[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNf6c-EcwvM]
This week, as much as I’m tempted to talk about Jesus calling a women with a demon possessed kid a dog, we’re going to talk about something else. Something that I had never noticed is almost completely skipped over in our Lectionary. Our Lectionary is a three year cycle of readings, which means in three years, we’ll be reading the same things here in church we did today. The Lectionary covers a lot of the bible, but not all of t and there’s a big gap here that I want to cover today because it never gets filled in, so today isn’t going to be a sermon as much as a story, though there are many many sermons that could be born of this story.
Last week, we heard a reading from Genesis 37, the beginning of the story of Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his brothers. Today, we skipped ahead 8 chapters and heard the ending of that story. There’s a whole lot that goes on in those 8 chapters. In fact, there was some that we even skipped at the beginning.
Joseph is the son of Jacob and Rachel. His father is Jacob, who was the son of Isaac and grandson of Abraham. You may remember a few weeks ago, we talked about Abraham almost sacrificing Isaac. Anyway, Joseph is Jacob’s 11th son, but his first with his favorite wife, Rachel. Jacob has a complicated history of having kids between his two wives and their slaves.
So Joseph is Jacob’s favorite son. He makes for him a special robe with long sleeves, not one made for “working” in. Instead, Joseph watches his brothers and lets his father know when they mess up in their work… basically he’s a snitch, and his brothers begin to hate him. To make matters worse, one day Joseph has a dream:
Joseph had a dream. When he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. He said, “Listen to this dream I had. We were all out in the field gathering bundles of wheat. All of a sudden my bundle stood straight up and your bundles circled around it and bowed down to mine.”
His brothers said, “So! You’re going to rule us? You’re going to boss us around?” And they hated him more than ever because of his dreams and the way he talked.
He had another dream and told this one also to his brothers: “I dreamed another dream—the sun and moon and eleven stars bowed down to me!”
When he told it to his father and brothers, his father reprimanded him: “What’s with all this dreaming? Am I and your mother and your brothers all supposed to bow down to you?” Now his brothers were really jealous; but his father brooded over the whole business.
This brings us to last week where his brothers are upset with him and throw him into a pit and then eventually sell him to some slave traders. These slave traders sold him to a man named Potiphar, who was the manager of the household affairs to the Pharaoh in Egypt.
[At this point of the story, you know how sometimes in a TV show they have this great cliffhanger, and you can’t wait to see what happens next but then the next week they focus the show on some secondary character and don’t say anything at all about the big thing that’s just happened? Well, that’s what happens here in Chapter 38. There is this really weird story about Judah, Joseph’s brother and his daughter in law. It’s weird. I wish they had included it in the lectionary because it would be fun to preach on, but I can also see why they left it out. You’ll have to read it for yourself if you want to hear it, but trust me, you’ll be like “what???”]
So, for a while, things go pretty good with Joseph under Potiphar. In fact, things go very well. Potiphar recognizes that God is with Joseph and that everything he did, he did very well. Eventually he makes Joseph his personal aide. The bible says that “From that moment on, God blessed the home of the Egyptian—all because of Joseph. The blessing of God spread over everything he owned, at home and in the fields, and all Potiphar had to concern himself with was eating three meals a day.”
UNTIL – and you knew that was coming, right?
Until, Potiphar’s wife begins to take notice of Joseph. She comes up to him one day, and being the master of subtlety that she is, says to him “Sleep with me”.
Joseph resists her advances, and tells her “Look, with me here, my master doesn’t give a second thought to anything that goes on here—he’s put me in charge of everything he owns. He treats me as an equal. The only thing he hasn’t turned over to me is you. You’re his wife, after all! How could I violate his trust and sin against God?”
But day after day, she keeps bugging him and he keeps refusing. Finally, one day she catches him alone and she grabs his cloak and begs him again to sleep with her. He tries to get away from her and she pulls his cloak off him while he’s getting away. So, she gets mad and starts yelling for help and accuses Joseph of trying to rape her. When Potiphar finds out about this supposed betrayal, he gets furious and has Joseph thrown into prison.
Yet, even in prison, he finds favor with the head jailor and before long, he’s put in charge of all the prisoners – the head prisoner, I guess.
