Proper 14
Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28; Psalm 105, 1-6, 16-22, 45b or 1 Kings
19:9-18; Psalm 85:8-13; Romans 10:5-15; Matthew 14:22-33
Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28;
Textually, note that there
may be at least two (and maybe three) strands of the same story woven together.
Examples:
- Jacob and
- Both the Ishmaelites and the
Midianites seem to have taken Joseph away (v. 28)
- Joseph has two very similar
dreams (vv. 6–7 and 9)
- the similarity of the
compassionate actions of Reuben and Judah (vv. 21–2 and 26–7)
From the NISB on the three
strands:
The
account is introduced by the Priestly writer (vv. 1-2), who employs the formula
‘This is the story of the family of Jacob’ (Lit., ‘These are the generations
[descendants] of Jacob’), a formula used to mark off new periods in the
ancestral history (e.g., 2:4a; 5:1). The narrative is made up of traditions
from both the Yahwist and the Elohist.
The
traditions woven together here provide three explanations for the conflict
between Joseph and his brothers:
(1)
Joseph’s negative comments bout his brothers to his father (v. 2, P);
(2) Jacob’s favoritism toward Joseph, symbolized by Jacob’s giving him
the special robe (vv. 3-4, J); and
(3) Joseph’s dreams about his superiority over his parents and brothers
(vv. 5-11, E).
Sermon Points
If
I were to preach on this passage, there are (at least) two directions I would
go in.
One: the favorite child.
Joseph was hated, or at
least disliked by his brothers, and that was the source of a lot of the
narrative’s action and conflict. Reasons why Joseph’s Brothers didn’t like him:
- His father openly preferred him. Joseph was
Jacob’s favorite. “Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children”
(v. 3).
- He was a tattle tale. Evidently he told Jacob
that some of the sons of Milpah and Zilpah who were supposed to be working
in the fields were actually slacking their duties. He the youngest of the
boys, and was their “helper” and he “brought a bad report of them to their
father.”
- Jacob gave Joseph a coat that was very
expensive and of fine cloth (Not actually a “coat of many colors” but the
idea was the same).
- Joseph had dreams of all of his older brothers
bowing down and following him. When he told them his dreams that did not
(to put it mildly) endear him to them more (v. 5).
Why was Joseph the favored child? It’s not
important to the story, but it is an interesting question to raise in your introduction,
and was probably because he (and later Benjamin) was born to Rachel, who was
the only woman of the four he bore children with, whom he really loved.
I think it would be helpful to list for your
listeners the four reasons why his brothers hated him. And then link them to possible
experiences they might have had. Say “How many of you can identify with being
the favorite child? Were you the youngest and the cutest, were you the oldest
and your father liked doing Boy Scout things with you and left the others behind?
Or were you one of those left behind? Were you jealous of the favorite one?”
This story has a little bit for everybody in it. Making the list personal will
help people identify with the story.
Two: the Providence of God as an
invisible undercurrent.
An interesting thing to note
is how little God shows in this story. The reason (according to Brueggemann[1]) is that God is directing
the action from the underground, unbeknownst to the actors above, God is present,
but below all the time. The writer of this story knows this and surely
intentionally leaves out God until way far into the action. In the passage next
week, Joseph says God had been behind the scenes pushing the actors in all that
they had done.
Genesis 45:5-8
“And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you
sold me here; for God sent me before you
to preserve life. 6 For the famine has been in the land these
two years; and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing
nor harvest. 7 God sent me
before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you
many survivors. 8 So it
was not you who sent me here, but God; he has made me a father to Pharaoh,
and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt
Genesis 50:20
20 Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people,
as he is doing today.
The meaning of Providence, “God’s will.”
It’s always something of a balancing act between
those who believe that God controls everything (predestination) and those who
believe God does nothing (“God has no hands but our hands”). Truth is, God is a
little bit of both. I believe that God does not so much control us as to work
out alternative plans for us. We have the free will to mess the plans up, but
God will work out new ones right after that. God is in the events of the day
working to draw the best, healthiest conclusion out of our (sometimes sloppy,
chaotic, unwise, selfish) actions. But God always gives us the free will to say
yes or no to those plans. God does not cause the brokenness; God causes the
healing after it happens. God is the power that draws all things together into
one as healing, reconciling.
Beginnings of a possible sermon
narrative…
Since we ended the story last
week, a lot of things have happened. None of which am I going to go into today.
