Whom Will You Serve?

Preached by Michael Cheuk
August 24, 2008, Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Year A
Exodus 1:8 – 2:10

Well, folks, they’re baaack!  Or to you students, “welcome back!”  What a difference one week makes.  Last week, Farmville was just a sleepy, little town, minding its own business.  The streets were clear, there were plenty of parking spaces, and restaurants had tables available without a wait.  But this past weekend, it seemed like a swarm of locusts descended upon the town, clogging the streets and parking spaces, and devouring food in restaurants.  Merchants like Walmart and Barnes & Nobles are literally minding their businesses as the “cha-ching” of cash registers are echoing throughout town.  Farmville, like so many small college towns, has a love-hate relationship with college students.  On the one hand, there’s no doubt that you students bring a lot of money into our local economy and energy into our community.  On the other hand, I hear the old-timers complain about swarms of students jay-walking across Main St., and how these “foreigners” from northern Virginia and the Tidewater region are taking over the town.

It makes me wonder if the Pharaoh of Egypt had similar feelings about the Israelites who were taking over his country.  These past several Sundays in August, we have been looking at the book of Genesis and focusing on the lives of some of the patriarchs of the Bible, Jacob and Joseph.  Today, we are in the book of Exodus, and a lot has happened since we left Joseph last Sunday.  Joseph had invited his father Jacob and his whole family to move down to Egypt where they would be taken care of during the famine that had struck the land.  Once in Egypt, the Israelites grew and prospered, and they were becoming as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore, just as God had promised Abraham in Genesis 22.

But all was not well.  For a new king, one who did not know Joseph, rose to power over Egypt. 

The Blessing of Unity

Preached by Michael Cheuk
August 17, 2008, Fourteenth Sunday After Pentecost, Year A
Genesis 45:1-15

Families.  They can be a source of great blessing, or they can be a source of great pain.  Or both.  And this morning, as we continue with the story of Joseph in the book of Genesis, we encounter a family that was seriously messed up.  Joseph’s dad, Jacob, could have easily been a guest on the Jerry Springer show.  Jacob had four wives, but only one he really loved.  Jacob himself knew how painful it was to not be the favorite son of his father, and still he played favorites with his own children.  Jacob loved Joseph, the favorite first-born son of his favorite wife, Rachel.  Now, if you’re going to show favoritism toward one of your children, especially one of your youngest, it’s probably wise not to make too big a display of it.  Much better to slip in an extra twenty dollar bill with his lunch money than to buy him a Corvette when he’s still not old enough to drive.  Unfortunately, Jacob just couldn’t help himself.  In big families like that, usually the youngest kids do not get new clothes; they get hand-me-downs.  Oh, but not Joseph.  Joseph received from his father a glitzy coat of many colors – a coat that shouted “I am my dad’s favorite son!”  And while Joseph couldn’t help being his father’s favorite, he certainly didn’t help himself by flaunting that fact in front of his older brothers.  Joseph was a spoiled brat who ratted out his brothers with an evil report about them to their father (Gen. 37:2).  Joseph was also a dreamer of grandiose dreams that envisioned himself being the boss of both his brothers and parents as they bowed down before him.  And Joseph was either stupid or arrogant enough to share those disrespectful dreams with his brothers and his father.  Joseph really put the “diss” into that dysfunctional family!

Wrestling for a Blessing

Preached by Michael Cheuk
August 3, 2008, Twelfth Sunday After Pentecost, Year A
Genesis 32:22-31

When my kids were younger, they would often ask me to wrestle with them, especially Wesley.  It’s a game where the kids would get on top of me and try to pin down every part of my body-my arms, my legs, my fingers and toes and even my head-to the carpet.  And to make the wrestling match more interesting, while they grappled with my arms trying to pin them down as I laid on the carpet, I would stick my left leg straight up in the air accompanied by the sound effect: “boing!”  That would get their attention, and so they would scramble to my raised leg, and as they pushed it down, my left arm would go up in the air-boing!  Wes would then hold on to both my legs as Thea made her way to my raised arm to wrestle it down.  As she did that, I would lift both my legs and Wesley up into the air-boing!  Both kids would squeal with laughter as they went around and around trying to pin down my body.  As soon as they got both arms and legs pinned down, one of my fingers would lift up-boing!  As soon as they got that, my big toe would lift up-boing!-and then my head-boing!  Pretty soon though, I’d get totally exhausted, and when they had every part of my body pinned down, Wesley would reach out with his palm and tap my nose as if it were a hotel concierge bell-ding, ding!-thereby signaling that I lost the wrestling match.  The kids would go away happy for having won the match, and I would limp to the medicine cabinet for my tube of Ben Gay.

Well, this morning’s Old Testament lesson from Genesis recounts another wrestling match, a smackdown seemingly straight out of World Wrestling Entertainment.  On one corner of the ring was Jacob, a “heel” if there ever was one.  Jacob’s name in Hebrew means “heel holder” because he was born holding on to the heel of his older twin brother Esau.[1] The name “Jacob” also means “supplanter,” one who usurps the place of another, especially through intrigue or underhanded tactics.  For most of his life, Jacob was a “Heel,” like wrestling villains Ric Flair, Chris Jericho or “Edge” in pro wrestling, whose tactics matched the behavior of a “heel” as defined by fellow wrestler Jesse Ventura: “Win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat.”[2]