Joseph -- Faithful Steward in Each of Us

Transcript of September 3, 2006 Message at:
Unity Church of Central Massachusetts (www.unityccm.org)
Christine Macfarlane

This is Labor Day Weekend. It’s the traditional end of summer, kids are back to school, and the weather is still good for cooking out or going to the Davis Farm MegaMaze (which is AMAZING, by the way, in case you haven’t been there.) And in the not-so-long-ago past, it also signaled the time to put away white shoes.

Labor Day celebrates working people’s contributions to society. It’s such a good opportunity to pause and reflect on our accomplishments and the ways our work makes a difference to ourselves, our families, and to our wider spheres of influence. And actually it’s an excellent time to think about where we’re headed, what we want to accomplish next, what old thoughts to heave out because they don’t serve us any more, and what we want to learn.

Our topic today takes its cue from the story of Joseph in Genesis. Joseph himself was a working man, wasn’t he? When his brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt he proved to be an excellent and completely reliable manager – a faithful steward -- for Potiphar, for the prison warden, and for Pharaoh himself.

So what does it mean to be a steward anyway? A caretaker, someone who’s in charge of someone else’s business affairs or the household affairs of a large estate, or someone who’s responsible for looking after the well being of something important.

Truthfully, I think the words steward and stewardship have been so overworked by their overuse in church fundraising that they’re almost not words we can use in church any more. I’m sure that those of you who came to Unity from mainline churches know exactly what I mean. Stewardship is a word that’s burdened with obligation, guilt-tripping, and nonsense about fair-share giving to meet the church’s budget. Actually, it’s not just in churches that you’ll hear this sort of appeal. Environmental groups and others often do fundraising the same way.

In my own experience, in churches before I came to Unity, I dreaded “pledging” time, but I didn’t quite know why. I just knew it felt terrible. So I decided to get into the middle of it to see what it was all about. And actually it was as the Chair of the Stewardship Committee of my church that I had a MAJOR spiritual awakening. Our committee invited a stewardship mentor from the Massachusetts Conference of the United Church of Christ to come to help us. And in that experience I had a revelation.

I saw that the standard practice of fundraising in churches was about the need of the church to receive. It wasn’t a bit spiritual at all. It was very worldly, in fact.

What a missed opportunity! I mean, sure a church has a budget and needs money to pay the minister, the light bill, the heat, the rent and so on, But a church isn’t just a club or a social group, or a secular organization that does good in the world – like the Red Cross or WGBH or Mass Audubon. They have worldly missionz, and their fundraising expresses a worldly consciousness. Good for them. That fits. But churches exist to support people’s SPIRITUAL development. Why abdicate that responsibility when talking about stewardship when there’s a much bigger opportunity to talk about stewardship in spiritual terms?

Now all y’all who know me know that I’m a big fan of the Bible. I believe it to be the ultimate textbook for how to live life. That’s why I love our Sunday morning Bible study.

Our metaphysical approach to interpreting the Bible looks at the ultimate reality beyond the physical realm, beyond the obvious, literal level of the story. The stories and the characters represent aspects of us in various stages of conscious awareness. We all are capable of everything we read that people do and are in the Bible.

So now that I’ve done my rant on the meaning of the word steward, let’s talk about the story in the Bible about Joseph, and consider how he was a faithful steward. And just what can we learn from Joseph for our own lives?

Joseph represents in us the state in consciousness that brings us INCREASE – in understanding, in vitality, and in substance. A major attribute of Joseph is the faculty of imagination. The magnificent coat his father gave him, the coat of many colors, stands for that faculty. It’s a pretty safe bet that Joseph was indulged by his parents. He was a prince among his brothers.

Remember that he was his father Jacob’s favorite son, the first child of Jacob’s beloved wife Rachel. He was blessed with the great love of his parents, who represent the balance of the best in natural man and natural woman.

Imagination is a very powerful faculty. Our ability to imagine is the ability to rise above worldly “reality” and the limitations of our physical eyes. By following the inspiration of Spirit and seeing with Spiritual sight, we connect with the Light of Truth. We can control the imagination and direct its work to practical ends. And yet, in our early stages of realizing what imagination can mean to us, our other faculties try to belittle it, to destroy it. Ah, the impatience of the intellect with anything that’s not rational and linear! In the story Joseph’s older brothers poo poo his imagination and his dreaming, putting them down as visionary and impractical.

So what do they do? The get rid of him. They sell him into slavery in Egypt. Now Egypt represents the darkness of sense consciousness. But Joseph holds true to his Spiritual Sight. How do we know that?

The Bible tells us that God is with Joseph. Well, what does that mean?

It means – help me out here: God is good all the time. All the time God is good.

Charles Fillmore, co-founder of the Unity Movement says in his wonderful book, Mysteries of Genesis (p 308), “God prospers us when we give the best that is in us and do all things unto Him, acknowledging Him in all our affairs. This is a sure way to success, and when success does come we should realize that it resulted from the work of Spirit in us, because we made ourselves channels through which the Christ Mind could bring its ideas into manifestation. The true Christian never boasts that he is a self-made man, for he well knows that all that he is and has, together with all that he can ever hope to be or to have, is but God finding expression through him as life.”

Here’s what it says in Genesis 39, “After Joseph had been taken to Egypt by the Ishmaelites, Potiphar an Egyptian, one of Pharaoh’s officials and the manager of his household, bought him from them.

As it turned out, God was with Joseph and things went very well with him. He ended up living in the home of his Egyptian master. His master recognized that God was with him saw that God was working for good in everything he did. He became very fond of Joseph and made him his personal aide. He put him in charge of all his personal affairs, turning everything over to him. From that moment on, God blessed the home of the Egyptian – all because of Joseph. The blessing of God spread over everything he owned, at home and in the fields, and all Potiphar had to concern himself with was eating three meals a day.”

The story of Joseph is not without trials. Joseph gets in several big jams. But because Joseph is true to his connection with God, Spirit moves in him and prospers him.

Psalm 24 tells us “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein.” As we say in Unity: It’s all good and it’s all God. All of it. Us, too. We are God’s people – each of us is a beloved child of God -- and that’s how each of us gets the role of steward of the gifts God has given us.

And how funny is it? Humans are the only creatures with free will. We can choose to squander our gifts – or worse, to deny them. I mean, have you ever known a tree or a flower or a dog or cow to say to itself, “Well, that’s about all I want to grow. This growing business… it’s too much work. I’m good enough already.” NO! They grow and flourish to the fullest extent possible, expressing exactly what’s theirs to express.

The Joseph in us is willing to do that, too. Like Joseph, we can listen for the still small voice of God’s spirit within – and then follow that inner direction, living life from the within out, just as Joseph did with that wonderful faculty, imagination, disciplined for good.

We are prospered to the degree that we align ourselves with our highest good. I call it tuning in to WGOD, the Presence of God in our lives. When we do this we flourish as Joseph did, no matter what.

Let’s close with this beautiful affirmation from Myrtle Fillmore, co-founder of the Unity Movement: “I, too, will arise and go to my Father and receive His love and wisdom and blessing. I now behold His kingdom, His riches, and His unfailing life pouring through me and manifesting for all my needs.”

And so it is. Amen.