I recently learned that I am ethnically far more Scottish than I realized, which explains my love for the movie Braveheart, the 1995 film depicting the (late 1200s) war of Scottish Independence. If you know the movie or the history it depicts, I am related to Robert the Bruce… the, uh, coward of the story. But my favorite Braveheart character is the lone Irishman, Stephen. 

Stephen is the first of the Irish to come to the aid of the Scots. He bursts on the scene a beady eyed madman who regularly converses with the Almighty. He’s clearly crazy, but the Lord has told him they need him, and they need the Irish. 

At one point when they are clearly out-numbered Stephen assures William Wallace and the others that the Irish are coming to their aid, and that together they will win this battle. When they question how he knows this, he says “The Almighty told me! And besides, Ireland? It’s my island.” 

Joseph wasn’t a mad man, but he did converse with the Almighty through dreams. He had been given a dream when he was just a boy, a vision of his future victory in which others would bow down to him. Whether it was his naïveté, or boyish confidence, or perhaps just a child-like faith, having been given this dream, Joseph believed it. 

As Joseph is abandoned by his brothers, sold into slavery, and thrown into prison in Egypt, it is his ability to converse with the Almighty through the interpretation of dreams, and the power of his own dream, which cause him to prosper against all odds. He can face such adversity, and even prosper in it because he’s been shown the future! He’s been given a dream! He’s been told it’s his island! 

In today’s reading it’s the dreams and future of Pharaoh himself which Joseph is asked to interpret. Pharaoh is awakened in the night by two dreams. All of Pharaoh’s advisors and all of Pharaoh’s holy men couldn’t interpret them, but then one of them remembers an old cellmate in prison with a gift for interpretation, a Hebrew named Joseph. 

They get Joseph out of prison, clean him up, and bring him to Pharoah. Joseph hears Pharaoh’s dreams and, looking him in the eye says, “The Almighty tells me he’s given you this dream. He’s shown you the future.” 

Joseph explains that the dreams are a warning. There are coming seven seasons of feasting, and seven seasons of famine. Without careful management, the famine will be their end. Pharaoh hears this interpretation, and Pharaoh believes. 

Pharaoh frees Joseph and quickly appoints him to the Egyptian Department of Agriculture and Crisis Management. Joseph’s liberation from prison might have been good news enough, but this is more than that. It is a fulfillment of Joseph’s future. In this role Egypt is effectively Joseph’s island, and from this position Joseph will soon see his own betraying brothers come and bow before him, just like he saw in his earliest dreams. 

In preparing for this Joseph sermon series I ran across a really terrible website. From the look of it it must have been created on like a Gateway computer back in the 90s. But, despite its ancient design, it helpfully catalogs all of the parallels between the story of Joseph and the person of Jesus, 78 of which are delineated on the site in a horrendously formatted spreadsheet. 

We’ve been cataloging these parallels ourselves all January long: like Joseph, Jesus is beloved of his father, betrayed by his brethren, sold, wrongly accused, and imprisoned, the list goes on. 

What can possess a person, Joseph or Jesus, to endure such mistreatment and hardship? What is it that kept them, or keeps anyone going when a dream seems to be repeatedly deferred? Perhaps it helps if you’re a little crazy? Or perhaps it helps if the Almighty has shown you the future. Perhaps there is something to believing “it’s your island.” 

The author of Hebrews puts it this way, “It is for the sake of the joy that was set before him, that Jesus endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and took his seat at the right hand of the Almighty.” 

It was because of the joy that was set before him, as if joy is the dream he was destined to fulfill, as if the kingdom of God which was coming into the world was his island. This is what made Jesus willing to endure the cross. 

What Stephen the Irish madman, Joseph the Hebrew Dreamer, and Jesus the Nazarene Savior seem to have in common is that they are convinced they know their future, their island, so convinced, they are ready to live that future now. 

I spent the last week in Alabama as a part of my continuing education through the Two Year Academy for Spiritual Formation. Early in the week we were made aware of a man named Kenneth Smith who was on death row in Alabama, scheduled to be executed on Thursday. Mr. Smith was found guilty in 1989 of murder. At his sentencing eleven out of twelve jurors recommended he be sentenced to life in prison, but because of an old Jim Crow law the judge could overturn their recommendation and sentence Mr. Smith to death, which he did. 

I will confess to you that I go to these weeks away in the hope of rest and renewal, and I didn’t really appreciate having my rest and renewal intruded upon but this awareness of Kenneth Smith’s coming execution. I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to face it. 

On Thursday night as we gathered for night prayer we were notified that despite appeals to the supreme court and against the recommendation of the former governor of Alabama, Kenneth had been put to death, killed. 

On hearing the news I wept in ways I had not anticipated. I wept in grief at the continued use of capital punishment in our society, I wept at how close a stay of his execution had seemed, I wept at the thought of him dying. And then, then I either imagined it or was given a vision of Kenneth Smith waking up on the other side of death, in the arms of his savior. I saw Kenneth unchained, unbound, and in boundless joy. I even saw Kenneth embraced by the person he had killed, reconciled to them in the joy of the Lord. 

The next day I looked up Kenneth’s last words. He said, “tonight Alabama takes a step backward, but I am leaving with love, peace, and light.” 

Kenneth was a sinner; but he was a sinner who knew something about his future. He knew that by the grace of the Almighty, the kingdom of God, Christ’s own island, was Kenneth’s island too. And for the love, peace, light, and joy that was set before him, was able to face death, and take his seat among those being reconciled to God and one another. 

Friends, the gift of faith is the gift of knowing your future, knowing that God’s kingdom is, by grace alone, our island too, knowing that God’s dream is God’s promised future of the world. 

Join me would you, in praying for this faith. Pray for the grace to trust in the good news of God’s promised future, a future where sins are forgiven, the dead are raised, and all divisions cease on God’s holy island, a future that is now.

I have conversed with the Almighty, and the Almighty has told me the Kingdom of God is your island. This is God’s promise to you. In the name of Jesus Christ, this is your future, now.

Thanks be to God