wpc

Genesis: Stories of Faith

“Generations, Growing in God”

Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28

The Reverend Chris Adams

August 7, 2011

I want to start this morning with a question.  It’s a philosophical question that I don’t expect you to answer right away.  Are you ready?

When is bad news actually good news?

I have a counselor friend who does Christian marriage and family counseling.  He has this theory that nothing really begins to happen in a difficult family system until the “fruit basket is all over the floor.”  It’s an image about that little bowl of fruit that people sometimes have in the middle of their kitchen table.  Sometimes when couples or families are fighting at their worst, somebody gets so upset that they knock that little fruit bowl off the table, spilling the contents all over the floor.  That’s when my friend knows there is a chance that things might begin to change in that family.  Until then nothing really changes.

Only when things get to their worst, and the news seems all bad, is the beginning of good news according to my friend.  Bad news is good news.

Years ago, my family was living in Richmond, Virginia.  We had this little apartment on the first floor of this beautiful old house on a tree-lined street in downtown Richmond.  It was the perfect image of community if you visited Richmond and rode down that street.  The houses were well cared for, there were children playing in the yards, and people walking their dogs down the carefully manicured grassy medium of the street.

Yet, the reality was that nobody knew anybody on that street.  People came and went, and moved in and moved out and most of our neighbors never knew any of the people that lived around them.  Sometimes images can be deceiving.

That is until a rogue hurricane Isabel came blowing in late summer-early fall.  The storm was so severe that the winds completely destroyed the Richmond city power grid.  Our family lived without electrical power, and therefore just about every modern convenience for 21 days until they got the power grid rebuilt.  It was not a fun time.

The interesting thing was that something happened in those days with our neighbors.  Everyone had frozen meat and other food in their houses that would quickly spoil.  So neighbors wheeled their grills out into that grassy medium in the middle of the street and offered to cook anything and everything people had before it spoiled.

So in the midst of this tragedy, a party broke out.  People got to know their neighbors for the first time ever.  We learned that some really wonderful people lived on that street.  It was absolutely the best time of our entire time in Richmond.  Isn’t that strange?  A storm, no electricity, and spoiling food was our best time.

So what should have been bad news all around actually turned out to be good news for us.  Bad news was good news.

It’s part of being a human being I think.  It’s ancient practice.  Things have to get difficult and almost tragic for us to want to see anything different.  That’s just how we are.  In fact, it’s even what we see in the Jacob story today.  It’s the same story.

Jacob now has his own family to care for.  This story is the story of that family.  Often, we think of this story as the Joseph story, you know “Joseph’s Coat of Many Colors,” but it’s much more than just about Joseph.  It’s about family.

You see, it seems that Jacob too must learn everything the hard way.  Jacob is a master at creating his own version of bad news.

We are told that Jacob and his wives and his children are living in the land of Canaan.  While Jacob, who is now since the “wrastling” with God called Israel, has many sons with his wives.  In fact, he has twelve representing eventually the twelve tribes.  But one of his sons, the youngest in fact is his favorite.

Jacob is going to continue to relive his story again and again it seems.  Talk about a difficult family system.  The same issues he had with his brother Esau, the younger stealing the birthright of the elder, is happening again.  It was the same with Abraham’s sons, Isaac and Ishmael.  In fact, this story goes all the way back to the beginning, Cain and Abel.  Over and over the family of God has to relive this same story.

Why can’t they learn anything from the past?  Why is it so hard?  Why can’t they look at the previous generations and avoid learning the hard way?  Somebody please knock the fruit bowl on the floor!

But they can’t apparently.  This time, because Jacob shows Joseph such favoritism, his older brother’s hate him.  In fact, if we read it carefully maybe they had a reason.  Joseph follows them around and reports on them to their father, perhaps to keep his most favored son status.  Joseph is a tattle-tale.

In fact, why are we told that Joseph is found wandering around in a field?  It might suggest that Joseph was so coddled by his father, that he didn’t even know his way around the same country his brothers would have known like the back of their hand.  Joseph is babied to a point of helplessness.

So his brothers decide to pull a Cain and Abel again.  Just like Isaac and Ishmael, just like Jacob and Esau, sibling rivalry is going to again take a family into tragedy.

This time though, it seems as if God intervenes.  I don’t think the brothers know any of this as God, in fact to them this is pure evil.  But in this story of faith we can begin to learn a great faith lesson...

What men mean for harm and evil, God can use for good!  It’s the same “When is bad news good news?” yet with a theological spin.

Remember, we know what’s coming don’t we?  It takes a while to develop, but in the end, Joseph will break the cycle of family violence and establish the family of God once and for all.  And all that happens in Egypt...