Some time later, two new prisoners come down to the jail. One of them is the Pharoah’s cupbearer and the other is the royal baker. Joseph was assigned to these two prisoners and after some time, these two guys both have strange dreams on the same night. They tell Joseph about their dreams and God tells Joseph what the dreams mean. In three days, the cupbearer was going to be set free and the baker was going to be executed. Joseph tells the cupbearer to remember him when he’s freed and to put in a good word for him to the Pharaoh, but three days later, it happens just as Joseph predicted and the cupbearer goes free and pretty much forgets about Joseph.
“Two years passed and Pharaoh had a dream: He was standing by the Nile River.
Seven cows came up out of the Nile, all shimmering with health, and grazed on the marsh grass. Then seven other cows, all skin and bones, came up out of the river after them and stood by them on the bank of the Nile. The skinny cows ate the seven healthy cows. Then Pharaoh woke up.
5-7 He went back to sleep and dreamed a second time: Seven ears of grain, full-bodied and lush, grew out of a single stalk. Then seven more ears grew up, but these were thin and dried out by the east wind. The thin ears swallowed up the full, healthy ears. Then Pharaoh woke up—another dream.
8 When morning came, he was upset. He sent for all the magicians and sages of Egypt. Pharaoh told them his dreams, but they couldn’t interpret them to him.”
Finally, the cupbearer remembers Joseph and suggests that he might be able to interpret the dreams, so Pharaoh has Joseph brought up to him. Joseph tells him that both dreams mean the same thing. “God is letting Pharaoh in on what he is going to do. Seven years of plenty are on their way throughout Egypt. But on their heels will come seven years of famine, leaving no trace of the Egyptian plenty. As the country is emptied by famine, there won’t be even a scrap left of the previous plenty—the famine will be total. The fact that Pharaoh dreamed the same dream twice emphasizes God’s determination to do this and do it soon.”
Joseph tells Pharaoh that what they need to do is save as much food as they can in the next 7 years so that they will have food to last the 7 after that. Pharaoh is so impressed with Joseph and, knowing his history, ends up putting Joseph in charge of all the good storage in Egypt and made him second in command of Egypt – second only to himself.
So, for seven years, Joseph is the big guy in Egypt, overseeing food storage and then the famine hits. After a while, people are coming from all around to buy food from them.
One group of people that come to him looking to buy food turns out to be his brothers. The brothers that threw him into a hole and sold him into slavery. Its been some twenty years since then and they don’t recognize Joseph, who is most likely clean shaven and dressed as an Egyptian.
So, what does he do? He throws them in jail! He finds out that he has another brother by his mother, named Benjamin – this story, by the way, is the story that we picked our son Benjamin’s name out of – out of all Jacob’s kids, Benjamin was born last and much younger than the rest of the kids, much like our little clan.
Joseph lets them out of prison, all but one, and tells them to go back to their home and to bring Benjamin to him because he wants to meet him. He sends them with grain and their money. When they get back, Jacob is afraid to send Benjamin (his new favorite) so they don’t go back until they’re out of food again.
When they finally go back, they bring Benjamin with them and Joseph has a big feast for them, and there’s a big crazy thing that happens that I’m going to gloss over for time’s sake here, but the end result of it is that Joseph sets them up to look like thieves and tries to take Benjamin as a slave, but Judah pleads for Benjamin’s life and offers himself in place of Ben, telling Joseph that their father had already lost one son long ago and if he lost Benjamin he’d die from grief.
At this point, Joseph breaks down and confesses that he is their long lost brother, telling them “ “I am Joseph your brother whom you sold into Egypt. But don’t feel badly, don’t blame yourselves for selling me. God was behind it. God sent me here ahead of you to save lives. There has been a famine in the land now for two years; the famine will continue for five more years—neither plowing nor harvesting. God sent me on ahead to pave the way and make sure there was a remnant in the land, to save your lives in an amazing act of deliverance. So you see, it wasn’t you who sent me here but God.”
He then sends them back to get their father Jacob, who is also named Israel and the whole family moves to Egypt, where they settle down and have lots of kids – the bible says “But the children of Israel kept on reproducing. They were very prolific—a population explosion in their own right—and the land was filled with them.” Jacob, or Israels, 12 kids are the tops of what will become the 12 Tribes of Israel, and they lived in Egypt for 400 years, though not happily for long, as we will see next week.
In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Comments