Joseph and His Brothers (Proper 15A; Genesis 45:1-15; August 17, 2014)

Joseph and His Brothers

Proper 15A
Genesis 45:1-15
August 17, 2014

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, IA

It was one of those funerals that every pastor dreads.  It was bad enough that the deceased was only seventeen.  Death is never easy even when children are burying parents in their old age.  There is something perverse about parents burying their children.  In the days before good obstetric care it wasn’t at all unusual to lose children at birth, in infancy or earlier childhood.  But Joseph was no longer a child—he was seventeen and past those dangers.  But not past all dangers, apparently.

This was a “blended” family.  This was common.  It was even usual that Jacob had two wives, Leah and Rachel.  They and their respective children—eleven sons and one daughter—were gathered together and it was clear that they had blended in the same way that oil and water don’t.  Joseph was the son of Rachel.  Rachel was clear deeply stricken.  Leah could barely suppress a smirk, as if a long score had been at least partly settled.  There was even something strange about the names—the youngest son was Benjamin, which means “son of the right hand.”  His name implied that he was a favorite and would be Jacob’s principal heir, even though that place should have been occupied by Rueben, Jacob’s first-born.

There was something else, too.  The story about how Joseph had died didn’t really hold together.  There was only a coat covered with blood and a vague story about Joseph having been killed by a wild animal.  When the brothers who claimed to have discovered the coat told the story they averted their eyes and Rueben looked like he was biting back an angry rebuttal.  It all looked very suspicious.

The family in fact had a culture of rivalry and treachery.  Leah and Rachel, Jacob’s two wives, were sisters.  Jacob fell in love with Rachel, not Leah, and arranged with their father Laban to marry her.  Laban wasn’t about to marry off the younger of the two sisters and get stuck with the older who had, as Jane Austen might have put it, “lost her bloom.”  So he made sure that the wedding reception did not lack for wine and substituted Leah for Rachel in the honeymoon suite.  Jacob figured it out in the morning, but done was done, so Jacob, if he wanted Rachel, would have to take Leah, too.

This was no bargain for Leah who for Jacob doubtless always represented Laban’s treachery.  It was for this reason, says our text, that God favored her with sons—four of them in rapid succession: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah.  Rachel, Jacob’s favorite or not, lost status with every birth.  So she offered her slave Bilhah as a surrogate.  Bilhah bore Dan and Naphtali.  Not be outdone, Leah substituted her own slave, Zilpah, who bore two more sons, Gad and Ashar.  Leah herself wasn’t finished, though, and gave birth to two more sons—Issachar and Zebulun—and a daughter, Dinah.  Finally, Rachel had two sons of her own body, Joseph and Benjamin.

The children inherited Leah and Rachel’s rivalry.  Jacob had waited a lifetime for Joseph’s birth.  By the time it happened it was a surprise.  Like a lot of long-awaited and unexpected children, Joseph was spoiled.  In fact, by the time he was a teenager he was, well, let’s be honest, a jerk.  While his brothers were out tending their flocks, putting up with the heat and the danger, Joseph was preening himself back at the tents.  Joseph gave him a special coat.  The Hebrew isn’t very clear.  It might have been a coat with long sleeves or it might have been, as traditionally understood, a coat of many colors.  In any event, while Reuben, Simeon and the others were wearing clothes from Wal-Mart, Joseph was strutting around in his coat from Hart Schaffner Marx.

Joseph was a dreamer, but it seemed that his dreams were always about himself.  He was never slow to tell these dreams to his brothers.  He had a dream in which all of the brothers were binding sheaves at harvest time.  Joseph’s sheaf stood upright and the sheaves of his brothers bowed down to his.  In another dream he claimed that the sun and moon and eleven stars came to bow down to him.  He loved to rub his brothers’ noses in this stuff.

Like I say, he was jerk.  With the possible exception of Benjamin, his brothers hated him.  So when they were out in countryside with the sheep and goats and saw him walking toward them, wearing his Hart Schaffner Marx coat, they decided to be done with him.  “Let’s kill him and throw him into a pit,” they said.  Reuben resisted this idea, “Let’s not kill him; let’s just throw him into a pit.”  This may not have been inspired by any mercy or love for Joseph.  The particular pit had no water in it.  Left alone, perhaps Joseph would have died of thirst, but the brothers would not have actively killed him.  So perhaps Reuben was simply being fastidious.

Joseph, stripped of his coat, was in the pit.  Was he weeping, was he crying for mercy, was he begging?  We don’t know.  We know that, whatever he was doing, it didn’t prevent his brothers from sitting down and having lunch.

Now it happened that a caravan was passing by, so Judah got the bright idea of selling Joseph into slavery.  They would get some money.  The caravan would take care of disposing of their jerk of a brother.  And so the other brothers agreed.  They killed a goat and dipped the Hart Schaffner Marx coat into it.  They concocted their cover story and they went home.

Sometimes grief brings out the best in us and sometimes it brings out the worst.  Families in grief tend to show their fault lines.  The brothers may have been rid of Joseph, but if they thought their stars would rise in Jacob’s eyes, they were sadly mistaken.  If it was hard to compete with Joseph while he was alive, when he was dead it was impossible.   Jacob’s other sons receded into the mist of Jacob's grief and his world became flat and gray.

