The Lord Be With You. Really.

Genesis 39:1-23; Matthew 5:11-12

The Lord was with Joseph, who was a slave in the house of his Egyptian master. His master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord caused all that Joseph did to prosper.

Later, when Joseph had been thrown into prison, the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love. The Lord was with him, and whatever he did, the Lord made it prosper.

There is a sermon that could be preached on this text along these lines: The moral of the story is that you should be like Joseph. Do a good job at work. Resist temptation and keep your hands to yourself. And in general just be a good citizen. And if you do, God will reward you with success, with promotions and honors, and everything that you do will prosper. That is one way to read this story.

Of course, life is more complicated than this simple story would have us think. There are plenty of people who do everything right but are not successful and some things don’t turn out well in their lives. And this simplistic way of reading Biblical texts like our reading today places a heavy burden on those of us who don’t have the Midas touch, who don’t have it all together – because it seems like it must be our fault for not trying hard enough.

Some of you may know of Diana Butler Bass. She’s an important Christian author – I don’t know her personally, but I believe she lives here in Alexandria and belongs to an Episcopal church. I was listening to an interview she gave last week, and she told a story about being on an airplane and sitting with someone who found out she wrote Christian books. The man said, I don’t go to church any more, and Diana said, A lot of people don’t go to church anymore.

The man said, My wife and I had a baby that was born with serious illnesses. She was disabled in ways that she’d never have much quality of life. And my whole church prayed and prayed for us, and the baby died. And when we came to church for the funeral, my pastor said: Look what you did. You didn’t pray enough. And that was the last time I went to church.  (It’s the last time I would have gone to that church too, to be honest.)

So I think it’s just irresponsible to say: Be like Joseph, be a virtuous person, and the Lord will be with you and everything you do will prosper, because it’s just not true. It is also not what our Scripture reading this morning actually says.

Yes, the text says twice that the Lord was with Joseph and that everything Joseph did went perfectly. The first time this is said is when Joseph has been sold into slavery and eventually is purchased as a slave by an Egyptian official named Potipher. The second time it is said that the Lord is with Joseph and that the Lord granted Joseph every success and made him prosper is when Joseph is falsely accused and thrown into prison. And one might ask: How can the Lord be with you when you have been sold into slavery? How can the Lord be making everything you do turn to gold when you’ve been thrown into jail? If the Lord is not setting Joseph free from slavery, if the Lord is not clearing Joseph’s name and getting out of captivity, what does it even mean to say that the Lord is with him and making everything he does to prosper? Slavery and unjust imprisonment doesn’t sound like prosperity and blessing to me.

I mean, yes, Joseph appears to have a talent for organization and management. Potipher recognizes this and puts Joseph to work and Potipher reaps the benefits of Joseph’s good work – yet Joseph is at every moment a slave, at every moment vulnerable and powerless, easily taken advantage of and scapegoated, without rights. The chief jailer also recognizes Joseph’s talents and gets Joseph to do all his work for him, but at the end of the day Joseph is not free to leave the prison, not free to choose how to live his own life. Perhaps in some sense the Lord was with him, but it’s hard to see how Joseph would have known that. Joseph could be forgiven for thinking, “My God, why have you abandoned me?” As Martin Luther said in commenting on this story, “God is silent and pretends not to know.” Which cannot have been much comfort to Joseph.

There is nothing simple about this story – it raises the most profound questions that many people ask all the time. Where is God when people are suffering? To this day there are still people who are actually enslaved, trafficked, unjustly imprisoned. There are countless people today who, through no fault of their own, have no opportunities to control their fates – lack of food or a place to live, bad family dynamics, whatever. Many people work hard for the benefit of others who do not appreciate them as people and treat them accordingly. Many people – especially women, but some men as well – are harassed and subject to unwanted sexual attention. And still more have physical illnesses that rob them of their autonomy and their dignity. And all of these people can rightly ask – is the Lord with me? If the Lord were with me, if the Lord did look with favor on me, why am I enduring all this?

This passage is one of many stories the book of Genesis tells about the family of Jacob, the grandson of Abraham, whom – as we read last week – God called to be the ancestor of a family, and then a people, who would come to understand the true and living God so that God could bless and be present to the whole world. Jacob’s 12 sons become the ancestors of the 12 tribes of Israel. Joseph is the first of the 12 sons to go to Egypt – not of his own free will, but because his brothers were jealous that Joseph was Jacob’s favorite. They sold him into slavery and tricked their father into thinking he was dead. Apparently they hadn’t learned very much yet about what it means to be the people of God. But then things start happening to the 12 sons – this story being just one of those events – where the Lord begins to reveal something of who God is and how God works in the world.

The family of Abraham is learning, slowly, where to find God in the midst of human suffering. In the midst of their own suffering. And they are discovering that this God whom they are learning to know is not like the gods of Abraham’s ancestors in Ur of the Chaldees, who remind one of the kings of ancient principalities, jealous of their privileges and ready to go to war to defend themselves from their enemies. The God they are coming to know is not like the gods of Egypt, who guarantee the power and authority of Pharoah and the rich officials of Pharoah’s kingdom like Potipher with land and wealth and slaves.

No, the God they are coming to know is the God who is with the weak and the lowly and the enslaved and the imprisoned and the least and the lost. Luther said that in this story one might have thought that the Lord was with Mr. and Mrs. Potipher – they’re the ones with the money, and the power, and the freedom to do what they please to the unfortunate people who have no power or freedom. But in fact, Luther says, they are speaking for the devil. The Lord is with Joseph, not with Mr. or Mrs. Potipher, despite all evidence to the contrary – and that is where real faith in the true and living God begins.

Just as I believe that the Lord is with the man on the airplane who spoke to Diana Butler Bass. You would have thought that the Lord was with his pastor, called to speak a word of comfort and grace from the Lord at a time of inconceivable loss and tragedy. In fact, I would contend, the Lord is with the man who was able to stand up and say in his grief, I reject a god who would have saved my daughter if only I had prayed to him differently. That man may not go to church but he knows the Lord much better than his pastor.

To me, this is what it means to say that the Lord was with Joseph in the house of slavery, that the Lord was with Joseph in prison. That the Lord is on Joseph’s side. And the little successes Joseph has – the little successes that make life easier for Potipher and the chief jailer but don’t actually make Joseph free – these are little hints God is dropping, for those with the eyes to see, about where the Lord is really to be found. And where we will see the power of God to truly set people free, the mercy of God that makes all things right, the life of God that defeats the powers of death and evil.

Joseph is learning that, even though God is silent and pretends not to know, God does know and God does care and God is with Joseph, not his tormenters. And, one day, when he and his brothers who sold him into slavery are reunited, this is what will allow Joseph to say to them: You intended to do evil to me, but somehow the Lord has brought something good out of it. This is what we hope for in our own difficulties and setbacks, what we pray for in our own trials, what we are looking for when we seek to see how God is speaking to us – the Lord will be with the weak and the troubled and the brokenhearted. May we have the eyes to see God’s presence there, and the faith to act on what we see.