It was shortly after his father died that my friend
Scott and I met at a pub to talk.
Even though he was grieving the loss of his father, Scott felt a lot of
anger toward him. He harbored many
resentments toward him and was haunted by unresolved arguments with him. I asked Scott what sorts of things he
was angry about and he was able to recount incidents from thirty years ago with
stunning clarity.
Scott was a pretty good baseball player. It had been his passion his whole
life. Yet it was also a source of
pain for him, especially in regard to his father. He remembered Little League games that his father had
promised to attend. As a young boy, he would look into the bleachers, hoping to
see him, but his father was seldom around. As he moved up to high school, Scott became quite a good
pitcher. What hurt him most was
the fact that, as he became a local baseball hero, his father never came to see him pitch a single game. It wasn’t just during the good games
that he missed his father. It was
during the bad games as well, during the hard losses and disappointments.
“I feel like I’ll be carrying around this
resentment the rest of my life,” Scott said depressingly. “My father was never there when I
needed him.”
Many of you may have had fathers who, due to a
heavy workload or just plain indifference, never seemed to be there for you
when we needed them. Many of you
in this room, who are fathers now, struggle to be a different kind of father. You make the effort to attend every one
of your child’s games or concerts.
You work hard to be involved in all the aspect of your kid’s lives. The last thing you ever want to be
called is an absentee father.
When we read the story of Joseph in the book of
Genesis, it can seem like the tale of an absentee father - or two. Joseph’s father, Jacob, sometimes
referred to as Israel, does not play a large role in moving any of the plot
forward. He favors Joseph more
than his other sons, even going so far as to give him a special ornamental
coat. But when the brothers become
jealous, even going so far as to plot his murder, Jacob doesn’t bother to
correct them, or stop their schemes against Joseph. Instead Jacob seems to passively sit back and allow this
evil to happen. Surely, we wonder
to ourselves, Jacob could have made the effort to get a little more involved in
Joseph’s life.
Throughout the remainder of the story, as Joseph
rises to power in Egypt and goes through vengeful machinations with his
brothers, Jacob is still a distant figure. The brothers, while not recognizing Joseph, ask him to take
it easy on them so as not to grieve their father. Jacob at this point is a shadowy uninvolved figure, off in a
far away land, whom everyone must strive to keep happy or at least, keep from
upsetting. Eventually, Jacob becomes more involved in the narrative, but for
most of the story, he is the archetypal absentee father. As such, I believe he stands in as a
tangible representation of the other seemingly absent father in the Joseph
story.
When we read the Bible, it is like are entering
another world. Of course we are,
quite literally. We are separated
from these stories by thousands of years of history, as well as by culture. But there is something more than
that. In reading these sacred
stories, it feels as if we are encountering a world that operated differently
than the way ours operates. The
stories of theophanies and miracles, of signs and wonders, are far removed from
the everyday reality that most of us experience.
Which is why the story of Joseph can come as something
of a relief to those of us who don’t hear from God audibly every day. The Joseph narrative is very different
from all that comes before it in the first book of the Bible. The stories in Genesis quickly move
from one to another. There are
rapid episodes, fantastic occurences, as well as boring geneologies all
intercut with one another. Then,
at Chapter 37, the action settles down to tell us the story of this one young
man, Joseph. Unlike in previous
tales, we get to know each of the characters in this story and their
motives. They each have scenes
alone in which we learn facts about them which the other characters do not
know. It all makes for a
well-developed narrative.
Curiously, however, one main character is prominent
by his absence. That character is
none other than God. Unlike the
epics which precede it, Joseph’s story is not driven by scenes of God speaking
to people (except for one brief scene where God speaks to Jacob at the end), no
remarkable events, divine messengers or miracles. Just one dysfunctional family fighting among themselves,
dreaming dreams and having them broken.
No supernatural events, just an everyday messy reality. In other words, a world much like yours
and mine.
Let’s
face it, for many of us, God often seems like that absentee father who never
showed up for baseball games. He
sometimes seems like Jacob, off in a distant land, removed from our struggles
and yet we are supposed to worry whether or not we are upsetting him. And so we get angry and resentful at
God.
As we read the Joseph narrative, may well ask,
“Where is God is this story?”
Likewise, as we live the stories of our lives, we often find ourselves
asking that same question, “Where is God in this story?” We may lose our jobs,
or our home, or a loved one and ask, “Where is God in this story?” We may suffer at the hands of others
who seek to keep us down, lie about us, or betray us and we ask, “Where is God
in this story?” We look around the
world at injustice, violence, horrible diseases, the Holocaust, tsunamis and we
ask, “Where is God in this story?”
For an increasing number of people, the answer is
simply that God is not in this story.
They no longer believe God is part of the story because they no longer
believe in God. It can seem a
perfectly rational conclusion.
A conclusion so rational that one can even imagine
Joseph coming to it. Yet he
doesn’t. When the weight of his
resentments and vengeful mind games becomes too much, he reveals himself to his
brothers. He shows them who he
really is and in doing so, reconciles with them. He tells them not to feel bad for selling him into slavery,
that God was working through those horrible events to eventually save lives. If Joseph and his wise managerial
skills were not available in Egypt, countless people would have died in a
famine. Later on, Joseph even
tells his brothers, “What you intended for evil, God used for good.”
Although there were no spectacular miracles or
voices from heaven, God was working all through Joseph’s story
nonetheless. The laws of physics
were never violated and nothing supernatural occurred, but God’s purposes were
forwarded in this messy story of a dysfunctional family. God operates, not as a character in the
story, or an object within it, but as the subject of the story. God’s purposes are not separate from
all the characters’ actions, but are accomplished through their actions. It is very telling that God’s purposes
are not declared until Joseph forgives his brothers. Because it is in reconciliation and forgiveness that God’s
purposes are made visible and God is most present.
When we face challenges in life or we suspect God
is absent, we often miss that God is most present. In difficult times, we doubt the reality of God because God
doesn’t intervene to change our situation. We may miss the realization that the challenges may just be
God’s intervention. Not in the sense of God capriciously sending us difficulties to teach us a
lesson, but being present in the difficulties themselves.
Our challenges are opportunities for us to act as
agents of God. Our resentments are
in fact opportunities for forgiveness.
Our pain is an opportunity for healing. Our hate is an opportunity to love. God’s absence is a sign of God’s
presence.
Some of us have fathers who weren’t such great
fathers or who were never there for us.
Some us have wonderful fathers who were always there for us. Some of us had fathers who have died
and yet are still with us. I don’t
mean with us in some spooky other-worldly way. Our fathers don’t reach down from heaven and fix our
problems for us. But they are with
us in how they shaped us and made us who we are. They gave us our values, a sense of purpose in life and
defined us . When we act out of
the character they formed within us, they are truly with us. When those of us who are fathers
now act as good fathers, they are truly present.
God created us and formed us. God gives us our values, defines us and
gives us purpose. In Jesus, God
gave us a picture of what a God-filled life looks like. It’s a life of reconciliation,
forgiveness and healing. It’s a
life like that of Jesus, who when on the cross, screamed his fears that his
Father was absent, but we now recognize that as the moment in history when God
was most present - right there in the person of Jesus.
When you and I follow him, forgiving, healing and
loving in a world where God seems absent to so many people, including sometimes
us, God is in fact most present.
Sometimes God leaves it to us, his children, to be his presence. Sometimes God challenges us to be the
divine intervention. Sometimes God
calls us to face forces in the
world that work against God’s purposes to stand in faith and say, “What
you intend for evil, God is using for good.”
A message from Genesis 45 by Don Heatley, pastor of Vision Community Church, Warwick, NY
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