of Esther. But other people are. On Saturday, hundreds of white nationalists and neo-Nazis gathered at a park in Charlottesville, Virginia to proclaim their hate for anyone who is not a white, Christian male. They shouted threats of violence against people who they claim are “replacing them” – Jews, Muslims, people of color, and even women. They carried clubs, pepper spray, and guns. It was an organized demonstration in the name of hate. If there was ever a time for Christians to do what must be done, it is right now. This is such a time. You may ask what exactly we can do. How can we combat the hate and the anger that seems to be boiling all around us? The answer isn’t new. In fact, it’s as old as the gospel itself. What do we do? We love. That’s easy, isn’t it? Oh, no, my friends. Loving is the hardest thing that we can do if we do it the way that Jesus intended. These days, “love” can be a very wimpy emotion. We have made it into a Hallmark card, complete with hearts, flowers, and four-line poems. But that’s not love, that’s sentimentality! The love that Jesus preached had very little to do with hearts and flowers. Jesus’ kind of love involved hanging around with people that no respectable person would associate with, accusing the religious types of being a bunch of hypocrites, and dying on a cross. That kind of love isn’t wimpy; it’s the strongest power in the universe! That kind of love is what led Esther to risk death by going unsummoned to the king. And that kind of love stands with all the people who are threatened by white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and the Ku Klux Klan. That kind of love gives people the courage to confront a mob of alt-right protesters who are out for blood. That kind of love stands firm when those protesters start to yell, “You won’t replace us! Jews won’t replace us!” and it doesn’t run away even when clubs and pepper spray and guns appear.

You have all heard about Saturday’s violence in Charlottesville; but I wonder how many of you have heard about what happened there on Friday night? A torch-bearing mob – some of the same folks who showed up on Saturday – surrounded a church where a group of clergy were gathered in prayer. For a terrifying period of time, the clergy inside were afraid that the mob was going to break in and attack them. How do I know? I followed the tweets of some of the clergy who were in that church. But those clergy – the ones who were threatened and terrified on Friday – came back on Saturday to face the mob again on behalf of the folks who were threatened. That, friends, is the kind of love that Jesus preached. That’s the kind of love that we need to keep preaching, too. And the hardest thing about that love is that we have to love the protesters, too. We can’t only love the people that they hate. Our love has to embrace everybody. Somehow, we have to find a way to love the white supremacists who threaten our very way of life in this country, a way of life that is founded on accepting people who are different than we are. And I’m honestly not sure how we do that. I can’t do it by feeling any affection for them; their actions offend and repulse me. Their actions are the very opposite of what Jesus tells me to do. In my eyes, they are what evil looks like in human form. Maybe, in the end, the only way that I can love them is to pray for them.

Queen Esther went to the King of Persia to rescue her people from impending slaughter. We can’t go to any earthly ruler to fix this situation. There simply isn’t anyone with both the power and the wisdom to solve the complicated problem of race relations and the aftermath of a civil war so divisive that it still sends shock waves through our country. We must go to a heavenly King, instead. We must pray… and pray… and pray some more. We must pray that the hate that fills so many hearts will be replaced with tolerance, if not with love. We must pray that the violence against our Jewish brothers and sisters, our Muslim brothers and sisters, and our black brothers and sisters will end, and end quickly! But we should also pray that God will help us to be part of the courageous love that is so necessary right now. We may not be world leaders, but we can influence the people who are around us; and in the end, that’s all God expects us to do. We can speak out against this evil wherever we find it, and speak out loudly! The Broadway musical Ragtime is a powerful statement about diversity and tolerance set in the early years of the 20^th century. Near its end, the black man Coalhouse sings a deeply moving song that responds to the prejudice that killed his wife and ruined his life. The lyrics say, in part, “Proclaim it from your pulpit, in your classroom, with your pen. Teach every child to raise his voice; and then, my brothers, then will justice be demanded by ten million righteous men! Make them hear you!” We need to make them hear us in such a time as this.

One of my favorite quotes isn’t from the Bible; it’s from anthropologist Margaret Mead. She once said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” We Christians are a small group of people these days. But we are both thoughtful and committed; and although we may be small, we are mighty. We love and we pray; and those are the most powerful tools in the universe! God is calling us to use them right now. Who knows, maybe God put us in this place for just such a time as this. Change the world? Maybe not. But then again… miracles still happen.