Sermon Series: Echoes  of Jesus in the Life of Joseph
Sermon: Into Egypt I Have Called  My Son
First Reading: Luke  8 :22-25
Second Reading: Genesis 45:16-28, 46:1-4
Preacher: Pastor Vito Aiuto

 

"The simplest truth about man  is that he is a very strange being; almost in the sense of being a stranger on the earth. In all sobriety, he has  much more  of the external appearance of one bringing alien  habits from another land  than of a mere  growth of this one. He cannot sleep

in his own skin;  he cannot trust his own instincts. He is at once  a creator moving  miraculous hands and  fingers  and  a kind  of cripple. He is wrapped in artificial bandages called clothes; he is propped on artificial crutches called furniture. His mind  has  the same doubtful liberties and the same wild limitations. Alone among the animals, he is shaken with the beautiful madness called laughter; as if he had  caught sight of some  secret in the very shape of the universe hidden from the universe itself. Alone among the animals he feels  the need of averting his thought from the root realities of his own bodily being; of hiding them as in the presence of some  higher  possibility which  creates the mystery of shame."

-G.K. CHESTERTON, The Everlasting Man

"He pictured the interior of the house as he had  known  it: the drawing-room with his mother half-reclining on the graceful old Duncan Phyfe  sofa, the carved Chippendale chair  that a great-aunt had  brought from England, the oriental rugs  glowing on the floor, the white columns of the mantelpiece. Past the fireplace, at the other end  of the long room where  the door opened into the study, was the piano: he could  see his mother seated there with her auburn hair piled  high  on her head and  hear  her clear  soprano voice singing the light opera  songs  she  loved. Or he might glance out the window and  see  her in the flower- garden cutting flowers or conferring with the ancient gardener.

Glenmerle, he thought, had  been a place to come  home  to, home  from Kentucky or Florida  or England, home  from schools and  home  from college. He pictured coming home  from boarding school, perhaps for the Christmas holidays, perhaps with snow all about –  the woods full of snow. It would be a winter dusk with the big blue  spruce a-twinkle with tiny white lights like stars, the big car sweeping up the hill to the house. Then  his mother’s cries  of welcome and  her kiss, his father’s handshake, and  his brother grinning in the background. And of course, as always, the cheery fire in the drawing-room, and  through the French doors  the dining-room alight with preparations. Upstairs, waiting, would be his own room, just as he had  left it. Heaven itself, he thought, would be –  must be –  a coming home."

-SHELDON VANAUKEN, A Severe Mercy