The Lord Is with You

Genesis 39:1-23

September 22,23, 2018

King of Glory Lutheran Church

Spirit of Peace Lutheran Church

© 2018

This is a very tough story to read aloud in worship. It jars our comfort level of expecting something pleasant for church. I must tell you that especially as the substitute preacher, I find it challenging, and want you to know it was assigned to me. I didn’t pick it out so I could rattle anyone’s cage.

Longer ago than I care to count, Joy Wilt was writing incisively about Christian education for children. She said that the Bible should be “Rated R,” not so much for risqué stories like this but because it was written for adults and children need adults to accompany them as they are introduced to the Bible. My friend Joe Bayly, whose career was in Christian education publishing, used to say that we should not water down stories like this to make them “safe” for children, but wait to introduce them when they are adolescents and can appreciate the power of the encounters. Diluted versions only inoculate children against recognizing God in the realities of life.

I don’t want to get sidetracked here, but not to mention that, even though Joseph was a male, he had his own #MeToo experience. He was the victim of a predator who used sex for oppressive power. Any of you who have had that experience know that sexual harassment is about power with sex as the weapon.

We Protestants are not usually too familiar with the Apocrypha, but the story of “Susanna and the Elders” is a classic case study of sexual harassment, with men as the perpetrators and a woman victim accused unjustly because of her righteousness, as Joseph was. I encourage you to find a copy and read it alongside Joseph’s story.

Five times the story says that The Lord was with Joseph (vv. 2,3,5,21,23). By exploring that, we can learn how to recognize that The Lord is with us too, in both our apparent successes as well as our persistent struggles, and yes, even when we are victims of injustice.

We easily miss that when our English translations use “The Lord” in large and small caps, the Hebrew behind it is what is considered to be God’s personal name: YHWH. So when the story says The Lord was with Joseph, it implies a personal relationship between them. When Joseph refused Potiphar’s wife’s advances, he said he could not sin against God. The Hebrew behind that is Elohiym, which is a general word for God or even gods. Joseph did not use the personal name for The Lord but the general “God” with this Gentile temptress.

We easily recognize and celebrate that The Lord was with Joseph when Potiphar’s household prospered under Joseph’s management. The Lord blessed Potiphar because of Joseph. Though in more difficult circumstances, clearly The Lord was also with Joseph when he managed the prison so well that the chief jailer trusted him the care of all the prisoners. These blessings seem to be The Lord’s promise to bless all the families of the earth through Abraham’s offspring in Genesis 12:3.

Not so easy to see is that The Lord was also with Joseph when he suffered as a victim of injustice. His brothers sold him as a slave, which is how he got to Egypt. When Potiphar’s wife couldn’t seduce him, she made false accusations and he was thrown in prison. We read past these things in just a few moments without realizing that Joseph endured these injustices for years. Still, The Lord was with him building patience and character that would not have happened as the coddled favorite son at home.

One of the problems with getting stuck with a children’s Sunday school version of this story is that we settle for a shallow moral of the story: be a good kid like Joseph and we miss the power of knowing that The Lord is with you in both apparent success and prolonged difficulty.

In some church circles people speak of a personal relationship with Jesus in a way that can seem a little pious and pretentious. However, when the Joseph story uses God’s personal name, YHWH, The Lord is the one who is being personal and intimate. The Lord is personally choosing to be with you! Let that sink in for a moment.

So when things are going well, and you sense you are prospering, instead of imagining you’re good at relating personally to The Lord, look around to see how The Lord is prospering the people around you, whether it seems to come through you or not.

And when you are enduring a prolonged hardship, especially if it is the result of some injustice imposed on you, remember that The Lord is personally hanging onto you even when you feel you can’t hang onto The Lord. From the Hebrew Prophets, to Jesus, to the New Testament Epistles, over and over again, Scripture assures us that The Lord extends steadfast love to the poor, the weak, the broken, the widow and orphan, the stranger and outcast.

In Genesis 12 (which we read last Sunday), when God promised to bless all the families of the earth through Abraham’s descendants, Abraham responded to God’s call by leaving a settled home and becoming a perpetual nomad. Every place he journeyed, Abraham pitched their tent and built an altar. We know the tent was portable, but so were these altars. They were made of earth and or stone to serve while Abraham sojourned in that place and were not carried from place to place nor were they fancy furnishing for a temple. When Abraham moved on, they returned to the earth.

In his Spiritual Exercises, Ignatius of Loyola described the spiritual journey as a rhythm of consolations and desolations. We see that in Joseph’s story and know it on our own personal journeys with Jesus. Ignatius taught recognizing the presence of Jesus whether your present path is one of consolation or desolation.

Recently, Pope Francis encouraged people to connect with Jesus by spending two minutes a day reading from the Gospels. If you don’t already have a way you watch for Jesus in the Gospels, just start with Matthew. Skip the tedious parts like the genealogies, and just read one incident and let Jesus meet you all day with it. I believe that will help you recognize that he is right with you in your consolations and desolations.

As I was starting my career nearly 50 years ago, Abraham “living in tents” as described in Hebrews 11:9-10, became a guiding metaphor for the journey Candy and have been making. We have pitched our tent in Illinois, New Jersey, Wisconsin, and Texas, with even brief campouts in Ontario and Oklahoma. Now our pilgrimage has brought us back to Wisconsin for our final sojourn until we reach the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. To be sure, Candy’s Alzheimer’s is a season of desolation. However, everyday our son and daughter-in-law and grandchildren with whom we share a duplex are a great consolation. The support of the Spirit of Peace and Milwaukee Mennonite communities have been the presence of Jesus to us again and again. These have been consolation to us on this journey.