Joseph was a young man who, like me and so many other people I know, enjoyed being right about things no matter how it upset his brothers. Joseph was always pointing out that he was more favored by his father, that he had a closer connection with the mysterious and the divine and that he was better suited for leadership than his brothers. Joseph made a point to be right in everything. However it was not a sense of righteousness that Joseph pursued but rather a state of being that made him factually correct. And he made sure everyone knew he was right. When his brother's decided he was too much for them to deal with they took away his bragging rights: both as a son and a brother. They took away his freedom to be the man he was destined to be, or at least the man he thought he was destined to be. Joseph was wronged by his brothers. He was sold into slavery, imprisoned under false pretenses, and abandoned by all those who had the power to restore him. Joseph was wronged. He was badly treated, his rights were violated, his due process denied and he was genuinely and righteously free to be indignant and angry at his brothers. When Joseph finally rose to prominence among the Egyptians he came to a place where he could mete out justice upon those from whom he had received much pain and injustice. Once again Joseph had the power to be right and had the power and the freedom to exercise the fullness of justice. Joseph however took the advice of his mother, the one Jacob loved the most…as I'm sure she said to him as he trampled off to be with his brother's in the fields each day, "Now Joseph, you be a good boy!" Joseph, however, did not exercise his right to punish his brothers for their injustice, but rather he chose to exercise his super human ability to be good, to turn aside from anger and embrace his brothers in a spirit of forgiveness. Slavery, prison, abandonment all taught Joseph the ill-natured results of always trying to be right. Joseph had every reason to force his brothers to submit to fullness of his anger, that he may correct the wrongs they suffered him through the years since he was sold into slavery. Joseph , understanding that indignation and punishment were his to give, instead chose to meet his brothers with the kindness and goodness that comes from the heart of mercy. His brothers had no idea what to expect, and even begged him to be kind. Joseph realized he was not in the place of God, and therefore could not enforce justice, or at least the kind of justice that they expected, upon his brothers as he undoubtedly had often thought of during those long nights in his cell or while being conscripted to serve a cruel master and his morally bankrupt wife. Joseph understood finally what his mother had meant all those times she sent him off with a kiss and pat.

For modern humanity, being righteously indignant about the treatment of others is ingrained in our culture. We see daily in the media protests and legal battles that are designed to protect someone's rights and constitutional freedoms, the global struggle for equality among humanity. The Civil Rights Movement, for example, was more than ensuring that an African-American can receive the same services at a lunch counter as their white counterparts. It was and continues to be a struggle to treat all people, regardless of the small nuances that make us different, as if they are valuable and have much to offer the global family. Many people struggle to level the playing field by trying to ensure the rights of people to live as their conscience allows them to live, from fighting to have equal access to the benefits of marriage regardless of sexual orientation to the equal and free access to clean sustainable resources such as water, food and shelter. There are people who are fighting to make sure every one gets a fair shake at life and that equality and equity of life is ensured for all generations for all kinds of people. If it weren't for people fighting for the rights of freedom and equality for all peoples, we would be a much different society and one that I fear would be most unjust and devoid of any kind of goodness. The passionate pursuit of Justice and Equality is hallmark of the Christian Kingdom. Since coming to this church in late January, I have been inspired by the calling to and commitment of justice among the people of this congregation. People like you, who take the time to bring forth justice to a careless and often self-soothing society are the kinds of servants the Lord has called forth to bring the good news of freedom from the bondage of poverty, the injustice of societal limitations because of class or station, and the inequity many people suffer based on gender or sexual orientation. This church has a long history of standing up for the rights of the small and the powerless and has proven throughout its history that selfless pursuits of justice is the high and moral calling of every church that bears the banner of Jesus Christ.

It is a good thing for us to fight for justice when it comes to the causes of the poor, the disenfranchised and the defamed of our society. Justice should be our goal and our most dearly protected mission. There is no greater calling from the Scriptures than to change human society and shape it in the image of its creator's merciful Kingdom. Henri Nouwen, a Roman Catholic priest and author of many books wrote: "For a Christian, Jesus is the man in whom it has indeed become manifest that revolution and conversion cannot be separated in man's search for experiential transcendence. His appearance in our midst has made it undeniably clear that changing the human heart and changing human society are not separate tasks, but are as interconnected as the two beams of the cross". The revolution of human society and the growth of the kingdom of God are not two callings but two sides of the same coin, a double calling that goes above and beyond denominational lines, geography or theological polarities. If we truly expect to experience God in the transcendent and the imminent, then we must meet the challenges of becoming a just and caring society.

