God Lifts Us Up

Sermon for August 8, 2011

by Rev. Sharon James Fazel

What a great story for this morning. A story of family. A story of relationships. A story of how relationships interact to either lift us up, or keep us down.

What we don’t hear in the telling of this part of the story is what happened before Joseph’s brothers plotted to get rid of him. You see, Joseph was a smart kid. He was his dad’s favorite, and it appears he knew that. He had special gifts, and he was pretty proud of them. Joseph especially liked displaying his particular gifts for dream interpretation. If he’d kept some of his interpretations to himself, he might have fared better in his brothers’ eyes, but no. Instead, he told them rather boldly that the dreams he’d had most recently indicated that everyone, including them, would bow down to him. Even the sun and the moon bowed down to him! Joseph’s dad Jacob tried to rein in Joseph’s adolescent enthusiasm for his own dream, but Joseph would hear none of it. Not that such a thing is justification for plotting to kill someone – especially a member of your own family – but, it is in fact the way families seem to relate to each other, isn’t it? Jealousy rules more often than not in sibling rivalry -- not just back then, but every bit as much today, as well.

But instead of killing him, Joseph’s brothers sold him off to itinerant traders who sold him to someone else, who sold him to the manager of Pharaoh’s household in Egypt. This is where Joseph came into his own. He used his gifts and built his skills, then rose to prominence and power in Pharaoh’s empire. Ironically, he who had himself been sold into slavery, eventually sold his own people into slavery, in trade for support of them by Pharaoh years later during a famine. It was then that he met up with his family again. To his credit and theirs, they made amends.

This part of the story speaks to the way power, authority, fortune and courage shift back and forth over a lifetime. First we have none, then we get some, then we use it against others, then it gets used on us. It also shows us how we ride the tides of life, first reaching out in anguish from pits of despair, then riding high on waves of accomplishment and success – never fully understanding how or why we lost courage and fell into the pit in the first place, nor how we regained our courage, and were lifted up to ride the waves once more.

The Gospel story today is from Matthew. It tells of Jesus’ encounter with the disciples after having spent a long day with people, sitting on a hillside talking and teaching. As was his wont, when it was all over, Jesus dismissed the disciples and went up the mountain to pray. His direction to his disciples was to get into the boat and head on over to the other side of the water. But they got caught up in a storm out in the middle, and when they were at the worst point of the storm, Jesus came walking toward them -- on the water. It was the last place they expected to see him! Everyone was startled. But Peter, who thought of himself as an exemplary disciple in every way, had a singular response. Like the young Joseph, Peter was a bit cocky. He asked Jesus to call him out onto the waves; and that worked, at first. But Peter got scared and began to sink. He lost his footing and he lost his courage at the same time. So Jesus lifted him up out of the water and into the boat, calmed the storm, and they all made it to the other side alive, together in the same boat.

I bet some of us can recall times we’ve been in a boat on perilous seas, as the disciples were, or in a pit, like the one Joseph was thrown into. And, somehow, someone reached out to us because we had the courage to look for them, the courage to open our eyes and see who might be there other than ourselves, and to let the hand that reached out to us lift us up. Likewise, I have no doubts that many of us have been riding waves of plenty at one time or another, expecting we’d “finally made it” – when a hidden and surprising event or situation suddenly changed the look of the world, and we needed every ounce of courage we could muster just to take our next breath.

Bruce H. Kramer, a dean at the University of St. Thomas, is a “PALS” – “person with ALS.” He wrote a stirring article in the Opinion Exchange section of the Star Trib this Friday, August 5th , in response to an article about another PALS, who has decided to take his own life because (quote) “the cost/benefit ratio of staying alive…is not worth it.” For me, Kramer’s clear courage shines through in his description of the terrible disease he manages. Giving in to death before ALS actually engulfs him on its own is not an option for Kramer. Instead, he offers this reflection for us all:

“How's this for a good death? It is predicated on a good life, one in which we take the opportunities given to make the way a little better for others. It is looking for the good in each gift of a waking day. It is understanding that a good life is easy when everything seems like it is going your way, but the proof of goodness comes when conditions are most adverse, when the deck is stacked against you, when the most mundane of behaviors might require a day's worth of energy…Aging is the ultimate chronic disease. Each of us will have to learn its meaningful management. None of us has special knowledge… We all will face the choices of disease. [Other PALS] and I just face them at the speed of ALS.”

My friends, who is it who is lifting up Bruce Kramer? Whom is he lifting up by sharing his story? Who are the advocates who reach back to Kramer, as his strength to reach fails him?

Elsewhere, who is lifting up the children of Somalia, whose gaunt faces haunt our daily news stories, whose deaths have topped 29,000 in the last 90 days? Who are the advocates, those who reach out a hand, for these children?

What about the LGBT children in our own AH-11 school district? Who is lifting them up from the name-calling, bullying and condemnation as “sinners” that has been laid upon them by so many of our colleague churches in this area? They are just our children, our very own children, but with very few vocal public advocates! Who will reach out to them to lift them to love?

Who will reach out to the families, both nuclear and extended, of those killed in Afghanistan over the weekend, both Americans and Afghanis? There are many “opportunities to make the way a little better for others,” my friends. Respond as you are called to respond, calling on a God who loves us all, who lifts us up when in our time of need. Let us pray for the courage it takes to face these trying times, knowing that compassion is a steadier tool than jealousy; that love is stronger, and demands greater courage, than prejudice. Praise be to God for the comfort, and the challenge, of such knowledge. Amen.

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