Do you have a younger sibling? Or are you the youngest child in a family?
Those of
you who are older siblings know what I know, which is that this Joseph story
was most definitely written by a younger sibling. See, I have a younger
brother, so I can imagine what I would feel if he came up to my parents and I
one day and said, “Oh, by the way, I had a dream last night, and you were all
bowing to me, because—well—I’m going to rule over you.” That would not have
gone over well. I can imagine how much worse it would be for eleven
brothers—ten of them older—who actually have quite a bit to gain from their
father’s favoritism. We older siblings know that if this story was written by
one of us Joseph would not have amounted to much.
What to do with Joseph…
This is a hard topic for me—perhaps
it is for all older siblings—because Joseph earned none of this, and as an
older brother I am tempted to play the “That’s not fair!” card on this one.
Joseph was the epitome of the spoiled brat, feasting on the riches of his
father through no merit of his own. Unlike other Biblical heroes—David, for
example—he had no Goliath moment of character. All we know about Joseph is a
couple of dreams and, worse still, his exuberance in sharing those dreams with
his family. Not only is he brash and arrogant, he is completely unaware of the
effect his brashness is likely to have. He is walking on thin ice.
These dreams are the thing that sets
Joseph apart. Analysis and interpretation of dreams has been around since at
least the time of Joseph and probably for as long as human beings have dreamt.
We have a fascination with this aspect of our subconscious. Are we telling
ourselves something? Is something outside of us giving us wisdom? What do
dreams mean?
I can imagine that if I were
preaching this sermon sixty years ago I would have talked about Sigmund Freud
and his interpretation of dreams, or if I was preaching this forty years ago I
would have talked about Carl Jung and his revisions of Freud’s psychology of
dreaming, but since this is 2012 I will ditch the psychology and instead
interpret Joseph’s dreaming through the only lens that a 26-year-old guy
knows—the 2010 Christopher Nolan film, Inception.
For
those of you unfamiliar, Inception is
a film about invading a person's dream and planting an idea that will ultimately
change the course of their lives. One of the questions that the movie raises
is: What emotion is so powerful to plant an idea deep enough for it to take
hold? Is it personal gain or fear perhaps? No, none of those things emotions
will do. The person dreaming rejects these as unrealistic bases for a new
idea. Instead, the only emotion that sticks is catharsis. Catharsis combines
both reconciliation and forgiveness, which are the only emotions powerful
enough to make a person change his course.
So
what does any of this have to do with Joseph?
In these early
dreams, Joseph interprets from a point of self-interest. We don’t know if it is
God or Joseph’s self-conscious desires that are causing him to dream these
dreams, but regardless of their source Joseph sees them as visions of his own
future glory. Nobody can mistake his reasons for sharing the dreams with his
family. He is setting himself above his clan, but in so doing he is misreading
the situation. The vision at the heart of those dreams is one of leadership, but
in his excitement to share what he has seen Joseph shows he is not yet fit to
be a leader. First, he must fall. Then, there will be the possibility of
catharsis before he rises to the place he will one day stand.
There’s
that old saying that pride comes before a fall. That saying may very well
originate here, as Joseph quite literally falls into the pit, albeit with a forceful
nudge from his brothers. It’s not that his brothers are justified in their
actions, though in their situation I probably would have been right there shoving little Joey (I can’t tell you how often I would have sold my brother to
some passing Ishmaelites if the opportunity arose). Joseph
doesn’t have a voice in this part of the story. We don’t know exactly what is
going through his head, but I can imagine this is not what he expected. The
dreams of greatness he had were portents of a future beyond his grasp.
This was going to be much harder than he could have imagined. It was
going to be much harder for the entire family. God had a trajectory in mind for
Israel,
but it took them much farther astray than anybody could have predicted.
We
have this problem with God’s will. For one, most of us don’t have dreams that
depict what the future will hold, or if we do they are muddled visions of a
reality we cannot yet discern. There is a real debate among Christians as to
whether God has everything planned and whether we have any control over the
future. Well, Joseph teaches us quite a lot about what God’s plan looks like.
It is never fully crafted, or at the very least it appears to us only dimly. It is never without our input—both positive and
negative. God’s plan is not intended for our ill, though ill may come of our
response to it. Finally, God’s plan is God’s and not ours.
I
cannot imagine that God, being God and not subject to constraints like time and
space, looks at the world like we do. When Joseph dreams these dreams they are
visions of a future—yes—but not one that can come to be without the active
participation of Joseph, his brothers and his father. Man plans and God
laughs—not because God knows every little action that’s going to follow but
because God’s view is much wider; ours is one-dimensional. Like Joseph, we
interpret things in terms of personal gain. Joseph knew nothing of how to be a
leader to his brothers until he was rejected and cast into the pit.
I hope it doesn’t
take that kind of betrayal for you to understand your purpose in this life, but
some of you have already been down into that pit. You have already had awful
things happen to you—some, like Joseph, at the hands of family. You have to
fall in order to rise.
The
Joseph story is a story lived out again and again in our lives. First we are prideful and exuberant, then we get shot down; then—slowly and
after much backsliding—we discover our purpose in this world. Almost
universally, that place in life looks nothing like we imagined it. When his
family finally does bow to Joseph it is not in the place or manner he would
have supposed. He becomes a leader in Egypt but finally wants nothing
more than catharsis for those years gone by.
We
don’t know what we want. That is our fundamental flaw. We think we know—we
think we want simple things: money, time, a person or a thing. We think if we
have those things then we will be happy, but when we have it all we discover we
want more. Soon, we are numb to life, unable to care for the good or the bad.
The worst life is the life that no longer values catharsis; the life that
learns no lessons from loss; the life that does not care. Catharsis requires
loss, then a turning, and finally redemption. It requires falling into the pit.
It requires looking deep within ourselves to find the essence of our humanity
and turning around. It requires forgiveness.
May
you forgive as you are forgiven; may you find catharsis for all your hurt;
and may God lead you in paths you would not have imagined.
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