Prayer:   “May the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts and minds here together be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer.  Amen.”

Today’s scripture stories are two of the most familiar ones in the whole Bible – Joseph and the amazing coat of many colors (or in this literal translation, the long-sleeved robe!) and Jesus walking on water (and Peter trying at least to do the same).  They both have a lot to say about trust in God – trust that God, despite the evidence to the contrary, is really and truly in charge.  It’s hard sometimes to trust that the Lord has a firm grip on our lives, even when we don’t – maybe especially when we don’t – because that’s when God may seem the most distant to us, or the most deaf to our prayers.

Anyone who’s ever tried to learn to water ski knows that too is a lesson in trust.  You have to have complete trust in both the driver of the boat AND in the spotters who are supposed to be watching you from the back.  And so I’ve never tried to walk on water, but I have tried to water ski.  Many times I tried.  When I was a teenager, my family used to spend a few days every summer with my godfather, Randy, and his family on the shores of Lake Norman in NC – which is a lot like our Candlewood Lake.  He had 3 slightly older teenagers, and they all water skied… well.  So they were determined to teach me.  Trouble was, Randy (God bless him) had lost a good portion of his hearing in the Korean War, and his 3 kids were usually fighting with each other in the back of the boat instead of watching me.  So every time he got the boat and me up to speed, I’d panic before I could stand up.  I’d be afraid they weren’t watching me and I’d quit.  I’d give up.  I’d drop my grip on the line.  And in my own defense, after they nearly maimed me one time when the rope got twisted around my arm and I was screaming “not yet” while Randy gunned the engines, they hadn’t done the greatest job ever of earning my trust.

My point is, scripture works very hard to prove to us that God is not like that.  As both our Bible and our money tell us, in God we can place our trust.  We can trust that no matter now wildly we wander off course – even if our pride gets us sold into slavery, or if our overconfidence leads us to step out to walk on water as if we were Jesus Christ himself – no matter how arrogant, ignorant, or misguided we can be, we can trust God to lead us home.  So both of today’s stories reveal a lot about trusting God.  When the ground we believe to be solid vanishes underfoot – and we find ourselves down in a pit like Joseph or sinking into the flood like Peter – what can we learn from today’s texts?

Let’s start by looking back at the story of Joseph, the pampered younger son with the nice long-sleeved jacket.  In case you were wondering, the Hebrew word kethoneth passim that gets translated as a coat “of many pieces,” or “of many colors,” literally is just a tunic that covers the ankles and wrists.  The phrase is used only one other time in the Bible, in II Samuel 13, to describe the long robe worn by King David’s daughter Tamar, a princess – so we can assume that (whatever its color, or colors) it was a symbol for a person of high rank who didn’t need to have legs and arms free to do hard work. 

And you know, many of us remember this story of Joseph as a tale of a great injustice – a crime by vicious and hateful older brothers.  But he really does sound in this story like a spoiled brat, doesn’t he?  He’s only 17 years old and yet he’s placed in authority over his older brothers[1] – and he tells on them, “giving a bad report” to his father.  Of course, he didn’t deserve to be killed or sold as a slave, but it’s important I think to the story that he isn’t a complete saint – he isn’t a hero without flaw.  Because a true tragedy is one we could well imagine happening to us – wayward sinners that we are.

But if you know your Bible, you know this is a story that just had to happen – no time traveler would want to change this history, because unless Joseph goes to Egypt the Hebrew people can’t be enslaved, and if they can’t be enslaved, then God can’t part the Red Sea and get Moses to lead the people across it to freedom in the Promised Land.  In other words, no one would celebrate Passover – not even Jesus – and the Jews would have no Seder and Christians no communion.  This story has the full momentum of God’s will behind it – like a tidal wave that could never be stopped.  In fact the text as a whole is a great proof of predestination – although it’s important to note that God does not will us to sin and do evil.  We usually manage that by ourselves.  But God has this effortless way, it seems, to make something good of the messes we make.  Again, no matter how far we stray afield, God has a way of shepherding us back onto the right paths.

Both Christian and Jewish scholars will point out that the strange messenger who points Joseph to Dothan conveniently corrected Joseph’s directional mistake – the man Joseph meets there in the field at Shechem might have been an angel steering him back onto the path, to his destiny at the hands of his brothers.  And too, when the brothers decide not to kill him outright, but to throw him the pit instead – why was it an empty cistern and not full of water?  Clearly because God wanted to save Joseph – God did not want Joseph to drown.  And by the same token, when he could have been left there to die slowly of hunger and thirst in the hot sun, instead of that, along comes, just at the right moment, that Ishmaelite caravan.  It’s not hard to see that it was more than coincidences that kept pulling Joseph back onto track when otherwise it would seem his time was up.

