BACK DOOR MERCIES

Not too long ago we were at the South Jersey shore and when we are there we go to a little Presbyterian Church, Wells Memorial Presbyterian Church. Services are just held in the summers there and the ministers are mostly from the Delaware Valley of Pennsylvania. It’s hard not to envy those preachers. They get two weeks at the shore, staying in the manse there, and they lead worship a couple of times and preach a couple of sermons. One of those ministers is Scotty Griffith. Scotty Griffith told a story about his own life, about his college years, decades ago, when he played baseball for Texas Christian University. He arrived there with visions of all-American status as a baseball player, being in the Hall of Fame and going on to a pro baseball career. He got into his first game, out in the outfield, I believe center field, and there was a long fly ball. Scotty positioned himself under it and was promptly hit in the forehead by the baseball, leaving marks on his forehead with impressions of the stitching of the baseball where it had hit him. He had a realization, a revelation at that point, that he probably was not going to be an all-American baseball player, let alone Hall of Fame material or pro material. It was as he said, “a back door mercy,” because it led him into the track that would take him into the ministry that would prove to be a very effective and blessed ministry, and a blessing to many – “a back door mercy.”

I think those “back door mercies” are happening in our lives all the time. One of my earliest lessons about that came when I was a senior in high school. I was playing football and based on the recognition I had gotten, I was certain that when the all star game came – West Virginia versus Ohio – that I would be the starting center for the West Virginia side and so I waited confidently for the phone call to come, begging me to include my sartorial splendor in the effort for West Virginia. The call did not come! And so it was a few weeks later I was at the training camp visiting with a couple of my friends who were playing on the team, and I found that one of the West Virginia coaches had brought his own center, which was the position I played, to the camp and so I did not get to do that. We won that year, by the way, over Ohio, and I would have played center. I’m fine with it now, as you can see, it’s fine! But it was a “back door mercy” which I did not realize right away. At that time, sports being huge in my life, I thought that was everything. As a result I wound up working on the work crew in a Young Life Camp in Saranac, NY on Saranac Lake and those experiences that summer were seminal experiences for me in youth ministry and ministry in general. And so, looking back on it, at the end of that summer, I realized that was a “back door mercy.”

Well this story of Joseph is a story, maybe the quintessential story of “back door mercies.” If you’ve been in the church for any length of time you’ve probably run across this story of Joseph, one of the great stories of the Bible. If you have not ever read the story, I would encourage you to make a literary pilgrimage this afternoon in the Bible to those chapters in Genesis and read about Joseph’s story of “back door mercies.” Joseph is one of the twelve sons of Jacob. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the patriarchs of Israel, Joseph, one of the twelve sons, and a favorite son of Jacob. He is one of the two sons of the beloved Rachel. And Jacob literally loved him more than the others and was not really subtle about that. He gave him the coat of many colors from which we get the musical, “Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat.” He gave him this beautiful robe, signifying how much he loved him. He played favorites. The response of that in Joseph as a young man was to be somewhat proud and arrogant about it and to put that before his other brothers. Their response was not unexpected. They were jealous and that jealously grew to hatred and so they planned to kill Joseph. Cooler heads prevailed and they threw him into a pit and sold him to a caravan to be sold into slavery in Egypt. They went back home and told his father, Jacob, that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal and they even had the remnants from the many-colored robe to show him, with blood from an animal on it.

Well Joseph found himself in slavery in Egypt but through faithfulness and the blessing of God he rose through intrigue, betrayal and even prison to be, literally, the second in command in all of Egypt. He had a gift to interpret dreams accurately; a gift that God gave him and energized in him and so he was able to interpret a dream that there was a famine coming and even tell Pharaoh how to deal with that, how to prepare for it. He was put in charge of those arrangements, being, as I said, second in command in all of Egypt. And so it was years later his own brothers came down from Canaan, having been gripped by a famine. They needed grain to stay alive; to keep from starving to death. They came to Joseph, not knowing who he was. He was wearing his Egyptian outfit and all of his Egyptian regalia and there they stood before him. He played with them a bit, did a few tricks to lead them on and then revealed himself to them emotionally, letting them know he forgave them. As a result the entire clan down into Egypt where they could survive the famine and prosper with his care.

Well, when we join the story this morning in the scriptures, we find that Jacob has died and now the brothers are in a panic because it occurs to them that maybe Joseph has only been gracious to them because of Jacob. Perhaps he does not want to grieve his father’s heart and so has been kind to them. And so they concoct a letter and put Jacob’s sign to it, take it to Joseph on his deathbed and say, “Our father requested that you be merciful to us.” They groveled and they put on a show and in response Joseph wept and so the brother’s wept. And Joseph said, first of all, “Don’t be afraid, fear not.” It brings to mind the words of Franklin Roosevelt, “There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” Words actually coined by a presidential aid, Louis Howell, in 1933 for the Inaugural address of Franklin Roosevelt. Because finally fear and guilt bend us out of shape in the human experience and in relationships. They blind us to the goodness in life; fear and guilt can blind us to the goodness in other people.

I can remember working in our family’s funeral homes, sitting with my father in the office at the end of calling hours. A family had been having at one another about all kinds of things and as the family was leaving, one man came into the office and said he was sure the other side of the family was going to literally steal rings off of the body that was in the funeral home. He wanted a receipt from my father to guarantee the rings.