Go and read it yourself. But Jacob (now usually known as “Israel”) has finally settled
in Bethel, the land of promise, which is about half way up the coast in what
will later be known as the kingdom of Israel.
It is the story of his
next-to-the-youngest child, Joseph. Joseph is seventeen by the time this story
begins, but I get the sense that his younger brother, Benjamin, had just been
born because the story says that Joseph was Jacob’s favorite son because he was
his youngest. Their mother, Rachel, by the way, died tragically in child birth
having Benjamin.
This favoritism of Jacob
toward Joseph is the crux of the story. And it was made worse by both of them. List
the four reasons why Joseph’s brothers hated him: The coat (perhaps with royal
connotations [see 2 Sam 13:18]), the tattle tale, the dreams. “Dreams in that
world were usually understood to be externally and divinely generated (cf. Jer
23:25-26), not the result of an interior psychological process. Yet the
brothers interpret Joseph’s dreams as if they are the product of Joseph’s own
arrogance rather than a divine word about destiny.”[2]
It’s interesting that in the
second dream, about all of the stars bowing down before him, even his father is
incensed, but unlike the brothers, instead of just getting angry, he also “kept
the matter in his mind.” In other words, he remembered it, wondering if it
might not someday become true.
After the incident with the
new coat, the brothers hated Joseph so much that they refused to greet him with
“shalom” (v. 4) an important statement implying that they refused to live in “peace”
with him.
This jealousy comes to a
head in v. 12 when Jacob is sent by his father to check on the how the other
brothers are doing as shepherds in the fields. He sends him up to Shechem. “Go
now, see if it is well with your brothers and with the flock; and bring word
back to me.” The story doesn’t say how far that was, but it’s about 20 miles
north of there. He gets lost and asks directions, and hears that they have
wandered further up towards a town called Dothan Dothan
is a little stopping spot along the trade routes from north of Canaan down to Egypt
When they see him coming
from off in the distance and they probably know that he’s going to give a bad
report on them to their father when he gets back. So one of them says, “Here
comes that guy who had the dreams. Let’s kill him and throw him in one of those
pits.” Now, the nrsv says “pit”
but it was probably a cistern (see more on that in the notes below). They had
several throughout the desert areas where water could be gathered up and the
flocks could be fed from them. And it made a good place if you wanted to kill an
unwanted brother and hide the body.
But Reuben—whom you may
recall was the oldest of the brothers—says, No, let’s not kill him. Let’s just
throw him into the cistern and let him die there, with the secret thought that
he might sneak back later and haul Joseph out and save him. So they do that,
but it’s interesting that when they grab him they first carefully take off his
robe. That hated item that symbolizes both his status in the family and their
distaste for him. Then they find one of the cisterns without any water in it
and throw him into it.
It’s interesting about the coat.
It’s not the central theme of the story, but it is the central symbol of their hatred.
It’s funny how hatred will cause you to do certain things. They obsessed on
that one symbol. If you have the time in your retelling of this tale, you might
give a brief example of a person you know who obsessed on something like Joseph’s
coat to their own detriment.
Now Reuben’s idea was to get
Joseph down into the pit and then come back for him later and rescue him, but
it doesn’t work out that way. While the brothers were eating lunch, a caravan
of Ishmaelites comes by and another brother, Judah, says, “Hey, why don’t we
sell Joseph to these guys? That way we can get rid of him, but not have his
blood on our hands.” The others agree and they sell Joseph to the Ishmaelites for
forty pieces of silver (the going amount for slaves in those days, and
interestingly, the same amount that Judas sells Jesus for many years later),
and they haul poor Joseph off to Egypt
Then, to cover their steps,
they take Joseph’s robe and dip it in the blood of a goat and take it back to
their father saying that some horrible big animal must have eaten poor Joseph.
What a sad thing!
Jacob, of course, is
distraught. He tears his clothing and mourns and dresses in sack cloth and says
he will go to his death mourning his poor son, Joseph. “The brothers sought to
displace Joseph in their father’s affections, but ironically Joseph will retain
a preeminent place in his father’s love even in death.”[3] And that’s where the story
ends. Jacob is mourning, but we, the readers, know that Joseph is still alive,
but has been sold as a slave down in Egypt
Next week we will pick it up
again when Joseph becomes a powerful leader in the Egyptian government and the
brothers come down to him begging for food during a famine, but for now, let’s
look at this story. What does it mean?
