Out of Memory
A sermon
delivered by Rev. Peter T. Atkinson
April 6, 2014
at Gordonsville
Presbyterian Church, Gordonsville, Virginia
Exodus 1: 1-14
Let
us pray, for a welcome mind and a loving heart
Help us to see despite our eyes
Help us to think outside of our minds
Help us to be more than our lives
For
your eyes show the way
Your
mind knows the truth
Your
being is the life.
Amen.
1 These are
the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his
household: 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, 3 Issachar,
Zebulun, and Benjamin, 4 Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. 5
All the offspring of Jacob were seventy persons; Joseph was already in
Egypt. 6 Then Joseph died, and all his brothers, and all that
generation. 7 But the descendants of Israel were fruitful and
increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong; so that the
land was filled with them.
8 Now there
arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. 9 And he
said to his people, “Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty
for us. 10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they
multiply, and, if war befall us, they join our enemies and fight against us and
escape from the land.” 11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them
to afflict them with heavy burdens; and they built for Pharaoh store-cities,
Pithom and Ra-amses. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more
they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in
dread of the people of Israel. 13 So they made the people of
Israel serve with rigor, 14 and made their lives bitter with hard
service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field; in all
their work they made them serve with rigor.[1]
Here the book of Exodus starts. . .
a new episode, entering into the life of a nation rather than a family. These
12 tribes united through the struggles and forgiveness we talked about last
week have come together, as foreigners in Egypt, they were to hold a special
place in the land. Joseph had saved the Egyptians from famine. Joseph was made
the governor, he was the right hand man of the pharoah, but that generation had
passed, and many in between. The Israelites, as they were now called, the
twelve tribes of the sons of Jacob flourished in Egypt. They were fruitful.
They multiplied. They grew strong. Everything was great, but then eventually
everything changed, and they became a threat. . . and there arose a new pharaoh,
who did not know Joseph. He did not remember, or had not been taught his
history, so he did not know.
He did not know that Joseph had
saved his throne, saved his country, saved his people. He did not know that Joseph,
favored by God, had found success with everything he touched. That Joseph
having been sold into slavery to some Ishmaelites by his brothers, was bought
by a wealthy Egyptian officer, a captain of the guard, named Potiphar. The Lord
was with Joseph, so everything that Joseph did prospered, Potiphar could tell
so he put him in charge of everything, becoming the overseer of all of
Potiphar's property. From the moment he became overseer, the Lord blessed
Potiphar's house, everything Joseph did, everything Joseph touched just seemed
to work out. Joseph became an important and beloved servant. Potiphar trusted
Joseph with everything, leaving for times at length, never worrying about his
property, his house, his wife. He trusts Joseph completely, and of course Joseph's
character gets put to the test.
Potiphar's wife makes advances at
Joseph. He refuses of course, but she is persistent. She tries again and again,
and he refuses again and again, until one time Joseph comes in from the fields
and Potiphar's wife is extra aggressive, she grabs his clothing, and a scrap of
it rips into her hands. She uses the cloth to get revenge from him turning her
down by framing him. She says that it was him who had made the advances. . .
and so Potiphar was angered, and threw Joseph into prison, to be forgotten
again, but again God was with Joseph. So he quickly finds favor with a new
benefactor, this the prison guard. The prison guard, like Potiphar, knew that
he could trust Joseph, and put him in charge of all the other prisoners,
knowing that whatever Joseph did he would do well because the Lord was with
him, showing him favor, giving him his steadfast love.
So while in prison two of the Pharaoh's
men, the baker and the butler make Pharaoh mad, and when you make Pharaoh mad
it doesn't go well for you, so they get thrown in prison with Joseph, and while
they are there they dream dreams, and Joseph interprets them for them. The
butler asks first, and Joseph tells him he will be restored to his job in three
days, and Joseph asks him to remember him when he is restored. . . but the
Baker is not so lucky, his dream means that he will be hanged in the same three
days hence. All of this happens. . . just as Joseph said it would, but the
butler does not remember Joseph like he said he would. He does not remember
him. . . and so Joseph remains in prison. People have forgotten Joseph but God
never has.
Two more years pass by, and finally Pharaoh
himself has a dream, and finally the Butler remembers, he goes to Joseph and
gets him to interpret the Pharaoh's dream. Joseph does, predicting seven years
of plentiful harvest, to be followed by seven years of famine. So Joseph is put
in charge of storing up the grain during the plenty years, and then becomes
governor during the famine years. He effectively administers the grain, saves
the Egyptian people, saves his brothers and his father. . . and the rest is
history, like Yogi Berra said, "History's great and all, but it don't last
forever." Yogi, always so idiotically prescient. History made is often
history forgotten, and when we forget, we run the risk of peril. Joseph, the
reason that the Israelites are there, the reason that they have a place, the
reason that they can prsoper, has now been forgotten by the powers that be. ..
but we see in the story of him that I just recapped for us all that this isn't
the first time that Joseph has been forgotten.
