Sent
Genesis 45:1-15

August 17, 2007


We have now heard the climax of one of the great stories of world literature, and typical of our age, we do not have the time or patience to hear all of it. Instead, we opt for the Cliff Notes abridged version selected by the Lectionary guys. Beginning at the end, we hear the conclusion of that whole epic of Genesis. The next episode stays in Egypt, but it takes place generations later as Exodus begins an entirely different story.

If you only know one part of a story, even the best part, you cannot understand its real meaning. Biblical stories are particularly susceptible to becoming isolated tidbits that distort what it’s all about. Joseph is now the prime minister of Egypt, only the grateful Pharaoh is his superior, but his rise to power was not simple or guaranteed. On each step of the way, Joseph never sought out power. He was given power as a reward of what he had done to enable others to gain freedom and life. It doesn’t always happen that way.

You know the beginning of the story: Joseph lost his freedom and coat of many colours to the jealousy and resentment of his ten older brothers. Thrown into a pit, then sold to a trading caravan passing through, he ended up being sold again as good merchandise to Potiphar, captain of the Pharaoh’s guard. Potiphar’s wife is never given a name, but her desire is not overlooked. She wanted Joseph and when he refused she grabbed his coat and showed it to her husband as proof that Joseph had tried to assault her. That it should have been obvious it was the other way around - Joseph should have had her garment in hand if he had assaulted her - was not politically correct even then.

Joseph was lucky that all that happened to him was being sent to prison. Prisons were not what they are today, but with Joseph everything turned out well. Just as Potiphar had recognized his integrity and organizational skills, so the head jailer saw the same thing and gave Joseph charge over the jail, sort of like a foreman. Two of the other prisoners had dreams and Joseph interpreted them correctly - one was executed and the other freed. The freed man overjoyed in his freedom forgot about Joseph, nothing new there, but finally remembered him two years later when Pharaoh too had disturbing unsolved dreams and recruited Joseph to interpret.

Isn’t it something how many of the most remarkable human achievements issue out of response to human suffering and natural disasters? Here it was a famine which in antiquity could have devastated the population not only in Egypt but far beyond, certainly up into Canaan and Mesopotamia. Joseph knew it was coming and the Pharaoh was wise enough to see the reality - it could have been politically correct to ignore Joseph’s dream interpretations - and appointed Joseph to manage the solution. He did so with amazing foresight and organization - every bureaucrat should aspire to be a Joseph. When the famine inevitably arrived, food was stored galore. Jacob up in Canaan heard about it and sent his sons way down to Egypt land so that they might not starve. Family matters take over.

Things have changed, especially Joseph, and his brothers have no clue that it is him, if for no other reason that he’s too important a person now. Joseph wants to see how much they have changed and plays hard ball with them, accusing them first of espionage, and wringing out of them the details of their family dynamics. Playing around with their sense of guilt, Joseph sends them back home with food at a severe price. To prove their legitimacy they are to leave behind one brother in prison as a guarantee and bring back the youngest brother Benjamin. Joseph knows this will place them in a hard spot with their father Jacob, but this is the test. Simeon is left behind as earnest, but when they arrive home all their money is in the top of their bags. They seem to forget about Simeon until they run out of food, and then they have to plead with Jacob about bringing Benjamin down to Egypt.

Jacob has no other choice and relents, the brothers eleven returning to Egypt. Joseph receives them well, wines and dines them, but as they set to go home with food he plays one more game. He has his special cup hidden inside Benjamin’s grain bag, then sends the police to catch the thief. That’s easy when you have set Benjamin up. A tremendous brouhaha ensues between Joseph and the brothers until he can no longer continue the game. This is where we step in to listen.

Weeping uncontrollably, Joseph declares to the shell-shocked brothers, “I am Joseph.” Joseph is the only one talking now and he tells the brothers, “You sold me, but that’s over, don’t beat yourselves up about it.” Magnanimous, excruciatingly polite, yes, but he knows there is a reason. “God sent me before you to preserve life.... God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God.” A trinity of “sents” - all in the passive, not the active tense. It wasn’t you who sent me, it wasn’t me who sent you, it wasn’t the betrayal of my brothers that sent me down as a stranger into a strange land where no one speaks my language and I had to live as a slave and then as a prisoner in jail. We have convinced ourselves that we control all parts of our lives, that we are the active agents for change, that at times we are victimized by other people’s action. But no, not in any naive way, Joseph knows that God sent him, not his brothers, in order to save and preserve life, and in that way to preserve the promise God had made to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

Joseph without doubt had been treated outrageously and unfairly by his brothers. They had indeed committed unspeakably wicked acts against him, and Potiphar’s wife just added on to the undeserved injustice. Is there anybody here who has not been done a completely unjust wrong at some point, a wrong from which you have not recovered, your reputation tarnished, your success nullified, your spirit crushed? You and I are meant in the final analysis to be Apostles. The apostles in the Gospels were the ones who were “sent”; they weren’t entrepreneurs, but servants sent on a task they often did not recognize or understand when they began.

As Christians, we are not in the first place meant to be successful - though a lot of churches think that’s what it’s all about. In the first place being Christian is not about being happy and self-fulfilled, and there are a million books out there telling you how to tap into those powerful Christian resources. In the first place we are meant to be sent to enable other people to gain life; we are meant to serve, not to be served. You may want to think you did it all by your own talent and ingenuity and brains, but then again, you’ve missed it all, you’ve been dreaming. You’ve been sent.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan