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But God Meant It for Good
A Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Joseph David Stinson,
Glen Ridge Congregational Church, Glen Ridge, New Jersey,
Preached on the 24th Sunday of Ordinary Time, (11Sept), 2011.
Text: Genesis 50:20
“As for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people
should be kept alive, as they are today. So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.”
The Joseph cycle is one of the great pieces of narrative art in the whole of the Bible. You
remember he was one of twelve sons of the patriarch Jacob-Israel. Because he was the son of the
favorite wife and, no doubt, because Jacob saw the many endearing talents in this son, Joseph
was favored by Jacob among the twelve. Joseph knew it and his brothers knew it and resented it.
There was the matter of the special coat of many colors that the father gave this son and not the
others.1 As a child Joseph also had a dream that he interpreted to mean that sometime in the
future the brothers would bow down to him. As you might imagine, this did nothing to endear
Joseph to his brothers. Eventually, they plotted against Joseph and sought to kill him. They
would have but at the last minute talked themselves out of it, instead selling their brother to slave
traders in a caravan going to Egypt. The brothers covered their tracks by bloodying the famous
coat with the blood of a wild animal and telling old Jacob that Joseph was presumed dead. They
said they had found the garment when looking for him. Joseph wound up a house slave in the
home of Potiphar as wealthy Egyptian. Through a series of fortunes and misfortunes he wound
up in the Pharaoh’s prison. There he continued to practice something he was good at: interpreting
dreams. Among those he assisted were two in the jail from the Pharaoh’s palace staff. One of
these eventually got back to the palace and put behind him this nasty episode in prison. Until
one day, his master had a dream, an odd dream about emaciated cattle and fat ones.2 No one in
the Pharaoh’s employ could figure out what this dream meant or if it were a warning of
something to come. The former jailed staff member remembered the young Hebrew who
interpreted dreams and sent for him to ask his help with the Pharaoh’s peculiar dream.
Of course, the confident Joseph replied, he knew what the dream meant. The seven fat
cows signified seven prosperous years coming and the seven emaciated ones represented seven
terrible years of drought and famine which were to follow. The dream warned the Pharaoh,
Joseph said, of what was coming. If the Pharaoh stockpiled grain during the good years, his
kingdom would survive the lean years to follow. The Pharaoh was so pleased he appointed
Joseph his viceroy to set up storehouses and prepare for the famine. Weather and agriculture
1
2
Genesis 37:3-4.
Genesis 41:1-8.
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followed precisely Joseph’s interpretation of the Pharaoh’s dream and Joseph over the next
decade became one of the most powerful men in Egypt. It was quite the turn-around.
As the famine deepened in the second seven years, it extended beyond the Nile basin into
Canaan, where Joseph’s brothers and father struggled to keep their tribe fed. Jacob heard that
though the famine also gripped the land of Egypt, the Pharaoh had food to sell.3 He asked his
sons—all except Benjamin, Joseph’s full brother—to go to Egypt and buy grain. The last person
the sons of Israel ever expected to see in Egypt was their brother Joseph, and indeed, all dressed
up in his Egyptian clothes, Joseph was not recognized by them. He kept his secret and helped
them but played cat and mouse with them until the denouement at the last.4 When he told his
brothers who he was, they figured their days were numbered. They presumed he would avenge
himself upon them for their earlier treachery. Here is how the story is told in chapter 45,
And Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph; is my father alive?” But his brothers could
not answer him, for they were dismayed at his presence. So Joseph said to his brothers…,
“I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed, or
angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve
life….God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive
for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God; and he has made
me a father to the Pharaoh and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt.5
In the odd and mysterious providence of God, years before the brothers had thought they were
getting even with their boastful, pampered brother but God had something else in mind behind
their motives and actions. This is not to say what the brothers did to Joseph was moral or good. It
was not. Still through the family’s jealousy, God redeemed the sacrifice and brought something
manifestly good out of their hateful action. The chosen people survived and thrived because God
got Joseph to Egypt where he was able to provide food both for the Egyptians and Israel.
Joseph had his brothers bring his father and all the children of promise to live in Egypt.6
Things went well but the Joseph cycle of stories doesn’t end until Joseph and his brothers buried
their father back in Canaan. On their return to Egypt, the brothers worried now that their father
was gone, would Joseph’s anger toward them emerge? They confessed to him again and asked
for his forgiveness, falling on their knees, saying, “Behold we are your servants.”7 In this text in
Genesis the odd and mysterious providence of God is again restated in Joseph’s reply to them:
3
Genesis 42:1
Genesis 45:4.
5
Genesis 45:3-8.
