Lions and Tigers and Bears
Sunday August 20th, 2023
Rev. Rhonda Blevins, pastor
Genesis 37:28
When some Midianite traders passed by, they drew Joseph up, lifting him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. And they took Joseph to Egypt.
GENESIS 39:1-3
Now Joseph was taken down to Egypt, and Potiphar, an officer of Pharaoh, the captain of the guard, an Egyptian, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had brought him down there. The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man; he was in the house of his Egyptian master. His master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord caused all that he did to prosper in his hands.
GENESIS 41:38-40
Pharaoh said to his servants, “Can we find anyone else like this, one in whom is the spirit of God?” So Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has shown you all this, there is no one so discerning and wise as you. You shall be over my house, and all my people shall order themselves as you command; only with regard to the throne will I be greater than you.”
GENESIS 42:1-6:
When Jacob learned that there was grain in Egypt, he said to his sons, “Why do you keep looking at one another? I have heard,” he said, “that there is grain in Egypt; go down and buy grain for us there, that we may live and not die.” So ten of Joseph’s brothers went down to buy grain in Egypt. But Jacob did not send Joseph’s brother Benjamin with his brothers, for he feared that harm might come to him. Thus the sons of Israel were among the people who came to buy grain, for the famine had reached the land of Canaan. Now Joseph was governor over the land; it was he who sold to all the people of the land. And Joseph’s brothers came and bowed themselves before him with their faces to the ground.
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“Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”
This is one of the most iconic movie lines of all time. Do you remember the movie? The Wizard of Oz.
Dorothy, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow are walking through a dark forest, and they’re terrified because they are hearing noises. Scarecrow wonders what kind of animals might be lurking in the woods—perhaps animals that like to eat straw. The Tin Man suggests that it’s not just omnivores out in the woods, but flesh-eating carnivores as well, like . . .
“Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!”
This iconic movie line captures how our minds like to invent things to worry about when we’re in a time of uncertainty along life’s journey—when the pathway is dark and the ending is unclear.
Which brings me to our scripture lesson today.
If you were here last week, we began the story of Joseph. We learned how Joseph’s father loves Joseph more than his other sons, and they become jealous. We discovered that Joseph is a dreamer—that he has two dreams in which his brothers and even his parents are bowing down before him. This snot-nosed kid doesn’t have enough sense to keep that dream to himself. And so at first opportunity, his brothers devise a plan to kill their little brother, Joseph. One of the brothers (Reuben) convinces the others to merely throw him in a pit. Reuben’s plan is to rescue him later. But Reuben steps away. And that’s where today’s story picks up. Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery for twenty pieces of silver.
They lead their father to believe that Joseph has been killed. So Joseph ends up as a slave in Egypt. What a story! There’s even sexual intrigue, as Potiphar’s wife wants to sleep with Joseph, who is quite a looker according to holy writ. She wrongfully accuses Joseph of impropriety as retaliation for his resistance to her advances. He ends up in prison, where he’s placed in charge of all other prisoners, and where he gains a reputation for his profound skill in dream interpretation. So when Pharaoh needs a dream interpreter, they call on Joseph. Pharaoh is so impressed by Joseph that he places him as second in command, in charge of everything. When Joseph’s older brothers are sent to buy grain in Egypt, they find themselves prostrate before a man who, unbeknownst to them, is the snot-nosed kid they threw in a pit and sold into slavery years before.
Joseph’s dramatic fall is the mechanism for his dramatic rise. It wasn’t, however, a straight shot. Joseph must have been delighted when he was pulled out of the pit. Maybe he imagined that was the end of his brothers’ cruel joke, and that he’d soon be back home under his father’s roof. Imagine how he must have felt when he realized he’d been sold as a slave. Imagine how difficult it must have been adjusting to his new lot in life. Later on, as he found himself not only a slave in Egypt, but an imprisoned slave in Egypt, imagine how tempting it must have been to lose hope—to give up. To give in to the despair and the metaphorical lions and tigers and bears. (Oh my!)
But he didn’t give up.
Joseph went from being an imprisoned slave to becoming the second most powerful man in the entire nation—a position which would lead to him saving his family from ruin.
One way to read this story is to think of Joseph as an archetype for us all. Joseph’s story of rising, then falling, then rising again. Or, like we discussed last week, the cycle we live over and over again: growth, death, new life.
Where do you find yourself in that cycle right now?
Are you growing and enjoying a time of relative comfort and joy? Are you experiencing some kind of death, or loss, or hardship or disappointment? Or are you experiencing “new life” after a period of loss or hardship or disappointment?
Another way to think about this cycle is: orientation, disorientation, and reorientation.
When we know this cycle of growth, death, new life, it can help us in the midst of loss and hardship and disappointment. Knowing this cycle, we know that hardship and suffering and even death does not have the final say. This is the crux of the Christian faith and the most profound meaning of the cross. Christ is risen and death does not have the final say!