Still, it may be hard to see how any of this could be Good News for us – we are none of us prehistoric goatherds wandering lost in the hills of Canaan.  I’m fairly certain that none of us is in any danger of falling into captivity at the hands of slave traders, Egyptian or otherwise, and yet we do have chains that bind us – some of us fall into the bondage of alcohol and drugs, some of us are held captive by fear, by bitterness, or by greed.  And yet Jesus is the one who, in Luke 4:18, proclaims “release to the captives” and promises “to let the oppressed go free.”  What does this look like for us?

I think the best illustration comes from the day I did actually learn to water ski.  I was freed from the bondage of my fear that day.  And it was not in the calm waters of Lake Norman but out in the choppy waves of the Atlantic Ocean, just off the shores of Wilmington, NC.  It was an overcast, windy and gray day – not one that I would have chosen for my 10^th or 11^th try at water skiing.  But I did that day have the advantage of peer pressure – some of my best friends from college were going water skiing and invited me along.  And so, I was blessed that day with a boat driver could actually hear and 3 spotters who I knew genuinely cared about me and were committed to helping me get over my fear and up on my feet, on skis.  And it made all the difference.  Three sets of eyes were locked on mine – watching.  Three sets of hears were straining to hear my voice.  Three human beings were waving and smiling and cheering me along.  I felt the power of their faith in me and I trusted my life in their hands.  I got up.  I skied.

That’s what it takes for us and God.  We have to trust this very Good News that God is truly present in our lives, no matter where we wander – God is always ready and listening, watching and coaching, prepared to steer us back onto the path.  This has perhaps never been more important than in the times we live in today – as we often feel we’re struggling against ever-spiraling, seemingly uncontrollable currents of history (like global warming, terrorism, economic collapse, famine, and disease).  Like Joseph, we can feel lost and alone – held tightly captive in the chains of fear that bind us.  Like Peter, we can feel the undertow of fate seeming to drag us down to despair.  And yet, like my friends in the boat, we disciples are charged with preaching that Good News to the world.  As the body of Christ alive in the world, it is up to us to trust in the promises of God and to reach out to others to encourage them when they falter.  Because no matter what, we know the Lord promises to hold firmly onto us and lead us safely home.

Thanks be to God for this Good News.  Amen.

 

Genesis 37:1-28

Jacob settled in the land where his father had lived as an alien, the land of Canaan. ²This is the story of the family of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was shepherding the flock with his brothers; he was a helper to the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives; and Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. ³Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he had made him a long robe with sleeves[2]. ⁴But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him.

⁵Once Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. ⁶He said to them, “Listen to this dream that I dreamed. ⁷There we were, binding sheaves in the field. Suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright; then your sheaves gathered around it, and bowed down to my sheaf.” ⁸His brothers said to him, “Are you indeed to reign over us? Are you indeed to have dominion over us?” So they hated him even more because of his dreams and his words. ⁹He had another dream, and told it to his brothers, saying, “Look, I have had another dream: the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.” ¹⁰But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father rebuked him, and said to him, “What kind of dream is this that you have had? Shall we indeed come, I and your mother and your brothers, and bow to the ground before you?” ¹¹So his brothers were jealous of him, but his father kept the matter in mind.

¹²Now his brothers went to pasture their father’s flock near Shechem. ¹³And Israel said to Joseph, “Are not your brothers pasturing the flock at Shechem? Come, I will send you to them.” He answered, “Here I am.” ¹⁴So he said to him, “Go now, see if it is well with your brothers and with the flock; and bring word back to me.” So he sent him from the valley of Hebron. He came to Shechem, ¹⁵and a man found him wandering in the fields; the man asked him, “What are you seeking?” ¹⁶“I am seeking my brothers,” he said; “tell me, please, where they are pasturing the flock.” ¹⁷The man said, “They have gone away, for I heard them say, ‘Let us go to Dothan.’“ So Joseph went after his brothers, and found them at Dothan. ¹⁸They saw him from a distance, and before he came near to them, they conspired to kill him. ¹⁹They said to one another, “Here comes this dreamer. ²⁰Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams.” ²¹But when Reuben heard it, he delivered him out of their hands, saying, “Let us not take his life.” ²²Reuben said to them, “Shed no blood; throw him into this pit here in the wilderness, but lay no hand on him” —that he might rescue him out of their hand and restore him to his father.

²³So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the long robe with sleeves that he wore; ²⁴and they took him and threw him into a pit. The pit was empty; there was no water in it. ²⁵Then they sat down to eat; and looking up they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, with their camels carrying gum, balm, and resin, on their way to carry it down to Egypt. ²⁶Then Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? ²⁷Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites, and not lay our hands on him, for he is our brother, our own flesh.” And his brothers agreed. ²⁸When some Midianite traders passed by, they drew Joseph up, lifting him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. And they took Joseph to Egypt.

 

Matthew 14:22-33

²²Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. ²³And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, ²⁴but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. ²⁵And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. ²⁶But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. ²⁷But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” ²⁸Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” ²⁹He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. ³⁰But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” ³¹Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” ³²When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. ³³And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”