However, there is a great danger lurking behind the call to justice and it stems from the one human error that we are all at risk of embracing. Pride is, to me, the root of all things evil. We forget that being good to people, even those who offend us or who make us wonder in amazement at their ability to live oblivious to the pain of others, is more important than individual preference and comforts. We are dangerously susceptible to pride when it comes to our desire to see justice thrive and our culture reformed. However, too often we substitute true biblical justice with a much deadlier and more dangerous reaction to personal discomforts and preferences that arise when we deal individually with people who may not agree with our positions, our passions or our purposes. How we deal with people who wrong us or rather treat us differently as individuals because we have different labels than we is just as important as the way we treat them because of their labels. Whether my label says "moderate" or their label says "conservative" or someone else's says "liberal", how we treat each other in response to our differences is vitally important to our calling and pursuit of justice in the greater societal arena. It is increasingly easier, when passions about what we believe to be right and wrong are stirred up and challenged by people whom we believe to be factually or morally wrong, to become focused on making sure we're right rather than good. Being good is a high moral calling that is more important than being "right" in an argument. Sometimes, it behooves us to sit in silence and smile in kindness when someone disagrees with us rather to fight to the death to make them convert to our position. Although, I understand the calling for us to take stands for those who cannot stand for themselves, personal affronts to our egos and our pride stir up envious feelings that want others to be punished or at least verbally assuaged to the point of tears because their positions are in our opinions dumb and worthless. Being active in pursuit of justice should never be replaced by an envious and selfish pursuit of being right.

Envy is the ugly and deadly antithesis of being right. Had Joseph chosen to exercise his "rights" when his brothers begged for mercy he would have been justified in punishing them for their evils. Joseph could have chosen the route that says my rights and my wrongs are more important to me than the well being of those around me. Joseph could have embraced envy and said to his brothers in essence retribution for the wrongs you inflicted on my life is more important than the survival of our family. Joseph could have demanded his brothers "pay" for the loss of time, happiness and favor he could have enjoyed in his father's house back home. Envy preaches that if I can't be happy, no one should be happy. Dorothy L. Sayers, an early twentieth century essayist and author of "Creed or Chaos" wrote concerning the 7 deadly sins: "The name by which [Envy] offers itself to the world's applause are Right and Justice…Envy is the great leveler: if it cannot level things up, it will level things down; and the words constantly in its mouth are: 'My Rights' and 'My Wrongs' ". Justice, when it becomes misguided and poorly executed becomes envy and envy is the deadly end of a misplaced mission to mete justice and to right wrongs in our lives. If justice is to be done to me and all the world be damned until it is, then it is not true justice. Justice, as the church is called to practice it, is to pull people up to a higher level of existence, where equality and viability of life are available to all who seek it. The church's brand of justice is a great equalizing of societal standards and ethics so that every person has a right be a person and to live a life of opportunity. Our conversation is not about social justice, but about individual pursuits of being "right" over and above the peaceful and merciful relationship we are called to have with all mankind. This envious approach to the world is immoral and atypical of the Church of Christ. We are called to live a life of mercy, where we accept people as they are, full of fault and personalities that scrape against our own like nails on a chalkboard.

Jesus taught us that it is better, that when people wrong us, we meet their wrongs with goodness and in doing so, honor God who is more Just than we can imagine. When the elders of the town brought the woman caught in adultery to see Jesus he taught them that she was more than an opportunity to be "right" about the rules in their interpretation of the Law. Jesus gave the woman value as a person, a fellow human being who needed someone to be good to her, not someone to beat up with the rules they themselves were incapable of following. As Jesus chided their attempts to make an example of this woman, the men who had shouted for the kind of justice that invokes a punitive response to breaking of the law, now seeing their own need for mercy, walk away in shame and dismay. Jesus, seeing that true justice has been mete looks at the woman and reveals to her the will of God: Go and be a good person in return for the goodness you have received from me!

So the example of Joseph is the example of Jesus. Give precedence to being good rather than being right. When we seek our own ego-centric passion to make others at least as miserable as me, we make a way for envious and detestable behaviors to guide our passion for justice into a passion to see all people suffer at least as much as the rest of us. Goodness, however, is an exercise in mercy. In mercy there is no room for selfish pursuits of obligatory bondage to a rule or a "law" we know we cannot keep ourselves. Being good is acting irrespective of persons and titles, being kind to one who hates you, and honoring the mysterious call of our God to love the poor, to walk in humility and seek justice in our relationships with the disenfranchised. In being good, I express the heart of the creator and mimic the divine nature of Christ. I drop the stone readied to serve punitive justice and I offer the hand of comfort readied to serve mercy.

Amen!