Service on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/seeyouonsunday/videos/513659317941748 and YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ys1wdCDH7os
Our story today, in the translation that was read, is not… perfect. No translation is. Where Joseph says “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good,” I start to feel… I don’t love it. Sometimes we read the Common English Bible which translate Joseph as saying, “You planned something bad for me, but God produced something good from it.” It changes the way God is involved in the story and in the actions of Joseph’s brother in the beginning.
I am not the pastor who is going to tell you everything happens for a reason. And I’m not the pastor who’s going to tell you everything is God’s will. I cannot look at the suffering of individuals and communities near and far from violence in schools to the catastrophic human toll of War and find comfort that I will never understand the ways of God, that God’s ways are higher than mine. I find zero solace leaving the god preordains suffering. You are going through it I will never deny what you need to find comfort but I will never say those words.
I brought up Kate Bowler before. She has just checked off huge milestones of a professorship at at duke, a dream job, and having a young baby. It was then she was diagnosed with terminal cancer, only eventually to realize it’s the rare version of the terminal cancer that might not be terminal. After this experience and surviving, She Wrote a book called Everything Happens for a Reason and other lies I’ve loved, because despite not believing in a transactional god, she did find herself wondering what she had done to deserve cancer. Because I guess it’s really great to say God didn’t preordain my suffering when you’re not facing your own mortality.
Sometimes it is life your body, Rogue cells, a diagnosis, the lack of a diagnosis that throw you into a pit. That is dark and scary and from which you don’t know how you will get out.
It could be someone else’s illness or a death that put you in a pit. Or a relationship that ends in a different way, the day the papers arrive to sign, the betrayal of a friendship. It might be a job you thought was a career that is over.
Sometimes it is people, of the loss of people, that drop you into a pit.
In Memphis, the Civil Rights Museum is attached to is part of the Lorraine Motel. You have to walk past the front of the motel to get into the building. They have 1960s cars in the parking spots, and you pause at a plaque and look up at the balcony where Dr King Jr was shot. On the plaque they took from the story of Joseph, “Behold, here cometh the dreamer… Let us slay him… and we shall see what will become of his dreams.”
Sometimes, a whole movement or group get thrown into the pit, into despair, grief, uncertainty.
Because pits can be like that. Lonely, painful, dark. It hurts getting thrown into a pit, or falling in, or even waking up and finding ourselves there. There is confusion, uncertainty, maybe hopelessness. And it’s probably not helpful for someone to walk by, look in the pit, and tell you this is God’s plan. Everything happens for a reason.
There is more to this life and cosmos than I will ever understand, so maybe I’m wrong about that. But what I do know, is God was present with Joseph in the pit, on the road to Egypt, and in the jail he spent time in as much as God was with Joseph when he tried on his robe for the first time, in his dreams, and when he stood before his brothers at the end of the story. God was with him, did not abandon him,
But maybe it’s something else. Recently on Kate Bowler’s Podcast she had Rabbi Stevn Leder. Steve And it’s the truth of it. It’s the best we can do. A shadow is also proof of light, right? You can’t have a shadow without light. It’s total darkness. So a shadow, no matter how long or how dark … and it’s pretty shitty to be walking in a valley of shadows.
Steve It’s helpful to remember. Well, there’s even a duality to that because the shadow is actually proof that the sun is shining behind those mountains. And that has to be enough. Because that’s all we’ve got.
You are not alone. God does not abandon you, or me, or us. There is light, there is reasons to hope, even from the middle of the pit.
The pit isn’t the end of the story. The pit is never the end of the story. Joseph get taken out of the pit, things are perfect, he still has a long journey ahead of him, it’s going to get ugly, but it’s not the end.
The pit is not the end of the story. Hatred is not the end of the story. God turns the story to good. There is a future beyond this moment, beyond this pit, beyond this darkness, beyond this point, out of which God is doing something good.
Sometimes, and it might be possible, that the working toward good is that when you are walking by the next pit, and you look down and see someone on alone at the bottom, you stop. Maybe you sit with them and tell them you’ve been there, you are the proof of that the story isn’t over. Maybe the something good is that you have compassion, you have a fire for those who are harassed.
