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So, what became of Joseph and his dreams? As you remember he was a precocious, sort of snotty young man of seventeen, a dreamer, the favourite son of his father, Jacob; yet, his brothers hated him…and hated is putting it mildly. This highly dysfunctional family dynamic of favouritism was complicated even more by the plans it seems that God had for Joseph that would involve his brothers bowing down to him. Remember those two dreams Joseph had? One was that he and his brothers were making wheat sheaves. His sheaf stood up and their sheaves bowed down to his. The second dream was of the sun, moon, and eleven stars bowing down to him. They believed such dreams to be God-given visions of God’s future plan for Joseph and his family. But,…Joseph’s brothers hated him so much that they even conspired to murder him to keep God’s plan from ever happening. In our reading last week, the opportunity presented itself and fortunately they reduced their plan to just kill him outright to simply selling him to Ishmaelite slave traders who were headed to Egypt. It would seem they might have even thwarted God’s grand plan for Joseph and them. Now for the rest of the story.
The Ishmaelites sold Joseph to an Egyptian named Potiphar who was Pharaoh’s captain of the guard. Being gifted as he was, Joseph quickly rose through the ranks in Potiphar’s household to where Potiphar put him in charge of the whole house, second only to Potiphar himself. The Bible says that Potiphar could see that the LORD was with Joseph and blessed everything he did. In just months Joseph went from being betrayed by his brothers and left in the bottom of a pit to being the household head for one of the most powerful men in Egypt.
But alas, nothing good comes without its complications. In this case it was Potiphar’s wife. She had her own plans for Joseph that a dishonourable man would have leapt at, but not Joseph. He could not be disloyal to Potiphar who had been so good to him. The situation came to a head one day when Potiphar’s wife got Joseph alone and threw herself at him. He nobly fled the seen but unfortunately his robe did not. (Joseph and his robes!) She had torn his robe from him. In her anger screamed and told her guards that the Hebrew man Joseph had assaulted her and she had the evidence in hand. Potiphar put Joseph in jail. A real rags to riches to rags story. Steve Martin would be proud.
Joseph stayed in jail for over two years. The LORD was with him there and prospered everything he did. The LORD caused him to find favour with the chief jailor and he rose in rank among the prisoners. He also discovered that God had gifted him with the ability to interpret dreams. Joseph the dreamer can now say what dreams mean.
There were two prisoners under Joseph’s charge who had dreams that needed interpretation. They both had been former servants of Pharaoh, one was his cupbearer and the other was his baker. The cupbearer dreamt of a vine with three branches that budded, blossomed, and bore fruit. He was holding Pharaoh’s cup so he smashed grapes into and gave it to Pharaoh. Joseph interpreted the dream to mean that in three days he would be serving Pharaoh again. Joseph made him promise that when things were well with him again that he would tell Pharaoh of Joseph and how he was wrongfully stolen from his homeland and sold into slavery and then imprisoned wrongfully. The Baker, he dreamt he had three baskets of cakes on his head and birds were eating from the highest one. Joseph told him that in three days Pharaoh would hang him and birds would eat him. In three days time, it was Pharaoh’s birthday and he had the two men released. He restored the cupbearer and hanged the baker. Unfortunately, the cupbearer did not remember Joseph.
Well, two years pass and it happens that Pharaoh himself has a couple of disturbing dreams. The first was of seven sleek and fat cows grazing when seven ugly and thin cows rise out of the Nile to consume them. The second was of seven blighted ears of grain consuming seven plump ears of grain on the same stalk. The dreams troubled Pharaoh so he called his magicians but they didn’t have a clue about them and that’s when the cupbearer finally remembered Joseph and told Pharaoh of his ability to interpret dreams.
Pharaoh sent for Joseph and told him his dreams. Joseph interpreted them. There will be seven years of bumper crops in Egypt followed by seven years of famine. He then advised Pharaoh to appoint someone to take charge of putting aside grain over the next seven years so that they would have food to eat in Egypt during the famine. Discerning this was the doings of Joseph’s God, Pharaoh appointed Joseph to that task and made Joseph his second-in-command. Oddly, there’s no narrator’s note here of the LORD being with Joseph blessing and prospering him. Joseph was now thirty. Thirteen years had passed since that cold day in the pit when his brothers sold him.
The seven years of plenty pass and the famine came and soon people from all over Mesopotamia come to Egypt to buy food. Joseph makes Pharaoh a very rich man. In that seven years pretty much everyone in Egypt had sold themselves to Pharaoh to be his slave in exchange for food and they were all under Joseph’s authority.
