When Life Gives You Lemons...

Genesis 45:1-15

Thanks to YouTube you can now find countless adorable videos of young children biting into a lemon slice for the first time. Their little faces twist and contort in shock and confusion as they experience that sour, bitter sensation for the first time. Moving past the debate over whether or not it’s appropriate to film your toddler eating a lemon and then post that video for all the universe to laugh at: I’d like to talk about “lemons.”

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” is perhaps one of the best known aphorisms of our culture, a buttress for the spirit of optimism. But what is it suggesting? Just add water and sugar. Dilute and sweeten. These are the ingredients needed to tolerate life’s sour, shocking, bitter, and hard to swallow moments. Or perhaps it has less to do with masking a bitter reality, and more to do with making something out of it. We aren’t avoiding or repressing or ignoring them lemons, they are an integral ingredient in the lemonade. It’s not about the ingredients we use, but about the intentionality with which we use them.

Joseph’s story begins with a bag-full of lemons. Joe’s boastful brags about dreams of his family bowing before him are like lemons in the ears of his family. His brothers recoil and become bitter against him. Plotting to rid themselves of the sourness he brings to their spirits, they make a pretty lousy lemonade by throwing Joseph into an empty cistern (a pit which would have otherwise been filled with water), and then they sell him into slavery (one might consider silver an “artificial sweetener” to the deal). Then the brothers go home tell a lemon of a lie to their father. Through the implication of a tattered and bloody cloak they let their father believe Joseph had been attacked and eaten by a wild beast. Meanwhile Joseph is shipped off to Egypt where the lemons continue to stack up against him. He is falsely accused and thrown into prison to be forgotten.

Long story short, the dreams which so soured the faces of his brothers become sweet in Egypt when Joseph’s ability to interpret dreams lifts him out of prison to a prominent position of power at Pharaoh’s right hand. He helps Egypt prepare for famine and drought and is able to store up resources that ultimately brings his own family to bow at his feet, begging for salvation. His brothers do not recognize the feet at which they bow, but Joseph recognizes them.

He accuses them of being spies, to which they respond: “No we are just 12 brothers.” Counting only 11, Joseph has them thrown in prison, says he will hold one of them captive and will only release him only if the remaining brothers go back home and return with their youngest brother to prove their story true. Perhaps Joseph is still holding a grudge? They say to one another: “We are clearly guilty for what we did to our brother when we saw his life was in danger and when he begged us for mercy, but we didn’t listen. That’s why we’re in this danger now.” Their guilt is still there. They blame themselves for their misfortune. And there in the presence of Joseph, though they don’t know he can understand what they are saying because he has been using an interpreter, they confess their sin against him and express their guilt. Simeon remains behind in Egypt and the rest return to fetch Benjamin. Their father can hardly believe the request. “Are you really going to take my last son from me? If anything should happen to him you would send me to my grave in grief.”

So the brothers don’t return immediately, but as their grain supply dwindles again it becomes apparent that they must return to Egypt to buy more food. The brothers refuse to go without Benjamin, fearing what Pharaoh’s chief adviser (whom they do not know to be Joseph) will do to them if they return to Egypt without him. After much convincing, all of Joseph’s brothers (minus Simeon who is already there) make the journey to Egypt.

Upon seeing his brother Benjamin, Joseph is overcome with emotion, but he leaves their presence to express it. This was not yet the time for him to disclose his identity. He tests his brothers by having a servant hide a silver goblet in Benjamin’s sack, accusing him of stealing it, and demanding that he remain behind as Joseph’s servant. Again, the brothers confess their guilt, and Judah begs to be taken captive in Benjamin’s place. He makes an impassioned plea on behalf of love for his father who will surely die if Benjamin doesn’t return. He mentions how Benjamin had once had an older brother of the same mother, and that he had “disappeared” presumed to have been “torn up by a wild animal.” We know this to be a lie, as does Joseph. But Judah doesn’t know that he is confessing all of this to one who knows the whole story.

