Interpretation Belongs to God

31 October 2021 – Reformation Day

So Joseph asked Pharaoh’s officers, who were with him in custody in his master’s house, “Why are your faces downcast today?” They said to him, “We have had dreams, and there is no one to interpret them.” And Joseph said to them, “Do not interpretations belong to God? Please tell them to me.” Genesis 40:7-8

We’ve been studying the book of Genesis in Bible Study. Have you ever studied the book Genesis? I mean really studied it? I got to be honest with you. It’s a lot of fun! My grandma Jean, who authored Sunday School curriculum was known to say that every single type of family dysfunction can be found in the book of Genesis. My wife Sheri recently said that reading Genesis was like watching the Jerry Springer show. The level of scandal and human depravity is quite honestly, off the charts. Some things never change; like human capacity for sin. 

Let me give you an example. Adam and Eve have two sons: Cain and Abel, until Cain gets jealous and kills Abel. This was the first family. Many generations later we read about Jacob.

Jacob had twelve sons and at least one daughter with Leah, Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah. Dinah, the daughter, was gifted with diplomacy and almost was a nation builder. The twelve brothers were: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. From these twelve brothers would come twelve tribes of Israel. Of the twelve boys, Joseph was different, special, and favored by his father. As a youth he was kind of a brat. Joseph had a special coat and had fanciful dreams and his brothers thought he had delusions of grandeur. So what did his brothers do to him? They took a page from their ancestor Cain, and sought to kill him! Reuben the firstborn son intervened, worked out a compromise, and Joseph was sold into slavery. He was sold to Ishmaelites, the descendents of his great uncle: his cousins basically. His cousins sell him to Potiphar in Egypt. Joseph is betrayed by Potiphar’s wife and thrown in jail. Joseph always seems to land on his feet, and soon is working for the jailor and has a degree of authority among the other prisoners. 

Then one day Pharaoh’s baker and cup-bearer are imprisoned and feeling down for the terrible and troubling dreams that they have. Joseph sees that their faces are downcast and asks them what is wrong. They tell him they have had terrible dreams. What does Joseph the dreamer say? In true rabbinic form he asks a question: “Do not interpretations belong to God?” Interpretations belong to God!

We don’t get to choose our dreams, at least not the ones that come to us while we sleep. We don’t get to choose holy scripture. We don’t get to choose our families. We don’t get to choose whether or not we pay taxes or for how many days we will walk on this earth. People like to say that God gives you a free will. Really? Where does it say that? 500 years ago our dear brother Martin Luther was summoned to debate the brightest minds of his age, including Erasmus of Rotterdam. What was it that they debated? Nothing less than whether or not the will was free. Erasmus was put forth to represent the intellectual power of established dominant teachings of the church. His position was that the will was free. Erasmus and many others want the will to be free, because then they could tell people that it was up to them to save themselves. It gave the church lots of power to set up prerequisites people had to fulfill in order to be saved.   

Martin Luther, a scrappy hot tempered Augustinian monk stepped forward to argue just the opposite. Luther wrote a treatise called, “The Bondage of the Will.” He had the audacity to question the teachings of the pope and the magisterium; he had the audacity to turn an entire worldview of his age on its ear. You are not free! Your will is enslaved by the power of sin, death, and devil. The bondage of the will and our weakness is enshrined in the hymn we just sang, “A Mighty Fortress is our God.” Listen to these verses:

“The old satanic foe; has sworn to work us woe. With dread craft and might he arms himself to fight. On Earth he has no equal. No strength of ours can match his might! We would be lost, rejected.”

Luther was convinced that our will was in bondage to sin by none other than holy scripture. Saint Paul writes to the Roman church:

“Now we know that whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced, and the whole world may be held accountable to God, For “no human being will be justified in his sight” by deeds prescribed by the law, for the through the law comes the knowledge of sin.”

In other words God’s law revealed in scripture makes us to know more than anything else, our complete and utter failure to uphold the law. The power of sin and evil is something that we cannot master. We keep going on making the same mistakes over and over again. 

Myself included! I am a sinner and make mistakes. I will give you an example. The other day I was driving the kids to school. It’s hard to make it to four different schools before 8am. So as I’m driving everyone to school my youngest child, Sophie Grace starts to ask questions. Dad what does the green light mean? It means go. What does the red light mean? It means to stop. Oh. What does the yellow light mean? It means to slow down. Then why do you always speed up at a yellow light? Umm, that’s a good question Sophie. That’s the power of the law. We are all equal before it, especially God’s law. 

So what hope do we have? What can we do when we are hemmed in all around us by things beyond our control, and bound by sin and evil? We don’t even get to decide our dreams! We, like Pharoh’s baker and cup-bearer find ourselves with what little freedom we thought we had taken away, and our faces downcast. 

