I listen to all sorts of radio personalities, from the disgusting debauchery of Howard Stern, to the ultra-fundamentalist Michael Savage of the “Savage Nation.”  Both of these help me get my “mad out,” and they are both inspirations for sermonizing.  Savage is so right-wing he makes Rush Limbaugh look like a dope-smoking-bleeding-heart-flag-burning-draft-dodging-hippie-dippie-crystal wearing Hilary lover.

            And besides, they are professional media personalities and I am skeptical of the media, and have found no such thing as objectivity in the news. I have learned through education by media specialist in my crisis response training that they are usually just after the ratings because that translates into dollars, which after all is why they are in business, and it is a business.  The latest target of my indignation is the very respected and enjoyable Paul Harvey.  Now Paul Harvey news may be the most poplar thing on radio, he is esteemed by millions, and harmless, I suppose.  But he is not objective, and his program is not the news or just the news, but rather his right-winged political bend on the news albeit a subtle bend.  Listen closely and his bias will shine through.  That is after you get though all his pitching for those adjustable Craftmatic mattresses and something you take for macular degeneration.  If they called this spot “Paul Harvey Opinions” I would enjoy the light levity and sensationalism that IT IS, much better.  But many are fooled into seeing this as a factual news cast.  I was complaining about a recent episode at work, when one of the ministers that works with me was taken aback– “I never knew anyone that didn’t like Paul Harvey.”   I do like him; I just think he is an entertainer, and not the second coming of Walter Cronkite.

            Having said that, I do enjoy his segment that plays at noon time, “The Rest of the Story.”   Although I have heard that he has started many an urban legend with these accounts, and that many of the facts cannot be verified, these stories are loosely based on a true story, and besides they make for good radio.

            We all like to hear a good story where someone overcomes incredible odds or hardships and raises to a great level of success, which is what makes “The Rest of the Story” so popular.  Stories that detail the rags to riches phenomena, such as the guy in Dallas that sold fried corn mush on the downtown streets to support his family.  We have since all supported this man’s family by buying a bag of Frito’s now and again.  Or maybe you heard the one about the Australian man nearly beaten to death by thugs and left terribly disfigured.  They knocked his face all the way off.  He could find no work or peace of mind because he was so ugly.  Not even work as a department store manikin. But alas, a priest befriended him and found him a great plastic surgeon . . .  The rebuilt man’s name was Mel Gibson. 

            So I got to thinking, there must be many rest of the stories in the Christian movement.  I have heard the one about how there was a vote to close the struggling First Baptist Church of Dallas, but ironically a small group of women met and prayed and vowed to keep it open.  They called a young man in a last attempt to save the church, and his name was George W. Truett.  We know about Truett, but I wonder how much is known about those women who saved the church?  My guess is not much.  They were silent disciples who will never get any credit, but whose ministry was of critical importance in the mission of the Baptist faith in the state of Texas.  There must be many such untold stories of our faith.  I guess we will never know the rest of the story this side of whatever we are on this side of. 

            Today in our lectionary text we have the rest of the story in a sense.  That is, the rest of the story of Joseph, whom we left last week sold into slavery by his jealous brothers and then reported dead to his father Jacob.  You remember the story.  It is tough to recount these tales as these narratives are very long and we only get a snippet in the lectionary.  So I turn to John Claypool this morning who wrote this summary of the story of Joseph:

