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Jubilee Episcopal Church is an incense-swinging, sanctus-bell-ringing, stomp-your-feet- singing ancient way of following Jesus with more than enough room for you to bring your compassion, curiosities, and complete self. We're rooted in NW Austin, Texas, but connect with folks globally in sharing a joyful and inclusive Christian faith. The title comes from a prayer found in Compline, a service in the Book of Common Prayer, where we intercede for Jesus Christ to care and tend for the hurting, the sick, and the weary, but also, to shield the joyous. This prayer is our heartbeat at Jubilee. You'll hear sermons, devotions, and other occasional audio treats here -- including the occasional baby squawk or squeak from our decidedly family-friendly community!
We worship Sundays at 9:30am in person at 12129 FM 620 Ste 310 Austin, TX and online!
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I'm Alexis Busetti and I come to you really just from down the street at st. Julian of Norwich Episcopal Church where my family and I worship and I'm so grateful to be with you today and also really grateful to Reverend Lizzie for the invitation to come and preach and what I won't say is that when she mentioned that you guys were going through track one which meant Genesis I remember that I was really busy whatever week it was that she was gonna ask me to preach and then when she told me what week it was and told me that it was the beginning of the Joseph story you know the one the part where he gets thrown into the pit I was like predicting some kind of sudden onset stomach pain but I said yes and I'm thrilled that I did because when I got to looking at this passage a bit more I took a deep breath and I remembered how much I love Joseph and how much I love Joseph's story and how much Joseph's story really does teach us about God. Sorry my computer is not working so I'm flipping over to my notes over here. The question though that this text begged of me over the last couple of weeks when I was looking at it is where is God in our betrayals? My quick answer for you today is I have no idea. I have no idea where God seems to disappear to when we experience heart-wrenching betrayals or where God seems to go when we end up at the lowest points in our lives because of those moments. Betrayal I think we would all agree is a major theme in this passage but as we heard when it was being read God isn't mentioned in this passage like God isn't mentioned by name even once. So where is God when we experience betrayal? When I named this text for my husband and told him just a little bit about my apprehension he of course is always like super supportive and you know a big cheerleader and he's like so are you gonna cover the song The Pit from Parks and Rec you know that Andy Dwyer sings and and I'm like you know this passage is this history in which we'll get there. I was like so don't be filled with suspense I'm not gonna do that here this morning but the more that this silly comment from him lived in my head rent-free over the next few weeks the more that resonated with me actually. So if you're a fan of the show you might remember that Andy Dwyer at the very beginning falls into this giant pit in Pawnee that's across the street from his girlfriend Ann's house and that's not just the beginning episode it actually ends up being the plot for the entire series. The question is how will the Parks and Recreation Department of Pawnee Indiana led by the audacious Leslie Knope transform that pit into a park? How will they change what happened by the pit's presence and turn it into something beautiful? So Andy's traumatic experience of falling into the pit impacts him so much that he writes a song that I've mentioned and he sings it performs it with his band Mouse Rat at the local bar and for the most part it's not a difficult song the lyrics are pretty simple and they repeat over and over again I fell in the pit you fell in the pit we all fell in the pit but there is a singular verse in that song with this line that I found to be pretty and it says Andy sings you think you found love but you're standing in the pit and that line sure feels like the heart of betrayal to me that's the story of Joseph in this passage that we just read with a literal pit but if we metaphorically we could say that the same thing is actually true of his brothers and of his dad betrayal feels like you think you found love but instead you find yourself looking up from the lowest point in your life you think you found love but something or someone takes that love instead you you think you found love but you end up abandoned or worse and betrayal hurts so badly because it's almost always nonsensical the experience of betrayal is almost impossible to make rational sense of when we're betrayed or even when we feel betrayed it's because someone something some entity or even some organization has behaved in a way that they were never supposed to behave either by their very nature or by the nature of the relationship that's why it hurts so badly that's why trauma is often a result of betrayal and mistrust often comes along afterwards because we think we found love but something heartbreaking nonsensical unthinkable happens instead in Isaiah there's a dialogue between God and God's people where God's people express feeling abandoned by God and God reassures them by comparing God's self to a breastfeeding mother who couldn't possibly neglect the baby that she's feeding with her own body and that kind of relationship isn't supposed to fail sometimes it does but that failing is against its very nature the love between a mother and child is among the truest most most faithful kinds of love and that's why God uses it to describe God's faithfulness loves like that aren't supposed to fail and when they do the results are tragic betrayal cuts deeply in this retelling of Joseph's story of betrayal interestingly the lectionary selection doesn't include maybe one of the most famous parts and that is Joseph's dreams so briefly the omitted part narrates how Joseph has two similar dreams and he interprets them to mean that there will come a time when his entire family including his parents will bow down to him and this severely irritates his brothers they already don't like the guy but this makes it ten times worse and even though I was surprised that the lectionary left it out I'm not mad about it and I'm not mad about it especially when I consider that including it might tempt us into finding ways to make sense of Joseph's betrayal but there is no making sense of Joseph's betrayal there is no excuse for the violence he experiences if we look at the dream portion we might be tempted to look at Joseph and reason that maybe he was acting just a little bratty at the time or maybe he might have had it coming to him but no there is no reasonable explanation for their betrayal that's what makes it a betrayal focusing on the telling of Joseph's dreams might give us some kind of evidence to bring to the table to try to figure out what happened to him and why when really nothing could adequately explain the tragic and traumatic events in his life at the hands of his brothers Joseph was violently betrayed period at the same time I'm gonna ask us to consider that maybe Joseph's story of betrayal isn't