Fourth Presbyterian Church: A Light in the City

Sunday, July 10, 2022 | 4:00 p.m.

Sermon

Nanette Sawyer
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 40:1–11
Genesis 37:1–4, 12–28

This is quite the story of family dysfunction, isn’t it? Betrayal, jealousy, arrogance, favoritism, lying, trickery.

Our scripture selection skips a few verses, but they’re so important to the story I have to tell you what they say. The brothers call Joseph “the big dreamer.” It’s because Joseph had two dreams that he told his brothers and his father about. In the first dream, he and his brothers were working in the fields binding sheaves of wheat. Joseph’s sheaf of wheat stood up tall, and the sheaves of wheat of his brothers circled around his and bowed down to his.

Then Joseph dreamed that the sun and moon and eleven stars were all bowing down to him. Now he happened to have eleven brothers! His father scolded him, saying, “What kind of dreams have you dreamed? Am I and your mother and your brothers supposed to come and bow down to the ground in front of you?” (Genesis 37:10 CEB). So, these dreams made Joseph’s brothers hate him even more.

Everyone contributed to the brokenness in this family. Even Joseph. What was going on for him when he told his dreams to his brothers and father? Could he have been naïve in repeating these dreams to his brothers and father? If he was being naïve, it might have had a tone like this: “Hey, I had this really cool dream! Everybody was bowing down to me. The wheat in the field and the sun, moon, and stars all bowed down to me!”

Since he ws the next-to-youngest of thirteen children (because we have to remember that, in addition to eleven brothers, he did have one sister, Dinah), I could imagine him getting excited about feeling special. I could imagine it as naivete if this story had happened when he was seven or eight maybe. But here he is, seventeen years old, and his father, who favored him, scolded him for the way he was telling these dreams. Maybe it was done in a tone that was arrogant or even taunting his brothers.

The father, Jacob, also called Israel, he made his mistakes, too. He fostered mistrust and competitiveness among his sons when he singled Joseph out for an extravagant gift of an ornamented coat and then set Joseph up as a kind of spy on his behalf. Joseph reported “unflattering things” about his brothers who were the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, and then Jacob sent Joseph to “find out” and “report back” what was happening with his brothers and the flocks. It all contributes to the mistrust, the animosity, the hatred even, between the brothers.

And, of course, the brothers let evil grip their hearts. Even Reuben. I want to give Reuben, the oldest brother, one point for trying to save Joseph’s life by suggesting they throw him into a dry desert cistern, a pit, instead of killing him outright. But that’s only a D+ in the scheme of things.

Reuben planned to come back and rescue Joseph later, but he never really challenged the actual idea of killing him. He was really saying to the brothers, let’s let him die a slow death in which we are passively responsible, rather than actively killing him. Reuben still fails the test of righteousness, but I give him a D+ instead of an F because he weakly tried something. Not good enough, really.

The brothers are responsible as a group. The narrator doesn’t single out anyone for the idea of killing Joseph. The story says, “The brothers said to each other . . . let’s kill him” (Genesis 37:20). After Joseph is in the pit for a while, Judah is the one who says, “Let’s not harm him, because he’s our brother; he’s family,” but “let’s sell him”! (Genesis 37:27), which presents a pretty twisted understanding of what it means to harm or not harm someone! Let’s sell him into slavery!

No one is innocent in this story. No one is immune from making mistakes, terrible decisions with horrible consequences.

This is a shocking story and one that we Christians tell in part. The part that’s included in the lectionary, our regular cycle of readings over a three-year period, these parts that we repeat most often carry an important message of hope and survival. Joseph is sold into slavery in Egypt. That’s the part we heard today. Next, if we keep reading, Joseph, by using his gifts of dream interpretation, rises to be a trusted advisor to the pharoah. He rises out of slavery. He guides Egypt to save up grain during times of plenty, so that when there is extensive famine, the pharoah’s storehouses are full and Joseph is able to save many people, including his family.

In that part of the story, Joseph’s brothers come to Egypt to ask for help during the famine. At first they don’t recognize Joseph, who is a respected and powerful leader. Over time, Joseph forgives his brothers, and they all move to Egypt along with their father, Jacob, and the extended family.

It's uplifting in that there is reconciliation and salvation. People do not starve to death. The family is reunited. There’s much weeping for joy. And for a while the Israelites live in peace and prosperity in Egypt.

It’s uplifting because Joseph overcame his meager beginnings as a young, poor shepherd, hated by his brothers, to become a respected leader. This is beautiful and inspiring and important. We can use that part of the story for encouragement and to give us hope about possibilities. But it’s not the whole story, and it’s not the end of the story.

The meaning and the implications of any story change depending on when you begin and end it. Our understandings of the characters in a story change depending on how far back we look and how far into the future we look. This story happens inside a longer history.

Before Jacob’s sons deceived him about his youngest son, Joseph, Jacob also deceived his elderly father and his brother Esau. Remember, Jacob’s twin brother was the elder brother, born before Jacob. Yet Jacob tricked his brother Esau into forfeiting his birthright as the eldest. This involved some red stew, for those of you who remember this story.

Then Jacob tricked his father, who was old and couldn’t see, into thinking that Jacob was Esau, so that his father, Isaac, gave him the blessing that Isaac wanted to give to Esau, his eldest son.

Betrayal, trickery, deceit, family dysfunction.

