This September, we are working our way through the Old Testament and covering major events when our ancestors of the faith were called upon to trust God. We touched on the occasion when Adam and Eve failed to trust God and ate a fruit from the Tree of Good and Evil. Last week, we focused on Abraham and Sarah and the trust they had for God when they left their homeland, moved around the Middle East, and believed God’s promise to make them the parents of countless generations of children, even though for most of their lives they were unable to have children at all. Finally, God gave them Isaac, even though they were elderly when he was born.
This morning, we focus on one of those promised descendants of Abraham and Sarah, their great-grandson Joseph. Joseph had eleven brothers and an inharmonious relationship with them. Joseph was a brat – for some reason, his father, Israel, favored him more than his siblings. Joseph’s brothers resented him, hated him, because of his special status with his dad. Joseph lorded his status over his brothers, when led to terrible consequences for Joseph. Let’s turn to the story and read a portion of it in Genesis 37....Listen now to the word of God....
The Scripture Genesis 37: 3-8, 17b-22, 26-34; 50:15-21
The Message God Works Through Joseph
Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he had been born to him in his old age; and he made an ornate robe for him.
When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him.
Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him all the more.
He said to them, “Listen to this dream I had:
We were binding sheaves of grain out in the field when suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright, while your sheaves gathered around mine and bowed down to it.”
His brothers said to him, “Do you intend to reign over us? Will you actually rule us?” And they hated him all the more because of his dream and what he had said.
Joseph sounds a little clueless and a little cocky – he taunted his brothers about his dream of having them all bow down before him. And, his brothers hated him...hated him for his father’s favoritism – hated him for his arrogant attitude towards them. Israel, his father, made things worse by giving Joseph a special, colorful robe – he was not only favored, he was also set apart and dressed in an expensive, colorful outfit. Everyone could see evidence of the father’s preference for Joseph.
The story continues:
So Joseph went after his brothers and found them near Dothan.
But they saw him in the distance, and before he reached them, they plotted to kill him.
“Here comes that dreamer!” they said to each other.
“Come now, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams.”
When Reuben heard this, he tried to rescue him from their hands. “Let’s not take his life,” he said.
“Don’t shed any blood. Throw him into this cistern here in the wilderness, but don’t lay a hand on him.” Reuben said this to rescue him from them and take him back to his father.
Judah said to his brothers, “What will we gain if we kill our brother and cover up his blood?
Come, let’s sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him; after all, he is our brother, our own flesh and blood.” His brothers agreed.
So when the Midianite merchants came by, his brothers pulled Joseph up out of the cistern and sold him for twenty shekels of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took him to Egypt.
When Reuben returned to the cistern and saw that Joseph was not there, he tore his clothes.
He went back to his brothers and said, “The boy isn’t there! Where can I turn now?”
Then they got Joseph’s robe, slaughtered a goat and dipped the robe in the blood.
They took the ornate robe back to their father and said, “We found this. Examine it to see whether it is your son’s robe.”
He recognized it and said, “It is my son’s robe! Some ferocious animal has devoured him. Joseph has surely been torn to pieces.”
Then Jacob (Israel) tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and mourned for his son many days.
All his sons and daughters came to comfort him, but he refused to be comforted. “No,” he said, “I will continue to mourn until I join my son in the grave.” So his father wept for him.
Joseph’s brothers sold him into slavery and then lied to their father and said he was dead. They punished Joseph for being favored and for being arrogant. And, they punished their father too – in return for his preference of Joseph over and above his brothers, he was lied to and devastated by his loss, by his grief.
Joseph’s story and his family’s story took a took a lot of strange twists and turns. Joseph ended up being the favored slave in the house of Potipher the Egyptian. But, then he was falsely accused of sexual abuse and thrown into prison. Over and over again, his favored status led to his downfall.
While he was in prison, Joseph became the favored prisoner of the warden....but he was so favored he became indispensable to the warden and was kept in prison longer than his sentence. He ended up correctly interpreting dreams of former employees of the Egyptian Pharoah. After one of the employees had his job restored, he forgot about Joseph until the Pharaoh needed a dream interpreted.
