Joseph: The Shape Of Our Choices
Genesis 39 & 40
October 26, 2008

There's an election coming up in nine days - in case you hadn't noticed! - and I don't know about you but I am mad. I am certainly not going to tell you how to vote. That's up to you to vote for the candidate whom you feel is best able to pull us out of the mess our nation is in. Let me ask you, however, to do one thing. Vote for the candidate whom you feel is capable of taking responsibility for his own actions. We are going to need a President who will tell us the truth when we need to hear it about the war in Irag and Afghanistan, about health care, about our social security, about our financial stability, about our social well-being. And we are going to need a President who can say it out loud when he gets it wrong.

Is that too much to ask? I am appalled at the list of leaders who lately cannot quite bring themelves to 'fess up. From our current president who seems to blame the congress for his own policies; and congress for their part of the same; to business leaders of huge failed institutions who shrug their shoulders in bewilderment yet seem to expect that their own golden parachutes will be funded by the taxpayer; to Alan Greenspan, chief architect and defender of the deregulation of financial systems, who cannot say more than he might-he might!- have got it wrong believing that banks would protect the interests of their own shareholders by regulating their own risk management; to pundits who actually once proclaimed that the housing market and the stock market will rise forever skyward, we seem on the face of it to have been led by fools- at best.

You know, here's the thing. I get that we live in a globalized economy in which we cannot guarantee outcomes. I get that the we do things is shifting faster than we can track. I get that our old models for understanding how business happens look backward better than they look fowards. I get that leaders sometimes screw up even with the best intentions in mind.

What I don't get is why we can't tell the truth and take some responsibility! I would much rather any day have a leader who says, You know, I was wrong and I screwed up and here's what I am going to do about it, than a leader who says, Well, if conditions were different and if I had had all the right information, and anyway, it's the other fellow fault, so don't blame me!

You know what I mean? We have people in this church who are starting to lose jobs because the economy is tanking while we try to figure out how to rescue politicians and business leaders who are covering their own backsides. Why are we doing this? Because the alternative is unthinkable? Hello?!

The collateral damage is huge. And it is starting to be paid by people in the pews of this church. People you know. People losing jobs. People who have no safety net, no golden parachute, no lobby, no PAC, no "no-ceo-left behind" plan. People who thought that a good working day, one after another, ought to be good enough to make your means and your ends come out even in the end. These people are taking a hit. Is anyone else besides me upset about that?

So, I do ask you to get out on November 4 and vote for the candidate you feel has the intestinal fortitude to tell the average citizen what's true and what needs to be done without pleasing, pandering or protecting anybody. Are you with me?

In the meantime, I am aware that we in the church have our own responsibility. We are heirs of Jesus who trained the trainers to go out and do the business of the world a little differently. You see, Jesus taught them that in order to change the world, you begin by changing yourself. You begin by praying (according to Jesus, for example) that familiar but very strange prayer we pray every Sunday morning when we pray the Lord's Prayer to God in heaven: to come bring God's kingdom and do things on earth as they are done in heaven. If the Lord's Prayer is not an acknowledgement that we don't get things right and are in desperate need of God's leadership, I don't know what is. The Lord's Prayer could be a training manual for human leaders. Show us how, Lord. Give us just enough, Lord, so there's enough to go around, build us a community of forgiveness and not rancor, keep us out of harm's way except where we must face up to evil. For it's really about you, Lord, and not about our success or security. So teach us your way. That prayer!

My point is that Jesus teaches disciples from the inside out. Jesus teaches courage to endure; wisdom to look beyond; mercy to include; patience in changing times. Ask Jesus for help – really ask! – and you will find Jesus can train you to meet anything the world can toss at you. And then He sends disciples out to teach that the kingdom begins inside each one of us and that is how the world is changed.

Now this sermon is supposed to be about Joseph and I have taken a long time to get here. Last week I talked about Joseph’s dream and how over time his dream shifted and he began to serve God. But hang in there – the Joseph story is about how God builds leaders! This week we see Joseph making choices. He’s still in learning mode, still in training for his big moment.

There’s a very hard lesson for Joseph to learn this week. In simplest form, the lesson is that you do what is right just because it’s the right thing to do. Remember that Joseph’s encounter with Potiphar’s wife is not about sex, it’s about power. This is not a prequel to Desperate Housewives or Sex in the City. Joseph is a slave. Potiphar’s wife holds the power. She holds Joseph’s life in her hands. She orders him to lie with her. When he says no, Joseph begins to learn how to say no to power. Then he learns that there are consequences. Human power does not reward you for saying No.

Later Joseph, now in prison, learns a similar lesson. He exercises a gift he has learned at some cost, how to interpret dreams. Again, one might hope that the useful exercise of your gifts might bring a reward. No, it seems. There is no direct reward for exercising your gifts.

The truth is that Joseph isn’t ready for the big time yet. He has still another huge lesson to learn. What is right has to come from the inside. You can’t count on the world to validate your sense of what is right. You can’t count on the world to secure you or compensate you. That can only come from asking God – really asking – passionately asking because your life depends on it – asking from the bottom of your heart what God wants you to do. We leave Joseph this week, still in prison and still learning how to ask.

We will see next week that when Joseph is ready, God will take him to the next level of leadership. God will begin to train Joseph in the ways of mercy, beginning with the hardest place of all for Joseph – mercy towards his own family.

When I talk about real leadership, I am talking about what the church calls discipleship, or “training on the inside.” I don’t mean elected officials, business leaders or tv stars. I mean you and me. Jesus didn’t ask elected officials to take his crash course in leadership, he asked a ragtag bunch of not-ready-for-prime-time-players. A tax collector, a few fishermen, a dreamer or two, a few oddballs. And he trained them up into disciples who believed that changing the world began with changing themselves.

So the truth is, as important as my vote may be in this presidential election, still more important is my belief that I can make an impact on this world for good. That is, if I am willing and ready to ask God to lead.

Amen!