The Dreamer Had it Right

Scripture Lessons: Romans 10: 5-15 and Genesis 37: 1-5 and 12-28 Sermon Title: The Dreamer Had It Right Preached on August 9, 2020 There’s an expression I remember from Tennessee that reminds me of Joseph. Based on what we’ve just read, he seems to have possessed that mix of ignorance or arrogance which rightfully earned him the spite of his brothers and would have inspired the use of that Tennessee expression: “Don’t ever be a small-town guy with a big city haircut.” Have you ever heard someone say that? It may be that no one uses that expression outside of Middle-Tennessee, but we all should because it’s important to warn people that not everything that comes with a fancy haircut, a nice new car, or a special robe, is good. We need more ways to express the sentiment that if you have champagne tastes but PBR brothers, they’re likely to make fun of you. It’s important to warn people like Joseph, that while anyone of us may have a dream of being bigger and better than our families, we must be careful about how we tell them all about it. Best case scenario, this Joseph from a small town with a big city, long sleeved, extra special robe will inspire the people who love him to kindly, patronizingly smile while he tells them his grandiose dreams, however, our Second Scripture Lesson warns that in the worst-case scenario they may try to kill him. I don’t know exactly why human society holds back the dreamers this way. Is it because the dreamers make the rest feel small? Whatever it is about them or us, I know that it was merciful that his brothers only threw Joseph down into an empty pit until a band of traveling Ishmaelite salesmen wandered by. That doesn’t sound merciful, selling someone into slavery, but they were planning to kill him, because no one likes a small-town guy with a big city haircut, and everyone resents the youngest child who announces: “One day you’ll all be bowing down before me.” You can’t say that. You just can’t. So, I don’t really feel sorry for Joseph. You could make the argument that I should, but I don’t. However, certainly, his father did. Reading this Second Scripture Lesson from his perspective or from the brother’s perspective tells two different versions of the same story, and there are a few ways to read this passage of Scripture from the book of Genesis. On reading this first chapter of the beautiful rollercoaster ride that is Joseph’s story in the book of Genesis, we’re likely to either resonate with him, the young, long-sleeved, dreamer; his jealous brothers; or his elderly, doting father, who couldn’t help but spoil the child of his old age a little bit. I truly and easily understand where the brothers are coming from, but to get to the fullness of this Scripture Lesson we must also consider the perspective of Jacob, Joseph’s father. At this point in the book of Genesis he’s called Israel, for from his sons will come the 12 tribes of this Chosen Nation. When those brother’s rise up against one of their own, they show their father Jacob or Israel, Joseph’s cloak dipped in goat’s blood, but notice: they don’t have to explain anything. Did you pick-up on that? Jacob, as he called earlier, or Israel as he is renamed by God, reaches his own conclusions about his young son’s fate based on the evidence at hand. He takes one look at a bloody cloak, and quickly considers it in light of the harsh realities of the merciless world he lived in. Maybe you can understand how his mind was working. Bloody cloak plus rumors of a wild beast which lurked around the outskirts of the land of Canaan equals the conclusion that his son has been eaten. Just as CORONA-19 plus protests, unemployment plus quarantine, or homeschooling plus a failed wireless connection can have any one of us feeling like the world is ending. Has it ever been the case with you that you took in the information at hand and reached a logical conclusion, only to find out later that it was exactly the wrong one? That’s the story of Joseph really, because Joseph wasn’t dead, but before we get to that, fully consider what was going on in his father’s mind that made it so easy for him to believe that he was. Jacob or Israel knew the world to be a harsh place. We think back on the stories we already know about him and it makes sense that a man willing to trick his own brother and manipulate his own father, who was himself fooled by his father-in-law and then wrestled with God by the bank of a river, would surely come to the conclusion that the world doesn’t liberally hand out blessings. No, if you want something you had better get it and if you quit fighting you should expect the worst. Turn your back on this world and expect to be stabbed. That was Jacob’s philosophy, and while he had begun to believe in forgiveness when his brother Esau chose mercy, just after that his daughter Dinah was abused and then his father died. Life taught him that 2 plus 2 is 4 and bloody cloak of favorite son equals tragedy. Surely some would call that way of thinking logic or knowledge based in experience. Whatever it