OUTLINE OF RTHK BROADCAST MESSAGE Sermon of August 8, 1999
Let’s talk about one of the most colorful characters in the Book of Genesis: Joseph. Stories about Joseph take up the l3 final chapters of Genesis. Charming though his story is, the Joseph narrative serves as a bridge connecting the ancestral narratives of promise, involving Abraham Isaac, and Jacob, to the Exodus narrative of oppression and liberation which follows as the second book of the Bible. The story of Joseph is not in the Bible to entertain us; it has no independent life of its own. I think we will see that all the Joseph stories are functional, serving as a bridge between the God of promise to Abraham and the fulfillment of that promise in the family of Joseph.
To start things off I’m asking our favorite storyteller, Nury Vittachi, to tell us the earliest part of the Joseph story; Joseph as a teenager and, Nury, I think this Joseph sounds in several ways very much like adolescents of today.
Nury reads Genesis 37.
******* Pastor Gene: Our regular pianist Enrico Pineda will play a medley of songs from the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical about Joseph and his technicolored dream coat to put us in the mood for some further exploration on the meaning of Joseph.
Two minute of piano interlude.
The image of a bridge comes to me when I think about Joseph. A bridge leads from one point to another; it has to cross over obstacles, otherwise there would be no need for the bridge. A bridge allows humans to go across to the other side. A bridge is held up by engineering. Joseph serves as a bridge in the book of Genesis for God’s purpose is carrying the Hebrew people forward to their destiny as the promised people, the people of the covenant with God. But first Joseph himself has to get out of that awful bondage to which his brothers’ treachery sent him.
Mary Jane Elliott, please lead up further into the story of Joseph by reading from 39:l-6 which tells us how this hapless teenager, sold into slavery, came to occupy a position of great influence in Egypt.
Mary Jane reads 39:l-6.
******* Pastor: Joseph does very well in Egypt. His first patron is Potiphar who respects and honors him until Potiphar’s wife deceives her husband with a false charge of rape against Joseph. Joseph spends several years in prison but even there he finds a kindly Egyptian, the prison warden who entrusts responsibility to Joseph. After Joseph is freed because he has interpreted the dreams of Pharoah, the Egyptian ruler appoints Joseph to be the second most powerful man in the kingdom. When famine afflicts the Hebrews in Canaan as it has severely afflicted the Egyptians; the Pharoah is generous in sending grains back to Cannan. When Joseph’s father dies finally, the Pharoah and the Egyptians weep and mourn the patriarch’s passing.
So in the story of Joseph we see ample evidence that the goodness of God extends not only to the Hebrews but also to the Egyptians and the whole world. And if we lift up the on going hostility between modern Arabs and the Israelis, there is most certainly a hopeful sign in this story.
It is at the second book, Exodus, when the Pharoah who knew and honored Joseph has died, that a new king comes to the throne and then the trouble begins with the Hebrews in Egypt leading to their eventual enslavement. The story of Joseph thus is prelude to explaining how the Israelites ended up in Egypt and it sets the stage for Moses and the liberation and second return of the Jews to Canaan land.
But first a drought afflicts Canaan as well as Egypt and Joseph’s family left behind in Canaan is suffering. Conrad So will give us more of the Joseph story from Genesis 42.
Conrad reads 42:l-6.
******* Pastor: Conrad, Joseph is such a full blown character that we tend to overlook that his stories are really stories about his family, about his father Jacob, or Israel, to whom God’s promise to the Jews passed and of the eleven brothers of Joseph whose survival is essential if God’s promise to the Hebrews is to be realized.
It’s easy to overlook the collective meaning because Joseph is such an engrossing character and his brothers are usually presented as a collection of undifferentiated persons. One chapter does give detail on Judah and probably because later the promise of God is to take form in the Davidic monarchy evolved from the house of Judah. Judah is important for Christians because the messianic promise also is conveyed through the descendants of Judah.
It is because of Joseph that the evolving history of the Isarelites, laid out in the stories of Isaac/Ishmael and of Jacob/Esau, now find a happy completion. In these stories of Genesis God has chosen to work with rather dysfunctional families, and that dysfunction is seen in the irrational jealousies and meanness of the brothers of Joseph. But now finally in Joseph’s attitudes of reconciliation and forgiveness to his brothers, the dysfunction of these early prototypes is overcome and the basis is laid for a unified Hebrew family .
(Either the pastor or another could add): The story lifts up the importance of individual responsibility in that Joseph breaks the dysfunction of his family, a dysfunction of which he himself is a product. Joseph rejects revenge and pettiness. Joseph shows that individuals make a difference in evolving God’s kingdom.
I suppose God always uses some persons to advance his kingdom of justice and reconciliation. I think of Nelson Mandela, just retired President of South Africa, as a modern Joseph. Mandela rejected revenge and racism, even after 30 years in prison, and has set South Africa on a hopeful course of cooperation between the white and black races in his country.
Let me read a bit more in the Joseph story from chapter 45 when Joseph finally reveals his identity to his brother: (Genesis 45:l-5).
There are several theological interests in Joseph’s story. It speaks to the proper exercise of power in the person of Joseph who meets the needs both of his own family and of the Egyptians. There are examples of the good use of authority, as well as its’ abuse, in Jacob and how he treats his family, and in the brothers’ ill treatment of Joseph, the youngest, and in Joseph’s later special interest in the remaining youngest sibling, Benjamin.
Ultimately the stories of Joseph are the story of God and God’s providential blessing of all peoples through Joseph. However, the God in these stories is quite different from the God in the earlier Genesis stories where there are miracles and warnings and other intrusive divine manifestations. The God in the Joseph narrative hovers quietly in the background. We are told several times that Joseph felt himself blessed, but there is no dialogue with God to establish the blessing.
Scholars believe this is so because the Joseph stories probably originated in the court of King Solomon in the l0th Century BC in a period when the Jewish people were very self-confident and living quite well without constant need to reference to God.
If this story arose in Solomonic times, that period is rather like our own era when most people believe in their own plans and ambitions and when God’s plan, if acknowledged at all, is way in the background of our daily experience. The fact is we never read the name God in our newspapers and magazines; and if mentioned in entertainment of TV or movies God’s name is either taken in vain or as a joke. Does that mean that God is not in control of our human affairs? That we are not subject to God’s rules and standards? That we have lapsed beyond the care of God? Of course, not!
The story of Joseph picks up on key themes introduced earlier in Genesis and continued in the next book Exodus. The primary issues are basic, creational ones from issues of family order to natural disaster, from socioeconomic crisis to national structures. God’s purposes throughout are to preserve life and well being, which in 45:5-8 includes the Egyptians and the world community. The author of this brilliant narrative focuses on divine blessing, blessings of the land, of wise leadership, of family growth, fulfilling the creational words of l:28 AND GOD BLESSED THEM AND GOD SAID TO THEM, ‘BE FRUITFUL AND MUTIPLY AND FILL THE EARTH’ (And in Genesis 47, Joseph’s father, Jacob, extends God’s blessing upon the Egyptians (47:l3-26).
God’s choosing to work through this weak, conflicted family constitutes a divine irony, using the weak to bless the strong, which leads into important themes in Exodus which eventually lap over into our Christian understanding of who we are and what God calls us to do with our lives.
A bridge must be held up by engineering principles, which appear to me as a lay person as a form of miracle. Joseph is a bridge between God's promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the subsequent three millennia or so of spiritual history. It may seem odd that Joseph’s name was not added to that trinity of names. But that is because Joseph, as God’s bridge, allows us to add all our names to honor the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and ourselves.