He said, “If you have to go through hell anyway, don’t come out empty handed.”
Steve We are like that fish. And when does a fish discover water? When it’s jerked out of it, wriggling at the end of a hook, gasping for breath. That’s when a fish discovers water. And it is only pain and disruption that can teach us anything. Pain is the only teacher. Death is the only teacher. And is it worth it? No. Is it worthless? No.
Not ever pit we fall, stumble, or are pushed into, even if we don’t come out empty handed is worth it. Even if God works it out for good. Sometimes we would rather have the life before than the lessons today. But the struggle and the pain, the beauty and the love, they are part of being alive.
Maybe you learn a hard lesson from the pit. Maybe you grow. Maybe you meet new people, maybe… I have to imagine there are endless options for what could be the good. It doesn’t mean you’d pick the pit, you’d pick the terrible thing just for the lesson, but that if you’re going to go through it, don’t come out empty handed. Know you are not alone. God, the love of God, the grace of God are with you and before you.
Theologian Frederick Buechner wrote: “The grace of God means something like: Here is your life. You might never have been, but you are because the party wouldn’t have been complete without you. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. I am with you. Nothing can ever separate us. It’s for you I created the universe. I love you. There’s only one catch. Like any other gift, the gift of grace can be yours only if you’ll reach out and take it. Maybe being able to reach out and take it is a gift too.”
It’s not always clear. Sometimes it is that long ark history. But the story isn’t over. The dream doesn’t die. God is still writing your story with you, setting a direction toward good. There is hope. There is good. It’s not over. Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. God is with you.
When I need God to redeem this painful, hard, sad thing
Wonder Worker,
When I peered up from the hole
and saw no way out…
When what was taken
away gave no warning…
When I didn’t think I
had the courage
(or even the energy)
to live into a life looking
nothing like it did before…
Something was happening.
The thing I thought would break me—
that did break me—
is now making me.
Great is the mystery of faith…
The pieces of life’s puzzle
come together here and there,
or shockingly in a big patch at once,
and I see you…
active and good in all things.
Your power to redeem—
to take the most painful deaths
and birth from them living, breathing gifts,
taking my own breath away in awe.
You do not create pain for me to grow
or cause the heartache of my soul,
but are the expert Shaper of life’s ashes.
Somehow this terrible thing—
when given in earnest to you today
(and many tomorrows from now!)—
becomes an open channel where
something amazing will flow.
A passage echoing
with a tender Voice:
You can trust me
with all the things….
in all the things…
You will lift me from this hole.
I will wail and wonder with gratitude.
I’ll begin a new kind of dance,
letting my limp remind
my soul and world
how broken bodies
learn exquisite new rhythms.
With you, pain finds a home
in something larger than itself.
And, sacred scars hold haven over
wounds that will someday bless.
Amen.
Kate I very frequently want to punch people in the face or throat who say that “pain is our greatest teacher” because mostly it happens in a yoga class and I just don’t take downward dog that seriously. But there is something at the heart of that saying that rings true. Pain transforms us in a way we can’t unlearn with lessons we don’t want to forget. And of course, this is the kind of wisdom I wish that none of us had to know because no, it wasn’t worth it. But as Steve says, “If you have to go through hell, don’t come out empty-handed.” So here’s a blessing for all of us who wrestle to find goodness and hope and beauty through it all. And it’s from Jessica and I’s new book of Blessings, which is called The Lives We Actually Have. “Blessed are you, who feel the wound of fresh loss. Or of a loss, no matter how fresh, that still makes your voice crack all these years later. You are stuck in the impossibility of it. Frozen in disbelief. How can this be? It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Blessed are you, fumbling around for easy answers or quick truths to try to make this go down easier. You who are dissatisfied with the shallow theology and trite platitudes. Blessed are we, who, instead, demand a blessing. Because we have wrestled with God and are here. Wounded. Broken. Changed. Blessed are we, who keep parenting, who keep our marriages and friendships and jobs afloat, and who stock the pantry … because … what choice do we have but to move forward with a life we didn’t choose with a loss we thought we couldn’t live without? One small step. One small act of hope at a time.”