Two Rivers Pastoral Charge
August 4, 2019
(This is a continuation of our look at beloved Sunday School Stories over the summer. Because this week's reflections are story-driven, I strongly encourage you to read the linked scripture readings that go with each reflection.)
Scripture #1: Genesis 37:1-28
Reflection #1
As I mentioned in my
mid-week e-mail on Wednesday, I love the story of Joseph because the characters
are so very human and so very relatable.
I mean, most of us have been that 17-year-old who knows everything and
who isn’t afraid to tell our elders what it’s all about. And since I have sisters myself, I get the
sibling dynamics in this story! The
younger sibling telling the older siblings that they are the favourite
one. The elder siblings jealous of the
younger ones’ relationship with their parents.
A bit of background to
this story… Joseph and his brothers and
sister are the children of Jacob and his four wives. Jacob is the son of Isaac and Rebekah. Isaac is the son of Abraham and Sarah. Abraham and Sarah are both descendants of
Noah, who is the descendent of the original humans who were created in God’s
image and brought to life by the breath of God.
The book of Genesis is essentially a family tree with stories of the
people involved scattered between the lists of genealogies.
Joseph was the second
youngest in his family – he had 10 older brothers, one older sister, and one
younger brother. Which is only slightly
less crazy when you remember that Jacob, his father, had four wives. So Joseph, as an annoying 17-year-old, had
brothers who were likely in their 20s, 30s, and maybe 40s. Now despite being the second youngest
overall, Joseph was the first-born of Jacob’s favourite wife, Rachel. And this made Joseph his father’s favourite. I think that we’re almost in soap opera
territory here!
And if we were to go
back digging in his family tree, you might start to see a pattern of the
younger son being favoured over the elder.
Joseph’s father Jacob was his mother’s favourite, and she helped Jacob
trick the inheritance out of his brother Esau.
And Jacob and Esau’s father was Isaac, who was the preferred son who
displaced his elder brother Ishmael in a story of pain and tragedy. And if we were to go waaay back to the story
of Cain and Abel, the offering of the younger son, Abel, was preferred over the
offering of the elder son Cain, leading to a murderous outcome. It’s amazing how patterns can repeat
themselves through family trees.
But let’s turn back to
todays story – the story of Joseph, the favourite son. Just as [name]
read for us, Joseph has been given a special garment – different translations
have this as a coat with special sleeves, a long coat, or a coat of many
colours – but no matter what the cloak actually looked like, it was something
that set him apart from the rest of his siblings. And he plays it up. He lords over his brothers in a way that only
a 17-year-old can do. He interprets his
dreams in a way that gives him power and prestige over them. He flaunts his new clothes. In short, he is a bit of a jerk at the start
of the story.
But as one of the
commentaries I read this week said, even a jerk doesn’t deserve to be
killed. But that’s just what his
brothers do. They initially plan to do
away with Joseph; but then they change their minds and decide to sell him into
slavery instead. And if we were to keep
reading past what [name] just read,
we would see that the brothers take this special robe that his father had given
to Joseph, they dip it in goat blood, they take it back to their father, and
they tell their father that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal.
So our story begins
with a not-very-kind younger brother, jealousy, and betrayal. Let’s see what happens when Joseph arrives in
Egypt.
Scripture #2: Genesis 39:1-23
Reflection #2
The story of Joseph,
as well as being the story of very real humans doing very real things, is also
the story of a rapid change in circumstances.
In a few short chapters, Joseph has gone from being the favourite son,
to being sold into slavery, to rising to be the overseer of the household of a
large and prestigious household, to being unjustly thrown in prison, to being
placed in charge of all of the prisoners in jail. This first part of the story of Joseph is an
overall downward movement from family to slavery to imprisonment, but in each
of these circumstances, Joseph must have had a lucky penny in his pocket or
something, since he always manages to rise to the top.
Or maybe it isn’t a
lucky penny. In the part of the story
that [name] just read, we’re told
again and again that God was with Joseph.
In the household of Potiphar, “his master saw that the Lord was with
him, and the Lord caused all that he did to prosper in his hands”; and then
“the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house for Joseph’s sake; the blessing of the Lord
was on all that he had.” And then later
in prison, “the Lord was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love”; and then
“the Lord was with him; and whatever he did the Lord made it prosper.”
Which is all very well
for Joseph, but I’m a bit troubled because if the Lord was with Joseph,
watching over him and helping him to rise to the top of every situation he
finds himself in, what about the other people who don’t prosper? I know that I’ve said it before, but you have
to be careful when you ascribe material blessings to God’s favour, because what
about when those material blessings are absent or lost. Was God with Joseph when he was sold into
slavery or when he was thrown into prison?
Was God with the other slaves and the other prisoners who weren’t put in
charge?
The only way that I
can answer these questions is with a “yes.”
God is with everyone at every time.
