Genesis 45:3-11, 15
Saint Luke 6:27-38
I have walked into some of the largest churches in the city, the country, the world, and I felt it. In the Washington National Cathedral, Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Holy Name in Chicago, I felt it.
I especially felt it last fall walking around Saint Peter’s Square in Rome and then entering into the stunning beauty of St. Peter’s Basilica.
When I worshiped at a parish that their diocese labeled as “distressed” because of their finances and saw in the corner a large supply of food and clothing collected for their neighbors who really were in distress, I felt it. Then, talking to the people of that church who were a long distance from giving up, I felt it.
Attending one of those “big box” non-denominational churches with a coffee bar only rivaled by the Starbuck’s Reserve Roastary on Michigan Avenue and a preacher who was much, much, too old and broad-in-the-beam for his hip skinny jeans, I felt it.
I felt it in a Pentecostal Church where the band was having their day, the preacher was shouting, and people were being slain-in-the-spirit left and right.
And, in the quiet of Quaker meeting at a campground in Indiana when minutes, that seemed like hours, passed before and “inner light” broke forth and moved someone to speak, I felt it.
What I felt was what sociologists call “Collective Effervescence” which is “made possible when a group of people experience something emotional together. This communal effervescence can produce a positive uplifting episode, such as a religious experience that makes participants feel closer to their god.”
There are two completely different sides to this phenomenon.
Collective effervescence can also motivate people to do things they would never do or even think of doing as an individual. Riots are a good example of this. Sometimes, people united against a social injustice will amass a group anger that overrides personal morals. Law-abiding citizens may find themselves under the spell of the perceived energy and end up smashing store windows or trying to physically harm the police.1
I’ve felt that too and it does not leave us filled with good feelings but with a strong sense of anger.
That is where the story of Joseph and his brothers begins. Our reading brings us in at the conclusion just as we get to the “happily ever after moment.” But we have missed eight whole chapters full of the intrigue, anger, disappointment, jealousy, envy, and even hate that appears in this very dysfunctional family.
It begins, as all of you who have seen the play know, with Jacob, Joseph’s father, giving him a very special robe. It may not have been an “Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” but only, as the Hebrew translation puts it, “a long-sleeved robe.”2 No matter if it were coat of many colours or simple long-sleeved shirt with French cuffs the robe said something and what it shouted loud and clear to the brothers who wore short-sleeved shirts was that “their labor was in the fields, in the heat,” while “Joseph was established in the house with those long sleeves, in a position of power.”3
Jacob has done what no parent should ever do. He has made it blatantly obvious that one of his children is the favourite. He has singled out Joseph and had made him the target of his brother’s negative “collective effervescence.” Jacob might as well have painted a target on his youngest son’s back.
Joseph, as you know, calls attention to that target. He laud’s his status as his father’s favourite son over them and he is so obnoxious that when the first opportunity arises, they try to kill him. Their collective effervescence almost overwhelms them until cooler heads prevail and rather than killing him they decide to sell Joseph into slavery.
In his exile Joseph’s self-absorbed effervescence is diminished. First, by the plight of being a stranger in a strange land. Second, by being falsely accused by no less that the Pharaoh’s wife of being a little too “handsy” with her and finding himself landing in the clink.
There, in the deep darkness of his jail cell, things begin to brighten as Joseph’s ability to interpret dreams finds him standing once again in Pharaoh’s presence interpreting his dreams as predicting record harvests followed by a record famine.
The change in Joseph is seen as he begins to see his abilities as gifts from God and not of his own making.
This newfound insight will be challenged as never before when his brothers show up at his doorstep and, as predicted long ago, bow down before him begging for food.
“He has been wise and virtuous with others, but what about with his family? Family can bring out the worse in us. Joseph must work out the complex feelings he has after his brothers’ profound betrayal of him.”4
Old Testament scholar Walter Bruggemann has written wisely and well of what is happening.
Every person and every family knows about these extremities of pain and estrangement in which humanness is at issue. Where yearning and hurt, deception and grief, hope and ruthlessness come together is where this special family moves toward dream fulfilment.5
It comes in the very first words of today’s reading. “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?”6
Both the pathos and hope of the whole story are packed into these words. At the heart of both the pain and redemption in this text lie core issues that concern every human in every time, identity, and relationship. In the episodes leading up to this text, he has toyed with his brothers, and cruelly so, but now he makes a choice that changes everything: he forgives them. Even within a family system loaded with manipulation, jealousy, and fear, a single person within the system has the power to transform relationships, and even the system itself, through an unexpected act of reconciliation.7
That is what Jesus is talking about.
He is inviting us to go as deep with members of our family with whom we may not agree on all sorts of matters from politics, to the cars we drive, to the sports teams we support, to even the colour we should paint the bathroom as Joseph did with his.
This life is not easy; it asks for a lot. It requires us to abandon the cycle of violence and retribution, rejecting at last the self-defeating logic of “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” It calls us to expand the circle of our concerns beyond the narrow boundaries of group or tribe. By implication, the call holds and even more startling hope: by lending, by loving, by giving, by forgiving, by showing mercy: by doing all these things, we enter into the very life of God.8
Don’t you think Joseph and his brothers felt all of that as they stood there together, forgiving each other, weeping together, and perhaps talking as a family for the first time in years, maybe forever?
Entering into the life of God may have been what I felt as I walked around all those spaces dedicated to God.
From great cathedrals to humble parish churches, I felt it. From Saint Peter’s in Rome to a “distressed” parish, I felt it.
From the noise of a Pentecostal meeting to the quiet of a Quaker meeting, I felt it.
Even in a big box mega-church with a smooth jazz band, I felt it.
What I felt was the collective effervescence of being in the presence of God and feeling God’s love, forgiveness, and peace.
Maybe you are even feeling it right here and right now in this place you call your church home? I hope so. By God’s great grace, I hope so, and I hope you will feel it time and time again.
__________
1. Rebecca Harkin, “What Is Collective Effervescence?,” (with pictures), January 29, 2022, https://www.wise-geek.com/what-is-collective-effervescence.
2. Genesis 37:3. David H. Stern, Complete Jewish Bible: An English Version of The Tanakh (Old Testament) and B'rit Hadashah (New Testament). (Clarksville, MD: Messianic Jewish Publishers & Resources, 2017).
3. James D. Howell, “What can we say come August 20? 11th after Pentecost,” James Howell's Weekly Peaching Notions (blog) (Myers Park United Methodist Church, August 7, 2017), http://jameshowellsweeklypreachingnotions.blogspot.com/2017/07/what-can-we-say-come-august-20-11th.html.
4. Brent A Strawn, Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, vol. 1 (Louisville: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2018): pp. 255-257.
5. Walter Brueggemann, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Atlanta, GA: John Knox Press, 1982). p. 342.
6. Genesis 45:3. (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]
7. Stacey Simpson Duke, Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, vol. 1 (Louisville, KY: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2018), 258.
8. Robert F Darden, Connections: A Lectionary Commentary for Preaching and Worship, vol. 1 (Louisville, KY: Westminister|John Knox Press, 2021), 269.
Sermon Preached February 20, 2022
Trinity Lutheran Church (Foster Avenue)
Chicago, Illinois
