By Rabbi Stuart Dauermann

We have been speaking of late of what it means to know God and to seek his help amidst the challenges and contradictions of life.  We spoke recently of Jacob and his family rededicating themselves to God after the very messy incidents surrounding the rape of Dinah and the subsequent massacre of the men of Shechem..  We examined last week what it means to live between our problems and the promises of God, and how in the midst of it all, undetected except in retrospect, is the Presence of God who says to us "not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit says the L-rd."

 

"The Big Picture"
A Sermon on Parshat Vayigash  -  B'Reisheet/Genesis 44:18-47:27
By Rabbi Stuart Dauermann

We have been speaking of late of what it means to know God and to seek his help amidst the challenges and contradictions of life.  We spoke recently of Jacob and his family rededicating themselves to God after the very messy incidents surrounding the rape of Dinah and the subsequent massacre of the men of Shechem..  We examined last week what it means to live between our problems and the promises of God, and how in the midst of it all, undetected except in retrospect, is the Presence of God who says to us "not by might, not by power, but by my Spirit says the L-rd."

This week we find added help for living amidst the challenges and contradictions of life.  This is a lesson we very much need, because all of us live out our lives in the space between the promise and the problem, and in living in such a space, we need all the help we can get.  It is also a lesson we need because it provides a much-needed perspective normally eclipsed in our current post-modern generation.  And what is that lesson?  The lesson is one of perspective and overview.  And if we were to state the lesson succinctly it would be this: "We will deal better with the challenges and contradictions of life as we are mindful of the big-picture trans-generational purposes of God." To put it inversely, "We get overwhelmed by the challenges and contradictions of life whenever we lose sight of the bid picture."

Joseph was a Big Picture man.  He was also someone who faced more problems, challenges and contradictions than most of us will know. His own brothers tried to murder him.  He spent at least ten years, perhaps more, in a filthy Pharonic prison, framed on a rape charge.  He was obliged to build a new life for himself far from the loving father he had known.  Yes, he rose to great heights.  But also yes, he arose from great depths.

One of the factors that helped him to cope and to maintain his personal momentum was "The Big Picture."  When his story begins, in Genesis 37, it is with his recounting to his family his grandiose dreams. . . dreams of ascendancy and superiority over his brother and even his parents.  He surely did not know how or when these dreams would be played out on the stage of his life: but he kept them in his heart.

How do we know this?  In last weeks parasha, in Genesis 42, when Joseph's brothers come down to Egypt to buy food to tide them over during the famine, we read that Joseph remembered the dreams he had about them some twenty years previously..  That is, he drew a connection between their coming to him now in a subservient status, and his dreams to that effect when he was a young lad.  Joseph had kept The Big Picture in his mind and heart all those years: he didn't know how it would work itself out, but he had kept these things alive within him.  And equally to the point, these memories kept him spiritually alive amid his trying circumstances.  One of the reasons he did not get pulled down into a maelstrom of despair by his unjust slavery and imprisonment, is that his dreams--his Big Picture--gave him some sort of forward momentum.

We also see Joseph as a Big Picture man in this week's parasha. When he finally reveals himself to his brothers, some twenty-two years after they sold him into slavery, he testifies more than once to The Big Picture.  He tells them

 

"do not be distressed or reproach yourself because you sold me hither.  It was to save life that God sent me ahead of you. . . .God sent me ahead of you to ensure Your survival on earth, and to save your lives in an extraordinary deliverance. 8 So, it was not you who sent me here, but God; and He has made me a father to Pharaoh, lord of all his household, and ruler over the whole land of Egypt [45:6-8].

When he tells them to not be distressed, he shares with them the secret of not being distressed in trying circumstances: that is, remembering the Big Picture: "it was to save life that God sent me ahead of you. . .to ensure your survival on earth, and to save your lives by an extraordinary deliverance. . .  .it was not you who sent me here but God."  Just as he had been sustained through his years of trial through knowing that there was a Big Picture of which his trying circumstances were but a part, so he encourages them to remember the Big Picture instead of being overwhelmed with guilt over their having betrayed him so deeply so long ago.