In the meantime, Joseph’s life had taken an amazing turn.  His dreams it turned out were true glimpses into the world’s unfolding reality.  That is, they foretold events.  This was a useful skill.  His Egyptian owner, Potiphar, recognized Joseph’s managerial abilities and put him in charge of his household.  That is, until the whole thing with Potiphar’s wife.  The text says that she attempted to seduce him and when he refused her advances she accused him of attempted rape.  I won’t pretend to know what happened in this classic case of “he said, she said.” Potiphar threw him into prison where his dreaming continued.  He foresaw the release and return of honor to Pharaoh’s cup-bearer and the execution of Pharaoh’s chief baker,both fellow prisoners.

When Pharaoh himself had dreams that baffled him, his cup-bearer remembered Joseph the dreamer.  Joseph interpreted Pharaoh’s dreams—there would be a great famine all through the region.  Careful planning would prevent the destruction of the kingdom.  Pharaoh wisely put Joseph in charge of everything to store surplus grain and prepare for the lean years to come.

The famine wasn’t confined to Egypt.  Palestine, too, was stricken and Jacob’s family as well.  So Jacob sent all of his sons, all except Benjamin, down to Egypt to buy grain, so that his family could eat and live.

Joseph was receiving the petitioners come from all over the region to buy grain from Pharaoh when whom should he see in line but his brothers.  There they were, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, and Zebulun, the very ones who had thrown him into the pit and sold him into slavery.  He was the last person they would have expected to see and so, naturally, they didn’t see him.  And, too, he spoke through an interpreter.  But he recognized them and he saw his chance. 

He had them in his power and he intended to make them squirm, to make them pay for the way that they had treated him. 

“Who are you?  Where do you come from?  Prove that you aren’t spies!”  They tried to offer an account of themselves, that they were twelve brothers.The youngest had stayed behind One of them was, in their words, “no more.”

“Well, then, to prove that you are who you say you are, all but one of you will stay in prison until the one brings the last son.” And he had them arrested and let them stew in jail for three days.  Then he summoned them and told them that only one need remain as hostage—the others must go and return with the youngest son.

The brothers conferred among themselves.  “We had this coming,” said Reuben. “Didn’t I warn you not to harm Joseph?  You wouldn’t listen and now we have to pay the price.”  Joseph picked Simeon as the hostage and let the others go, filling their bags with grain and placing each brother’s money back in their sack.

When the brothers discovered the money they were terrified: somehow their payment had not been made and they were therefore thieves.  How could they return to recover Simeon with this hanging over their heads? 

Jacob was freshly grieved—in effect he had lost another son, for there was no way he would risk Benjamin, the only other son of his favorite wife, the “son of his right hand.”  Going back to Egypt was out of the question.

Except that the famine continued and it was return to Egypt or lose all of his sons and their families as well. So the nine brothers and Benjamin took the original money and more besides and made their way down to Egypt once again to face the wrath of Pharaoh’s governor.

In front of Joseph they tried to explain about the money.  Joseph brushed their excuses aside, “Do not be afraid.  God must have put it there.”  And Joseph had Simeon brought out to them.  Joseph asked about his father and had Benjamin introduced to him. 

Now all this time Joseph’s charade was getting harder and harder to maintain. But maintain it he did.  He had the brothers’ sacks filled and the money replaced.  He had his own silver cup placed in Benjamin’s sack.  All this, of course, was unknown to his brothers.   He sent them on their way but sent his own steward to accuse them of stealing his silver cup.

When the steward caught up with the caravan, he made the accusation.  The brothers answered that, if the cup were found among them, the possessor of it would become Joseph’s slave.  Sure enough, it was Benjamin’s sack that held the cup.  The brothers were beside themselves: this would certainly kill their father with grief.

They went back once again to Joseph and Judah offered himself and his brothers as Joseph’s slaves.  Joseph said, “No. I am a fair man.  Only the thief will suffer.  The rest of you may go.”

Then Judah told the story of his father’s loss and his own promise to bear the guilt if he failed to come home without Benjamin.  Judah offered himself in Benjamin’s place.  Judah who had sold his own brother into slavery offered to buy his brother out of slavery with his own freedom.

In that moment something happened to Joseph.  He had devised a plot line for himself and his brothers, a plot line of sweet revenge,but he could no longer play the role that he had assigned for himself.  It was clear that, whoever his brothers had been years before, they were no longer those people.  And he was not who he had been either.  His heart, bound in iron to the past and all its resentments, could no longer contain the man that he had become.So his heart was broken open.

“I am Joseph, your brother!” he cried.  “Is it really true that my father is still alive?”  His brothers were terrified into silence, but Joseph’s turn was complete. “God’s hand has been in all of this—how else would I have been in a position to save the lives of all of our family?  Do not trouble yourself with the guilt that you have incurred.  Instead, go quickly and bring my father and all your family, for this famine has just begun.”

So it was that these brothers, once bitter enemies, were reconciled.  Joseph’s dreams came true, but not in ways that any of them could have imagined. 

This is the story that you and I have fallen into, my brothers and sisters.  We can, none of us, see the outcome of what we do, nor the outcome of what others may do to us.  What others intend for evil may turn to good.  Such is the power of God’s grace.  That is what the cross tells us.

Joseph burdened his brothers with gifts—his brother Benjamin most of all—and sent wagons to bring their families.  He sent them back to Palestine, back to their father.  Jacob could not believe his ears.  Joseph alive?  Joseph the governor of Egypt?  All that he had lost had been restored and more, if the brothers’ story could be believed.  “But when they told him all the words of Joseph that he had said to them, and when he saw the wagons that Joseph had sent to carry him, the spirit of their father Jacob revived.  Israel said, ‘Enough! My son Joseph is still alive.  I must go and see him before I die.’” And that’s what he did.

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