No Joseph is forgotten often, Joseph
was forgotten by his brothers in the pit, forgotten by Potiphar, when his wife
framed him, forgotten by the Butler after the dream came to be, and he was
restored, and now forgotten by the Pharoah, once a few generations have passed.
He is forgotten, the Isreaelites are enslaved, people have forgotten Joseph's
importance, but like all those times when Joseph was forgotten by people, he
was never forgotten by God. That is the message here of the text. Things are
about to happen. God is about to act. The cries of the Hebrews in slavery will
make it to God's ears and he will again provide for them. God has not forgotten.
. . but why do we? Why do we forget the important stuff of history?
It's a common theme in literature,
especially modern literature. It is as if we know that we often forget. It usually
finds its ways into fantasy books most often because they are usually
allegories, parallels of our world, written to warn us about our own human
tendencies, and it seems that forgetting is one of them. I chose the prayer of
preparation, taken from the Lord of the Rings, by Tolkien. . . that
And some things that should not have been forgotten were
lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half
thousand years, the ring passed out of all knowledge.
Somethings just shouldn't fall out of
our memory, nor out of our history but they do, and we suffer for it. Like many
people I have watched the Game of Thrones show on HBO, and read the books, and
that is another example. The people of these southern kingdoms have built a
great big huge wall at the north of their kingdom. They believe it was to separate
them from people who have chosen not to live with them, refusing to bow their
knee to the kings. Their history has forgotten, that there is a much darker,
dangerous, and sinister enemy lurking just north of the wall. They have
forgotten. . . and now winter is coming, and they will be reminded. . .
harshly.
In some ways it is amazing to me that
world war II ended less than 70 years ago, because often it seems like it was
another world, so long ago, and out of many people's minds. How much of that
history has been forgotten already? Does the generation of kids today even know
what a Totalitarian regime is? Would they know one if they saw one? Would they
know why they are problematic? Would they know why the pose a threat to
freedom? Do they even know what freedom really is? And if those of us in this
room haven't forgotten, how about the next generation. We may not forget it
all, but we will forget alot of it. Even more recently is the Cold War. . .
most of my students were never alive while the Berlin wall was standing. Never
knew what it was like to have another superpower in the world, never knew what
it was Communism is like? Never heard of the Iron Curtain? The Warsaw Pact? Do
they remember? How often are they taught that stuff? I know that most modern US
history classes in high school barely make it to World War II, leaving so much
recent history, untaught, and forgotten. It happens so fast that memory goes
away, generation to generation, falling completely out of memory. Important
things, crucial things.
It becomes an important aspect of the
religion of the Israelites, to simply remember. So much of it all is to
remember the faithfulness of God. Deuteronomy talks about so many different
things that Israelites must do to remember while they are in the land.
Remembering that God saved them and brought them up out of their bondage by
hand, parting the Red Sea, feeding them in the desert, and even then they
forget. They are to bind reminders to their arms and foreheads, to their door
posts, everywhere, to teach their children day and night, dripping repeatedly
from their tongues, reminders of God and his steadfast love for them. And they
still forget.
Jesus says to us Remember me. He
gives us the cup, he gives us the bread and he says remember me. In the next
few weeks we will be remembering together the two most amazing saving acts of
God. Easter, the resurrection, the cross. . . and the Exodus, the plagues, the
crossing. God sets us free, but we often forget. The day to day happens, the
immediate takes over, and we forget to look back. We forget. . . and we have
forgotten since the beginning. There in the midst of the garden, God had
created the world, in six days, and left the seventh as a special day of rest,
a day each week to remember all that God had done, but Adam and Eve forgot, or
chose to ignore at least. . . what God is. In what we have studied in the last
few months, we see generations forgetting what their parents knew. We see
parents unable to pass on their faith, their walking with God. Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob, there is a disconnect of knowledge between them, of how God works with
them. . . It is easy to forget. . .
But we must remember. . . and God
knows us, just like he knew the Israelites, he knows we are prone to forget. .
. so he works to constantly remind us, by giving us church, giving us each
other, giving us spring, and most importantly giving us the sacraments, giving
us Communion. To come together and experience, to remember in our minds but
also in our bodies, a multisensory memory of God's love found in Jesus Christ.
As we share in the holy feast of our Lord. . . let's try to remember what it
means, who we are, where we are going, where we've been, and that God has been,
is, and will be with us every step of our journey. We can remember the story of
Joseph and his steadfast love from God, and perhaps our own history is similar,
God walking with us throughout. . . can we pass that love on, pass that story
on, so there is never a time where it is forgotten. . . as if God would ever let
that happen. Amen.
[1]The
Revised Standard Version. 1971 (Ex 1:1). Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research
Systems, Inc.
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