A reading of the holy gospel according to Matthew. Lord, hear our prayer. Jesus said to his disciples, of course, this is continuing the message of yesterday where our lord is sending out his disciples. As you go, make this announcement. The reign of god is at hand.
Cure the sick, raise the dead, heal the leprous, expel demons. The gift that you have received, give as a gift. Provide yourselves with neither gold nor silver nor copper in your belts, no traveling bag, no change of shirt, not even sandals, and no walking staff. The workman, after all, is worth his hire. Look for a worthy citizen in every town or village that you come to and stay with him until you leave.
As you enter his home, bless it. If the home is deserving, your blessing will descend on it. If it is if it is not, your blessing will return to you. If anyone does not receive you or listen to what you have to say, leave that house or town, and once outside it, shake its dust from your feet. I assure you it will go easier for the region of Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than it will for that town.
And this is the gospel of the lord. Praise be to Lord Jesus Christ. The name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen. Very few men and women, mature or immature, old or young, have not experienced great frustration.
They, on the one hand, have a profound faith in the existence of an omnipotent god that they call our father, And they remember what his son said about that father's care of us, that not even a hair of our head falls without his consent, and how he had told us not to worry about what we should wear or what we should eat. All of this is in the background. And then what happens? The unthinkable happens. The monstrous happens.
Tragedy strike. Consequences for which we have no rational antecedent happen. Life gets turned upside down. It's the and above all, it appears that the the evil living people prosper. Everything seems to go well for them.
And on the other hand, those who are trying to serve God, live a good life, seem to get clobbered right down the line. The old story of Job. No one can live very long without experiencing this great, great threat to faith. How do you reconcile this crazy world with an omniscient, omnipotent god? How do you put them together?
We are told by people who have made very serious studies of the matter that when, for example, very mortal illness strikes a person, that the person's first reaction is, Why me? What have I done to deserve this? And so on. There are so many irrationalities in life. Let's face it.
From our point of view, they're irrational. Now this is a very serious problem and no one can give a flip answer. The only answer is Jesus Christ. And he has given an answer. But one of the things that a person of some experience will always come up with is this.
How do you know that what is happening to you now is so dreadful, so tragic, so irrational, so contradictory of a benevolent god? How do you know that now? Now. Especially now. How do you know it?
I never will forget a skating party that I was involved in when a young girl there died. We took her to the doctor's office and got the priest. Of course, she was dead. And then we got the girl's father. And the first thing that that priest said when the father of the young lady came in was was, Jules, it's all wrong.
It's all wrong. It's the first thing this pastor said. And it was so well said because from that father's point of view, nothing could be wronger than a girl of 18 or 19 being chopped down like that. Leave the dinner table all fine and gay and joyful for a good evening on the ice and whang. Here he's seeing his daughter dead in the doctor's office.
And the pastor says, it's Jules. It's all wrong. Because that's the way that father saw it at that moment, at that moment. Now this story of Joseph is just what okay. What what I wanna say is that when you sort of mention this to people, when they are in this situation, you say, well, now look.
It looks absolutely horrible to you at this moment. I am not about to try to give an explanation for it. I'm only saying that maybe ten or fifteen years from now, you may look back and say, This was the best thing that ever happened. Well, if dare say that, most often people will say it's a cop out. He's not going to fool me with that kind of nonsense.
Well, it is not nonsense. Whether it's appropriate to say it or not, that's something else. But in a as a matter of empirical fact, it is not nonsense. It is not nonsense because we don't have to live very long to know that this is the way things happen. Right in the past year, there have been a couple of things in this parish I could tell you as evidence for this attitude, for this persuasion.
But anyway, we have here the instance of Joseph. That's it. That's what we're coming to. And here's look at the here you have a bunch of brothers who want to kill their brother. So instead of killing him, they very benevolently sell as a slave.
He winds up in Egypt. He winds up as the treasurer. And not only that, as a fact told him, he seemed to be in complete control of food. Well, you can't be higher up in the echelon than that. And here his own flesh and blood now are coming from Israel where there's a famine, no food.
They're coming down to Egypt, the granary of the Mediterranean world at that time, and to beg the pharaoh for some grain. And it just happens that the man they're talking to is their blood brother. And so at the end of this narrative that you heard this morning, we have the denouement. We have Joseph telling his brothers, I am your blood brother and how is my father? And his brothers, they don't know what he's going to have.
He may chop off their blooming heads. They certainly deserved it. But what does he do? Joseph turns to him and says, Don't be distressed. Don't be distressed.
Listen at the line. He said, I am your brother Joseph, whom you once sold into Egypt. Notice, he doesn't mind telling him. But now do not be distressed. Do not reproach yourselves for having sold me.
Don't feel guilty about it. It was really for the sake of saving lives that god sent me here ahead of you. See, this is just a tiny little lesson. But I it's it's worth thinking about in our calmer moments. This kind of thing isn't going to help us when the chips are down, when we are the victims or whatever that put quotations around that word.
But when we are in the midst of trouble, when we are in the midst of a trial which tests our faith to the limit, this kind of thinking I don't believe is going to be much help. But in a calmer moment, in preparing for those crises which are going to come sooner or later in one form or another, we're going that we're gonna cry out, why me, god? What have I done to deserve all of this? And then in our calmer moments, let us think of this, that god is eternal, that we are born into immortality now. In a sense, right now, we are timeless beings.
And so let us attempt to take a bigger view, god's view. And if we are faced as we are faced from time to time with many events or some events that are beyond our explanation, let us say, well, why should I think that I can explain everything? Wait and see. In the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. Amen.