After being away traveling for two weeks, it’s good to be back at St. Peter this week. This week, I’m looking at the character of Joseph. Joseph is a great example of God’s faithfulness despite challenging circumstances. In everything Joseph went through, God was with him. And when Joseph could have pursued vengeance, he chose to offer forgiveness.
The text for today is Genesis 45:3-11, 15 although really I’m looking at the entire story of Joseph. I found helpful this commentary from Justin Michael Reed as well as several devotional entries by Nicky Gumbel in his Bible in One Year commentary.
There are 50 chapters in the book of Genesis. The first couple are about God creating the world, stories of Adam and Eve, sin entering the world, the flood and Noah’s ark. Abraham and Sarah get a couple chapters, with God promising numerous descendants to Abraham and his elderly wife Sarah laughing at God’s promise until she has a kid.
There are some stories about Abraham almost sacrificing his son Isaac, and then some fun ones about Isaac’s son Jacob tricking his older twin brother Esau out of his birthright and inheritance and in turn being tricked into marrying his fiancé’s sister before also marrying his beloved Rachel. They’re great Sunday School stories, but really, all these families are pretty dysfunctional. Not exactly what most people picture for “Biblical family values!”
Then finally, we get to Jacob’s son Joseph. And Joseph’s story gets 13 of the 50 chapters in Genesis. He’s a pretty important character.
Today’s first reading is a climactic moment in Joseph’s story, but in order for it to have meaning, we need to hear more of the story. Some of this you probably remember Joseph from either Sunday School or the Andrew Lloyd Weber’s “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”
The story starts in Genesis 37, when Joseph is 17 years old. He’s Abraham’s great-grandson, Isaac’s grandson, the youngest of Jacob’s 12 sons. He’s out in the fields with his brothers, and he’s kind of a know-it-all. He’s the kind of kid grown-ups love and his peers basically can’t stand.
And it doesn’t help that his dad loves him more than any of his other sons, so much that Jacob had given Joseph this super-fancy ornate robe, a coat of many colors. Not surprisingly, his brothers are jealous of him. Jacob may not be the best parent.
So Joseph is out in the fields with his brothers, wearing his fancy coat, and he has a dream, and because he’s kind of an arrogant jerk, he tells them his dream. “Listen to this dream I had: We were all tying sheaves of wheat in the field, and my sheaf stood up and all your sheaves bowed down to it.”
And then, because this guy has the emotional intelligence of a rock, he tells them another dream. “Look, I’ve had another dream: The sun, the moon, and eleven stars were all bowing down to me. What a coincidence! I have eleven brothers. Isn’t that interesting?”
Some time after that, all the brothers are out in the fields again, and Joseph’s lounging around at home, and his father Jacob sends him out to go check on his brothers. They see him coming, and they decide this is their chance to get rid of him. Some of them want to kill him, but the oldest, Reuben, convinces them throwing him into a pit is enough to teach him a lesson, then Reuben’s going to rescue him later.
But then this caravan of Ishmaelites comes along, and another brother, Judah, convinces the rest of them to sell Joseph as a slave to them. Joseph gets taken off to Egypt, and his brothers dip his fancy coat in some goat’s blood and take it home to their father Jacob and tell him how sorry they are about this horrible tragedy that some animal must have eaten Joseph.
In Egypt, Joseph ends up serving Potiphar, the captain of Pharaoh’s guard, and Genesis 39:2 says, “The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man; he was in the house of his Egyptian master.”
Joseph is a slave in a foreign land, but other than that, everything is going great. Things are turning out ok for him. Until Potiphar’s wife takes a liking to Joseph, and when he refuses her advances, she accuses him of assault, and he ends up in prison. This story is kind of a roller-coaster.
In prison, Joseph starts interpreting the dreams of his fellow prisoners. One of them, the chief cup-bearer in Pharaoh’s household, gets good news from his dream and just as Joseph predicts, he gets out and is restored to a position of honor in Pharaoh’s service. Another one, the chief baker, gets some bad news when Joseph tells him his dream of three cake-baskets on his head means in three days his head will be lifted up off of his body and he’ll be hanged, and sure enough, it happens.
If you’ve seen Encanto, Joseph is a bit like Bruno, where he interprets the dreams, but doesn’t get to decide what they say.
Eventually, Pharaoh himself has a dream and learns from his cup-bearer about this guy in prison who can interpret them. Joseph interprets Pharaoh’s dreams and learns that seven years of plenty are coming, followed by seven years of famine.
