REUNITED: GOD AT WORK
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Cynthia M. Campbell
President, McCormick Theological SeminaryEphesians 2:11–18
Psalm 133
Genesis 45:1–15
“And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them.”
Genesis 45:15 (NRSV)
Forgiveness means abandoning your right
to pay back the perpetrator in his own coin,
but it is a loss that liberates the victim.
Desmond Tutu
I had not really intended to read the latest Harry Potter book. Although I loved the first three volumes, I stalled out in numbers four and five. But the day after the release, I happened to be at Marshall Field’s on State Street, where a Harry Potter party was in full swing. Witches and wizards were making hats, capes, and wands. Photographs were being taken, fortunes told, food consumed. Then I saw the display—a table piled high with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince with matching tote bag for $19.95—and I was hooked.
I read most of it the first weekend and finished it in ten days. Yes, it’s sad at the end, but it is a wonderful read. Once again, I was caught up by the joy of getting fully engaged in a truly good story.
This summer, John Buchanan has been reminding us of what a truly great storybook the Bible is as he has worked through the remarkable narratives of Genesis. What we have just read is the climax of the saga of Joseph, the last great story of Genesis. Genesis is literally the book of beginnings. Its stories tell us where everything comes from; they tell us that we and all life belong to God and that God has pledged to protect and promote life. These stories tell us who we are: children of Abraham and Sarah and Hagar, heirs of God’s promise. They tell us again and again that even though we may reject God and God’s ways, God will never abandon or forsake us.
The “Joseph saga” occupies chapters 37 through 47 of Genesis. As such, it is the longest continuous narrative in the Bible. Thanks to Andrew Lloyd Webber, we may remember some of the outline of the story, but let’s go back to the beginning to set up today’s reading.
The story opens when Joseph is seventeen. He is the next to youngest child of Jacob (wily and conniving Jacob, see John’s sermons of July 17 and 24). Jacob was the father of twelve sons by two wives (Rachel and Leah) and his wives’ servants (Bilhah and Zilpah). The tradition has it that these twelve sons were the progenitors of the twelve tribes of Israel, among whom the land was later divided. Rachel was the first woman Jacob loved and the one he loved most. But it was many years before she was able to get pregnant. Her firstborn was Jacob’s eleventh son, Joseph, and she died giving birth to the last son, Benjamin.
So Joseph, much younger than his ten brothers, is handsome and charming and Daddy’s pet—something that endeared him not at all to his older siblings. To make matters worse, Joseph was brash enough to show off. He reports back to Jacob when his brothers slack off on the job. He has the “coat of many colors” (or coat with long sleeves—the Hebrew is unclear, but the point is Joseph got the Hummer while the older brothers got used Buicks and Fords). And Joseph has these dreams. The dreams are all variations on a theme: Joseph is in power and all of his brothers bow down to him.
Now I am an only child, but even I get it about how really irritating a kid like Jacob would have been. One day, the brothers (older, bigger, stronger) ambush Joseph, strip off his coat, and throw him in an empty pit. Along comes a caravan loaded with trading goods and headed to Egypt. Seizing the opportunity, the brothers sell Joseph to the traders. To cover up this crime, they kill a goat, sprinkle the goat’s blood on Joseph’s coat, and take it back to Jacob. “Surely a wild animal got him and tore him to pieces,” they say. And Jacob goes into deep and prolonged mourning.
Meanwhile, Joseph is sold by the traders to a high-ranking Egyptian official by the name of Potiphar.
Sobered by his situation, Joseph becomes a very hard worker, and soon Potiphar has made him the overseer of his entire household. Things are fine until Potiphar’s wife decides to seduce Joseph. He literally runs away to escape her advances, but in what turns into a “he said-she said” incident, Potiphar has Joseph thrown into the -pharaoh’s prison.
Once in prison, Joseph “finds favor” with the people in charge; before long he is helping run the jail. Some time later, two of the pharaoh’s servants join him in prison—the cup bearer and the baker. One night, they both have troubling dreams. Joseph (familiar as he is with his own dreams) volunteers to interpret them. To the cup bearer he predicts that in three days he will be returned to the Pharaoh’s service; to the baker, he says that in three days he will be executed. And that is precisely what happens!
Two years pass as Joseph languishes in prison. Then the pharaoh begins to have strange and troubling dreams: seven ugly, thin cows that eat seven fat, healthy cows; seven thin, blighted ears of corn devour seven plump and healthy ears. None of the official interpreters is able to discern the dreams. Then the cup bearer remembers Joseph! Pharaoh sends for Joseph, and sure enough, Joseph is able to interpret the dream. There will be seven years of good harvest, followed by seven years of drought and famine. Moving from interpretation to strategy, Joseph proposes that Pharaoh appoint a special overseer (we might call it a commodities czar) to manage the harvests and stockpile grain for the years ahead.
Pharaoh is so taken by the interpretation and the strategy that he appoints Joseph to be his overseer. He gives Joseph great authority. He arranges a marriage to the daughter of one of his priests. Joseph is now thirty years old and essentially running the most powerful empire around.