Then along comes Joseph. He’s in jail too, but he doesn’t seem so impressed. He looks at us who are full of anxiety and nightmares of what is to come and he says, “Do not interpretations belong to God?” Interpretation belongs to God. What does that mean? Or as Luther’s little boy always said to his Vater: Vas is dat? It is everything! Interpretation is to make meaning out of what once seemed chaotic and strange. You may not be able to choose your dreams or your nightmares. But with the grace of God you can interpret them. Interpretation belongs to God. Luther knew this very well.

The Bible is not a book of super-heroic people who lived perfect lives. It’s a family history of sinners who mess up over and over again, but whom God tirelessly and patiently cares for. 

In the time of Luther do you know who read the Bible? Almost nobody. It was totally exclusive. Books were terribly expensive and up until that point hand-written. The Bible was forbidden to be translated from Latin, Greek, or Hebrew into common languages. The last thing they wanted was for common folk to be able to read, get ideas, and question the established order. Luther was fortunate. He was privileged. He showed intellectual ability and so his superiors arranged for him to learn the ancient languages. There were a group of scholastic church leaders who wanted to teach the ancient languages and because of them, Luther was able to learn where even just a generation previous even less people would have access to scripture. Little by little as Luther read and learned the Bible he began to: interpret. He began to think for himself. He began to question the heretofore impenetrable obscurity of authoritarianism. All around him people like Erasmus and Tetzel scolded the people for their sin. But then Luther reads in Romans that in fact no, that is not the case. That nobody is able to resist sin and live perfectly save Christ alone. Luther read in the letter to the Romans what we read again this morning, 500 and four years later.

“But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”

Luther, like Joseph, dared to interpret the Word of God, to step into the sublime space of interpretation.

Luther interpreted these words to mean that Jesus was far more than a moral exemplar. He was much more than an example to follow. He saved us out of  pure love. He gave himself to atone for our sins. We call him the Lamb of God. Luther did not come to these conclusions in a vacuum. He was taught how to interpret, he would debate and chew on ideas with other scholars. Luther was so inspired and his life so radically changed by the knowledge of God’s grace that he went to write in the hymn a Mighty Fortress:

“But now a champion comes to fight, whom God himself elected. Ask who this may be; Lord of hosts is he! Christ Jesus our Lord, God’s only son adored, He holds the field victorious.”

By the prompting of the Holy Spirit Luther stepped into the same sacred space as did Joseph thousands of years before him in a dungeon in Egypt. Does not interpretation belong to God? Does not creativity and imagination belong to God?

Sometimes people have a hard time with Lutheran theology. They say, what responsibility, then is left for persons to get themselves saved? I say this. Imagine a robot. Or a puppet. Or an animal. When we are otherwise enslaved to sin and cannot think for ourselves, the Holy Spirit first activates our imagination. Imagination is so powerful because it allows us to interpret, and to create meaning from our lives. When you look at your life, can you see God at work? That is faith. You can do that because God allows you to. When we can see and trust that God is at work in our lives, it frees us to give up control,  and instead to interpret.

Lately we’ve been talking about how each of you is called to be a minister and a priest, and in a way yes pastors, you are called to be pastors and deacons to the world. One of the ways you do this is through interpretation. If you can interpret scripture and your life to find meaning, then you are really doing ministry. 

You may not be able to choose most things in your life. You cannot choose your dreams, nor what the Bible says, nor the people God brings into your life, but by the Grace of God you can interpret all these things. You can wonder! You can imagine! You are made in the image of God and God’s image includes the capacity to think as in the divine Logos, as in Sophia. Humble earthlings that we are have been endowed with a divine gift to interpret the things that we cannot control, and to make meaning. Jeremiah the prophet received a message from God, and God said, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, form the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity , and remember their sin no more” Jeremiah 31:34. Sometimes a little, sometimes a lot God is imprinting our being with divine imagination and the ability to interpret. God is giving you faith! God is giving everybody faith! God’s efforts for salvation are universal, and cosmic. 

God’s word has the power to free our imaginations, free our minds, free our hearts, and yes to free our will. Jesus said that this freedom comes be continuing in the Word. We receive the word of God through scripture, fellowship, and especially through the sacraments; through Holy Communion, and Holy Baptism. It’s Holy and wonderful and even better than magic, because of the Word of God combined with the water. God’s word poured over Oskar’s head, and each of our heads. God’s word sealed onto our forehead in the sign of the cross, and the Holy Spirit suffused into our soul and body. 

Finally and most spectacularly God has revealed a most spectacular dream for all of creation, and for each of our lives. The end of all war and violence. The end of conflict and despair will come in God’s time. Psalm 46 says:

God makes wars cease to the end of the earth;

God breaks the bow, and shatters the spear;

God burns the chileds with fire.

Be still and know that I am God.

Amen.