I decided to explore the first lesson for this Sunday from Genesis 45. The reading is a bit unusual since we are entering a big narrative at its culminating point, rather than hearing it from the beginning. Many of us are familiar with the plot, stretching over several chapters in the Book of Genesis. Joseph was one of twelve sons of Jacob and very clearly his favorite. Jacob, who had fathered him in his old age, did everything parents aren’t supposed to do: he showered his golden boy with gifts; he gave him special treatment at every turn; and he remained clueless about the growing jealousy and animosity among Joseph’s older siblings. Meanwhile, bad blood was running in the family. When Joseph shared with his brothers two dreams that were pointing at his own future grandeur, they got so angry that they very nearly killed him. Only through the intervention of the oldest, Ruben, they settled for selling him to Egyptian slave traders. The brothers hid their crime and told their aging father that Joseph had been killed by a wild beast. He was dead, they told him, showing him his blood-soaked dress, and for all intents and purposes, he was as good as dead in their minds.
But that’s just the beginning. The story reveals that Joseph – number eleven of Jacob’s sons – remained very much alive. Through many ups and downs, including several years in prison, this one-time slave is appointed special advisor to the powerful King of Egypt. A few years before his ascent to power, he had interpreted a dream that woke up Pharaoh one night, a frightening vision which the monarch immediately perceived as a message from God. The King of Egypt consulted his dream interpreters, which was a profession back then, but without any success. Joseph, however, summoned from the prison cell, was able to interpret the dream: seven years of abundant harvests were predicted in the dream, followed by seven years of misery, drought and starvation. As a result of the interpretation, and with Joseph’s skillful management, the Egyptians built huge food storage facilities to preserve the surplus harvests for the expected string of bad years.
We enter this story just as Joseph’s family, hit hard by the increasing food shortages, decides to travel to one of Egypt’s food distribution centers to buy some of the priced grain. We come in just as several of his brothers set foot in the facility that Joseph oversees. It’s a small world sometimes. Joseph recognizes them immediately, the brothers who had beaten him up and tried to murder him more than ten years earlier – his own siblings, who had sold him to a life sentence of forced labor, who had treated him with utter hatred. The story has every element of drama, with a set-up that many victims of crimes can only hope for: one day being in a position of power and having your perpetrators helpless before you, the scales of power having been reversed. Those who have been wounded deeply often develop a desire for revenge, pay back, retribution, the satisfaction of afflicting pain on those who afflicted pain on you. Human history is full of those stories and some of them are as massive as a full blown war. So, this is a story of humanity’s flaws and humanity’s potential, of wounding and healing, of relationships that are broken and need reconciling. Would Joseph take advantage of his position of power?
They do not recognize him, his brothers. He had gotten older. He had changed. Maybe he had a beard now. His dress was quite different, his manners, his language, everything about him. And of course, they don’t expect their brother to be alive at this point and least of all in a position of power. They don’t see him, until this foreign Egyptian official bursts out in tears. “Is our father alive?” he cries. And they don’t even know how to respond. It was as if a ghost from the past was haunting them. It must have been surreal, a moment filled with guilt and fear of retribution. They were trapped now, weren’t they? It is pretty amazing that Joseph let down his guard so quickly, that he is able to focus on what unites them (their father) rather than the horrible things that had divided them. It is even more amazing that he is able to look at the story from a different angle. “It was God who sent me here, not you!” he says. “It was God’s plan to bring me here so that I could save people’s lives, including yours.” It takes faith to look at things that way. It takes a person of enormous inner strength and resources to forgive so generously. And so, yes, he is using his position of power by being gracious, more gracious than most people would be. And I guess, God is asking us this morning: is there something in your life, in my life where we can be gracious, where we can outgrow our hurts?
All along, a few things were going in Joseph’s favor, and perhaps we can learn or be inspired by his life’s spiritual riches. The first and most amazing of his traits is this: although he was abandoned by his brothers, he never felt abandoned, he never played abandoned, he never accepted being a victim. He had such a strong sense of God’s presence in his life, he had such a wonderful sense of trust that the years in prison and labor, the years of hardship did nothing but grow his faith. And long before his brothers showed up he already knew: I was destined to be here!
The second thing is this: he didn’t dwell on the bad things that had happened to him. He never allowed those things to define him. There are many things in life that we have little or no control over. Particularly things in the past – we can’t change them. But we can change how we look at them and how we deal with them and how they affect our inner lives and our priorities right now. The people who hurt us – they may take responsibility for their actions or not. We can’t wait for them. Life is too precious. Joseph didn’t dwell on his wounds from the past. He lived!
The third thing is: he never forgot his roots. How easy it would have been for him to say: I am an Egyptian now. I don’t want anything to do with this “hillbilly” family into which I was born by accident. I am better than you… He could have chosen to punish them simply by revealing who he was and sending them home hungry. But amazingly, he cared, and he reconnected with them. There are more famous people in the Old Testament – Abraham, Moses, David, Solomon, – but there is nobody who exemplified the big word “reconciliation” like Joseph did. We are still, in our world and in our lives, just trying to be people of reconciliation, people of peace and forgiveness. Needless to say, we are not always successful in that; the wounds of the past still haunt us. And God says to us, “Don’t worry about it. Try again. Perhaps there will be a more fortunate time down the road. Then: try again. I am a God of peace.
Amen. 00000000000