Later, Jacob’s father-in-law, Laban, tricked Jacob into marrying Leah, the older sister of Rachel, when Rachel was the one Jacob wanted. Jacob had to then work an additional seven years for Laban in order to be able to marry Rachel also.

Betrayal, trickery, deceit, family dysfunction.

In this extended history of human failure, injustice, and recovery, we hear this story of Joseph’s brothers selling him into slavery. And we hear of Joseph’s rise to power. We hear how he saved his family and how he saved the Egyptian people. These are great things, inspirational things, but that’s not the whole story.

Let’s skip ahead ten chapters in the book of Genesis to chapter 47. Listen:

“Now there was no food in all the land, for the famine was very severe. The land of Egypt and the land of Canaan languished because of the famine. Joseph collected all the money to be found in the land of Egypt and in the land of Canaan in exchange for the grain that they bought, and Joseph brought the money into Pharaoh’s house” (Genesis 47:13–14 CEB).

He didn’t just give the grain to the people on the brink of starvation; he sold it. When the people’s money ran out and they couldn’t buy any more grain from Pharaoh, they had to give all their livestock to Pharaoh. And when their livestock was gone, they only had their land and themselves.

“So Joseph bought all the land of Egypt for Pharaoh. All the Egyptians sold their fields, because the famine was severe upon them, and the land became Pharaoh’s. As for the people, he made slaves of them from one end of Egypt to the other” (Genesis 47:20–21 NRSV).

The people “sold” their fields, meaning, in exchange for food, they gave their land to Pharaoh. And Joseph made them slaves. Joseph had power, and this was how he used it. His actions benefitted him, Pharaoh, and his family. Pharaoh told Joseph, “Settle your father and your brothers in the best part of the land” (Genesis 47:6).

The Egyptian people, as a people, did live. They did not starve. And that’s good.

But the story doesn’t end there, either. The time came, some years later, when “a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph” (Exodus 1:8). And now we are in the book of Exodus, when all of Joseph’s people, the Israelites, become slaves. But that’s not the end of the story.

Moses rises up and brings the Israelites out of slavery and into the wilderness for forty years of wandering and seeking the promised land. And that’s not the end of the story. We’ve never come to the end of the story. The story continues today.

History is long. One story leads to another. And somehow they are connected. Actions have consequences, intended and unintended. Sometimes evil leads to more evil, and sometimes people resist and overcome their trials and adversity. In the long arc of history, there is resilience and resistance and overcoming.

Goodness can come after evil. After Joseph rose up, he forgave his brothers. He even saved them from starvation and gave them a home. This goodness doesn’t make the evil that led to him being sold into slavery into a good thing—no. What his brothers did to him was evil, through and through. The fact that God was with Joseph and that Joseph was able to overcome the betrayal of his brothers can never justify or explain away the evil actions that the brothers took. Betrayal is betrayal. And despite Judah’s words about not harming their brother Joseph, they did harm him. They greatly harmed him. But God helped him.

Goodness can come after evil—Joseph rose out of slavery. And evil can come after goodness—Joseph enslaved a nation and consolidated their wealth in the coffers of one powerful, autocratic man who imprisoned and killed people on his whim.

History marches on; story follows story. And we find ourselves faced with the question, What will our story be? When faced with adversity, what role will we play in redeeming this moment? What role will our families play, or our churches?

This is our moment in the long story of history. And our story will resonate into the future.

Our heroes, our ancestors, are not and were never perfect. Joseph was not perfect, and his brothers were not perfect. Jacob was not perfect, and his ancestors, Isaac and Abraham, were not perfect. Our matriarchs, Rachel, Rebecca, and Sarah, were not perfect. They made mistakes, but redemption happened. Healing and forgiveness happened. Liberation happened.

These are our biblical ancestors. And we also have our ancestors in this country—those who committed great evils and those who fought for justice and liberation. Those who resisted evil and rose up out of their limiting circumstances and took actions that saved the lives of people, just as Joseph did.

We, too, have to play our role. We have to grow and continue to grow. We can be like Joseph, who rose out of slavery and forgave his brothers. We can be like Joseph and outgrow our weaknesses, like arrogance or shame. We can be like Joseph and use our power to save people from starving.

But we have to watch ourselves closely and consider the consequences of our actions and how they affect everyone. We have to watch for that seduction of power or the paralysis of fear that might tempt us to care for “our own” families or “our own church” but not care for the well-being of society. How will we use our resources, our finances, our influence, our power?

Be like Joseph, but don’t be like Joseph!

We may be tempted, like Joseph was, to take actions that give the best land to our people and put others into servitude and poverty. Don’t be like Joseph.

Don’t be like his brother Judah, who said, “Let’s not harm him. . . . Let’s sell him into servitude”!

The story won’t end with us. But in the long story of history, and as we build our future, we just have to do the next right thing.

And maybe it can help us to remember that despite the deepest betrayal, the deepest disappointment, and the disabling paralysis of fear, there is a way through and out of this part of the story and into the next part of the story. We don’t have to do it perfectly; we just have to do the next right thing.

We have to envision the change we want. Sometimes our actions will have consequences we didn’t anticipate. We will probably need to make adjustments and shift strategies. We’ll need to keep expanding our understanding, so that we are working for the benefit of the whole and not just ourselves. We’ll have to lean on each other and learn from each other. We don’t have to solve it all. We just have to play our part. We just have to do the next right thing.

God is here. God will help us. We have to lean on God and lift each other up. We just have to do the next right thing. Amen.