Pharaoh believes Joseph, and appoints him as the second in command of all Egypt. Specifically, he’s responsible for managing the new national economic plan of storing up food during the years of plenty so that they’re ready for the famine.
Again, things are going well for Joseph, and he gives credit to God. He gets married and names his firstborn son Manasseh, “For,” he said, “God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house.” The second son he named Ephraim, “For God has made me fruitful in the land of my misfortunes.”
After seven years, sure enough, the famine comes, and everyone in the area outside of Egypt is low on food. Jacob, hearing there’s grain in Egypt, sends his sons to buy food from the Egyptians. I’m not going to retell it all, but there’s a back and forth where Joseph recognizes his brothers, but they don’t recognize that the Egyptian in charge is really their younger brother whom they sold into slavery all those years before.
Also, there’s a younger brother named Benjamin, who Jacob didn’t send along because he was afraid of losing him like he’d lost Joseph, and Joseph really wants to meet him, so he accuses his brothers of being thieves and spies and keeps one as a hostage until they bring back their younger brother Benjamin.
There are several trips back and forth, until eventually, Joseph reveals himself, which is the passage for today’s reading. Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph. Is my father still alive?” And imagine what these brothers are feeling. I don’t know the exact dates, but for something like 15 or 20 years, they’ve lived with the guilt of killing their brother, and lying about it.
They know they’re supposed to be the chosen people, God’s people, but they’ve done this horrible thing, and they can’t ask forgiveness, because they can’t admit it. They’re carrying a lot of guilt!
Now that’s all out in the open, but what if Joseph wants revenge? Not only does he control the food supplies they need, but he’s the second-most powerful person in Egypt, and the Pharaoh listens to him. Not a good situation!
But Joseph is not the same arrogant jerk he was as a kid. He’s grown. He’s not interested in having his brothers bow down to them. He says, “Do not be distressed or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life.” God sent me here because of this famine, so that I could be responsible for saving lives. “It was not you who sent me here, but God.”
Joseph’s relationship with his family transforms. He refuses to take vengeance. He plays some tricks on his brothers, but eventually he breaks the cycles of deception and disfunction that have carried through the Genesis story.
Instead, he follows what Jesus will preach a couple thousand years later: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”
That’s a tricky passage, because it’s been misused to manipulate people in unhealthy situations, to manipulate people into staying with abusers. That’s not what Jesus is saying. It’s not about cheap forgiveness without repentance. It’s not about passivity (being a “door-mat for Jesus”), trying to short-circuit healing.
Joseph doesn’t forgive his brothers so they can hurt him again; forgiveness only comes after wrestling with guilt and repentance. It’s a long process, not a quick fix. Forgiveness and loving your enemies and praying for those who have caused you harm should not give them a license to keep causing harm.
But Joseph’s story serves as proof that no amount of sin can disrupt God’s plan. The worst plans of your enemies cannot disrupt God’s plan. God’s love for you is not derailed by anything you do, or anything anyone else does to you.
This story is not saying that everything fits into God’s plan. I know several people who’ve dealt recently with pregnancy loss, or loss of family members, or reoccurrence of cancer. That’s not in God’s plan. And if anyone tells you that is part of God’s plan, you have my permission to slap them and they can practice turning the other cheek. (Please don’t actually hit people.) Sometimes bad things just happen, because this is a broken and sinful world.
But in the midst of this broken world, God is at work for good. Sometimes that’s hard to believe.
Later, after Joseph dies, his brothers again get nervous that he’s going to want vengeance, which I think is a reminder for us that forgiveness can be hard to accept—but again, Joseph forgives them. And there’s this great verse, Genesis 50 verse 20, which says, “Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good.”
And that, I think, is the point of this story. God takes even what is meant for evil and redeems it. God redeems our stupidity, our jealousy, our fearful selfishness, and turns it for good. God is working for reconciliation and offering forgiveness.
Joseph had plenty of reasons to give up on God, right? He was sold off into slavery by his brothers, he was falsely accused and spent time in prison, but he held on to the promise that that wasn’t the end of the story. He held on to the promise of faith that God was still somehow at work, that God wasn’t done with him yet. God’s story was still unfolding, and that’s a promise for you today. God’s plan is still unfolding, and God intends good.
Let’s pray.
God of grace and mercy, we give you thanks for the ways you are at work in our world and in our lives. In those times when it’s hard to see your plan unfolding, when it’s hard to believe that even you can bring good out of a situation, give us faith. Give us strength by your Holy Spirit to believe and to trust in your work of redemption. In Jesus’ name, Amen