was and no matter how much sense it made Jacob was wrong because Joseph wasn’t dead. So, on the one hand we have Jacob’s logic but on the other hand we have Joseph’s dream. You know what’s wonderful about dreams? Sometimes dreams look at the exact same evidence but come back with an exactly opposite conclusion. Joseph, despite his brother’s, never stopped dreaming. As the Ishmaelite caravan carried him to some unknown place, he never gave up hope. Then as he was sold to Potiphar, was wrongly accused by his wife, and then dragged off to prison, did this young man give up on his future? Did he give up on the dream? I feel like I do all the time. There a plenty of images in Scripture which make me profoundly hopeful, but, which I give up on as soon as the tide turns against me. Christ speaks of loving your neighbor as yourself, but I receive the wrong email at the wrong moment, and it seems nearly impossible. Likewise, I read about the coming Kingdom. How our God is bringing fullness and restoration to each corner of creation, but then I think about virtual learning and see a future of zombie kids addicted to computer screens, or I think about in-person learning and all I can see are outbreaks of a virus we can’t seem to get a hold of. There’s a fair amount of Jacob in me, for some days I look at the evidence at hand and I assume the worst, but Jacob was wrong you see. Jacob was wrong and I must be willing to consider that I might be wrong too. It has happened before. Once I got home from church and standing in the driveway, I bent over to pick up something from the ground and split my pants. There’s at least two ways to explain something like that: either the suit was cheap or the guy wearing it, me, had expanded. As it turns out in this case, both parties were guilty as charged, but I hope you’re getting my point. Sometimes we make assumptions, and sometimes our assumptions are wrong. So, acknowledge this with me: the way we view the world we live in colors the way we understand the information we receive. What we believe already changes the way we see the future. And the truth, sometimes the truth, while Scripture says it will set us free, often it also demands that we rethink all kinds of things. Sometimes the truth demands that we change the way we see the whole world. Thinking of the truth: can you imagine if back in February someone had said that your kids won’t be going back to school in their classrooms next year. Many of you will start working from home. You might get together with people, but you won’t want to shake their hands, and facemasks are going to become commonplace in grocery stores. Can you imagine if someone from the future visited us five months ago to report that everyone you know, even your grandmother, is going to learn how to use a program on their computer called Zoom? You know that list of projects around your house? You’re going to do all of them out of sheer boredom. And by the way, Netflix doesn’t have enough content to provide for what’s about to happen. Lies are sometimes easier to believe than the truth. Especially if there’s enough evidence pushing your assumptions, especially if there are enough dots to connect, especially if all you have to do just accept what’s right in front of you rather than lift up your eyes to the heavens. That’s maybe the difference between Jacob or Israel and his young son Joseph in this passage from Genesis. Jacob is willing and ready to believe what’s right in front of him. While Joseph refuses to give up on a dream despite what’s right in front of him. Do you know anyone like that? Sure, you do. She’s maybe 5 years old, and she would be going off to start Kindergarten if she could. Regardless, she’s still off to conquer the world. Ask her what she wants to be when she grows up and she’ll tell you, “I want to be a doctor and a nurse and a teacher and a babysitter.” If you could ask a whole group of them, “Who here plays a musical instrument?” every one of them would raise their hand. And who here has a friend in their class? And who feels loved by their teacher? And who here knows that tomorrow will be even better than today? School didn’t start this year like it always does, and I feel sure that means the children of this church will miss out on some of the lessons they should be learning. Regardless, let me make this suggestion: today we need to be learning a lesson from them. Because too often we grownups look at the data at hand and see the worst. Too often we cling to logic rather than hope. Too many of base our projections on numbers and not faith, so consider for just a moment a child who will look into a mud puddle and see the perfect filling for a pie or who will see a prolonged time of quarantine as a good reason to spend more time with her family. I don’t know what you’re using to understand the world out there today with all its horror and all its tragedy, but let me tell you this: these days a 5 year old may have an edge, for if nothing else this Scripture Lesson from the book of Genesis tells us that the dreamer had it right.