Jacob. He had only really loved one woman in all his life, a lovely lady named Rachael. He had done a great deal in order to win her hand in marriage. But for some reason she was not able to bear children. Back in that era that was a terrible handicap. Polygamy was practiced back in that time and so other wives were brought in. Across the years they produced ten sons for Jacob. Then mysteriously Rachael was able to bear a child and Joseph was born. He was the eleventh child chronologically, but he was the first born child of the beloved Rachael. When Rachael died giving birth to a second child, little Benjamin, in his grief Jacob took all of the affection that he had for Rachael and began to channel this on her first born son. As a result, he gave things to little Joseph that he didn’t give to any of his other sons. He never asked anything of this one so he became a pampered, spoiled child. The other brothers naturally had a great deal of hostility because of the unfairness of their father. It was a very toxic family situation. One of the ways that Jacob showed his favoritism was that he gave Joseph a coat unlike anything he had given to his other sons. King James called it “a coat of many colors.” A more accurate reading of the Hebrew is that it was a coat with sleeves on it, something that only a prince would wear, someone who didn’t have to do physical work. Naturally the brothers hated that coat because of what it symbolized. And, of course, Joseph was terribly spoiled by being the object of all this favoritism. One day old Jacob sent Joseph out to see his brothers who were having to work in the field. He was wearing that hated leisure coat. When they got him out away from their father, all of their pent up anxieties and hostilities exploded. They almost killed Joseph with their bare hands. But then wiser heads said, “But wait, he is our own blood.” About that time a group of Midianite slave traders was passing by so they sold their brother into slavery, took that hated coat and dipped it in blood, and took it back to their father saying that Joseph must have been accosted by a wild animal. Everything about that situation is tinged with evil: the way Jacob had shown favoritism, the way the brothers had been jealous, the way Joseph had become so spoiled. Everything about it seemed to be awful. And yet amazingly this Alchemist God, who has the power to take the seeming worst and bring out of it that which is unbelievably good, was at work in the live of Joseph. When he went down to Egypt he was sold to a man named Potiphar. Now for the first in his life something was asked of him. He was given responsibilities and he began to flourish in ways he would have never flourished if had stayed with the pampering of his father. In fact, he was so effective he rose to be the head of Potiphar’s household. Everything was going wonderfully for the young Hebrew, but then Potiphar’s wife became sexually attracted to him and tried to seduce him. When he resisted her, she turned the table and accused him of the very thing that she had done to him. As a result, Joseph was taken out of Potiphar’s household and put into a royal prison. Once again it seemed to be the absolute worst thing that could have happened. But remember the God who made all things and can mend anything was still at work in the life of Joseph.  Joseph became skilled there in the prison as an interpreter of dreams. When the Pharaoh, the head of that land, was troubled by nightmares, someone remembered the young Hebrew in the jail. He was taken to Pharaoh and he was able to help him understand that his dreams were saying that they were having times of wonderful abundance but they should husband some of that because a famine was coming. Pharaoh was so impressed with Joseph that he lit him out of prison and made him the number two official in all the Egyptian hierarchy. Joseph was able to husband enough of the affluence of that great time that when the famine did come, Egypt became the bread basket of the Mediterranean basin. Jacob and his sons, who were starving to death back up in Palestine, came down and, because of what Joseph had done, the descendants of Abraham did not starve to death.  (Claypool, John, “The Worst things are Never the Last Things” 30 Good Minutes, 02/24/2002)

            So the point of this story which hardly needs any exegesis or explanation is that although Joseph’s brothers meant it for evil when they sold him into slavery, God meant it for good.  They meant to get rid of the little spoiled brat, and God meant it as a way to preserve the family tree, for had Joseph not gone to Egypt and became rich and famous; they would have all starved to death.  But his plight turned to right and ended up being necessary to save all of their lives. So it seems that God was there all the while working his purposes out through others, or at least Joseph giving God credit for things working out well in the end. So in effect it was not really Joseph’s brothers who were behind this evil act, it was instead God Almighty working his magic in what was sort of a necessary evil.  And the resulting implications for us are equally obvious, that God is working all things for good as Paul says, even though they appear anything but good at the time.  True enough that the good is sometimes concealed to a later time, and we sometimes believe that the good is indiscernible by mere mortals as we are not God, and his ways are not our ways.  We take comfort in the belief that he is working behind the scenes none-the-less.

            It is a nice story; I especially like the forgiving reconciling part, the part about repaying evil with good, and the part about Joseph being truly great when lesser people would simply want revenge.  I might want to strip them down, kick ‘em around a little and throw them in a hole, to make ‘em pay before forgiving them.  But not Joseph.  He toys with them a little. But he understands a bigger plan.  Joseph makes an excellent archetype of Jesus Christ; I think the parallel is obvious to the Christian.  It is a feel good, inspirational story that gives us hope. 

            Well end of story.  But before we beat the Methodist to Luby’s, it is not the end of the sermon as I just want to ask a question or two.  Namely, if God is in control and working behind the scenes, then are all things good? And the short answer is no.  Only the terminally naive believe that.  Evil exists in the world and it is as real as the six o’clock news.  We witnessed evil first hand as one Timothy Dale Johnson burst into the Democratic Party Headquarters and killed the Arkansas Party Chairman, Bill Gwatney this past week.  I needed not belabor the point, evil definitely exists in the world, it is probably the theme of the story of civilization, or maybe un-civilization.

Which leads us to the next loose end from a story like ours this morning, namely is God the author of evil or does he in some way uses evil to promote his purposes? Again the short answer has to be no. But that is what is purported here.  Joseph was sold into slavery as though he was dead and later interprets the event as God intending it for good.

Now, believing that God causes evil in our lives as an avenue to the good is very problematic.  There are way too many Christians who believe that God is behind their suffering, behind their troubles, and behind their pain.  That God can only accomplish his purposes, which are bigger purposes than us through these mechanisms. We have a “no pain no gain” theology at times.  We have to have discord to appreciate harmony.  We have to have strife to understand peace.  But even more frustrating is the belief that while God has a bigger purpose than us, it is often beyond our comprehension, so we shake our heads in despair, ad nauseum.  But that is OK, because the Kingdom is a better place because we have suffered.  God is not evidently powerful enough to work his purposes in our lives and world without hurting us.  How many times have I sat with a family who has endured some unfathomable tragedy only to hear their belief that God knows what he is doing by causing them the pain.

