Joseph in Jail

How is your memory of the Book of Genesis? With all the drama, epics, and archetypes, Genesis is just packed! Let's run through a few. 

Creation, creation again, Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Noah and the Flood(creation yet again,) the Tower of Babel(that would be another creation story,) Abraham and Sarah and Hagar, Lot & Co., Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Esau, Leah and Rachel, playing host to angels, wrestling with angels, brother-betrayals, famine, journeys to Egypt, and a whole mess of "begats!" Some of these moments, characters, and plots resonate with my life. How about yours?

One dramatic moment happens when Joseph was first a servant, a slave, for Potiphar, who was "an officer of Pharaoh, captain of the guard." Joseph gets on well in his job until the day he is falsely accused of inappropriate physical contact by Potiphar's wife.

And Joseph's master took him and put him into the prison, the place where the king's prisoners were confined; he remained there in prison. Genesis 39:20

There was no trial, no evidence-gathering, no judge, and certainly no jury. The way Egypt worked in those days was the way that authoritarian systems work most of the time. The most important factor in the economic, justice, and social system is the relative power of each person. What is important is who has power, who carried the day, and can be expected to show power in the future. The playing field isn't even supposed to be level. It's supposed to be the way it is.

In our time and nation, we hold to ideals of a justice system that is based on something other than the preferences of those in power. We have tried, with varying degrees of success, to establish a law enforcement that is just. It may be that for you law enforcement has been just, appropriate, reasonable, consistent – fair. That wasn't the case for Joseph.

Joseph needed circumstances – fate – to turn around for him. That's just what happened. He made his way back into trust, out of jail, and upward in the Egyptian realm until he was as powerful as anyone, anyone who wasn't the Pharaoh himself. Actually, the Bible attributes the turnaround using its well-known explanation, "because the Lord was with him; and whatever he did, the Lord made it prosper." In fairness, the text also gives some credit to Joseph's skills, although if we say Joseph was a gifted steward we consider who it was gave Joseph the gift.

Have you been falsely accused? Have you been locked up or just locked? Have you been in a position where you didn't and couldn't move forward in your job or your relationship with someone? Have you ever been stuck? If in your difficult time you have longed for deep sustenance, then you know the direction God's help comes from. Consider your heritage.

You inherit the love of God that God has for all creation – open yourself to the possibility that God's love is available to buoy you up. You inherit a practice of praying for just what you need (your daily bread) and no more – open yourself to the hope in that prayer. You inherit a way of living in which each of us shares with each other (see Acts 4:32) – open yourself to your brothers and sisters in faith that they might know your need and share with you their strength.

Joseph did find his way out of the fix where he was stuck. May this be your story too! May you always find your way through the stuck places you encounter and realize that those stuck places do not completely define your life. Your life is alive in the very being of God, the Holy One, the Source. That is where you live and move and have your being. The place where you're stuck? That's just a place you are in "for now!"

Spirituality 102 - on the path

I walk on woodsy paths more frequently than some of you, I suspect.  Walking in the woods comes with the territory of living with a Labrador retriever who is ready at any moment to head out and find the next adventure.  

Briar's experience on the walk in the woods is like mine in some ways.  We cover some of the same ground and we start and end the walk at the same time.  Yet anyone watching Briar, or knowing even a little about dogs, knows that Briar experiences something quite different from what I experience.  

To authentically follow the inner, spiritual path, one must practice observing what one sees on the journey.  This is problematic because we already have a way of seeing ourselves and what is inside us.  If we consider moments in our lives, decisions we have made, principles on which we have settled, etc., we may find a well-defined series of monuments to our own righteousness, our woundedness, our shame, our pride, our accomplishments, our thought processes, our taste, etc.  I use the word "monuments" to convey that they are frequently unchanging, "cast in stone."  We see them in the way we've come to see them.  Yet that fixed nature of what we expect and have prepared for will often prevent us from learning and growing.  That fixed view of our lives makes our inner journey the same each time through.  It can prevent what might have been a spiritually deepening experience from being anything more than a stroll down our memory lane of what we see as the facts.  In other words, it is not much of a spiritual journey.

Most of us take these inner journeys alone.  We think.  We ponder.  We decide.  We walk the same paths again and again.  This does build our character a certain way.  This solitary journey can strengthen our opinions and cement our principles.  Also, there is something appealing about doing it ourselves, independently.  I confess that my mode of introspection has mostly been of this solitary sort.

Well, except for my example of walking with the dog.  When Briar and I walk a path together, what she sees changes what I end up seeing.  The path is a different experience when we walk it together.

So one way to improve the depth and breadth and ultimately the spirituality of your introspection is, at least some of the time, to take someone else along. One use of therapeutic counseling is to reconsider how we have come to regard the elements of our inner life.  Note that I am naming how we can revisit our way of looking at people, moments, accomplishments, losses, loves, etc.   The purpose of such conversations is not so much to excavate hidden facts as it is to push past the meaning we settled upon long ago into a new meaning, freshly meaningful to who we are now.  This is also the domain of the spiritual director or guide.  Those, then, are two kinds of people who will go with you along such journeys.

Which brings us to our religious tradition.  Particularly at Grace Church, we invite people to walk the journey of life with us ("No matter who you are …")  Our part of that is to invite one or more other people to walk the spiritual path with us.  Our part of that is to allow our experience in worship to enter into our consideration of the path we're on right now.  Also, our tradition is full of Bible study, book study, conversations, special services, prayer groups, pilgrimages, retreats, shared chores, cooking together, work in the Stearns Farm field, and shared stewardship for our church, our property, and the world beyond our parking lot.  All of these are places of journey, places of spiritual encounter, and places where we share the path.  I conclude that being part of a church can be a way to find companionship for your spiritual journey.

Which leaves you and me with the question of the day, "When is your next chance to share with someone else with the idea that you are, together, on the spiritual journey?"