One of the best examples of this from nature is the butterfly. Children and adults alike are fascinated by the journey from caterpillar to butterfly. The caterpillar hatches, eats its own egg, then has one job—eating! The caterpillar grows quickly, and as it grows it molts five times, shedding its old skin that no longer holds the expanding form. Then it forms its chrysalis, hangs upside down from a plant, and spends the next 10-14 days there. Did you know that inside the chrysalis, the caterpillar digests itself? That can’t be pleasant. It releases enzymes that dissolve all of its tissues. Certain highly organized groups of cells survive—these are called imaginal discs.
The discs contain imaginal cells, which were dormant in the caterpillar. Imaginal cells contain the blueprint, the seed for the new image (hence the word, “imaginal.”) The image has been there, but hidden, until the suffering within the chrysalis. Did you know that when these imaginal cells awaken, the caterpillar’s immune system attacks them, perceiving them as enemies? (Much like new ideas in science, medicine, theology, etc. are attacked by the orthodoxy.) The imaginal cells band together, they organize, and eventually the caterpillar’s immune system is overpowered. The soup that remains from the caterpillar’s body feeds the “imago,” the name for the insect in its last stage of metamorphosis.
Here’s the kicker. “Imago” is a word used in theology. The “imago dei” (Latin, the “image of God”) resides in each human. This wisdom is as old as time—we see it in the very first chapter of the Bible. Genesis 1:26: “And God said: ‘Let us make man in our image.” Like in the caterpillar, sometimes this “imago” is latent, appearing absent. But there it rests, often called forth through the “upside down” experience of suffering. Through suffering, the framework of ego (Latin for “I”) begins to be dismantled—the false image we develop in the first years of life. The masks we wear peel away through loss of status, or a broken relationship, or a health crisis or whatever might rock our world. In our spiritual metamorphosis—the emergence of the imago dei—is accomplished as the false self is stripped away, like Joseph stripped of his beautiful robe.
Father Richard Rohr calls this false self the “container” we develop for ourselves in the first half of life. Necessary for survival, but at some point, the container prevents us from further growth. The container—this false self—binds, constricts. The container prevents us from living in freedom; we eventually outgrow our need for so much restriction or so many rules.
Now consider this: religion is one of life’s containers. Religion is the chrysalis that can hold us until the imago dei—perhaps latent within—calls us into spiritual maturity. Religion gives us the framework, the rules, the expectations—it is a means to an end but not an end unto itself. If we are to live into the imago dei, the image of God within, we must grow beyond religion, we must rise above the doctrine and dogma and unlearn a lot of stuff in order for transformation to happen.
Jesus was known for saying, “You have heard it said . . . but I say . . .” I think that in everything Jesus taught, he was “unlearning” his disciples as he prompted them to spiritual maturity.
How do you gauge your spiritual maturity? There are markers, signposts if you will, indicative of a mature faith. Rohr offers several markers in Falling Upward (chapter 10), which I have fashioned them into a quiz for you today. Let’s call it “Ten Marks of a Mature Faith.” Here’s what I invite you to do. As I read each statement, evaluate your life and your faith. Rate yourself on a scale from 1-10, with one being “I’ve got a long way to go” and 10 being “I have fully arrived.” You may even want to get out pen and paper to add up your score at the end. Here goes:
1. The eight beatitudes speak to you more than the Ten Commandments.
2. You ignore and withdraw your energy from evil or stupid things rather than fight them.
3. You no longer have to stand out, make defining moves, or be better than anyone else.
4. You don’t have to prove that you or your group is the best, that your ethnicity is superior, that your religion is the only one God loves.
5. You are not preoccupied with collecting more goods or services.
6. Your daily desire is not acquisition, but generativity. You want to pay back, give back a little of what you have received.
7. Your God isn’t punitive or tribal.
8. You no longer need to change others in order to be happy.
9. You are less compulsive than you used to be.
10. Your concern is not so much to have what you love anymore, but to love what you have, right now.
Did anyone score 100? If so, let’s set up an appointment to talk about your inflated self-image. We’re all on a journey in this “almost nearly but not quite hardly” adventure of faith. Ever molting, ever shedding old skin for new. Ever dying to self, allowing the imago dei to shine forth more fully. That’s the journey.
Joseph’s journey contained betrayal, pits, slavery, imprisonment, and false accusations along the way to the realization of the dream planted in him years before.
In The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy suffered through tornadoes and witches and fears of lions and tigers and bears (oh my) on her way to Oz, only to pull back the curtain and discover reality. (Kind of like how the chrysalis becomes transparent at the final imago stage.) The reality was that the source of her power was with her all along, she simply hadn’t actualized that power. What freedom she now has!
What about you and your story? What have been your tornadoes, your witches, your lions, your tigers, your bears? What have been your “pit” experiences? When have you been imprisoned or enslaved? In what ways are you still (figuratively) held captive . . . to your compulsions or addictions, to your thoughts or your worries, to the expectations or rules placed upon you by family, community, or self?
Let go. Unlearn.
May your suffering guide you into expanding freedom from false self. “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.” (Gal. 5:1)