Genesis 40 "He Forgot Him" Scott Hoezee

Here in Grand Rapids most of us have at one time or another heard of "The Forgotten Man Ministries." Because some of us have heard that phrase for so long, it's possible that some of its punch gets lost on us. But when you stop to think about it, there are few phrases so searingly sad as "forgotten people." In life there are any number of things you may forget sooner or later. Often we forget (temporarily) where we put our car keys or what we did with that folder of old letters and postcards. It's frustrating! Like some of you, I've now and again spent a few hours rummaging around in file cabinets, closets, and the like searching for something I just know I put somewhere some while ago but now I cannot for the life of me remember where it was! Often we forget such things because probably we weren't paying that much attention to what we were doing in the first place.

As time goes on, we may forget also old phone numbers, addresses, maybe even people's names. Upon running into an old acquaintance at the mall, you can usually tell if he or she just can't come up with your name. Often there is just a little bit too much gusto when the other person says, "Well, hey there!" and you sense that the high-decibel level given to that "Hey!" is covering for the fact that he can't say, "Hey, Scott!" But if forgetting someone's name is a bit embarrassing (for both parties usually!), forgetting that someone even existed is a vastly more serious matter. It hurts to be forgotten. Perhaps you run into someone you admire and respect, someone you had a college class with once or who lived in the same dorm as you. You'd never forget this person because he or she is important to you. You've been glad to tell people over the years that you know him or her. But then one day you come up to this other person but see no glint of recognition at all. If they ever noted your existence to begin with, they long since forgot about you--not your name, but you. You didn't register high enough on the horizons of their consciousness to be worth taking more permanent note of. And that hurts.

It hurts no less, and maybe more, when the cause of such forgetfulness is something like Alzheimer's Disease. Few things wound us more than looking into the eyes of a parent or a spouse but seeing no hint of recognition. It ought never have to be that we say to a loved one, "Do you remember me?" Some questions should never have to be asked, and so if as a matter of fact you do need to pose that most precarious of all questions, you sense that your world has shifted into a frightening new territory.

If ever there were a biblical figure who knew the pain of other people's forgetfulness, it was Joseph. After successfully interpreting the cupbearer's dream by assuring him that in three days' time he'd have his old life back again, Joseph all-but begged to be remembered. "When you're back on top of things again, remember me! Show me lovingkindness by mentioning my name to the Pharaoh! Please!" Yet chapter 40 ends with three devastating words: "he forgot him." Who knows why. Was the cupbearer merely distracted? Did he deem it beneath his restored dignity to mention that some grungy Hebrew dungeon denizen had predicted these turns of events? Or did he conclude that although Joseph had interpreted the dream correctly, nevertheless Joseph could hardly be credited with getting him out of jail and so didn't warrant mention to the Pharaoh after all?

Whatever the reason, the cupbearer rather quickly slotted Joseph into a back closet of his memory. It would be two whole years before he'd tumble to recall that wise fellow in the dungeon. Two years! For the first few weeks or so, maybe Joseph watched his cell door expectantly, just waiting for the warden to come fetch him. Surely the cupbearer would not forget him! True, Joseph himself neither gave the cupbearer his dream nor did Joseph execute the predicted fulfillment of that same dream. But if you told someone a weird dream only to have that other person tell you the future meaning of that dream--and then if precisely that prediction came to pass in your life in pretty short order--don't you think you'd remember that dream master!? How could you even forget such a striking incident?!

So Joseph waited expectantly for some time until finally he was crushed by the dawning awareness that he had been forgotten after all. Despite the unlikelihood of it, the cupbearer to the king had forgotten Joseph. Some of you have perhaps seen the film The Shawshank Redemption in which an innocent man, Andy Dufrain, is sent to a state penitentiary for life on a charge of murder. At one point in the film a new prisoner arrives who, as it turns out, has the knowledge that could at long last set Andy free. But that prison's warden is an evil and corrupt man. He does not want Andy to go free. And so when Andy insists that the warden pursue this matter, he gets sunk into a hole of solitary confinement for an entire month. Meanwhile, the warden arranges the death of that prisoner who alone spelled Andy's hope. When in solitary Andy learns of this new act of babarism, the look of despair and dejection on his face is searing.

