That God Might Exist
Genesis 45:1-15
Violence to be increasing in our society. So much of it seems to be connected with revenge. “Road Rage” is a common occurrence. We hear stories of a person being cut off in traffic by another driver, and then retaliating by running the other driver off the road and administrating a severe beating before continuing on his way. Family violence is often connected with vengeance, sometimes in a very sick way. We heard of a man recently who was so angry at his wife separating from him that he beat the children to “get back” at her. Violence is merchandised on television. Some people say that it is violence that keeps the Nielson ratings up. By the time a child is 18 years old , he or she has spent more times in front of the Television set than in school. It is estimated that the child will have witness during that period of time some 18,000 murders and countless highly details incidents of robbery, arson, bombings, shootings, beatings, and torture. It is not surprising that much of this violence on TV is connected with revenge, retaliation, and retribution. In fact, there is something in all of us that desires revenge, and we want to cheer when someone who has done a dastardly deed to another, gets “what they deserve”. Wars continue to be fought in retaliation for past misdeeds of the enemy and continue to escalate with atrocity after atrocity.
Revenge is such an insidious thing . It can eventually take up all of our insides and take control of our whole life so that we can think of nothing else. In Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, we see Captain Nemo ranging the seas in his submarine the Nautilus seemingly possessed by a hatred for all humankind. He takes fearful and titanic vengeance on anyone who crosses him. The book comes to a close with the description of the sinking of a ship by the Nautilus, with the swarm of seamen, overtaken by the sea, struggling in the waters and clinging to the hull of the sinking ship, until the dark mass disappears and is sucked down into the depths. We see Captain Nemo, the terrible avenger, a perfect archangel of hatred, still looking over the scene. Finally he turns and goes into his room and focuses on a portrait of a woman and two young children, his family whose murder had delivered such a devastating blow to him. His arms reach out to them, and kneeling down he bursts into deep sobs, exclaiming, “Almighty God! Enough! Enough! With that the Nautilus is sucked down into the maelstrom.
There seemed to be no end to this kind of hatred and revenge, and there is an emptiness in it that in the end fails to satisfy.
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In the Hebrew Scriptures today we have the story of Joseph, who certainly had reason and the opportunity to take revenge on his brothers. After all, his brothers had been extremely jealous of him because of the favoritism displayed to him by his Father, and angry at him for his dreams in which the whole family bows down to him. In their hatred, they left him in a pit to die.. They took his coat of many colors that his father had given him, soaked it in the blood of a goat, and took it back to Jacob with the suggestion that Joseph had been torn to pieces by some wild animal. Instead Joseph had been taken from the pit by some merchants who sold him to others traveling to Egypt.
Here’s where the story gets even more interesting. Joseph rises to an important position in the Kings’ court because of his ability to interpret dreams. It was because of this ability that the Egyptians were able to save food and have ample supplies for the time of famine in the land. Eventually the famine brings his family to Egypt looking for food to keep them from starvation. They have to come before Joseph for food. He recognizes them. They don’t recognize him. He could take great revenge on them.
He couldn’t resist getting a little of his own back for awhile. He pretended they were spies. He gave them some grain to take home but kept one of them back as a hostage, and demanded that they bring back the youngest brother, Benjamin. He played this charade for awhile, even accusing them of stealing the silverware, and I suppose it gave him some satisfaction making them sweat a bit. But he was moved by another spirit that of reconciliation with his family. He told them who he was and they fell into each other’s arms and wept. He invited them to come live with him in Egypt and bring old Jacob alone with them, who of course was delighted to find Joseph still alive after all these years.
After Jacob died the brothers wondered whether Joseph’s benevolence would continue and so they did fall down on their knees and begged his pardon, much like the dream that Joseph had in his younger days. Joseph, however, was not vindictive and assured them that they had nothing to be afraid of and that they were certainly pardoned. So, one could say that at this time Israel was saved from famine and extinction, and Joseph was saved as a human being. Hatred, anger and retaliation were overcome. Forgiveness and kindness triumphed.
God was alive in Joseph’s heart.
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I think of another story of famine from the Scandinavian novelist Johan Borger entitled The Great Hunger. It was a story of an engineer whose little daughter was killed by a neighbor’s dog. The cruel loss turned the community against the dog owner and drove the father almost insane. At first it shattered his faith. Shortly afterward the region was stricken with famine . The engineer took some of his meager supply of seed corn and planted it in the field of the neighbor whose dog had slain the little girl. He describes his feelings at the time:
” I understand how blind fate can strip and plunder us of all, and yet something will remain in us at the last that nothing in heaven and earth can vanquish. Our bodies are doomed to die, and our spirits to be extinguished, yet still we bear within us the spark, the germ of an eternity of harmony and light for both the world and for God. So therefore I went out and sowed the corn in my enemies field that God might exist“
“That God might exist” is a powerful expression. To what degree is God alive and well and living in the human heart? It was only in the Engineer acting in benevolence toward his enemy that he was able to prove to himself that God existed in his life and in the world. Otherwise God remained distant, aloof, and unknowable.
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When Joseph acted in forgiveness and benevolence rather than in revenge and retaliation, God was alive. I think that you could say that when Joseph acted in that way he showed himself, his family, Israel, and the world to come that God did indeed exist.
When we see the increasing violence, hatred, and vengeance in our world it is easy to say that God does not exist and that evil triumphs over good. But individually and together when we get in touch with that spark, that tiny germ of eternity, of harmony, and light, and act on it, we can shown to ourselves and to the world that God does exist.
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