Well, my father told him we didn’t have that kind of thing but that he could type up a letter, which he did, signed it and gave to the man. When the man left, my father looked at me and said, “You know someone who is that unable to trust usually is a person who is untrustworthy himself.” I will always remember those words – fear, guilt blind us to the possible goodness in others and the goodness in life. And so it is, Joseph says, “Don’t be afraid, don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God to bring those consequences upon you?” Finally, “that’s all in God’s hands,” and then he says something about those “back door mercies.” “You planned this for evil but God planned it for good,” saying essentially, I forgive you completely. I will care for you and provide for you and care for your little ones,” says Joseph. A “back door mercy.” One of many “back door mercies” Joseph experienced and one he brought to his brothers in that time – and they wept.

I think you and I experience “back door mercies” through our lives, as I said. Paul in his letter to the Romans said, “All things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purposes.” “All things work together for good.” Sometimes we see very clearly it’s God’s plan, it’s good, it’s all good. Other times we see God at work in “back door mercies” when He brings good out of evil, light out of darkness.

The story is told of oriental master weavers who will have their apprentices weave beautiful tapestries and carpets. As those apprentices are weaving, invariably they make errors and those master oriental weavers then step in but they don’t tear out those mistakes or undo them. They rather take that process and work those errors and mistakes into the pattern, making it a one-time, unique pattern of beauty. Working the error or mistake into the pattern, making it priceless, literally, in those tapestries and those carpets. That is what God does in our lives. He takes even the darkest times, even the worst of human life and He works it to good…all things work together for good, and at many points in our lives God works those “back door mercies.”

Joseph’s reply to his brothers meant to them that the cycle stopped there. The cycle of Jacob’s favoritism, that he could not resist showing to Joseph, the cycle of Joseph’s arrogance and pride in receiving that favoritism and flaunting it before his brothers. The sin of his brothers escalating it further with their violence and murderous plans and finally Joseph’s opportunity to escalate it further and get back at the brothers – but he said, “I forgive you, I will provide for you, I love you.” And there stops the cycle of violence and escalation and hatred, replaced by love and grace in the “back door mercies” of God. The cycle is broken. Joseph wept when the brothers came to him. I think he wept because he realized there was still a vast separation between his brothers and himself, based on this subterfuge of bringing a fake letter from Jacob to him. It was foreshadowing’s of Jesus’ emotion looking over Jerusalem and saying, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who stone the prophets and kill those who are sent to you. How I have longed to gather you to myself as a hen gathers her brood, but you would not.” They would not because of the fear and the guilt and the blindness that comes from it all. The inability to see the goodness of God and the blessings of God intended for them. And so the cycle is broken and this verse that I read just a few minutes ago, basically says that these brothers have been greatly concerned with their plan to eliminate Joseph and all the ramifications of that plan, but so great was their concern and their preoccupation that they could not see in the midst of their scheme there was a much larger and greater eternal plan that none of them could perceive. Joseph had a certainty throughout - that God’s plan was for life and that God’s plan for life would finally triumph.

And it is Joseph in this story who has the authority to speak the Word and speak the Word of God in order to make all things new for his brothers. Walter Bruegermann has it this way – the plan is that the family is destined for life in a world of death. The plan of God is that the family is destined for life in a world of death and this is the good news to us. The good news to you is that you are destined for life in a world of death.

When I officiate a funeral, often I return to a quote that was shared to me by my colleague in ministry, Bill Meyer, my good friend. It’s not his own quote, but he shared it with me and it goes like this:

As we gather (for a funeral or memorial service), it may appear at first glance that we, the living, are gathered to mourn the dead, but in closer examination the fact is that we who are dying gather to celebrate life.

Joseph got that! It was life and blessing and grace and those “back door mercies” of God, who insists that we have life, and life to the full, now and forever.

One of my mentors, Bob Holland, as great a preacher as I have ever known, was at Shadyside Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh when I was a seminary intern there. He had a card taped on the pulpit of the Shadyside Presbyterian Church that he would see every Sunday. The quote was “Preach as dying man to dying men.” Because finally God’s plan is dramatically greater than any plan we can conceive and God’s plan dramatically overrides and overshadows our own plans. In the words of scripture, for our good always, God does just that.

My boyhood friend, Dale Ebbert and I had a plan, on a snowy winter’s morning about this time of year. There was a huge snow and we were certain it was going to be a “snow day.” So we got up early, it’s easy to get out of bed on a snow day. I went over to Dale’s house and found school was on. There was no radio or television announcement about school being called off and so for the next half hour Dale and I put our plan in motion. We shoveled as much snow as we possibly could onto the road in front of Dale’s house – about two blocks from the school. We knew the bus had to go by there, and if we piled up enough snow, the bus wouldn’t get through and school would be called off! It was a great plan! We feverishly shoveled a huge amount of snow into the street and hid behind a car only to watch the bus blast through the snow and right on up the hill. There ensued then a mad dash to the school in order to get there on time. Well, there was a bigger and more potent and more powerful plan in place than the plan of Dale Ebbert and Bill McCoy. So it is with God. There is a great and elaborate, infinite plan for your life and mine. A plan that includes “back door mercies” where God incorporates every means and every way to make sure that your life is blessed, now and forevermore. And what’s more, God insists that you be a blessing to others. That you be included in this great work that breaks the cycle of violence, that breaks the cycle of sin and death and brings light and grace and blessing….life after life after life; that your life be redeemed and redeemed again and that you participate in the way God has in mind for you and has from the beginning in being agents of that redemption in the lives of others – over and over and over again in this life and in eternal life to come. That is a plan that God will not relent from incorporating in your life and mine. Back door mercies. The process of God doing everything that is possible and even that which is impossible to bring us into the life He has for us and has intended for us from the very beginning.