Genesis 37:12-36; St Luke 22:14-30
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
You might say he’s a dreamer. And you wouldn’t be the only one. As the apple of their father’s eye, Joseph’s brothers hated him. When he was given a robe of many colors as a token of Jacob’s affections, they could not speak peacefully to him. He was a boy among the sons of Israel when the brunt of their anger fell on him. Playing favorites with one’s children can be disastrous. Jacob ought to have known.
But relating his dreams to his family didn’t help either. Not only were his brother’s sheaves bowing down to him, but so were the sun and moon, his father and mother. And so they hated him even more and were jealous of him. Those who love virtue will be envied and hated by the wicked. And Joseph did little to avoid arrogance and cultivate humility.
So when they identified this dreamer from afar by his technicolor coat, Joseph’s brothers conspired against him. Seething with jealousy and hatred, they viciously plotted cold blooded murder.
It is, beloved, not unlike our Lord Jesus Christ, the Favored and Beloved Son of His Father, who was sent from above to walk the fields of this earth, to seek and save the lost. He sought out His brothers and among them He gathered Twelve to Himself. Twelve to correspond and fulfill the number of the sons of Jacob, the Tribes of Israel. St John writes, He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him (Jn 1:11). In the Sundays of Pre-Lent you yourselves heard how the Son of Man must go to Jerusalem and be handed over to the chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day rise.
And so they conspire against Him. Cold blooded murder. When the hour came and He reclined at Table with His apostles, already Satan had put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot to betray Him. None could Him out of their hands. This is the Father’s will.
Reuben already lived with the shame and guilt of incest with his father’s wife. It would cost him the birthright. Thanks be to God that his conscience did not allow him to cover up Joseph’s murder as well. But his attempts to appease his own timid conscience were unfruitful. They always are. Dear Christians, do not try to settle and quiet your own guilty conscience through works. They will not give the guilty conscience peace or wash away the stain.
But the Lord is a Shield about you. Your Glory and the Lifter of your head. Cry aloud to Him. He answers from His holy Hill. That is, from His the holy hill of Golgotha and the Cross alone which is your glory and your life. Here at this Altar and in His holy Absolution, His blood bespeaks you righteous and removes the curse through His bleeding love.
But calloused hearts do not acknowledge and receive such love and therefore are unable to show it. They took Joseph, stripped him of his robe and threw him into a waterless pit. Their wicked work done, they sat down to eat, deaf to his cries for help and pleas for mercy.
Again, not unlike our Lord Christ. We see in Joseph a type of the One who is to come. A foreshadowing of our Lord’s suffering and passion. His own betrayal and rejection. There He sat at Table with the Twelve, His soul sorrowful to death, instituting His last will and testament, the New Covenant in His Blood. And they argue about who is the greatest among them! They were deaf to His words.
Is it any different with us? How often have we sat idly by while our brother, our sister, in sorrow aches? Turned a deaf ear to pleas for mercy? Or just a deaf ear to one who only needed a listening ear? We may not have sold our Lord, our Joseph, into slavery, handed Him over for the price of a slave like Judah or Judas, but our hands are far from clean. Like the sons of Jacob who listened to their brother, we have listened to the voice of those who deny our Lord, betray Him, slander Him, and hurt His reputation. We have argued over prestige and power and refused to stoop into the pit to lift out a neighbor in need.
Repentance is needed. The family drama of Joseph and his brothers is our own. We have not sought virtue and humility, but instead have chased after our own dreams. Repent.
But do not despair. For into this family drama, into this disfunction and strife, our Lord Christ Himself comes. Into a family were He was rejected and denied by His brothers and sisters. Stripped of the robe of His own righteousness and dipped into the blood of your own sins. This is the answer to the question of the hymn, “Whence come these sorrows, whence this mortal anguish? It is my sins for which Thou, Lord, must languish” (LSB 439:3).
But do not pity Him, dear Christians. For He goes willingly. He willingly dips His hand in the bowl with the one who would betray Him. He allows Himself to be handed over for the price of a slave. He fulfills His Father’s will when He’s given over to death and Satan, that wicked Pharaoh and fierce animal, to be devoured.
He does it for you. He is your true Joseph, your King and Lord and Benefactor. He is the Greatest among you, but He serves. He came to give His life as a ransom for many. He gives His Body for you. He pours out His blood for you. Once for all upon the Cross and now here, upon the Altar, where His Crucifix is laid sideways and you are given to recline at Table with Him to eat and to drink in His Kingdom.
This is His last will and testament. The sign and seal of His love for you. The sure and certain hope that He comes to you not in vengeance or anger, but in mercy, to forgive, renew, and strengthen you with His Word and Spirit. You may have betrayed Him, denied Him, doubted Him, but He answers you here from His Holy Hill. From His Altar. His Mt Zion with salvation and blessing. As on the night on which He was betrayed, Jesus still has table fellowship with sinners. He is the Greatest among you, but He is still here as One who serves.
By these - through His Word, in His Supper, at His Table in the liturgy - does He sustain you in your trials. He is with you, even as He was with Joseph to fulfill His plan and the dreams He had revealed, as we will be reminded in the coming weeks.
For now, beloved, rejoice in the comfort that He has gathered you here, as a Shepherd gathers His flock, in this Shechem. Recall that Shechem is between between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerazim, that place were Joshua gathered the congregation of Israel to hear the reading of the Word of the Lord upon entering the Promised Land.