Just a side note about how things change over time: Joseph, the Hebrew sold into slavery by his brothers, became the head master of the institution of slavery in Egypt. In 400 years, the role of slave and master flip-flopped so that the Egyptians enslave the whole nation of the Hebrew people.
Moving closer to the context of this morning’s passage, Joseph’s brothers hear that there is grain in Egypt and they convince Jacob to let them go and buy some. Jacob let’s them all go except Joseph’s younger brother Benjamin. He couldn’t bear to lose his second son by Rachel, the wife of his four that he loved; the love that was the source of that unhealthy dynamic of favouritism in the family.
In Egypt, Joseph recognized them but they don’t recognize him. Joseph now has the power and opportunity to exact revenge on his brothers for what they did to him, but amazingly doesn’t. Instead, he starts to play head games. He gets them to admit that they all of the family. There’s still a younger brother and their father and another brother who had died. He accuses them of being spies and puts them in prison for a couple of days, a small taste of what he went through. But enough is enough. Joseph agrees to sell them food, but makes them leave one brother behind until they return with their youngest brother. The brothers begin to talk among themselves saying God was now punishing them for what they did to Joseph. Joseph sends them back with full sacks and, unbeknownst them, the money they gave him for it and tells them don’t come back unless they bring the other brother with them. And wouldn’t you know it…the whole exchange involves Joseph’s brothers bowing to him over and over just like the dream said.
A year goes by. The brothers have to go back to Egypt for more food and they convince Jacob to let Benjamin go too in hopes that they will get Simeon back. Joseph sees them when they arrive and brings them to his house and inexplicably treats Benjamin especially well. He returns Simeon to them Again, he sends them on their way with full bags and their money unknowingly returned to them. But, Joseph also did something very sneaky. He had his steward put Joseph’s fancy silver cup into Benjamin’s bag seeding an elaborate scheme to get his brothers to bring Jacob back as well. When they were a short distance from the city Joseph sent his steward after them to accuse them of stealing the cup. It is discovered Benjamin had it and they are brought back to Joseph fearing that he will kill Jacob’s beloved Benjamin. It winds up that Judah, the brother who orchestrated selling Joseph to the Ishmaelite slave traders for ill-gotten gain, begs Joseph for Benjamin’s life saying he is the last of two brothers who were his father’s favourite sons and their father would die if he didn’t come back. “Take me as your slave, but let Benjamin go,” he says.
Joseph loses control of himself and begins to weep loudly. Joseph, the man who has control of all things Egypt can’t stop crying. All the pent up emotion, all the hurt he had from his brother’s betrayal took him over and he could not stop it from overflowing. Many a person would have flown off in a fit of blind rage, but Joseph, well, the LORD had been at work in him and through him these last fifteen years and he saw things differently. He could see a God-reason for what his brothers did to him. Joseph said it best at the formal forgiveness that he extended to his brothers in chapter 50 when they came to him after the death of Jacob in fear that he still begrudged them. They lied to him saying it was their father’s request that Joseph forgive them for the crime they committed against him. Joseph said to them. “Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? 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” (50:19-20).
The evil they did him, God let it happen so that he could work good from it, a good that will affect the whole of God’s people. This sounds a lot like Romans 8:28 which reads: “We know that in all things God works for good for those who love God, and who are called according to his purpose”. Through all the undeserved and unjust terrible stuff that happened to Joseph – the betrayal, the slavery, the imprisonment – the LORD was with Joseph and blessed him and prospered everything he did. God worked good from all the evil done to Joseph as if it fit into something God had planned all along.
I have to admit that this sounds troubling to me. If you start to think about it, it starts to seem that God orchestrates evil and causes people to suffer just so he can work some good from it and it somehow makes it all okay because God is with that person through it all. If we don’t want to ponder the idea of God doing evil to bring forth good, then at least we have to take a gander at what kind of God lets terrible things happen to people. Why does God let bad things happen in the first place? Why doesn’t he just make it so people don’t do evil? Why does God stand back and watch why holocausts, atomic bombs, nuclear plant meltdowns, and pandemics happen? Why does God let an economic system persist that’s based on greed and bullying in which a wealthy few are making a mockery of democracy and causing needless poverty. Why does God just stand back while we grand-scale destroy the planet God gave us to live on? Why does a loving God let a messed up world go on instead of acting and fix it?