First, the favoritism and
sibling rivalry. Nobody wears a white hat in the story. How many of you are Joseph
in this story (pride)? How many are the brothers (jealousy)? How many are the
father (favoritism)?
Second, mention the fact that
God is not mentioned anywhere in this story. But that doesn’t mean that God is
not present. When they finally get together later in Egypt
There are two ways of
viewing God in the world. One is to say that God does everything (God’s plan, “What
does God have for me?” “Why did God take my father from me?”). The most extreme
version of this is Predestination, which says that we have no free will
whatsoever. I don’t believe that. At the other end of the pole is God as the
first mover, the First Cause. Here God acted in creation, but never again. God
got the ball rolling down the hill and then sat back and watched us to see how
it turned out. That’s a little much.
“[T]his dialectic: either
divine determinism, where God fully controls events, or deism, where God must
simply make do with whatever human action turns up and acts with no independent
initiative. Neither of these options grasps the theological perspective that
governs the story.”[4]
I’m somewhere in the middle.
God acts but doesn’t control. God is the one who cleans up our messes. God has
a plan for us, has a goal for us, one which is stronger and healthier and more
humane, and which we most of the time ignore and substitute instead our own
goals and plans. And then God creates “Plan B,” which we may take but sometimes
will not take. Then God creates “Plan
C” and Plan D” (and for a few of us God is still hammering out “Plans X and Y”
well into our adulthood), always trying to get us to follow a plan that will
bring us to health reconciliation, redemption, and salvation.
A couple of good
illustrations right here on times when you (or someone you know) made bad
decisions but were turned around in the midst of them, would be in order. When
was a time when you had a perfectly good option for your life, but you took a
different path instead and it turned out badly, but that fate or God or luck
pulled you back from disaster and set you on a healthier path? If that has
happened to you or someone you know, this would be a good place to share it.
I believe that each of us
are kind of like this dysfunctional family. Most of us are not essentially bad
people, but stricken with greed, selfishness, pride, favoritism, or jealousy. I
believe God is working around all of
that to find a way to reconcile all of us in our own families and in our church
family and in our global family. But it’s up to us to do the right thing, to
hear the call to compassion and mercy and go for it.
This could similarly be
applied to your church. Ninety percent of the churches in the world are going
through tremendous stress turmoil, and we have thousands of choices. But in
each of these choices God is working to bring about a beautiful new church and beautiful
new world. It’s up to us to hear God’s voice and respond, for even when it
appears as though God is not present or here or near, God actually is. God is
at work cleaning up the messes of all of our decisions, moving us forward,
healing our wounds, and making us new.
I’ve relied far too much on
the New Interpreters’ Bible for this
Sunday’s sermon, but it’s been helpful, and I’ll close with a lengthy piece
from it. Tip: don’t read something like this to your congregation in a sermon. Paraphrase,
don’t read. In fact never read
something lengthy to your congregation in a sermon, unless you’ve already
accepted a call to your next parish. People hate it when Pastors do that.
From the NIB:
“We should not evaluate the brothers’
life-diminishing activity against Joseph as good (see 50:20) or deem irrelevant
how they conduct themselves within God’s economy. Rather, God’s activity from
within the context set in part by the brothers’ sinful behaviors has proved,
finally, to be decisive. Hence, what God has done now counts in charting a way
into the future. God has preserved life; God has kept this family intact in the
threat of death. To use a different image, the brothers’ sinful objectives have
been thwarted by being drawn into the larger orbit of God’s purposes and used
by God in such a way as to bring life rather than death. To repeat, God has “taken
over” what they have done and used it to bring about this end.”[5]
[2] New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, p. 601.
[3] New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, p. 600.
[4] New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, p. 601.
[5] New Interpreter’s Bible , p. 646
Exegetical/Translation Comments
Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28
Joseph Dreams of Greatness
1Jacob
settled in the land where his father had lived as an alien, the land of Canaan
Joseph,
being seventeen years old, was shepherding the flock with his brothers; he was
a helper to the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives; and Joseph
brought a bad report of them to their father. 3Now Israel
5 Once Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated
him even more. 6 He said to them, “Listen to this dream that I
dreamed. 7 There we were, binding sheaves in the field. Suddenly my
sheaf rose and stood upright; then your sheaves gathered around it, and bowed
down to my sheaf.” 8 His brothers said to him, “Are you indeed to
reign over us? Are you indeed to have dominion[3] over us?” So they hated him even more because of
his dreams and his words.