God was with Joseph when he was sold into slavery and when he was thrown
into prison, just as much as God was with Joseph when he rose to be head of the
household and head of the jail. God was
with the other slaves and the other prisoners just as much as God was with
Joseph.
We’re going to be
skipping over the next chapter of the story.
In this chapter, Joseph is still in prison, and a couple of members of
the Pharaoh’s household join him there.
Remember that Joseph had a talent for dream interpretation, even if
that’s what got him into this situation to begin with. Anyways, Joseph uses this skill at
interpreting dreams to predict correctly that the Pharaoh’s cupbearer – his
chief wine taster – was going to be released from prison and returned to his
former position; and that the Pharaoh’s baker was going to be executed. And Joseph asks that the cupbearer remember
him once he is out of prison. It takes a
couple more years for this to happen, but our story picks up again in the
Pharaoh’s household.
Scripture #3: Genesis 41:1-8, 14-15, 25-36
Reflection #3
So here we have the
final reversal of situation in Joseph’s story.
Joseph is brought from prison to interpret the Pharaoh’s dream, and in
doing so he is not only given his freedom, but he is placed as the Pharaoh’s
commander-in-chief, and he is able to save the people from starvation through
seven years of famine.
But in doing so,
Joseph proves once again that he is a complicated person. Just like most humans, he is neither purely
good nor purely evil.
After the 7 years of
good rain and good crops come the 7 years of famine. And the famine isn’t limited to Egypt – the
famine has also reached Canaan where Joseph’s family are living. And Joseph’s family hears that there is food
to be found in Egypt, so they set out in search of something to keep them
alive.
When they get to
Egypt, Joseph recognizes them right away, but they don’t recognize their baby
brother. After all – they had sold him
into slavery more than a decade ago – they would not have expected him to be
the overseer of the Pharaoh’s kingdom.
And Joseph doesn’t
reveal himself right away to them. It’s
almost like he wants to make them suffer a bit more for what they did to him so
many years ago. He has them make the
trek back and forth between Canaan and Egypt a couple of times – hundreds of
kilometers each way, in the middle of a famine.
He plays tricks on them, has them accused of thievery, kidnaps his
youngest brother. And then he eventually
reveals himself to them, and all of his brothers and their father move to
Egypt. But as we’ll see in a bit, they
still don’t quite trust each other yet.
And we also get to see
Joseph acting in a troubling way as the commander in chief of the land. He had inside knowledge about the upcoming
famine, and he was able to stockpile enough food for everyone to get through 7
hungry years. But he doesn’t just give
it away. No; in a move that has been
repeated by colonial empires around the world throughout history, he takes
money from all of the people in exchange for food; and when the money runs out,
he accepts livestock in exchange for food; and when the livestock runs out, he
accepts land in exchange for food; and when the land runs out, he allows them
to enter slavery in exchange for food.
And so by the end of
the famine, the people of Egypt and Canaan have no money, no livestock, no
land, and no freedom. Like I said,
Joseph is a complicated character.
Eventually the famine
ends and Jacob and all of his family are comfortably settled in Egypt. Jacob eventually dies of old age, offering a
blessing to each of his sons from his deathbed.
And it is only after burying their father that Joseph and his brothers
can finally be fully reconciled.
Scripture #4: Genesis 50:15-21
Reflection #4
The story of Joseph
and his brothers, these sons of Jacob, reads very much as a novella tacked on
to the end of the book of Genesis. This
morning we’ve gone with Joseph on his journey from favourite son to slave to
prisoner to the Pharaoh’s number one man.
We’ve seen how God was with Joseph through each of these movements. We’ve seen how Joseph did some good things
like saving people from famine, but we’ve also seen his shadow side when he
lorded over his brothers, when he tricked his brothers when they were
vulnerable, and when he stole the land and the freedom from people who were
starving.
And now we come to the
close of our story. Cue the crescendo of
strings, the credits are about to roll.
Joseph is finally reconciled with his brothers. Sensing that they were still hesitant around
him, and rightly so, given what they had done to him, Joseph is able to make
the first move towards building a new relationship with his brothers. He reminds them that he isn’t God, judging
them for their misdeeds – he is only human, just as they are.
And then we come to
what is one of the better-known lines from the Joseph story. Joseph tells his brothers that even though
they intended harm when they sold Joseph into slavery, God was able to make
something good come out of it, so that many people’s lives were saved from the
famine.
We are all human. And we all mess up. We all do things from time to time that we
regret, we say things that we wish that we could take back. And despite how much or how often we mess up,
God can still make good things happen.
Love is still possible.
Reconciliation is still possible.
New life is still possible.
God is always with us,
just as God was with Joseph. God is with
us with life is good, and God is with us when life seems to bring only pain and
heartbreak. And God is always reaching
into the messiness that we make in our lives, and making the good things possible.
Thanks be to God!
"Reconciliation" - Statue by Josefina de Vasconcellos (Berlin)
Photograph by Mark Ahsmann CC BY-SA 3.0
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