Before we
begin, let’s catch up on what’s been happening in Joseph’s life. When we last
saw Joseph, he was in prison, and had been forgotten by the fellow prisoner he
hoped would put in a good word for him. But Joseph’s fortunes took a dramatic
turn for the better after he interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams. Joseph was promoted
to a rank second only to Pharaoh himself; and he even married the daughter of
one of Pharaoh’s priests. One of Joseph’s duties was to provide for the storage
of Egyptian grain and to sell it to foreigners; and so, when his brothers
turned up asking to buy some, Joseph was the one who talked with them. But they
didn’t recognize the baby brother that they had sold into slavery so many years
before. This morning’s reading begins as Joseph prepares to reveal his identity
to them. (Genesis 45:1-15)
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“You can’t make
a silk purse out of a sow’s ear!” There’s a lot of common sense in that
statement. We all know that we end up with is determined in large part by what
we start with! Oh, we can rearrange things and add a decoration here and there,
but if you want an elegant silk purse, don’t start with a rough, scratchy pig’s
ear, or all you’ll get is – a decorated pig’s ear! But there are times when
that proverb doesn’t apply; times when the creativity and the genius of the one
who is working is so profound that the finished product goes way beyond
anything that we could have dreamed! On those occasions, a silk purse really
can result from a sow’s ear. Great music is an example of this kind of
transformation. All music uses the same notes. In the hands of some people,
those notes only make noise – sometimes very loud, unpleasant noise -- but when
a genius like Bach or Mozart or John Williams uses them, the pattern and the
rhythm of those notes create music that transcends the notes themselves. The
entire genre of jazz, in fact, is based on that idea. A good jazz musician works
with a basic melody, adjusting the rhythm and improvising music to complement
it. What results is something new and exquisitely beautiful.
I once read a story
about the jazz trumpeter Wynton Marsalis. Marsalis was playing in New York City
with his combo. After a few pieces by the combo, Marsalis stepped to the
microphone to offer a solo titled “I Don’t Stand a Ghost of a Chance with You.”
It is a melancholy, deeply emotional song; and Marsalis played it masterfully,
full of expression. At the climax of the number, just as he began to play the
heartfelt final phrase, a cell phone rang. The dramatic spell of the trumpet
solo was completely broken by the silly little ring tone. The audience giggled,
their attention lost. Marsalis stopped playing and paused for a long moment.
Everyone assumed that he had finished. Instead, he put his lips to his trumpet
and replayed the cell phone melody note for note. He played it again, and again,
and again; and then he started to improvise variations on the tune. People
stopped talking and started to listen again. He changed keys once or twice, and
then eased back into the tempo of the original ballad. In just a few minutes,
he finished his improvisation exactly where he had been interrupted on the
final, melancholy phrase. It was a magical moment, a blend of musical mastery and
creativity! In the process, Marsalis made a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.
God, like great
artists of all kinds, is in the same kind of business. From the very beginnings
of creation, God has taken raw materials and added love and divine creativity
to make something new – something that was infinitely better than what had existed
before! On the first day of creation, for example, all that existed was dark,
formless, swirling chaos. “Darkness was upon the face of the abyss,” is the way
that Genesis describes it. Into that chaos, God spoke a creative word; and
suddenly there was light, something completely new, shining in the midst of
that chaos. Joseph is a perfect example of how God works in our own lives to
create something better than anything that had existed before. Joseph was sold
into slavery, lied about by a spurned woman, and forgotten by a friend. How
could such a sow’s ear of a life possibly be transformed into something
beneficial? We can’t do it; but God can; and God did. God used Joseph to sustain
a whole country – even people who were from other countries – when starvation
threatened them. God still does the same kind of thing today. God works with
whatever is available to create something new and better. God can turn even
actions that are taken in hate into a situation that reflects God’s love. That’s
why we Christians can hold on to hope in any and every situation in which we
find ourselves. We put our faith in a God who can create something positive
even out of tragedy. God is like the grandmother that writer Rachel Remen
recalled in her memoirs. Rachel’s grandmother grew up in Russia, and she
learned early in life how to make the best of whatever happened. Nothing was
wasted, even if it didn’t fit into the plans that she had made. “Occasionally,”
Rachel wrote, “an egg would fall out of the icebox and break on the kitchen
floor. My grandmother’s response was always the same. She would look at the
broken egg and say, ‘Aha! Today we have a sponge cake!’”
The Harvard
Business Review once wrote about the type of people that are termed
“resilient.” Resilient people can bounce back from hardships after they fall. They
have the ability to get back on their feet and keep going. “Resilient people,”
the article claimed, “possess three characteristics: a staunch acceptance of
reality; a deep belief… that life is meaningful; and an uncanny ability to
improvise.” That’s not a bad description of a Christian, either, with one small
exception – we don’t trust our own ability to improvise; we trust God’s
ability to improvise! And, for Christians, it is because of God’s ability
to lovingly create something new that we can accept reality, and we can
believe that life is meaningful. In whatever situation we find ourselves, we
can trust God to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, all on our behalf. God
can work the same kind of creative transformation in every single human life. I
find that to be deeply comforting; because it means that I can trust God to
work in loving, creative ways in every single situation in which I find myself.
I means that although I may grieve, I don’t have to despair, regardless of how
bad my situation may be. And it means that I can take risks on God’s behalf. If
I do my best, even though I might fail, God will be working to make whatever sow’s
ear I might create into a silk purse fit for the kingdom of God.
We worship an
amazing God: one who created the whole universe, and is still creating beauty
out of ugliness, order out of chaos, and love out of hate. God shatters the ugly
boxes in which we confine ourselves, liberating us to expand into new
possibilities of beauty and creativity. God refuses to leave our broken lives
alone, healing them into lives that are strong and healthy. What can you say
about a God like that? I have a few suggestions. You can say, “I love him.” You
can say, “I thank him.” And you can say, “I trust him.”
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