“Don’t be angry with yourselves that you sold me here.” Joseph told his brothers. “Actually, God sent me before you to save lives.” (Genesis 45:5)
To truly rejoice with this beautiful reconciliation between brothers, we need to go to the bottom with them. We need to go to the depth of the sin and dysfunction that went back generations. This is a dysfunctional family in ways that all of us can recognize at least parts of in our own families. To be in a dysfunctional relationship is to be alienated from that person with who we still find ourselves in relationship with. And to be alienated, from God and each other, is sin. We can trace the alienation that was handed down from the grandfather, Isaac, to the father, Jacob, to these brothers who were so alienated from each other that were ready to kill. But today’s conclusion to this family drama offers the hope of reconciliation.
It began with Isaac, to whom Abraham’s servant brought Rebekah to comfort him after the death of his mother, Sarah. But in the end, neither of them really found comfort with each other. Instead, as they distanced themselves from each other, they attached themselves to the hips of their two sons, Isaac to Esau, Rebekah to Jacob. Why? Perhaps it was because Esau was a “man’s man,” hairy, muscular, an outdoors man and hunter. But Jacob was a “quiet man who stayed at home,” presumably closer to his mother. And when Rebekah disguised Jacob in goat hide to con the father’s intended blessing for Esau, The family is split in two as Jacob is forced to go east to escape his brother’s anger.
Jacob makes his way to the ancestral homeland, which his grandfather Abraham had left. He finds his way to his relatives. And missing his mother, what does he do? He falls in love with the first girl he sees, Rachel. But then his uncle Laban tricks him into marrying Rachel’s sister Leah before he is allowed to marry Rachel. And so we are told, “Jacob loved Rachel more than Leah.” But Leah wins the battle of who bears the most children, six to Rachel’s two. But those two are Joseph and Benjamin. Rachel died as she gave birth to Benjamin. So as Jacob was overly attached to his mother, Rebekah, and his second wife, Rachel; so he fuses his heart and soul to the two sons that Rachel gave him. And as the two brothers Jacob and Easu, struggled for dominance, so does the favored Joseph struggle with his brothers.
The rest of the story leading up to today’s reading is familiar to most of us. Either you know it from the Bible, or also from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Joseph with his amazing Technicolor dreamcoat boasts about his dreams of his brothers bowing down to him. They throw him in a well, then sell him into slavery in Egypt. But because of his ability to interpret dreams, Joseph is able to warn the Egyptian Pharaoh of the coming famine, and becomes the second most powerful man in Egypt. He marries, and has a son whom he names Manasseh because, he said, “God has helped me forget all of my troubles and everyone in my father’s household.” Now that would be nice, if it were true.
And then, who should appear before him but his brothers in need of food, and bowing before him just as Joseph dreamed. But was that really the point of the vision God had given him all those years earlier? Perhaps there is a chance that the cycle of over-attachment and alienation, handed down through three generations, can be broken. But to do that, Joseph and his brothers must replay the painful events that led them here. The brothers must face up to the wrong they did and change their hearts and lives. And Joseph must replay the pain he suffered, and how he contributed to the bad feelings between himself and his brothers. Then he has to choose to forgive.
So first; Joseph verbally abuses them, and takes one of the brothers as a hostage. He sends the rest back with food, but demands that they return with Benjamin, the youngest son of Rachel, whom Jacob clings to for fear that he will be killed as he was led to believe that Joseph was. And so the brothers say to themselves, “We are clearly guilty for what we did to our brother...So now this is payback for his death.” Basically, Joseph’s brothers seem to think that the world is run by karma: what goes around comes around. Eventually, with the famine continuing and the food running out, Jacob lets the brothers return to Egypt, with Benjamin. Joseph arranges to have a silver cup placed in Benjamin's sack, and then accuses him and is ready to make him a slave. But then, just before today’s reading from Genesis, Judah, whose idea it was to sell Joseph, replays that moment. But this time he offers himself as a slave in place of Benjamin.
Some might think that Joseph has been cruel in the way he manipulated them. And as he sees the change in the hearts and lives of his brothers, Joseph changes his heart as well. “Don’t be angry with yourselves that you sold me here,” Joseph pleads with them. “Actually, God sent me before you to save lives.” Through the years of bitter struggle, shame, and guilt, God has watched, and opened the doors for Joseph and his brothers to walk through, if they were brave enough to replay the pain and evil of the past, trusting that instead of leading to alienation, this time it would lead to reconciliation.
And so the generational cycle of attachment and alienation is broken in this family. And just in time. The people of Jacob, also known as Israel, will need to stick together. Eventually, a new Pharaoh will forget how Joseph saved the Egyptians from starvation. And for 400 years, the Israelites will suffer the toil of slavery, until Moses comes. But that's a story for another time. This day, there is reconciliation, and softened hearts. Where are you in this story? What attachments do you need to loosen? What alienation and bitterness do you need to stop avoiding? What reconciliation do you hope and pray for? I pray that we may hear this story of attachment, alienation, and reconciliation, and make it our own.
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