Those are real hard questions and indeed the questions that Modern Atheism is built on. My answer isn’t one that anyone will like, but in short, it is that this is simply the God we’ve got to wrestle with. We don’t find those questions answered in the Bible other than the day will come when God makes all things new. But until then, we will find ourselves at times awed in the goodness of God’s presence with us and his blessing on our lives. But you know we will also spend as much if not more time shaking our fists at heaven screaming “Why God?” or “Wake up, God!” or “Have you forgotten me, God?” or “I’ve been the faithful one this time around, God. That’s what you promised to be. Let’s see a little bit of those mighty acts like you did long ago?” Read the Psalms. There are more Psalms of Lament in the Book of Psalms than there are Psalms of Praise. A full one third of the Book are Psalms of Lament. The psalmists lament as much as Jesus talked about wealth and its ills. One third of Jesus’ teachings have to do with wealth. Maybe wealth causes lament, but I digress.
The first part of my answer to all those questions is God is God, we are not, so we have to resolve ourselves to letting God be God and wrestle with him. The second part of my answer is that we don’t give enough thought to our role in God’s good creation as those who bear his image. Like Joseph, humanity is very precocious, very gifted, and God has great hopes for us working to make his creation beautiful. Yet, like Joseph’s brothers we are selfish and petty and bear the brunt of the responsibility for the way things are. Moreover, and I apologize to the atheists in the crowd, though I get where you’re coming from; it‘s just infantile for us to say there is no God because there’s evil and God’s not fixing it especially when we are responsible for the most of that evil. We need to step up and use our giftedness to work for reconciliation and the healing of the messes we have made and stop wishing for miracles. God gives us guidance but we don’t listen. God gives us opportunities for reconciliation and healing that we don’t take because like Joseph’s brothers we don’t see the profit in it for ourselves. As every big pharmaceutical company knows there is more money to be made in maintaining sickness than in curing disease. So, it seems humanity only sees profit in furthering the persistence of evil until the mess gets so big that only God can clean it up.
Finally, let’s look at Joseph. Yes, his brothers unjustly betrayed him and sold him into slavery. Yet, the Lord was with him in slavery and blessed him and caused him to prosper. Yes, again Joseph was treated unfairly and imprisoned for doing the right and faithful thing when he refused the advances of Potiphar’s wife. Yet, the Lord was with Joseph in prison and prospered him there. God makes up for the wrongs committed by his presence and favour.
Yet, something interesting happens in Joseph’s story as soon as he starts working for Pharaoh. The narrator of the story in the Bible does not tell us that the LORD was with him, blessing him, and prospering him while he worked for Pharaoh. It’s suddenly become just Joseph doing what he’s good at.
As the second most powerful person in Egypt Joseph fully invested himself in serving Pharaoh no questions asked. Yes, Joseph and Pharaoh both give God the credit for giving Joseph the ability to interpret dreams and the wisdom of how to deal with the coming drought. But, what did they do with it? Joseph and Pharaoh took God’s gifts and guidance and used it for ill-gotten gain. When the drought came and with it famine, instead of simply giving back to the Egyptian people what they worked so hard to produce in the first place during the bumper years, Joseph sold the grain to the Egyptian people, first for all their money and then for all their livestock. And then having nothing more to buy grain with, Joseph made them sell themselves to Pharaoh to be his slaves. In the end there was nothing in Egypt that Pharaoh did not own. Joseph, in the name of Pharaoh, used his God-given giftedness and God’s guidance not to save and bless Egypt, but to enslave it.
All the while, as a huge part of Joseph’s story in the Bible we find God giving Joseph and his brothers the opportunity to reconcile and heal their family. They do. God indeed put Joseph in Egypt to provide a way for his own people, Israel, to survive throughout the drought and famine. In the end, Jacob and his family went to Egypt where Joseph freely provided for them. They settled in the good land of Goshen and they didn’t have to sell their livestock or themselves to Pharaoh as slaves to buy grain. God providentially took care of his people through Joseph. Joseph’s dreams and God’s plan came to fruition.
But why did Joseph have to enslave the people of Egypt? Joseph should not have sold to the Egyptians for Pharaoh’s ill-gotten gain that which God had freely provided for them for their security. He should have freely shared it with them so that God’s peace could rest on the Egyptian people as well. Joseph chose power, wealth, and prestige over seeking justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with his God and it resulted in the cruel institution of slavery in Egypt that came back to haunt the Israelite people as soon as the day came that there was a Pharaoh who no longer remembered Joseph. That’s next week’s sermon.
The same temptation besets each of us every day. We can take the giftedness God has endowed each of us with and his guidance and instead of seeking justice, loving kindness, and walking humbly with our God and neighbour we choose to enlist it to the service of power, wealth, and prestige only to find we simply further human disfunctioning in God’s good creation. We have a choice to do the good. Shall we? Amen.
