Sermon: Radical Jesus

The Seventh Sunday after Epiphany I love kids. One of the things I love most about kids is they always say the neatest things, the craziest things. They speak what is in their mind. It just kind of comes out of their mouth. A number of years ago, I was with some kids, and I asked one of them to say the grace at our meal. We held hands and. And the kid said, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, Toys R Us, Amen. Sounded great to me. Joseph was just a kid. He was a kid who blurted out everything he thought and saw. And he was also a kid that had been gifted with dreams, dreams that were powerful and visionary. Joseph's father, Jacob, played favorites, which is not a good thing to do as a parent. Jacob chose Joseph as his favorite, and he adored Joseph, and he gave him a robe. It's funny, we talk about it as Joseph's coat of many colors, but actually the Hebrew is that it was a robe with long sleeves. So Joseph, being an unaware child who blurts, wears his robe in the presence of all of his older brothers, that's not going to make him very popular. And then he blurts out, I had a dream. And in my dream, you all were bowing down to me. Not so smart. Joseph's brothers were probably adolescent boys. Moody, jealous, angry, slightly irrational young men. So they decide to throw Joseph into a pit in the desert climate of Israel, a pit without water. They strip him of his robe, cover it with the blood of a lamb, and plan to tell their father that Joseph was killed. Luckily, some slave traders come by, and the brothers decide, no, they'd make a better profit if they sold their brother into slavery. So they do that. Joseph is taken to Egypt as a slave. The narrative story of his life in Egypt is quite something. And he goes through so much. But basically, in the end, because of his dreams, Joseph is able to help Pharaoh. He dreams that there are seven fat calves and seven thin calves. And the seven thin calves eat the seven fat calves. And then again there are seven big fat ears of grain and seven thin ears, and the seven thin ears eat the fat ones. And he goes to the Pharaoh. I'm sorry, the Pharaoh has had this dream. And Joseph goes to the Pharaoh, and because he knows dreams, he interprets Pharaoh's dreams. And he tells Pharaoh, there are going to be seven fat years of great fertility in the land, and you're going to have so much grain and so much abundance, but you've got to save that grain because you'll be followed by seven years of famine. But if you Store up during the good years. You'll be okay during the years of famine. So the Pharaoh believes this and trusts Joseph and basically puts Joseph in charge of his whole country. He becomes like the vicar of Egypt or the sub dean or something. But inside, Joseph is still torn up because of the trauma he endured, because he's never to see his family again, because he was treated so cruelly, because he was so hurt. But he becomes this great figure in Egypt. And there are seven years of abundance. And then the years of famine begin. And in the second year of the famine, Joseph's brothers come before him, begging for food. And at first, Joseph, like all of us, is so angry. He's so angry, he reacts. He puts some silver in their grain bag and then accuses them of stealing. Terrifies them. But then something happens to Joseph. A miracle of God, because forgiveness is a miracle from God. All of a sudden, Joseph is somehow able to forgive. And he says in that beautiful reading that Owen read so, so beautifully, I am Joseph. I am your brother. And he starts to cry. Have you ever been able to forgive someone totally and utterly and kind of cried about it and been able to restore a relationship that was broken? If you ever have. It does feel like a miracle, like a whole new chapter has started again. But in forgiving them, Joseph says some really important things. He says, I realize now that it was God that took everything that you d...