Jigsaw Puzzles

The Rev. Dr. Skip Ferguson

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

November 29, 2015

First Sunday in Advent

Jigsaw Puzzles

Genesis 37:1-11

Jacob settled in the land

where his father had lived as an alien,

the land of Canaan.

This is the story of the family of Jacob.

Joseph, being seventeen years old,

was shepherding the flock with his brothers;

he was a helper to the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah,

his father’s wives;

and Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father.

Now [Jacob] loved Joseph more than

 any other of his children,

because he was the son of his old age;

and he had made him a long robe with sleeves.

But when his brothers saw that their father

loved him more than all his brothers,

they hated him, and could not speak peaceably to him.

Once Joseph had a dream,

and when he told it to his brothers,

they hated him even more.

He said to them, ‘Listen to this dream that I dreamed.

There we were, binding sheaves in the field.

Suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright;

then your sheaves gathered around it,

and bowed down to my sheaf.’

His brothers said to him,

‘Are you indeed to reign over us?

Are you indeed to have dominion over us?’

So they hated him even more

because of his dreams and his words.

He had another dream, and told it to his brothers,

saying, ‘Look, I have had another dream:

the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.’

But when he told it to his father and to his brothers,

his father rebuked him, and said to him,

‘What kind of dream is this that you have had?

Shall we indeed come,

I and your mother and your brothers,

and bow to the ground before you?’

So his brothers were jealous of him,

but his father kept the matter in mind.

**********************************************

You remember Joseph –

he was the one with the coat of many colors,

the “long robe with sleeves”

we heard about in our text.

What else do you remember about him?

Do you remember that Isaac was his grandfather,

and Abraham his great-grandfather?

Do you remember that Joseph was the 11^th

of Jacob’s 12 sons,

born of Rachel, one of Jacob’s wives?

Bilhah and Zilpah, whom our text referred to,

were also Jacob’s wives,

as was Leah, Rachel’s sister.

Four thousand years ago,

that was a traditional marriage.

As the 11^th son,

Joseph would have been destined

for a life as a shepherd,

a life spent working in the shadows

of his older brothers –

Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah and the others.

So when his older brothers heard Joseph’s dream,

they probably burst out in laughter at first,

that their brother, their kid brother,

would even dream such a thing:

that he would reign over them,

that they would someday bow down to him.

And then when he had another, similar dream,

a dream that seemed to include

his father and mother

among those whom Joseph would rule over,

his brothers were no longer amused,

and his father was offended;

after all, a father did not bow down to his son,

the son honored the father.

After telling his brothers and his father his dream,

I am guessing that Joseph was about

as popular in his family,

as Kevin McCallister was in his family

in the first Home Alone movie,

a perennial Christmas favorite.  

But back in Joseph’s day

a dream was more than a dream –

a dream was a prophesy,

a harbinger of what was likely

to happen in the future.

So it was more than a silly dream

that Joseph had;

at least from his father’s and brothers’ perspective;

it was a glimpse into the future,

however unlikely it seemed.

Joseph knew it,

his brothers knew it;

and his father knew it, too,

which is probably why we heard our text

end with the words,

“his father kept the matter in mind.”

Jacob no doubt wondered

what the dream might have meant,

and what lay ahead for his beloved Joseph.

Now, if you remember the rest of Joseph’s story,

you’ll remember that

his brothers’s  anger and jealousy

got the better of them,

and they first sought to kill him,

at least until Reuben,

the eldest brother, convinced them

that that might be a little extreme.

So they sold Joseph as a slave,

sold him to a trading caravan

that was headed to Egypt,

first stripping him of his wonderful coat,

and then collecting a handsome fee

from the traders

for their annoying little brother.

The brothers then took Joseph’s coat,

smeared it with goat’s blood

and presented it to their father Jacob

to convince him that his precious Joseph was dead,

killed by wild animals.

Quite a family!