9 He had another dream, and told it to his brothers, saying, “Look, I have
had another dream: the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.”
10 But when he told it to his father and to his brothers, his father
rebuked him, and said to him, “What kind of dream is this that you have had?
Shall we indeed come, I and your mother and your brothers, and bow to the
ground before you?” 11 So his brothers were jealous of him, but his
father kept the matter in mind.
Joseph Is Sold by His
Brothers
12Now
his brothers went to pasture their father’s flock near Shechem. 13And
Israel
He
answered, “Here I am.”
14So
he said to him, “Go now, see if it is well with your brothers and with the
flock; and bring word back to me.” So he sent him from the valley of Hebron
He
came to Shechem, 15and a man found him wandering in the fields; the
man asked him, “What are you seeking?”
16”I
am seeking my brothers,” he said; “tell me, please, where they are pasturing
the flock.”
17The
man said, “They have gone away, for I heard them say, ‘Let us go to Dothan Dothan
25Then
they sat down to eat; and looking up they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming
from Gilead, with their camels carrying gum, balm, and resin, on their way to
carry it down to Egypt. 26Then Judah Egypt
29 When Reuben returned to the pit and saw that Joseph
was not in the pit, he tore his clothes. 30 He returned to his
brothers, and said, “The boy is gone; and I, where can I turn?” 31 Then
they took Joseph’s robe, slaughtered a goat, and dipped the robe in the blood. 32
They had the long robe with sleevesc taken to their father,
and they said, “This we have found; see now whether it is your son’s robe or
not.” 33 He recognized it, and said, “It is my son’s robe! A wild
animal has devoured him; Joseph is without doubt torn to pieces.” 34 Then
Jacob tore his garments, and put sackcloth on his loins, and mourned for his
son many days.[9] 35 All his sons and all his
daughters sought to comfort him; but he refused to be comforted, and said, “No,
I shall go down to Sheol[10] to my son, mourning.” Thus his father bewailed
him. 36Meanwhile the Midianites had sold him in
[1] “Story” (toledot). Feminine Noun. Generations, account, family
history. In the plural, it is used to denote the chronological procession of
history as humans shape it. It refers to the successive generations in one
family (cf. Gen: 10:32).
[2] “Long robe with sleeves.” (kĕtōnet
passı̂m). The traditional KJV translation, “coat of many colors,” was based
on the (incorrect) Greek LXX translation of the OT. “An examination of cognate
terms in Semitic suggests it was either a coat or tunic with long sleeves (cf. NEB
[3] “Reign” (mālaḵ). Verb, to rule, to be
king, to make king. “Dominion” (māšal). Verb, to rule, to
reign, or to have dominion over. “The dream is a vision of history being
inverted against all the odds. ‘Reign’ is a royal word used in relation to the
patriarchs only by the P tradition (17:6; 35:11). (‘Rule’ is used only for
Joseph among the fathers [cf. 24:2].) We have seen the word used only twice for
persons (cf. 1:16-18) in the pre-history: in 3:16 concerning the perverted
relation of the man and the woman; and in 4:7, in the ironic promise to Cain
that he might control the power of sin. But it occurs nowhere before this in
reference to political power. This is a first awareness in the text of genuine,
responsible political power. With the dream of Joseph, something new enters the
awareness of Israel
[5] “Pit” (bôr). Masculine noun. Not usually a “pit,” and almost certainly not meant as pit
here. Its more common meaning is cistern
or well. “Cisterns were hollowed out
of the limestone bedrock or were dug and then lined with plaster to store rain
water. They provided water for humans and animals through most of the dry
months. When they were empty, they sometimes served as temporary cells for
prisoners” (Matthews,
Chavalas and Walton, The IVP Bible Background Commentary : Old Testament
[Downers Grove , IL
[6] “Pit” see note
on v. 20.
[8] “This was the average price
for a male slave in Old Babylonian times (early 2nd millennium b.c.),” Victor
P. Hamilton, NICOT, cited by Sidney Greidanus in Roger Van Harn, ed., The Lectionary Commentary: Theological
Exegesis for Sunday's Texts (Grand
Rapids , Mich.
[9] “The official period of
mourning was thirty days but could continue for as long as the mourner chose to
continue to grieve.” (IVP Bible
Background Commentary: OT).
[10] “Sheol is the realm of the dead, a shadowy and lifeless place
considered in ancient Israel