I guess we don’t always believe the Bible. For Jesus asks if you asked your earthy father for a slice of wonder bread would he give you’re a copperhead, and the answer to his rhetorical question is a resounding hell no.  So how much more does our heavenly parent want to give us good things, because God is gooder than any mere mortal?   James tells us that God is not the author of evil, but that every good gift, every perfect gift comes down to us from the God of Light.  So not only is God incapable of evil, he does just the opposite – if it is a good thing, then it is probably a God thing, at least according to the New Testament.  Now reconciling the good God of the New with the Warlike God of the Old, I won’t even go there this morning. 

But these are things that we know and understand at least on some level maybe even intuitively, and we don’t even try to reconcile these beliefs with passages like this morning.  These somewhat contradictory concepts can coexist in our minds, sort of like the peaceful coexistence of Bill and Hilary. The real everyday slap me in the face and kick me in the, well, you know where, problem come in the question, “Does God work good out of every evil?” The answer again has to be no.  I am willing to admit that it was so in Joseph’s case, as Joseph assigns that interpretation to his own personal plight, and who am I to question an individual’s religious experience?  But just because it may have been at work here does not mean that it is always that way.  I have seen things in my life that are so tragic that it is almost sacrilegious to suggest that good has come from them.  What good came from the Holocaust?  What good has come from the humanitarian catastrophe that is Darfur? What good has come from the China earthquake or the countless tsunamis in Indonesia?  Or for that matter, the tornadoes of Atkins and Clinton this year?  Or from a child who suffers with cancer his whole little life?  And before anyone starts giving me the silver lining, I want to point out that in some cases whatever good that has resulted from certain evils is so disproportionately small that it in no way tips the scales to the greater good.  Sure the communities of Atkins and Clinton have pulled together in some amazing ways, ways that they would not have otherwise, but try telling how those who lost loved ones or businesses or property that they are better off because of the crisis.  See how far that one gets you.  The burdens of such evils can often outweigh the benefits by a disparaging degree.

I am also not happy with an explanation that everything evil is being rewritten by God for a good that we simply cannot fathom in this life.  Our ways are not God’s ways we say.  And while I will not argue with that statement, I don’t take a lot of comfort being a pawn in a celestial chess match where I am easily expendable in order to win the game. I spent the morning at the hospital just this morning with a man whose wife of 11 years is dying of cancer.  She was the best thing that had ever happened to him, as they had both lost their first spouses 15 or so years ago.  She leaves behind children and he suffers another grief.  He himself is disabled with a disease.  He said he had prayed hard for 8 months for God to heal her, but he guessed that God had another plan that he could not understand.  But just for once, he prayed that God would heal her. He could not understand why God would do this to him twice before he was 50 years old.  So tell me, what price is this good?  Is there no other way for the good purpose to be accomplished other than through pain and loss?  How limited must such a God be?

 So where are we? How did God “mean it for good?”  About the only help I can offer this morning is subtle at best, but important none-the-less.  Notice that the text does not say that God says that he meant it for good, but that Joseph believed and said that God meant it for good.  And therein is a key for me.  You see, we have to be willing to work God into the equation no matter what even if we do so blindly, for when we do so we birth faith not just in the good, but in the dark nights of our souls.   Joseph knew God’s hand was redeeming the situation and working to keep a great promise that had been made, even if human beings would have otherwise thwarted his purposes.  You see, despite our falleness, God ultimately wins.  God is still in control.  The Lord indeed sits on his throne.  Joseph said God meant it for good, and who better to figure that out than a man who kept getting knocked down but somehow, someway kept going on to better things.  Is there the possibility that God is taking evil and bringing something good out of it?  Absolutely yes. He did so for Joseph, not once but over and over again in his epic story.  And he often does the same for us as well.

I hear affirmations of such faith everyday in my job.  They don’t always fit into my personal theology, but it is hard to disagree with those who wear the badge of faith played out on a real stage in their own piece of the human predicament. It is the stuff that a personal relationship with God is made of—it does not come from a book, nor from a lecture, nor from a class or from a sermon, not even from the Bible itself.  But from faith in such a God who is working behind the scenes to redeem something or someone with His amazing grace.  For we do know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

            At the end of this incredible saga of Joseph, where the seemingly worst always opened into something very good, the brothers came to Joseph and apologized to him for all they had done. He said, “Look, do not weep. You meant what you did for evil. I will admit that. But God used it for good.” This God can take just about anything and do just about everything with it. That is the basis of our blessed hope. The basis that it is never too late to wonder how God may take your situation, bad as it may seem at the moment, and bring from it incredible, inexplicable good. And that is the rest of the story.  In fact, it is the rest of all of our stories.  The story of Good News to all those who have been victims of evil.  Thanks be to God! Amen.