Welcome to the Knox Talks blog. Here you can find recent and past sermons relating scripture to a wide variety of topics. I would like to thank Shelley Rose for transcribing my notes into text for the blog.
Joseph and Jesus: Parallels
Scripture: Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28
The Bible contains stories that carry striking parallels. This isn’t some kind of inter-generational plagiarism, it’s because some human behaviours repeat themselves and people recognize familiar stories playing themselves out again.
The story of Joseph and his coat of many colours was foundational to Israel. Joseph was the one who got them to Egypt and saved them from the famine. Today’s scripture lesson reminds us of how he got there.
It is a story of bad parenting, sibling rivalry, secret plotting, betrayal, almost murder, and a sale to foreigners into slavery.
The bad parenting was all on Jacob, also named Israel. He played favourites with his children and his ten older sons were bitterly jealous of how much he doted on Joseph. To make matters worse, in the verses we skipped we hear how Joseph had visions about how his father and brothers would one day bow down and serve him. This is NOT how you endear yourself to your older brothers and it even sounds disrespectful of your father, who gave you that amazing, expensive coat.
This jealousy between brothers reminds us of their father, Jacob and his brother Esau. Jacob cheated Esau out of his birthright and blessing, Jacob only escaped bloodshed by fleeing the country and staying away for years.
And even farther back, it reminds us of Cain and Abel where God favoured Abel and a jealous Cain murdered his own brother.
The lesson of that basic sin clearly didn’t sink in for everyone; but Reuben, Joseph’s oldest brother, maybe he remembered that his uncle Esau had learned forbearance and welcomed Jacob back eventually. Reuben was wise enough not to repeat Cain’s error and saved his obnoxious younger brother from death and his nine other brothers from becoming murderers.
The whole “jealous brother” theme gets repeated by Jesus in his parable of the two brothers, sometimes called the parable of the Prodigal Son, but there’s no direct application to Jesus’ own life that we know of. His brothers, at their mother’s direction, did try to stop Jesus from preaching. They decided that he had gone crazy but nothing violent happened and they went away peacefully when Jesus refused to stop. Indeed, after the crucifixion, Jesus’ brother James became the head of the Jerusalem church. So whatever differences there had been were ironed out by then.
But when we talk about the crucifixion we can see some powerful parallels that the Christian Church certainly noticed: Joseph was sold for 20 pieces of silver; Jesus was sold for 30 pieces.
In each instance it was a profound betrayal. Joseph was sold by his own brothers to the foreign traders. Jesus was sold by his own disciple to the religious authorities and then passed on by them, his own people, to the Romans – the brutal foreigners who killed him.
In both cases, it was a personal betrayal of the deepest sort and as the early Christians would have understood, they were both occasions of profound injustice that God would transform into salvation.
People who want life to be predetermined or fated sometimes talk like God engineered each situation; like God made sure that evil would happen so that good would triumph.
I don’t believe that. Joseph’s family history and his father’s favouritism combined with his own bragging don’t make it hard to predict that his brothers would have some dark thoughts. But the brothers chose to plot to murder him and the eldest brother, who had learned some self-control and who knew how upset their father would be, was wise enough to persuade his brothers to back off a bit.
And as for Jesus, he was being remarkably public in his teaching and he was doing the usual prophet thing in upsetting the people in charge by pointing out how they were corrupt. Again, it was not surprising that they would attempt to silence him.
All of the bad behaviour in both stories can be recognized as the kind of human behaviour that appears in every generation.
What’s wonderful is the way that these horrible, impossible situations could be transformed by God into unexpected good news in ways that no one could predict.
A Jewish slave becoming the second most important ruler in Egypt? Who would have believed that? But it put him in the perfect position to save his extended family from starvation.
A crucified carpenter dying a weak and shameful death inspiring a movement of outcasts, women and poor people and slaves that would replace the mighty Roman Empire? Inconceivable!
Yet Jesus gave people a vision of life in this world and beyond: life with a profound spiritual and eternal dimension that gave people an alternative to the lives they were living; lives that locked most of them into pre-determined boxes with no real hope for anything better. They were so inspired that an astonishing number of them were prepared to die for their beliefs.
In the lives of both Joseph and Jesus we are shown people behaving badly: jealous, fearful, angry, petty people who wanted to protect their own positions and were prepared to betray and murder to do it.
And we are shown God transforming these situations from potential bad endings into new beginnings; into situations where people were not only saved but whole new nations were shaped and developed: the children of Israel in Egypt – that extended family that became a whole nation; and the people Jesus called sisters and brothers – that family, not of blood but of faith, which grew to extend around the world.
It is remarkable what God can do with flawed people and terrible circumstances. Even the worst motivations can become the jumping-off point for profound change.
So as we navigate this fractious world with its internet trolls, hostile divisions and poisonous opinions, with its ongoing betrayals and people who do unethical things to defend their positions; as we deal with all the bad stuff that is still there after 2000 years, let’s not be discouraged. God has been able to transform awful stuff in the past into wonderful new hope.
If we keep ourselves open to possibilities, even when things seem to be going terribly wrong, we will find that God is there, in the crisis with us, showing us where to find a new direction and discover unexpected new hope.
Joseph learned that through faith and experience and saved his family, giving them a place to grow into a nation. Jesus counted on God doing that and through his faith began the transformation of the world.
That transformation continues with us. So no matter how bad things may look in life let’s never forget: God is still here, and God can still turn the worst circumstances into unexpected blessings.
Amen.
Knox United Church Nepean 