Joseph commands all of his attendants to leave him alone with his brothers and we feel it in the pit of our stomach: something is brewing. Then, when the room is empty, hardly able to contain his emotions, tears flooding his eyes, he reveals his identity to his brothers: “I am Joseph.” His brothers couldn’t even respond because of their terror.

Terror. Imagine how they must’ve felt. They know exactly what they did to this brother. They remember the cistern, selling him to the Midianites, the lie the told their father…If they had been compelled to do such things because they felt angry about a couple of dreams, what would Joseph’s anger compel him to do on account of their iniquities? He’s got a whole lot of baggage...a bag full of lemons, some might say. Who could blame him for feeling bitter against his brothers, for holding a grudge, for wanting revenge? And now he has the power to exact that revenge. The brothers look up from bowing at the feet of Pharaoh’s chief adviser to stare into the face of the brother they betrayed, eyes full of tears, face contorted and twisted by the pain of all the bitterness their actions have brought into his life.

Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they did. Trembling with trepidation and guilt. “I’m your brother Joseph. The one you sold to Egypt.” Now they’re really going to get it. They have all been brought before their brother to pay the price for their past. They will hang from the gallows of guilt.

But that’s not what happens. Yes, Judah’s confession was imperfect, he doesn’t confess exactly what happened to Benjamin’s older brother, but he does reveal the love he and his brothers have for Benjamin and for their father. Rather than focusing on their guilt, which clearly still plagues them, Joseph looks upon their love. In doing so, Joseph pours them an ice cold glass of lemonade.

“Don’t be upset and don’t be angry with yourselves that you sold me here. Actually, God sent me here before you to save lives.” Joseph doesn’t blame them for betraying him and selling him into slavery. If anything, he blames God. He takes all of their lemons, their guilt, their shame, their blame, their anger, their fear, and gives them to God. “God sent me before you to make sure you’d survive and to rescue your lives in this amazing way. You didn’t send me here; it was God who made me a father to Pharaoh, master of his entire household, and ruler of the whole land of Egypt.” Amazing grace how sweet...how sweet indeed.

There is great temptation to squeeze the lemons we are given back in the eyes of the ones who gave them to us. To make lemonade with the tears of our enemies and the artificial sweeteners of blame and shame. But what if we made our lemonade with life-giving waters of forgiveness and the pure sweetness of grace? Does it sound too good to be true? Too unrealistic? Too costly? This begs the question: is Jesus too unrealistic? Was his death too costly? He is the one who tells us: “Put my yoke upon you, and learn from me. I’m gentle and humble. And you will find rest for yourselves. My yoke is easy to bear, and my burden is light.” We all carry a load of lemons in our baggage of blame. What would happen if we gave it all to God? “Here God, I don’t want to carry these any more, nor do I want to pass this bitter baggage to my brother, or my neighbor, or even to my enemy.” What what would that make possible for you? For your neighbor? For your enemy

I want you to find out.

Prayer is a practice that brings our ingredients in tune with God’s intentions.

We know that God is love, and that the intentions of God’s unconditional love is to call forth what is best for creation.

In prayer we hold our lives, our hopes, our joys, our concerns before God so that God might bring the best out of all of these ingredients.

When life gives us lemons, God helps us, through prayer, to focus our intentions on what’s better...not what’s bitter.

For our prayers of the people, today, I am going to give you lemons. I want you to write on these lemons where you see bitterness: in yourself, in your family, in this city, in our nation, in the world. I want our practice of prayer this morning to be an offering of these lemons to God along with this petition:

“Take, O God, what is bitter. Show me, O God, what is better.”

I will give you a moment to think, to write, and to lift your prayers.

Amazing grace, how sweet the taste.

I now invite you to exchange what is bitter for what is sweet. Come to the table of grace, lay your lemons at the cross, and take a sip of lemonade.

Take, O God, what is bitter. Show us, O God, what is better. Fashion our lives by your intentions of forgiveness, reconciliation, and justice, grace, peace, and joy, faith, hope, and love.

Amen.