The trading caravan took Joseph down to Egypt

where he was to spend many years

enduring great hardship,

including a seven-year stint in prison.

But God was with Joseph every moment of every day,

and in time, Joseph became a power in Egypt,

a favorite of Pharaoh,

and eventually be became

second in command over all the land.

When famine wiped out food supplies in Canaan,

where Joseph’s brothers all lived,

they went south to Egypt in search of food,

and one day they found themselves

in the presence of Pharaoh’s governor.

They bowed down to the man out of respect,

and probably more than a little fear,

none of them realizing

that the man to whom they bowed

was their own brother,

…their kid brother Joseph.

But Joseph recognized them immediately.

How easy it would have been for

Joseph to have had his revenge,

to have let his vile, evil brothers

starve to death.

But Joseph didn’t do that –

they were his brothers, his family;

so he forgave them,

embraced them,

and sent them home with food.

It is a marvelous story – Joseph’s life,

and it is a powerful reminder

that we have no idea how our lives will turn out;

a reminder that our lives are jigsaw puzzles,

that we spend our whole lives

putting together piece by piece.

                                            

At time the pieces fit together neatly,

quickly, effortlessly.

At other times we find ourselves at a loss

trying to find the next piece,

the next part of our lives –

the job, the partner,

the place to live,

the recovered health –

the piece that will bring

a sense of fulfillment, accomplishment;

the piece that will bring peace.

Still other times we find ourselves

trying to force a piece that clearly doesn’t fit.

And of course, we never have the box cover,

with the picture of the completed puzzle

to show us what it is we are assembling

piece by piece,

what our lives will look like

when all is said and done.

That’s known only to God.

So we go through life,

assembling the puzzle;

learning, we hope, patience,

as any good puzzle master learns;

learning to put our trust and hope in God,

that when the next piece is to be put in place,

we’ll know it, we’ll find it,

and it will fit,

as it is meant to.

Forty years ago, the completed picture

I imagined for myself

was that of a successful attorney at law,

or possibly an owner of a small business.

Those were the pieces I kept looking for

to snap into place as I worked on my puzzle.

I never imagined that the pieces

I would eventually put in place,

the pieces that God had shaped for my puzzle,

would eventually form a picture of a pastor

standing in a pulpit, preaching a sermon.

Advent reminds us that time and history

are also part of God’s jigsaw,

a puzzle that is being put together by God

in God’s way, in God’s time.

But Advent reminds us

that unlike our own histories,

where we don’t know what

the final picture will look like,

we do know where God is leading us,

what God is creating for us,

what God is creating for all humanity:

that day when Christ will come again in glory,

come again to make all things new,

come to usher in and complete God’s kingdom.

So the prophets tell us,like Joseph’s dream,

what lies ahead,

what the puzzle will look like when it is finished,

a world in which,

“The wolf shall live with the lamb,

the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
and a little child shall lead them.

The cow and the bear shall graze,
their young shall lie down together;
and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.

The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
and the weaned child shall put its hand

on the adder’s den.”

(Isaiah 11:6)

It will be a world where death will be

swallowed up forever,

and where every tear will be wiped away.

(Isaiah 25)

                 

It will be a world where,

as hard as it is for us to imagine now,

“there shall be endless peace”.

(Isaiah 9)

It will be a world where the meek,

or perhaps better translated as,

“the humble”,

will inherit the earth,

where the rich will be sent away empty handed.

This is the message of Advent,

this season that begins today:

that the God who created,

is the God who creates still,

forming, shaping,

and putting the pieces together

in your life, my life,

all life,

and will continue doing so

until God,

in God’s time,

puts the final piece in place

and Christ comes again,

our prayer, “thy Kingdom come”

answered.

“O Come O Come Emmanuel”,

we sing as we begin Advent,

echoing the very last words in the Bible,

the final words in the Book of Revelation

“Come, Lord Jesus!”

(Revelation 22:20)

Yes, “Come, and make all things new.

Come and complete the puzzle.”

AMEN