So when we read at the end of this story that they take Joseph to Egypt, we could even understand that as good news.  It’s not pleasant, it’s not very comfortable for certain, but this is how God will apparently break the cycle.   This is the good that God intends from all the evil in this family history, and in fact the evil done by the family of God in their story up to this point.

What they intend for evil, God intends to use for good.  That’s the faith lesson of this story.  That’s when bad news becomes good news; when God’s involved.

My friends, there is a lot of evil going on in the world today.  I don’t mean “pitch fork and horns evil” though you can assign it any way you want.  I mean that there are lots and lots of folks suffering.  People are hurting and questioning and just about ready to give up.

This has been one of the worst weeks for good news that I can remember.  On Monday, we are treated to our political circus in Washington DC.  Our leaders are having a food fight over the economic status of our country.  Then we learn that our credit rating with S&P has in fact been downgraded anyway, despite the efforts of our lawmakers.  It’s the first time since 1917 we have not been AAA rated.  We made it through World War I, the Great Depression, World War II, the Cold War, and everything in between just fine, but now we are no longer one of the world’s great economies, at least according to S&P.  Then yesterday we awoke to the news that 30 of our best and brightest in our nation’s military were lost in Afghanistan.  It seems the Taliban have learned to shoot down our helicopters at night.  It’s the worst single day in the ten year old war.

It’s like that storm knocking out the power grid in Richmond.  All of a sudden, people are wandering around outside in a Joseph-like stupor trying to figure out what the heck is going on?  

It’s like a cycle that we can’t seem to get out of, a roller-coaster ride that never ends.  We are up and then we are down and then we are up and then we are down.  It’s very disorienting.  If it weren’t for bad news, there would be no news at all it seems.

But then, as I look around it almost seems like God is changing things.  I am not sure most of us are aware that it’s God.  All of a sudden, people are returning to things that just a short time ago didn’t seem to have as much meaning.  Family, community, helping one another out, and being creative in addressing problems seems to be a new theme.

I watched a television show on Thursday night about the city of Detroit that reminded me a little of our experience in Richmond.  Detroit has been devastated by the economy.  It is probably the hardest hit city in all the United States.

Yet, the show highlighted many different ways people are coming together to break the cycle of the economic rollercoaster.  People are beginning to smile again.

There are new businesses being created literally from the scraps of the auto industry.  Neighbors are reclaiming empty lots in blighted neighborhoods and growing gardens there to feed their neighbors.  Schools are thinking outside the box at ways to inspire kids to get educated again.  It’s like things are starting to change.

This isn’t just in Detroit, but all over America.  What we messed up by taking our focus off of the really important things has caused lots of hard times.  We are suffering from the dysfunction of our society.  We came to believe that it was all about acquiring stuff, and bigger and more expensive.  That is until the storm came, and the fruit basket got knocked all over the floor.  Now it seems we are ready to change.

Perhaps we are not yet ready to see some of our suffering as good news.  But remember, we are the people of God, we know where we’re headed.  Even what might be intended as evil, or certainly neglect, God can use for good.  That’s a fundamental truth of our faith.  Bad news can be turned to good news by the Almighty God.

Let me give you a real close example of this.  We have some families that have been through it over the last few years.  There are lost wages, lost homes, and even the loss of a hopeful future.  This is not how many families in our congregation thought things were going to turn out for them.

But my friends, over the last three days, these families have come together in a special way.  Our Bible School this summer was not just for children, but for families.  Westminster is recognizing something of a need in our families here.  It’s time for us to get back to the basics of family, mom’s and dad’s, grandma and grandpa.  We spent our time together getting back to basics, doing the simplest of ancient practices.  We talked about faith, family and food.  Growing our own food, but more than that, part of our discussion was growing our community too by sharing the blessings given to us by God.

I believe this is God beginning to turn things, maybe from dysfunction to something new, from same old news (mostly bad) to a fresh outpouring of good news in the Spirit.  It’s only beginning, as our theme indicates, there is much more Growing in God to begin.

Maybe in the end, it’s still true that we have to learn everything the hard way.  Mabye we have to live through a little bad news, in order for God to be able to turn us again to the good news God has in store for us.  

Isn’t that what God does?  Our Lord Jesus Christ took the hard way so that we could learn about faith and life, and hope and grace, and rebirth and resurrection?  What most understood as the worst of news.  God came to us with a message of good news, and we killed him for it.  Could there be any worse example of bad news?

Yet our God turned even this into good news for you and for me.  Out of those dark days, God used death and destruction, hate and violence, to turn the world into something else.  God gave us good news out of our bad news.  And it’s all because of Jesus Christ!

Do you want to know when bad news is actually good news?  When the power of our Almighty God, the blessing of Jesus Christ, is involved.  When he is part of our lives, even our bad news is good.

Thanks be to God.  Amen.