Surely Joseph must have had such a look at some point as his best, fondest hope for release fails to pan out. He had been forgotten. Joseph had asked the cupbearer for "kindness." In the Hebrew of verse 14 that is the loaded word chesed, which as I have pointed out numerous times over the years, is a word I think is the Old Testament's equivalent of "grace." Chesed is that key characteristic of God that refers to God's abiding mercy, his everlasting love, his core disposition to be kind toward needy sinners such as ourselves. Over and again in the Book of Psalms, the psalmists say that when they go up to the Temple to worship, it is the shining chesed of Yahweh that is their chief focus, their pious pre-occupation, their number one reason for giving Yahweh the glory forever and ever.

Joseph hopes to see a glimmer of this same kindness in the cupbearer, but as is so often the case on the human plane of existence, we are disappointed to find so little grace in other people. In this case, a little chesed would have been what led to the cupbearer's keeping Joseph in mind: remembering him instead of forgetting him. It is, after all, a kindness to be remembered. A few moments ago I mentioned how much it can hurt to run into an old acquaintance only to see that while you remember this other person, he has clearly long since blotted you out of his mind. But conversely, suppose you run into someone whom you don't necessarily think will remember you. But then suppose you discover that not only does she remember you, she can even still tell a certain story of a fine thing you did once. How do you feel then? What is a typical reaction to this rather surprising development? Don't you often walk away from this happy encounter only to say something like, "Well now, that was just so nice that she remembered that!" Holding certain things in memory does not happen automatically. Often remembering something is indeed an intentional act--there was some nurturing of memory going on there and so it's no exaggeration to say that, indeed, someone's recalling this or that about you is a nice thing, a kind thing, a chesed type of thing.

It's what God does. He remembers us. God is the Great Remembrancer, and this facet to God's character, surely borne of God's chesed, is itself a frequent cause of praise and joy in the Bible. In a famous line from Isaiah 49, the prophet asks rhetorically at one point, "Can a mother forget the child sucking at her breast?" Well, yes, as a matter of fact parents do forget their own children sometimes. Not always, but sometimes. So the deep comfort for Isaiah lies in the fact that even if a mother were to forget her own child, yet will Yahweh remember us forever. Particularly in the Old Testament there is frequent solace found in the fact that Yahweh remembers us, remembers that we are but dust, remembers his promises to Abraham and his descendants. At the outset of the single grandest narrative in the Old Testament, the Exodus from Egypt, we are told that when God heard the groans of his people as they languished in slavery, "he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob . . ." And through that act of divine memory, the whole sequence of saving events was set into motion.

For God, and also for us, memory is a lively, living thing. It is even capable of giving life. That's why one of the single most famous phrases of the Christian gospel--"Do this in remembrance of me"--is by no means a dry or dead summoning to mind of things long past. Memory at the Lord's holy table is a living encounter with the living God, imparting yet more life into our souls.

To be remembered by God, and in turn to remember this God ourselves, assures us that we have a future, that even death cannot be our end. That thief on the cross knew what he was doing when he said to Jesus, languishing on his own spit of wood, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom!" What that man had in mind was not that one day Jesus would be riding some white stallion in his kingdom only to say to someone, "Say, do you remember that other fellow who died with me at Golgotha that day? I remember him. Not a bad fellow in the end. Too bad he's gone now." Of course not! When the Lord Jesus Christ remembers you, what happens is not the summoning up of a piece of data but the re-enlivening of your very existence.

In this divine capacity for memory we do indeed find the chesed or grace of God at work. And it lends not just hope but also meaning to our lives. John Updike once wrote poignantly about how staggering it is to consider the sheer number of people who have lived and died in history, not to mention the billions who still live right now (some of whom have died even since we gathered here for worship 40 or so minutes ago). Untold millions of consciousnesses silt history full to nearly the brim.

Each person was unique. Each had a story. Yet each passed away, and with the relatively rare exceptions of historically famous people--Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, Abraham Lincoln--something like 99% of the human race has come and gone without a single blessed soul still alive to this day to recall them. We all die twice, the old adage says: first we die physically and they bury us in the ground, but then we die a second time when at some future point the last relative or friend who can recall us also passes away, and then our very memory is buried into the inaccessible reaches of history.

