They Didn't Get What They Deserved

Scripture Lessons: Romans 11: 1-2a, 29-32 and Genesis 45: 1-15 Sermon Title: They Didn’t Get What They Deserved Preached on August 16, 2020 I want to begin this sermon by telling you about a young woman, a friend of a friend, who had just moved to New York City. She was living in her very first apartment, which was just large enough to sleep in, working her very first job that paid her just enough to get by. You might remember what that was like, so you’ll understand why, when her boss asked her to stay in her apartment for a couple weeks to care for her cat while she went on vacation, this young woman jumped at the chance. The apartment was wonderful. Unlike hers it was air conditioned. It had, not just a microwave, but a full kitchen. There was no roommate. Plus, it had wireless internet that actually worked and a great big TV. Such luxury and all she had to do was keep the cat. The only problem was that on the second or third day the cat died. She felt horrible, as you can imagine, and rehearsed the phone call a few dozen times before finally calling her boss, the cat’s owner, to deliver the bad news. Fortunately for the young woman, her boss understood completely as the cat was 16 years old. Her boss’ only request was that she go ahead and deliver the cat’s body to the vet’s office where they would handle the remains. Relieved to be done with such a sensitive phone call she hung up before thinking through one big important detail. The vet was across town and she didn’t have a car. How would she transport the cat there? She couldn’t walk, because it was too far. She didn’t have enough money for a taxi, and even if she did, she couldn’t just hold a dead cat in her arms, so she looked around the apartment and finally found an old briefcase. She put the cat in it and went down to the subway, got on the train and sat down. The briefcase was on the floor between her feet, and she tried hard not to act like anything at all was the matter. As the train rolled along a nice-looking young man sat down next to her. After a little while he nudged her and looking down at the briefcase asked her if she was on her way to work. “Yes, I am as a matter of fact,” she replied with a little too much confidence, “just going into the office with my trusty laptop,” she said looking down at the briefcase. Then she asked what he was on the way to. He was headed to the Met to enjoy some artwork since it was his day off, or something like that. Well, she loved the Met too and it turned out that’s not the only thing that they had in common, so at some point in the conversation this young woman began to wonder if she was about to be asked out on her first date in New York City with a dead cat between her feet. But before that could happen, the train came to a stop, the young man snatched that briefcase and ran off the train never to be seen again. Now I tell you this story because it’s not every day that the thief gets what he deserves. It’s not in every story that justice, precious justice, is served. So, I tell you this story today because we have been wronged, a faceless enemy assails us. More than 160,000 Americans are dead, parents are trying to work, kids are home from school, and I’ve thought of worse things that I wish would happen to some of the people responsible than opening up a briefcase to find a dead cat. That’s why I love the story I just told you. I’ve told it so many times that Sara never wants to hear it again, though I keep telling it because I love it when the bad guy doesn’t get away. Can you imagine what Joseph was hoping would happen to his brothers? As you know well, his story begins when he was the little brother who didn’t know when to stop talking about himself, so his brothers helped him find his way into a pit with no water in it. You can imagine how he looked up from the bottom waiting for the joke to be over and saw his brothers looking down on him, glad to have put him in his place. It turns out they weren’t just joking. They meant to get rid of him, so there were chains next as they sold him for silver coins, then a long journey to a world he’d never seen surrounded by words he couldn’t understand, and he was helpless to do anything about it. He went from the chains of a slave to the cell of a prisoner wrongly accused, though neither the rats nor the guards cared that he was innocent. Each day passed slowly. Each day he was hungry. Each day he was alone with only the memories of the brothers who got him there in the first place, and the thought of what he would do to them if he ever had the chance to keep him going. You can imagine that he was ready for the moment when he would finally see them again. Probably he had rehearsed his words and actions through a million times before. You know what vengeance is like. Remember from the Princess Bride, “Hello, my name is Domingo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die”? How many times had Joseph thought it through? How many times had he rehearsed the words? How sweet was the thought of his revenge? Only from his seat of power, having risen through the ranks of the Egyptian hierarchy, he not only has the faces of his brothers looking down on him from the edge of that pit in his mind’s eye, he sees also the hand of God leading him, sustaining and preserving him, lifting him up for just such a time as this. With his brothers before him and at his mercy, he threw out his prepared speech for something else: “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life… God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God.” If our daughter Lily had been there she would have said, “Wait, what?” Such perspective. Such maturity. Such faith. Truly, his example is a timely one for us today, because I know what some people would like to do to our school superintendents. I know what others would like to do to the governor. I know how some of you all feel about people who don’t wear facemasks in the grocery store. Now is a time when we find ourselves at the bottom of a pit. Without a clear way out what is there to do but locate a target for our frustration and plot our revenge? I can think of plenty of people who I hope open their brief case tomorrow to find a dead cat, but blame won’t get us as far as mercy because blame points a finger at the failure of humans and mercy opens our eyes to the power of God. And God is at work among us. The story I told about the cat and the briefcase, the first time I remember telling it was at Buck and Cindy Buchanan’s house just before they moved to California. That was 15 or 16 years ago. That I’ve been telling the same story for 15 or 16 years is one thing. Another is that after 15 or 16 years, they’re back her in Marietta and so am I. I don’t know who you are blaming for this nightmare we’re stuck in, but I urge you to think like Joseph today, and the way the hand of God is moving all of us according to his purpose. Stop blaming. Stop plotting revenge. Stop harping on human power, for God is at work, and in this moment of true powerlessness, when we cannot climb our way out, we can still choose to be faithful. I just learned this morning that when John Lewis walked across the Edmond Pettus Bridge, he expected to spend the night and jail, so he carried with him two books: one was political, the other was The Seven Story Mountain by a monk named Thomas Merton. In that book Merton wrote: “People have no idea what one saint can do: for sanctity is stronger than the whole of hell.” My friends, we are standing at the edge of it, and it may seem as though we are powerless to do much about it, but we are not without a choice in what we do. Choose today to be more holy, more merciful, more kind, and more faithful. When you watch the world and those who scurry across your TV screen, don’t look for humans to disappoint you, because they always will. Instead, look for the hand at work in all of this, for he never will disappoint you, nor does he slumber, nor does he sleep. Someday we’ll hear about how all this could have been avoided and we’ll have the chance to point our finger at those who are to blame, but until we know how to forgive, we’ll never deserve the grace that’s been provided. Joseph’s brothers deserved punishment, but they did not get what they deserved. Neither have we. We have been forgiven, and we must learn to forgive. We have been redeemed, and we must trust God to redeem us again. For Joseph was led by the hand of God to save his people, and by the hand of God we will be saved. So, choose faith this day. Choose faith. Amen.