As predicted, after seven years of bumper crops, the drought sets in and with it widespread famine. Soon the word is out: the only place to buy grain is Egypt, and the man to see is Joseph. Jacob hears about this, and desperate for food for his extended family and herds of livestock, he sends ten of his sons (all except Benjamin) to Egypt to buy grain.
Twenty years have passed since the brothers sold Joseph to the traveling merchants. Maybe one or two of them have a small twinge of conscience, but I suspect they have all managed to almost forget their horrible deed. Joseph is at best a distant memory, frozen forever as the brash teenager he was. Joseph, too, is twenty years removed from the betrayal. He is rich and successful. He has sons of his own. He is running the empire, but late at night, he must remember that he has a father and brothers far away.
When the sons of Jacob arrive in Egypt, they are sent to Joseph and, just as in the dreams, bow down before him whom they do not recognize at all. Why should they? What they see is a powerful man, dressed in the pharaoh’s uniform, who speaks to them through an interpreter. Joseph claims to be suspicious of their motives; surely you are spies, he says, and puts them in prison for three days. In their defense the brothers say that they are twelve sons of a man of Canaan; our youngest brother is at home, they say, and the other “is no more.”
Eventually Joseph decides to sell them the grain but insists on keeping one brother behind as a hostage until they return with the youngest brother. On their return to Canaan, Jacob is greatly distraught: one son is dead (so he thinks), one a hostage, and one now in jeopardy. Time passes; the famine gets worse; the brothers must return to buy more supplies. This time, they take Benjamin.
Upon their arrival, the brothers discover that Joseph has prepared a great feast for them. When they are led into the palace, Joseph welcomes them and then spots his brother Benjamin. Joseph is so overcome with emotion that he runs out of the room to weep. Eventually he gets himself under control and returns to the banquet room. Some time later, a deal is struck: the grain is sold and packaged up for the return trip. But Joseph has his servants pack his personal cup in Benjamin’s bag. After the caravan has left, Joseph sends his soldiers out saying the cup has been stolen. A search is made and the cup found. All the brothers are arrested and forced to return. Joseph decrees that the “thief” must remain in Egypt. Knowing that this will literally be the death of Jacob, they plead for one of them to take Benjamin’s place.
Finally Joseph can take the deception no longer. He sends all the Egyptians away and reveals himself to his brothers. What we read here is a remarkable story of betrayal and reconciliation, of jealousy and poisoned relationships, and a truly miraculous healing. On one level, the purpose of this long story is summed up by Joseph: this was God’s way of preserving the people of Israel during the famine, moving them out of danger and preserving them for the future. But God could have accomplished that in any number of ways. That leads us to look at the story more closely and see that the true miracle is not preservation but reconciliation.
Here is where the story is so powerful and so real. When his brothers first came to Egypt, Joseph did not immediately break down and welcome them with open arms. He deceives them; he hides behind his office and his interpreter. He sends them off with the grain (and, in fact, with all the money they paid for it), but he keeps one brother behind as a security deposit for their return with Benjamin. This is a man deeply torn: he is caught between his pain and his love.
When they return a second time, Joseph concocts an elaborate scheme to keep Benjamin in Egypt; still he is torn. When Judah begs for Benjamin to be allowed to return to Jacob, putting his own life on the line, the breakthrough happens. Joseph relents and falls into his brothers’ arms weeping.
This story could have been written a dozen ways. What it shows us is an honest picture of how hard it is to mend what is broken—something we all know from much experience. We know what betrayal feels like: the alcoholic parent who disappoints the family time and time again; spouses who find that love cannot withstand the pressures of life; siblings (like these) or dear friends who abandon a beloved or a friend when the need is greatest. We have been betrayed and we have betrayed others.
That is the human reality.
This story could seem almost naïve. We could be tempted to dismiss it as a fairy tale, except for the fact that it is God’s story. I said that Genesis is the book of beginnings. You may remember that in the beginning, there was a family—Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel. The first story of this family is that Cain murders Abel. It is no accident, I think, that Genesis ends with a story of attempted murder and miraculous reconciliation. The text does not say so explicitly, but I think it is clear: this is God’s work. Yes, God planned to save Israel from famine. But God also planned to save the family, to mend what was broken.
This is God’s work in the world. Jewish theologians have a term for it: they call it tikkun olan—the healing of creation. Wherever we see this healing, this reconciliation, this binding up of hearts broken and betrayed, we see God at work. And it is to this that we are called: to join God in that work.
J. K. Rowling has a challenging task ahead of her as she is writing the final book of the Harry Potter series. At the heart of the saga is a struggle between good and evil. Professor Dumbledore, the principal of the Hogwarts School, has told Harry Potter that he will be able to do battle with evil and prevail because he knows the secret: he knows about friendship and he knows how to love. The question Rowling must answer as she writes is, will love prevail? Will what is broken be mended? This is a human story, so it’s hard to say. As believers, we know what God’s story is. We know that God’s work is the mending of creation, binding up the brokenhearted, creating one new family in place of two. And the proof of this is the love of God in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.