Joseph was brought to the Pharoah, and correctly interpreted the Pharaoh's dream as meaning Egypt and the Middle East was going to be plunged into a multi-year drought. Joseph was appointed by the Pharaoh to administer a food storage plan before the drought so that the Egyptian people could turn to the Pharoah’s stores of food when their crops didn’t grow. Joseph’s biological family came to Egypt to appeal for help when they were unable to graze their herds during the drought. The brothers were presented to Joseph, made their appeal for food, and did not recognize Joseph because he was dressed in Egyptian finery. After a complicated and lengthy negotiation, Joseph revealed himself to his brothers and invited them to all move to Egypt. Even though many years had passed, Joseph’s father Israel was still alive. The entire clan moved to Egypt.
The next bump in the road came when Israel died. Joseph’s brothers feared Joseph was friendly and generous to them only because he loved and respected their father—they worried he would turn on them now that their dad was gone. So, they came up with another lie...listen to the next part of the story as we read Genesis 50 verses fifteen through twenty-one:
When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, “What if Joseph holds a grudge against us and pays us back for all the wrongs we did to him?”
So they sent word to Joseph, saying, “Your father left these instructions before he died:
‘This is what you are to say to Joseph: I ask you to forgive your brothers the sins and the wrongs they committed in treating you so badly.’ Now please forgive the sins of the servants of the God of your father.” When their message came to him, Joseph wept.
His brothers then came and threw themselves down before him. “We are your slaves,” they said.
But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God?
You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.
So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.” And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.
Here ends this reading of the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God. Amen.
Joseph and his brothers had a lot of ups and downs. Joseph may have been the smartest guy in the room – he developed Egypt’s entire food storage and drought relief system – but Joseph had other personality traits that were unhelpful – he may have been smart but wasn’t tactful or empathic. He was so arrogant about his father’s treatment of him that he ruined his relationship with his brothers. But, they were not exempt from guilt – they were liars, they were cruel, they were greedy – they literally sold Joseph into slavery and then deceived their father. Even though twenty-years passed between the selling of Joseph and the death of Israel, I can understand why the brothers were fearful that Joseph would seek retribution against them. Their actions caused immense hardship and pain for Joseph.
Instead of plotting the downfall of his brothers, like they had previously plotted his downfall, Joseph responded to their cruelty with love. He said: “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives. So then, don’t be afraid. I will provide for you and your children.” And he reassured them and spoke kindly to them.” Joseph’s spin on the events was positive.
Joseph responded to his brothers with kindness even though they repeatedly treated him with deceit and cruelty. We must ask ourselves how would we respond? If people literally plotted against us, beat us, threw up in a pit, sold us into slavery, came begging many years later and then lied to us again and again, how would we respond? Joseph exemplified Jesus’ teaching to turn the other cheek. Even though he lived centuries before Jesus taught us to love our enemies, Joseph loved his enemies.
The prayerful reflection at the beginning of our bulletin is a quote from Jesus found in Luke...It says: “But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.” God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. God was kind to Joseph’s brothers even though they were ungrateful and wicked.
If God is kind to the ungrateful and wicked, how will God treat us? ....God treats us with love and kindness.
We are amid a tumultuous time for our country as we prepare for the upcoming presidential election in November. People are picking sides, and sometimes we feel the people who are planning to vote differently than us are our enemies. We need to remember to be like Joseph – he treated them with love and kindness even though they repeatedly were awful to him. We must embody Jesus’ words and love our enemies and do good to them.
Joseph exemplified grace to his brothers – they did’t deserve his forgiveness – they didn’t even work to earn it – even when they plead for compassion, they lied to him and made up a story about what his father told them. Joseph treated them with love and grace.
We must work to be like Joseph. We must work to treat others with love and grace even when they disappoint us....even when they don’t deserve it....even when they make it hard. But, we love and serve the God who loves us and showers us with grace, not because we earn it, not because we deserve it, not because we refrain from disappointing God. So, in appreciation of the God who loves us, we must work to love other people. We must work to be like Joseph....may his attitude of love and forgiveness guide us through this election season. Amen.
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