A couple of weeks ago in a sermon on providence, I mentioned the theological school of thought known as Process Theology. This way of thinking about God has lots of problems and vast tracks of quite disagreeable ideas for most orthodox Christians. But one feature to Process Theology that is probably right, and that is also pastorally lyric in its sensitivity, is the notion that as history unfolds, as billions of individual lives get led every day, God is the one who tenderly prehends, takes up up into, his very self every event, every person's story, and then preserves all of that forever. Nothing is lost. No person is ultimately forgotten.

That is not just a lovely thought, it seems biblically right, too. Science tells us that this universe is destined for destruction. Life as we know it cannot continue forever. So if there is no God to remember all things, then it becomes difficult to resist the conclusion that life, and the cosmos generally, has no point. True, it is possible to construct philosophical arguments defending the notion that even if each person winks forever out of existence at his or her death--and even if one day the earth burns up and so forever takes with it every piece of art, every novel, every play, every piece of music we have ever known in history--that even so there is value in the moment, beauty in evolutionary development, worthwhileness to life at least for however long we have it. You can argue that, but if that's all you can say, then the knock-knock-knocking of nihilism at history's door sounds louder and louder!

We need God as the Great Remembrancer. We need to remember Jesus, eating and drinking at his table in a living remembrance. If we have that, then the ache we feel when we remember that dear spouse or child who died, though still painful, does not have the last word. If there is a God who remembers that dear soul, then we shall see him or her again. Because biblically to be remembered by God is the equivalent of being preserved by God. A dear sister in this congregation who recently died used to talk long and ardently with me about what happens to us after we die (and before we are raised to new life at the final resurrection). She didn't like it when I spoke about this subject, and said to me once, "I don't want to be just a memory in God's mind!" But when God is the one we are talking about, then there is no such thing as being "just a memory." To be remembered by God is to be alive indeed, even as to be blotted out of the divine mind is the very definition of hell.

I suppose we've wandered a bit far afield from Genesis 40 by now. Yet in a real way this story is illustrative of everything we just thought about. The cupbearer's lack of compassionate kindness kept Joseph essentially dead for two more years. But when, in Genesis 41, the cupbearer at long last remembers Joseph, Joseph is resurrected from the dead, as it were. The Pharaoh lifts him up, and almost as quickly as Joseph had gotten thrown into prison by Potiphar in the first place, he is taken out and elevated to the second-highest position of power in all of Egypt! Seldom in the Bible is the enlivening power of memory so vividly illustrated. Joseph moves from death to new life in a flash, and it all happens because of the power of memory.

Ultimately, though, we do see the divine hand in this. Joseph came to a new life, married a wife, had children, not finally because the cupbearer remembered him but because, as a matter of fact, God had never forgotten Joseph! God remembered Joseph always, even when all others had quite literally forgotten about him. In that delightful fact lies a summary of the whole gospel: of the Jesus we remember and of the Jesus who remembers us to his Father in his eternal kingdom.

In one of his fine sermons, Frederick Buechner relays a dream he once had. In this dream he was staying at a nice hotel somewhere and he had a room in this hotel that he just loved. He loved being in the room for some unknown reason. It brought him a feeling of contentment and peace and joy just to be in the room. But then the dream meandered a bit, as dreams do, and suddenly he was in another hotel and in a different room that he did not like nearly so well. So he picks his way back to the first hotel and asks the clerk for his old room back. He can't tell the clerk which room it was but if the man could check his ledger and tell him what room he had had before, he'd like to have that room again. "Certainly I can tell you which room that was, Mr. Buechner," the dream clerk said, "It was the room called 'Remember.'"

And that revelation in his dream was so startling that Buechner says he woke up and sat bolt upright in bed. The room he wanted was the room called Remember. Maybe it's the room we all want, the place to which we wish to journey again and again, the place where we can remember all things even as we are ourselves remembered by the God whose memory means life itself. And maybe among the most important things we each of us could remember--the one thing common to all of us despite our many uncommon stories--is this: when we look back in remembrance, we realize that though most of the time we failed to see it, we were never really alone. Not in life's dungeons, not in life's sunny times, not ever. We would never have made it this far were it not for Him whose presence is as everlasting as his chesed and whose memory of all things is itself life, hope, and joy. Amen.