The Rev. Frank Logue
Christ Church, Dublin, Georgia
Clergy Day of Preparation for Easter
March 16, 2010 

Elected for Mission
Genesis 49:29-50:14

It is good to be gathered together here with my people—the deacons, priests and bishop of the Diocese of Georgia worshipping together. Many are called, few are chosen. Here we gather—the few, the proud, the elect, the chosen, the ordained. 

In preparation for this day, it was foreordained by the daily office lectionary that we would spend this past month reading day by day through that great novella from Genesis, the story of Joseph. From the first Monday in Lent until tomorrow morning’s last lesson from Genesis, we have immersed ourselves once more in the story of the dreamer.  

Once again Israel’s favorite has been singled out with the gift of the long coat with sleeves (or a coat of many colors depending on your translation of the Hebrew and preference for musical versions of a story). The old heal-grabber who took the place of his older brother Esau in the line for blessing from their father, sees his favor fall on Joseph, the son of his old age. Once more the green monster of envy has arisen murderously within the band of brothers. This is a truly gripping story.  

It is as if we are part of a book club that selected a particularly good short novel for our Lenten journey. Now we gather one day short of completing our assigned reading and reflect on the journey thus far. Joseph is selected by God for a divine purpose. He is to be a leader of his people. He is gifted for this task with the abilities he will need and invested with a divine trust.  

In this way, those of us who have been called by God to ordained ministry, whether that be the ministry of bishop, priest or deacon, share with Joseph an experience of being called by God to serve. As Joseph was graced with prophetic dreams and the gift of interpretation, which he would need in his journey from slave to prisoner to leader of all Egypt, so you too have been graced with the charisms, the gifts you need for the ministry to which God has called you. 

If this seems a bit overblown, it is. But bear with me. I would like to explore the story of Joseph a bit more and then return to consider what it teaches us about being chosen by God, and I feel it will relate quite closely to our own call this Lent. 

At one level, Joseph’s story is pure etiology, a story of origins. We learn through these chapters of Genesis how it came to be that the children of Israel found themselves enslaved in Egypt. All of the Exodus experience and the rest of the history of the people of Israel will depend on this founding narrative of the family of Israel.

Yet, we know that the art of biblical narrative is to accomplish much in a very compact form. Some crucial events in salvation history merit merely a few verses. Yet here we find a quite significant dilation in the story of how the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob is involved in human history to consider a name that never becomes the fourth in the chain. Despite this epic scope of this rags-to-riches tale, we never speak of the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. While we will see Joseph’s two sons blessed each with an inheritance from their grandfather, we do not find that the blessings will flow through the generations in any particular way through Joseph’s family. Unlike Levi’s family who will become the family of the priesthood, there is no particular charism that will rest on Ephraim and Manasseh through the generations. There is something more going on here than a story of origins. 

At another level, the story of Joseph will prevent us from the great tendency we would otherwise find in reading the Book of Exodus. Without this primer on Pharaoh, we would find it easy to demonize the Pharaoh and all Egypt. Yet in today’s reading, we find the touching account of how all Egypt mourns for Joseph’s father. He is embalmed after the manner of the Egyptians in a forty-day process. Yes, Israel receives the royal treatment in death and is mummified and also there is a seventy-day period of mourning proclaimed for all Egypt. Israel also gets a royal entourage accompanying him to the grave of his father and grandfather, where another seven-day period of mourning is observed. The text sees the Egyptians as being more than fair, they are gracious and good. Yes, a Pharaoh will arise who knows not Joseph, but we are not permitted to paint all of Egypt as evil because of what will follow.  

On another, more troubling level, we also discover within Joseph’s saga the way the world works. It is a painful revelation and one we prefer to gloss over in Broadway and Hollywood version of the story. But the Bible is a very realistic text. Woven within the Hebrew is a chillingly accurate description of the way of the world. When we continue with the story on Thursday through the opening section of Exodus, it will seem that the Pharaoh who knows not Joseph enslaves the children of Israel. But that is not exactly how it happened. Last Friday, we learned how the world really operates as we read of the way the famine progressed. 

I guess I am hopelessly naïve. Every time I read of Joseph’s interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream, I want to imagine the story differently. The seven fat cows and the seven famished cows predict a time of plenty followed by a time of want. In order to save his people, the Pharaoh believes Joseph and places him in charge of a great government project. They tax the people at a rate of 20 percent in the fat years, in order to store grain for the lean years. In this way, when famine comes, Joseph is sitting on top of a massive surplus of grain. This is the exact mechanism that God uses to save Israel and his twelve sons and all their grandchildren and great grandchildren. God does not alter the way of the natural world, but works out a plan of salvation in advance so that even as his brothers head unknowingly toward a time of famine, Joseph is already taxing all Egypt in order to stack up the grain that will feed his family. 

Yet, when the bad years come, I expect the storehouses to be opened and all to eat freely at the public trough. After all this is the food stored for the sole purpose of keeping people fed in famine. But that is not the way the world works. The Empire always strikes back. There is no manna in those storehouses. This is not Bread from Heaven, but Pharaoh’s bread. And if you want Pharaoh’s bread, you are going to have to pay. First they pay with their money. Once Pharaoh has secured all the money, the people pay with their livestock. Next they say they have nothing but their bodies and their land. And so they give their land in exchange for food. In the end, the tax imposed for the fat years alone remain. The people are to give twenty percent of all they produce to Pharaoh and from the remaining they are to live, now providing their own seed for crops from their portion rather than from Pharaoh’s part. Mind you, the children of Israel are not treated special here. Everyone in all Egypt and Canna fall under the same policy.  