the only one in this passage so we can see they definitely earned their labels as villains in this story but I would ask what about Joseph's brothers is it possible that each of them experienced betrayal or at least felt betrayed by their father Joseph's brothers lived with the knowledge that their dad loved their little brother more than he loved them and it wasn't just a hunch Jacob's partiality was proven to them day in and day out both publicly and privately these actions in this culture might have been a tough to weather because the oldest brothers were assumed to have certain claims over their younger siblings so maybe the villains in this passage have a backstory of betrayal themselves and then there's Jacob we don't quite make it there in this reading and I don't think it's included next week either so hope it's not a spoiler sorry if it is but Jacob ends up being betrayed by his sons we can see them plotting the betrayal in this part of the passage because they plan to report Joseph's death which ends up being a lie to their father and they know that the news of Joseph being supposedly murdered will tear him apart from the inside because Joseph is the favorite so where is God when all of this betrayal happens as we mentioned before God is absent at least in name from this text there is no mention of God God doesn't appear in anybody's internal monologue there's no discussion of God between parties God is seemingly absent and here's where I'd like to break the fourth wall so to and say we don't see God explicitly mentioned in this narrative but God is definitely present in this text God is present in this text we know because God is present all throughout our sacred texts God is present in Genesis God is present in the Torah God is present in the Hebrew Bible God is present in the Gospels God is present in the New Testament these texts are given to us through humans and by God in part as a tangible reminder of God's presence these texts are a record of our not-so-distant companions in faith who have gone before us and continue to testify constantly to us about the goodness and faithfulness of God even when their own circumstances portrayed a different lived reality. Rabbi Karen Breutman in her recent book the Torah is an open book radical readings for the seeker and the skeptic begins with an invitation for her readers she asks us to engage the Bible with quote the help of the Jewish interpretive tradition as a true record of the inner experiences of great sold persons wrestling with the crises of their fate this is exactly what we see here with Jacob Joseph and his brothers now we sitting in this room might say well that sounds really great for those characters you know for those great sold people but Rabbi Breutman also ensures us that the Bible includes within it all of our emotions and instincts to know that God has given us a sacred text that already has all of our emotions accounted for to know that God is not surprised by any of our instincts good bad ugly or indifferent and that God's commitment to us as beloved creatures outweighs any of them to be able to rest in the compassion of a God who does not settle for a long relationship but moves heaven and earth to get to us this is something we have in this complex passage and in the book of Genesis and beyond where is God and our betrayals present even when we can't bear to test the waters to see if it's true in the gospel reading for this week as we just heard Jesus disciples right before that had just spent some serious time and energy working together on a miracle meal and then Jesus left he sent them off in a boat to weather a storm on a lake by themselves all night it's possible they might have felt abandoned by him in those moments around Lent and Easter time we often talk about how Jesus was betrayed by his friends which is true and can definitely provide us with some comfort when we're feeling abandoned or alone but I want to ask this morning prompted by the gospel reading what about Jesus friends does this record a time when they might have felt even for a moment betrayed by Jesus I mean it feels like it seems like from the text that he left them they were out there on lake but God Jesus was present Jesus is present Jesus calls out to his terrified friends to come closer they didn't know where he was before but now that they see him they scramble at least some of them to reach him the wind was still there the storm was still brewing but the summoning they felt from their was strong enough to draw them near to him in return Joseph's not on a lake he got thrown into a pit but it's not like the one that Andy rolled down into in Pawnee I was actually really glad when I heard this translation using the term cistern so this won't feel so foreign but a cistern is a place where water is stored in the wilderness and the passage tells us here that the cistern or the was empty specifically that it had no water in it later in the Torah after the story of Joseph comes full circle we might say and the children of Israel are returning back to their homeland after being enslaved in Egypt Moses gathers his people gives the Ten Commandments and right afterwards says this to them and when the Lord your God brings you into the land he swore to your fathers to Abraham to Isaac and to Jacob to give you with great and good cities that you did not build and houses full of all good things that you did not fill and cisterns that you did not dig and vineyards and olive trees that you did not plant and when you eat and are full then take care lest you forget the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery a cistern is a good thing Moses tells the children of Israel to take a look around at the goodness that God has surrounded them with in this land not only do they have a place to live but so many of their provisions necessary for a good life are already there they have houses they have fruit bearing trees they have water vats these cisterns these pits already in place waiting there to In other words Joseph's brothers take a life-giving tool and turn it into a weapon meant for his destruction isn't that what happens so many times in betrayal someone sees something around us something we only know as good maybe it's who we are a relationship a place a gift and they choose to take that good thing and use it against us for evil maybe they even blame us for it and before you know it we think we found love and we're left not in a life-giving space but in an empty place more fit for a tomb than as a well of living water the good news is Jesus is at work in both the good news the gospel is that Jesus is already and actively working now toward the kinds of transformation where he exchanges beauty for ashes and he's calling us to partner with him in that very good and holy work but those seasons still exist where we can't see the top of the pit and this part of the Joseph story is one of those examples we don't see a happy ending yet for now it just looks like betrayal and in these seasons we ask where is God when we experience betrayal our predecessors in the faith beckon us to remember God is never absent God understands human betrayal at a visceral level and meets us with compassion God could never dream of leaving us alone in our darkest circumstances God is friends present living and active with us in the pit