So it is that our Good Shepherd and new testament Joshua, our Lord Jesus Christ, gathers you here between the mountain of your Holy Baptism and the Mountain of His Sacrament, to this Shechem, to hear again the reading and proclamation of His holy Word by which His Kingdom comes in order that He might raise those who fall and to strengthen those who stand; and to comfort and help the weakhearted and the distressed.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
You might say he’s a dreamer. And you wouldn’t be the only one. As the apple of their father’s eye, Joseph’s brothers hated him. When he was given a robe of many colors as a token of Jacob’s affections, they could not speak peacefully to him. He was a boy among the sons of Israel when the brunt of their anger fell on him. Playing favorites with one’s children can be disastrous. Jacob ought to have known.
But relating his dreams to his family didn’t help either. Not only were his brother’s sheaves bowing down to him, but so were the sun and moon, his father and mother. And so they hated him even more and were jealous of him. Those who love virtue will be envied and hated by the wicked. And Joseph did little to avoid arrogance and cultivate humility.
So when they identified this dreamer from afar by his technicolor coat, Joseph’s brothers conspired against him. Seething with jealousy and hatred, they viciously plotted cold blooded murder.
It is, beloved, not unlike our Lord Jesus Christ, the Favored and Beloved Son of His Father, who was sent from above to walk the fields of this earth, to seek and save the lost. He sought out His brothers and among them He gathered Twelve to Himself. Twelve to correspond and fulfill the number of the sons of Jacob, the Tribes of Israel. St John writes, He came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him (Jn 1:11). In the Sundays of Pre-Lent you yourselves heard how the Son of Man must go to Jerusalem and be handed over to the chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day rise.
And so they conspire against Him. Cold blooded murder. When the hour came and He reclined at Table with His apostles, already Satan had put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot to betray Him. None could Him out of their hands. This is the Father’s will.
Reuben already lived with the shame and guilt of incest with his father’s wife. It would cost him the birthright. Thanks be to God that his conscience did not allow him to cover up Joseph’s murder as well. But his attempts to appease his own timid conscience were unfruitful. They always are. Dear Christians, do not try to settle and quiet your own guilty conscience through works. They will not give the guilty conscience peace or wash away the stain.
But the Lord is a Shield about you. Your Glory and the Lifter of your head. Cry aloud to Him. He answers from His holy Hill. That is, from His the holy hill of Golgotha and the Cross alone which is your glory and your life. Here at this Altar and in His holy Absolution, His blood bespeaks you righteous and removes the curse through His bleeding love.
But calloused hearts do not acknowledge and receive such love and therefore are unable to show it. They took Joseph, stripped him of his robe and threw him into a waterless pit. Their wicked work done, they sat down to eat, deaf to his cries for help and pleas for mercy.
Again, not unlike our Lord Christ. We see in Joseph a type of the One who is to come. A foreshadowing of our Lord’s suffering and passion. His own betrayal and rejection. There He sat at Table with the Twelve, His soul sorrowful to death, instituting His last will and testament, the New Covenant in His Blood. And they argue about who is the greatest among them! They were deaf to His words.
Is it any different with us? How often have we sat idly by while our brother, our sister, in sorrow aches? Turned a deaf ear to pleas for mercy? Or just a deaf ear to one who only needed a listening ear? We may not have sold our Lord, our Joseph, into slavery, handed Him over for the price of a slave like Judah or Judas, but our hands are far from clean. Like the sons of Jacob who listened to their brother, we have listened to the voice of those who deny our Lord, betray Him, slander Him, and hurt His reputation. We have argued over prestige and power and refused to stoop into the pit to lift out a neighbor in need.
Repentance is needed. The family drama of Joseph and his brothers is our own. We have not sought virtue and humility, but instead have chased after our own dreams. Repent.
But do not despair. For into this family drama, into this disfunction and strife, our Lord Christ Himself comes. Into a family were He was rejected and denied by His brothers and sisters. Stripped of the robe of His own righteousness and dipped into the blood of your own sins. This is the answer to the question of the hymn, “Whence come these sorrows, whence this mortal anguish? It is my sins for which Thou, Lord, must languish” (LSB 439:3).
But do not pity Him, dear Christians. For He goes willingly. He willingly dips His hand in the bowl with the one who would betray Him. He allows Himself to be handed over for the price of a slave. He fulfills His Father’s will when He’s given over to death and Satan, that wicked Pharaoh and fierce animal, to be devoured.
He does it for you. He is your true Joseph, your King and Lord and Benefactor. He is the Greatest among you, but He serves. He came to give His life as a ransom for many. He gives His Body for you. He pours out His blood for you. Once for all upon the Cross and now here, upon the Altar, where His Crucifix is laid sideways and you are given to recline at Table with Him to eat and to drink in His Kingdom.
This is His last will and testament. The sign and seal of His love for you. The sure and certain hope that He comes to you not in vengeance or anger, but in mercy, to forgive, renew, and strengthen you with His Word and Spirit. You may have betrayed Him, denied Him, doubted Him, but He answers you here from His Holy Hill. From His Altar. His Mt Zion with salvation and blessing. As on the night on which He was betrayed, Jesus still has table fellowship with sinners. He is the Greatest among you, but He is still here as One who serves.
By these - through His Word, in His Supper, at His Table in the liturgy - does He sustain you in your trials. He is with you, even as He was with Joseph to fulfill His plan and the dreams He had revealed, as we will be reminded in the coming weeks.
For now, beloved, rejoice in the comfort that He has gathered you here, as a Shepherd gathers His flock, in this Shechem. Recall that Shechem is between between Mount Ebal and Mount Gerazim, that place were Joshua gathered the congregation of Israel to hear the reading of the Word of the Lord upon entering the Promised Land.
So it is that our Good Shepherd and new testament Joshua, our Lord Jesus Christ, gathers you here between the mountain of your Holy Baptism and the Mountain of His Sacrament, to this Shechem, to hear again the reading and proclamation of His holy Word by which His Kingdom comes in order that He might raise those who fall and to strengthen those who stand; and to comfort and help the weakhearted and the distressed.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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