What a Lenten journey we have enjoyed so far! We have seen God’s foreknowledge save the children of Israel and yet the purposes of humanity have also not been thwarted. True, god may have worked through Pharaoh, but the leader used even that to his advantage. By the time we get to Exodus, the great command enjoyed by the Pharaoh is in no small part thanks to that dreamer Joseph who interpreted Pharaoh dream and in so doing helped Pharaoh amass greater wealth and power. It turns out that while God is adept at working all things together for the good, we humans are pretty good at answering the question, “What’s in it for me?”  

Before I wrap up, I want to turn to the 36^th chapter of Genesis. Don’t bother trying to recall this part from your reading. This chapter is skipped in our lectionary. We read the first chapters of Genesis beginning on the Monday following the First Sunday After the Epiphany. This year, the way the calendar fell for Easter, we were cheated out of reading a section of Genesis in the week that would have followed the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany. The lectionary always skips Genesis 36. Why not? It’s the boring bits. In it we read more than 200 names in one of those sections I think of as a being like a Jerusalem phone book listing. But this was not the Jerusalem phone book. These are the names in the Edomite directory. Genesis 36 gives us the scintillating genealogy of the descendents of Esau with such heart-moving passages as, “These are the sons of Reuel, Esau’s son: chief Nahath, chief Zerah, chief Shammah, chief Mizzah. These are the chiefs descended from Reuel in the land of Edom; these are the sons of Esau’s wife Basemath.” 

I imagine that we skip this chapter for two reasons: 1) It’s boring. 2) It’s about the wrong team. This is, after all, a long list of names of Esau’s family and those are the guys who were not chosen. Yet, in skipping chapter 36, we miss finding out that God never forgot Esau. He might not have been chosen for blessing in the same way the trickster Jacob was chosen, but Esau and his descendants were never forgotten by God. The same was true for Ishmael and Isaac. Isaac may have been the chosen one, but God was also with Ishmael. And in the Joseph saga we did read, we find that God blesses Egypt as well.  

This pattern of God remembering the descendants of Ishmael and Esau is an important corrective to ideas about being chosen and fits in the strand of theology woven through the tapestry of scripture in which Israel is not God’s chosen people to the exclusion of others but is called to be a light to the nations and so that others will find salvation. We find this more strongly in Amos to whom God said, “‘Are you not as the sons of Ethiopia to Me, O sons of Israel?’ declares the LORD. ‘Have I not brought up Israel from the land of Egypt, And the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?’” (Amos 9:7). The chosen people are not called for their benefit alone, but for the good of all. 

What those of us gathered here today as the ones chosen to lead congregations in the Diocese of Georgia is that in our being elected for this task, we should not feel lifted up as worthy, but tasked with a purpose. I’m not sure about you, but at my worst, I have a tendency to believe my own P.R. And it is not healthy to do so. After all, as a priest, I benefit from transference. Sure, some will see me as a representative of the Church and will think bad of me because of negative thoughts about God or the Church. But many more people will transfer very positive attributes to me because of my roles. But this is the role and not me. Much of what they credit to me is God working through me. 

So it is important to note that Joseph was elected for mission. His God-ordained purpose would bring salvation to his people, but this would not come by his might or power, but through the gifts God gave him for this purpose. If you want to decide that those chosen by God for a special task are selected because they are the most special of all, then read the story of Balaam’s Ass and then we’ll talk.  

God doesn’t choose the gifted, but gifts the ones chosen for the tasks before them. You have been set apart through your ordination for specific ministries within the Body of Christ. This is solemn and sacred and if you don’t get brought back to a right view of things, being chosen can go to your head. 

In these 40 days of Lent, we offer a tithe (a bit more than a tenth of our year) toward the purpose of recalibrating our inner compass. Lent calls us to self examination and so is a time for humility. Yet, humility is not self-loathing or to selling yourself short. Humility means seeing yourself rightly.  

I offer this look back at Joseph’s story as a lens through which to see what it means to be called, chosen, elected. Through his story we learn not just the historical background to how the Hebrew came to be enslaved, but we learn how God is working in human history through fallible folks like you and me. We find in this story that we are not justified in demonizing the Egyptians, who also had the capacity for great good. Nor are we justified in lionizing Joseph, who had the ability to bless his brothers but also made indentured servants out of Egyptian and Israelite alike, including his own descendants. 

Yes, we are capable of getting it right at times and through our leadership others can be fed. But when we concern ourselves with amassing power and prestige, we can find ourselves, not building up God’s kingdom, but our own. As we keep reading Exodus and we will find anew how very different God’s bread is from Pharaoh’s bread. And in our journey through Holy Week we will discover how far God’s love extends. 

At this point in our Lenten journey, I simply want to highlight Joseph’s story as a cautionary tale for those chosen by God. When we begin to build up our own power and create our own little kingdoms, as we clergy are sometimes want to do, then we too will find ourselves enslaved to a something far short of the Gospel. While if you and I remember that like Joseph we were elected and gifted for God’s mission, and not our own, then we will be fine. 

Amen.