Later in the parasha, when Jacob/Israel hears from his sons that Joseph is alive in Egypt, it is the Big Picture which encourages him to pick up at the age of 130 and make the trek to Egypt.  We read in chapter 46:

God Himself reminds Israel/Jacob of the Big Picture, that these strange events are but part of a grand scheme of which God Himself is the designer.

The lesson for us is clear: If we would maintain our equilibrium and momentum in the midst of the very difficult trials and disappointing circumstances that confront us, we will need to avoid making our catastrophes absolutes.  We must not let our horrors become our horizons.  Rather, we should always remember the Big Picture.

What does this mean?

(1) We must remember that the purposes of God are more far-reaching than our usual horizons.  God has a long-haul perspective.  The trials we are facing now may be for the benefit of your grandchildren--not simply us or our children, if we have any.  The consequences of our obedience or disobedience have an effect beyond our lifetime, and we need to keep that in mind.

(2) We must remember that the purposes of God are broader than our own perspective.  We tend to see things with a kind of tunnel-vision, seeing only how things effect us and those toward the center of our field of vision.  But our obedience and faith may be for the benefit of other people and other purposes we have not taken into account.  We do now know what God will do with our faithfulness: we do know that it is our responsibility to be faithful.

(3) We must remember that the purposes of God may be other than our own perspective.  Joseph never would have guessed that he was being sold into slavery in order to one day be the Viceroy of all Egypt, and to effect the deliverance of millions of people, and especially his own family, and through them, God's salvific plan for the world.  The purposes of God were other than what he would have imagined: and so will they most often be for us.  Sometimes. God gives to us an intimation of his purposes, though the Scripture or other means. Sometimes he does not.  Some of us have had our own dreams, visions, holy intimations of one kind or another.  We need to hold fast to these and to our faithfulness amidst the storms and contradictions of our circumstances.

In Midrash Tanchuma we read

In this account the lamb is Israel and the seventy wolves, the other nations of the world seen as arranged in hostility against it. The lesson for us is clear. We may be surrounded by dangers, and threats of various kinds, even in our private and family lives.  We would do well to remember the shepherd who protected Joseph and Israel, and who looks after us and his purposes in and through our lives.

We may not know why we are going through the trials we are currently facing.  We may not see any purpose in them.  We may not know how things are going to work out, but we can be sure that they are going to work out.  We can know that all things work together for good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose.  Often that purpose is hidden from our eyes.  The purposes served by our suffering and obedience may only bear fruit in generations to come.  Our suffering and obedience may be for the benefit of people and purposes we cannot see.  But faithfulness to God always makes sense within the scope of his Big Picture.  Remembering that should gives us all hope, perseverance, and momentum when the maelstroms of life threaten to drag us under.

We can close with an illustration from the life of a famous saintly Rabbi.

"The wise Rabbi Bunam once said in old age, when he had already grown blind:
"I should not like to change places with our father Abraham!  What good would it do God if Abraham became like blind Bunam, and blind Bunam became like Abraham?  Rather than have this happen, I thing I shall try to become a little more myself." [As reported by Martin Buber in "The Way of Man"].

Amazingly, he saw his own afflictions within a bigger picture than his own convenience and ease.  He realized that his blindness might serve a useful purpose in the Big Picture--the Big Scheme of things.  Similarly, when Scripture says that "all things work together for the good of those who are called

according to His purpose," I do not think this means that everything that happens to us as individuals is for our own benefit.  Sometimes we do undergo real and tragic loss.  Rather, I believe Scripture is speaking in the collective sense: that all things that the people of God suffer individually benefits the people of God collectively.  No suffering or trial that I undergo is useless and without purpose.

Joseph's suffering was real: but he rejoiced in it because of its benefit to others within God's plan.  May we too see our trials as not without purpose, serving purposes beyond our own, even times beyond our own, within the purposes of God.  And like Rabbi Bunam, may we get on with the business of trying to become a little more ourselves--embracing our lot with trust in God.