Genesis 41:14-16, 25-44; 2 Timothy 2:1-10
April 3, 2022
- How God lifts the small in greatness of grace
There is always more going on that we can see at face value. This is one of the great lessons in life that is very useful to know as we try to relate to others, especially those who seem to acting in difficult or troubling ways. No doubt you have at some point in your lives run across people who seemed more rude or emotionally charged than you might expect. Maybe someone lashed out at you or someone else around you for apparently no real reason. We carry a lot in our lives that we do not really show. We carry burdens, hurts, weights, sorrows, injuries, struggles, and all kinds of things that we don’t really want to share, but it gets worked out in our day to day exchanges. Everyone should have a sense of what others might be dealing with, not that you might truly know, but that we all are carrying things that can make day to day more difficult. When someone behaves in a way that does not make sense, there is probably more to the situation than we know. In love, it is also OK to ask. Life is full of layers.
The Bible is also a layered story, just like our lives. This is beautifully depicted in today’s lesson. On the one obvious hand, we are back with Joseph today as he helps move the Hebrew people closer to their time of living in Egypt. That is where we are headed. Joseph is the key figure who gives his family a new home in Egypt, in the land of Goshen. This is Joseph’s role in Scripture, and in order to have that influence, he has to become the Pharoah’s dream interpreter and then his administrator. This is the very moment when Joseph is given the power and authority to bring his people to Egypt. But there is also so much more going on.
God loves the little people, and I am not talking hobbits, munchkins, or leprechauns. God has a profound habit of reaching to the people who are little in life and giving them big places in God’s story. Joseph is a nobody. He is a Hebrew slave in Egypt, AND he is a convict, a prisoner, someone who offended the Egyptian authority. Joseph should have wasted away in that prison; no one should have given him a second thought the rest of his life. He is a nobody of nobodies. The only way he could have been less in that culture would have been to be a woman – oh, wait, that would be Esther. Or how about a female slave living in another country – oh wait, that was Hagar. Or how about a female, pagan prostitute who ends up in Jesus’ family tree – oh wait, that’s Rahab. Or how about a foreign, pagan, widow with no hope but who also ends up in Jesus’ family – oh wait, that’s Ruth. God, again and again, finds people who should be near worthless and gives them fantastic value. The Bible is full of them.
Joseph is a nobody, but Pharoah is the biggest somebody you can be. Pharoah is the most powerful person in the most powerful nation in the world. Pharoah holds all the cards, calls all the shots, makes all of the decisions, and controls all life around him, until God completely wrecks Pharoah with a dream, two dreams to be exact. It is almost humorous. No one could have gained Pharoah’s attention unless Pharoah allowed it, but God walks right into Pharoah’s mind and shows him something he cannot unsee. These dreams terrify, confound, and occupy Pharoah with such force that he has become powerless.
You have to understand how scary this picture is. The Nile was sacred to the Egyptians, their source of life, hope, and prosperity. It was the pillar of their existence. Now, it looked like the mighty river was diseased. It was a place of death. Vibrant life was swallowed up by horror. Pharoah was scared silly.
In fact, you know just how bad it had to be for Pharoah to bring Joseph to help. The most powerful man around was reaching for the least powerful man for help. Pharoah is wallowing in helplessness. Empire is powerless. It stands helplessly before a Hebrew prisoner. Restless, sleepless Pharoah is worn with worry, so overcome with angst that he gives the future of his Empire into an unknown Joseph’s hands. This is the glory of God who turns the tables, who lifts the small, the weak, the poor, who makes the last first and the first last. This is the God of the little person.
God made the most powerful, the strongest, the richest, and the most famous person in the nation completely helpless, powerless, and ineffective in order to show us how things work in God’s Kingdom. And there is so much more because not only does Joseph come to the Pharoah’s aid and explains the dream, he actually becomes the most powerful person in Egypt in the process. Yes, you heard me correctly. I am happy to argue that while technically Pharoah is still Pharoah and could technically do away with Jospeh, Jospeh is the one who has the real power because he controls the future and well-being of the nation and Pharoah. Pharoah could get rid of Joseph, but he really cannot since Joseph is his savior, too. It would be idiocy, lunacy, suicide to get rid of Joseph. Pharoah needs Joseph far more than Joseph needs Pharoah. Yes, God has done it, again. The weakest has become the strongest. The little has become great. That greatness has paved the way for God’s salvation to be displayed. With Joseph in place, the story can continue.
This is really a very interesting turn of events for Joseph. How far would you be willing to go for a stranger, how much would you be willing do for another, or how much would you be willing to give for an enemy? The Egyptians are NOT Joseph’s people. They are not his family. He ends up making a home there and having an Egyptian family of his own, but at this point in the Joseph story, he is still an outsider, a slave, a criminal, a nobody. I wonder if part of Joseph was angry at the Egyptians for keeping him in chains. Even in Potiphar’s house, Joseph was still a slave. He was not free to pick up and leave. He had to do whatever Potiphar said. He was not there by choice, and he was forced to live by the wishes of someone else. He was also imprisoned under false pretenses. There is so much here to make Joseph resent the Egyptians. There is so much here to make Joseph NOT want to help them, but according to the text, Joseph does not skip a beat. Instead, he is looking for an opportunity to help them. He seems to be pleased to help them. This is interesting, maybe even strange.
So are we strange people? This is a sermon that should make any of us nervous for a number of reasons. First, if we consider ourselves among the powerful, the strong, the accomplished, the together, the well-established, maybe the ones who don’t need God all that much, then this is a stark reminder of how much stock God puts in any of that. So much of human success is dust in the wind to God. Instead, God’s heart and God’s hand go to the ones we would never expect and would never pick as servants in faith.
But if we look to ourselves as little people, maybe even nobodies, in the grand scheme of the world, maybe the ones who really feel need for God’s help, then there is a word of hope here. God does know you; God does value you; God does call you. You are the ones who are most important in God’s expanding ministry. You are the ones who have the greatest potential to show the world the power of God in the Kingdom of Christ. You are the first-string players here waiting to be called into the game, if you are not in the game right now.
The challenge is that the game is not going to look like you imagine. Joseph did not know what God had in store for him until he got to Pharoah’s space and heard Pharoah’s dream. We cannot know how God will want to use us in these beautiful and glorious ways until it happens, but we have to be ready and open.
That is the idea of the passage from 2 Timothy. There is nothing easy about this road in faith. Paul describes the life of service and what he is willing to do to be useful to God. He invites Timothy to follow in his example. Joseph had to endure all kinds of trouble just to be in the right place at the right time and in the right circumstances to be the little person God could exalt. None of us is born ready to be the minister God needs us to be. It takes life and all of its struggles to bring us to that point. It takes faith to walk with confidence into that service. When we feel small and weak and like we are a nobody, then we can know that God is not done with us. God is absolutely not done with any of us. We pray for God’s glory; we look for God’s glory; we wait for God’s glory; we work for God’s glory.
The beauty of our Lord is with us. The beauty of our Lord is with all of us, especially the little people by the grace of God. To God be the glory. Amen.