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!"

Empty

Empty

Last night was Christmas eve.  At the evening service, I somewhat regretfully informed the gathering that they, we, are "the rich." That our topsy turvy God put our fate in the mouth of Mary as she sang, "God has filled the hungry with good things; the rich God has sent empty away." I observed that we were all glad of the message that God fills and will fill the hungry with good things. The observation that God has sent the rich "empty away" is okay, we think. After all, is any one of us what we consider to be rich? Mary's song isn't referring to us, is it! Well, among those gathered for worship, few miss supper on a regular basis. Compared to so many in the world, we are certainly rich. Does that mean God has turned away from us because we have enough?

I suggest that God does give us a gift. Consider that in the midst of what we have, what we've been given, what we've worked for, what we've baked and wrapped, in the midst of all our plans and good intentions, we have filled ourselves with good things ... and left ourselves full. Like an inn with no room for the savior of the world, we have left ourselves full.

"The rich God has sent empty away."

God's gift to us is the gift of emptiness, the gift of yearning.

Beloved, we won't have Christmas until we hear and respond to the call from the carol, "Let every heart prepare him room!"

So that is God's gift to us; emptiness we can't fill ourselves. The emptiness that lets us be, "where meek hearts will receive him still, the dear Christ enters in."

May you have the gift of emptiness today, that there be space for the holy.

Peace and Blessing, ...

Spirituality 101

I don't frequently look up definitions, do you?  I seem to hold the belief that the last time I needed to look at a dictionary was in school, that whatever I think a word means is good enough. 

Perhaps you recognize the reference to Humpty Dumpty's pronouncement in Alice In Wonderland?  "'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'It means just what I choose it to mean - neither more or less.'"  Of course, the author, Lewis Carroll, wants to show that Humpty Dumpty is an arrogant egg.  With good British wit, however, Carroll's H.D. is also speaking the truth.  For even though we acknowledge that words have meanings, the layers of meanings in what we say modify generally accepted meanings thoroughly.  

Consider the word "green.'" 

Or how about the word "Christian?" 

From our conversations about "spirituality," we've discovered a variety of meanings and an uncertainty, for some of us, about any meaning.  Perhaps some definitions will help.

-- Spirituality: having to do with the human spirit.  That's a good start, although it kind of postpones an answer. 

-- Spirituality: having to do with the soul, incorporeal, not pertaining to material things but to intangibles.  That helps a little more, I think.  We are in the domain of the 'intangible.'  For those of us who like concrete information, this suggests, we're likely to be unsatisfied.  Spirituality is not something concrete, not something you can touch. 

-- Spirituality: to be distinguished from our physical experience, our material body.  This is helpful.  It is a very old idea, embedded in much of the Bible, that the material body and the spirit, or spirituality, are separate domains.  Do you agree?  Separating spirituality or spirit from the physical experience of being a human is helpful, up to a point.  It helps us to see clearly.  However, it also makes a false distinction between mind and body.  For we are mind and body – one entity.  There is no mind separate from the physical and chemical activity of heart, lungs, brain, etc. 

-- Spirituality: belief in an ultimate or an alleged immaterial reality.  Do you believe that there is a reality beyond what we can perceive?  Do you assert that there is  "more?" 

-- Spirituality: an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of his/her being.  That's an interesting one, isn't it?  Now the definition is leading us to consider not so much how the cosmos is arranged or the nature of reality but how we experience and use this thing we name spirituality.  

I think we can stop there for this posting.

Would you consider these aspects of spirituality and let me know your thoughts?  I'm not asking you to go find more definitions, although you certainly may do so.  Rather, I invite you to consider the questions posed so far in this survey of meaning.  Spirituality's intangibleness, the idea of a separation between you as a physical body that is alive and you as something spiritual, the idea that there is something, some reality that is "more" than our concrete experience of reality, and especially, that there is an inner path which, by taking it, you can discover the essence of your being.

And pray with me too.  

Dear God, Dearest God, reveal to us sufficient insight into the mystery of  ourselves and our relationship to this wonderful creation.  We attribute our creation and all creation to you and so we give you our attention, our love, our praise, and all the glory.  Amen.

Despair

Despair.

There is a lot of despair in the Bible, in the history of our faith, in the way churches often fail to grow healthier, in the lives of those who find their way to church as well as the lives of those who don't.  It is here, in this space of despair that the church and our faith has the greatest potential.  It is in the context of despair that so much of our worship and our sacred texts can speak so clearly and usefully.

The core assertion of our faith is that we are not alone, that God is with us.  

We gather as a congregation because when we sit shoulder to shoulder and face to face we restore ourselves to the family of God.  It is here, being church, that we restore ourselves in the face of despair.  That's why our gathering together is so essential to the possibilities of life.  Together, we can face that which causes despair and that which is unknown.  Bound together as a congregation, we can find the faith and the courage that we're going to need when we leave and head out to tackle the issues of our lives and our world.

God is with us, beloved!  God has always been with us!  You and I, we can draw strength from God through the process of drawing strength from each other.  Consider these words, written by Shirley Erena Murray, sung so recently by all of us together:

Find the room for hope to enter,

Find the place where we are freed:

Clear the chaos and the clutter,

Clear our eyes, that we can see

All the things that really matter, ...

Peace and Blessing,

Brad