6
This is not exactly a happy-ever-after story. In time, after a Pharaoh arose ‘who knew not Joseph’ (Exodus 1:8), the
children of Israel were enslaved. And this set up the marvelous story of the Exodus and their return to Canaan.
7
Genesis 50:15-18, fulfilling Joseph’s childhood dream.
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2
“Fear not, for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me; but God
meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are
today. So do not fear; I will provide for you and your little ones.” Thus he reassured them
and comforted them.8
You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good. Three months ago when I planned my sermons
for the fall, this text from the lectionary seemed perfect for this Sunday, the tenth anniversary of
the horrors of September 11th, 2001. But when I saw my title in this month’s newsletter, I
thought about all that we lost that day and I wondered, will my congregation think I believe 9/11
was something God meant for good? Who can say anything good came out of that day?
This week John Boyd saw I was preaching on the text and contacted me. He had learned
the RSV uses ‘meant’ and the Good News Bible translates the verse, “You plotted evil against
me, but God turned it to good.” While in retrospect, that may be true, John commented to me
‘meant’ is one thing and ‘turning something to good’ is quite another. He asked, which is it?
There, is our conundrum. How can we say of some bad deed, that God ‘meant it for good’ or
‘turned it to good’? For that matter, how can we believe that in a world God created and
pronounced good,9 such things as what happened ten years ago—planned by people and carried
out by people who even thought they were carrying out the will of God—can happen? What can
we make of it? And what does God make of it?
I turned to my friend Harold Robinson for a rabbinic perspective on the text. The first
thing he said is that the Hebrew verbs are the same in that sentence.10 “You x-ed it for evil, but
God x-ed it for good.” In common Hebrew usage this word may be translated to think or to
calculate (as in math). It might even be translated to intend, as ‘You intended evil by it, but God
intended good.’ The rabbis took special note of the context, in the previous sentence, where
Joseph told his brothers he was not God. With that in mind, the rabbis teach, there are things we
do and decisions we make, but we only know a little of our actions’ meaning. God has a different
perspective and a different way of using the myriad of human choices and actions to accomplish
his purposes. Many of the medieval rabbis said the sentence in this context means, ‘Your
motives were evil, but something deeper, higher, was going on in God’s providence.’ Note that
the brothers’ act of contemplating murder of Joseph and selling him into slavery was still evil.
We will all be judged on our choices and behavior. Nor is this the same as saying ‘everything
will turn out for the best.’ That may be true, but we are still responsible for what we do and how
we live. However, God’s grace is inscrutable and beyond our knowing. Somehow, God can even
redeem bad human choices and bring something good out of them.
8
Genesis 50:19-21.
Genesis 1:31.
10
Cha-sha-vah is the transliteration of the Hebrew verb.
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3
During the Civil War, Lincoln was known to brood about just this same question. At one
low point during the war he was interviewed by a reporter. “Does it bother you, Mr. Lincoln, that
every Sunday churches in the north pray and make assumptions that God is on the Union’s side?
While simultaneously in southern churches people pray and make the contrary assumption that
God is on their side? Mr. Lincoln, do you think God is on your side?” “Oh,” replied the
President, “I try not to think that God is on my side. I worry more if I am on God’s side.” It is a
very fine distinction. We might say it does not so much matter that people, especially our
enemies, think God is on their side. After all who can say in the present moment what is God’s
will? We rarely even understand why as individuals we do the things we do. How can we claim a
cosmic perspective, a trans-historical perspective over the large movements of our world? But
one thing we can do, we can search the scriptures and the teachings of saints and see if we have
aligned our choices, values and actions with the Godly.
“You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” A paradox, yes. Given the things that
human beings do to one another, what can we do to bring some good out of the brokenness and
suffering of our world? I am not wise enough to wrap this up with a happy ending. Certainly
events like September 11th effect huge changes in us and our world. In tonight’s sermon I will
tell a story of one small good that came out of it. Will someday we be able to say, “You meant it
for evil, but God meant it for good”? It is too soon to tell. But bitterness was not Joseph’s
response when he found himself enslaved in Egypt and then imprisoned. He continued to believe
in those dark days that God had a purpose for all these events in his life and that he could still
serve God. “While Joseph is the obvious hero of the tale, the reader realizes that behind the man,
behind the friend of Pharaoh and the guide of Egypt, stands God, the Friend of Abraham and the
Guardian of Israel.”11 Joseph’s power to forgive his brothers seems possible because he knew
and served God. God calls us to try to see something else behind the events of our own confusing
lives, to see the hand of One who made us and redeems us, and to offer ourselves in service to
God’s purpose.
End
But God Meant It for God. DOC
11
Plaut, W. Gunther. The Torah: A Modern Commentary. (New York: The Union of American Hebrew
Congregations, 1981), 317.
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