Genesis 37: 1 – 4, 12 – 28
New Ark United Church of Christ,
Newark, DE
August 10, 2014
I am a big believer in dreams: the
ones we have at night with our eyes closed and daydreams, the ones we have
while our eyes are open. I’ve shared
with you the dream I had that turned my life around and called me to
ministry. I had dreams about my daughters
before they were conceived, that they were on their way and what their names
would be. I’ve had dreams about other
people’s lives, spelling out their internal landscape. I’ve dreamt of people I love who have passed
on, letting me know that a relationship continues after death. I’ve had waking dreams, dreams that had me
walking and talking in a half-sleep, that helped me realize how stressful a
certain situation was to my body, mind, and spirit. In my childhood with an alcoholic parent, my
dreams confronted me with how lonely and insecure I was. And I’ve had dreams that rattled my
then-present circumstances and announced in no uncertain terms that it was time
to return to full-time ministry.
To
me, any dream is a good dream if it conveys truth and we are willing to listen
and interpret that truth in the way we live our lives. Good dreams can be warnings, wake-up calls as
well as a source of reassurance that everything will be alright.
In
the book of Genesis we have the Bible’s first dreamer. Joseph’s dreams seemed more like an outgrowth
of his ego rather than anything revelatory from God. His brothers already hated him because their
father Jacob loved Joseph more than they and openly so by giving him that Technicolor
dreamcoat. But then Joseph had a dream
that he and his brothers were binding sheaves in wheat in the field, and his
brothers’ sheaves bowed before Joseph’s.
You can almost hear them saying, “You little brat! You’re not the boss of us!” But Joseph heaps it on with another dream, over
the top, with the sun, moon, and eleven stars bowing before him. He not only inflames his brothers’ jealousy,
his father rebukes him as well.
But
it doesn’t stop Jacob from sending Joseph to spy on his brothers and see what
they’re up to. These are hotheaded boys
who slaughtered Shechem, a local prince, his father Hamor, and every male in
the city, then plundered the city because their sister Dinah had been defiled
by Shechem. So perhaps Jacob was worried
his sons might be up to no good.
The
only thing that goes right that day is that someone gives Joseph directions to
where his brothers had gone. After that,
it all goes to pot. His brothers
conspire to kill him, they had become so sick of this dreamer. Lucky for Joseph, Rueben’s oldest-brother-guilt
kicks in and persuades his brothers to lower Joseph into a pit so that Rueben
can come back and rescue him later. So
they strip him of that colorful dreamcoat, throw him in the pit with no water,
and then, of all things, they sit down to a picnic.
Imagine
what must have been going through Joseph’s head. Those dreams were nothing but trouble. His brothers just might leave him in that pit
to die. A hole is a hole, no matter if someone
throws us in it, or we dig it ourselves.
It’s hard to look up and think we’re ever going to get out.
Hold on, just a little while longer
Hold on, just a little while longer
Hold on, just a little while longer
‘Cause everything is gonna be alright
But
it’s not enough to torture Joseph for a little while; his brothers truly want
to be rid of him. So they sell him to
some traders, and not just any traders but Ishmaelites, the other sons of
Abraham, from the one son Ishmael who was thrown out of the house with his
servant mother Hagar. Joseph too is thrown
out, his fate now in the hands of men who see him only as money to be made.
Where
Rueben went, the text does not say. He returns
to haul Joseph out of the pit but he is too late. Joseph is long gone. So his brothers kill a goat, stain his robe
with its blood, and rather than tell their father, allow him to come to the
conclusion that a wild animal killed Joseph.
Jacob, who tricked his father into blessing him instead of his older
brother Esau, wearing the skins of a hairy animal, has been tricked himself
into grieving his beloved son. Jacob
refuses to be comforted, declaring that he will join his son in Sheol, taking
his grief to the pit that waits for all of us.
Meanwhile, Joseph is carted off to Egypt, the lectionary leaving us at
loose ends.
| "Joseph Being Sold into Slavery" Károly Ferenczy - 1900 |
These
are bad times for Joseph, for his brothers, his father and wives, as this
violent episode is followed by the land of Canaan heading straight into a
famine. In this story of jealous, angry
brothers we can hear the millennial bad times of Israelis and Palestinians,
Iraqis and Syrians. We hear the bad
times of Ukrainians and Russians, and closer to our home, bad times in
neighborhoods like those of Wilmington and other cities in our own nation—all
of these brothers and blood relations out to kill the other’s dreams, their own
dreams shot down long ago by systems intended to exclude and push down. And the bitterest irony of all—isn’t it every
human being’s dream to live in peace?
It
is the hardest work of faith to hang on to our dreams in bad times. And I know that my bad times are nothing
compared to others. I have had cushions
of family and friends and church to fall back on. I’ve had good health and affordable health care
to hold me up. I’ve got an education and
a calling that keeps me going forward.
If I’ve been in the pit, it hasn’t been for very long and there was
always a rope to pull me up. But what
the pit does to each of us, hopefully, is that it teaches us to pray, to
surrender like we never have before, and to turn our lives over to God, because
there’s nothing else left.
Pray on, just a little while longer
Pray on, just a little while longer
Pray on, just a little while longer
‘Cause everything is gonna be
alright.
There
are some who say faith is a pipe dream, that prayer is like talking to a wall,
that the Bible is just a bunch of stories, and that rising from the dead is
impossible. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a
German pastor imprisoned and executed for conspiring to assassinate Hitler, who
knew a great deal about that pit, said a Christian’s calling is to cling to the
resurrection, not to explain it. Our
calling is to cling to our dreams of new life, of justice and peace, of
impossible possibilities and irrational hope.
Our calling is to rebel against those bad times, in the words of the
poet Wendell Berry, to “be joyful though we have considered all the facts.”
Author
Chris Hedges wrote “Faith…should be our natural state. [Faith] is a belief that
rebellion is always worth it, even if all outward signs point to our lives and
struggles as penultimate failures. We are saved not by what we can do or
accomplish but by...our steadfastness to the weak, the poor, the marginalized,
those who endure oppression. We must stand with them against the powerful.
...[The] struggle to lead the moral life is worth it."
When
we think about it, most of our living is a cliffhanger. We don’t know how the story is going to move
forward, how our story will end, even when our lives feel predictable or monotonous
or even hopeless. And it IS harder to
look up or look around at who might be with us than it is to look downward and
see nothing but that pit. Having faith
means the pit does not have the last word.
Resurrection means surrender, even death is a doorway, a threshold to
another way of living. If we, the Body
of Christ, cannot cling to this hope, this dream, this resurrection, then we
might as well pack it up and make our home in the pit.
But
even then, we will find Jesus waiting for us there, in the pit. Before God raised him up, like Joseph, he had
to wait a while. But he didn’t just wait
quietly. The story has it that Jesus
contended with the powers, broke open the graves of Adam and Eve, grabbed them
by the hand, and pulled them up, pulled us up with him.
So,
while we are waiting and living this cliffhanger life, while we each face our
own pit gaping at us, while we’re looking up, praying on because that’s all
that’s left, we too are to grab a hand of someone who could use some lifting, whose
dreams could use some hanging on, because that’s how the story moves forward.
Sing on, stand strong just a little
while longer
Sing on, stand strong just a little
while longer
Sing on, stand strong just a little
while longer
‘Cause everything is gonna be
alright.
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