JOSEPH - PART ONE: BROKENNESS

August 10, 2014

Pentecost 9

Genesis 37:1-4,12-28

(prayer)

So far this summer, the series of Bible readings we have been given by the Revised Common Lectionary have had us working through some of the stories of the first Generations of the Hebrew Patriarchs beginning with Abraham and Sarah’s journey to the land of Canaan.  In fact, by the time the book of Genesis ends, we have some details of four generations.

Last week, I did a bit of an overview of the third generation - looking at Jacob’s life from the time of his birth up until he wrestled with an angel by the River Jabbok, when Jacob was given a new name: ‘The God-Wrestler’ - Israel.  In the future, his descendants would be known as the People of Israel.

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Today, we move into generation four.  If you are familiar with Jacob’s family, you might recall  that it’s make up bears little resemblance to most of our family experiences.

The love of Jacob’s life was his cousin, Rachel - daughter of his Uncle Laben.  Laben promised Jacob her hand in marriage for the small price of seven years of labour on the family estate - which Jacob eagerly did.

After the wedding, when Jacob and his bride retreated to the marriage tent, he discovered that his father-in-law-uncle had tricked him into marrying Rachel’s older sister, Leah. 

Eventually, Jacob did get to marry Rachel as well... after another seven years of service.

I’m sure that it was not for a lack of trying, but Rachel was not able to have any children.  It was through Leah that the fourth generation of Abraham’s family began.  Jacob and Leah had four sons: Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah (Gen29:32,33).  Sadly at the time, some believed that the purpose of marriage was to bear children - Rachel felt unworthy of Jacob because she couldn’t do that and she was deeply envious of her sister for her success in this regard.  But Rachel had a back-up plan - she would give her maidservant Bilhah as a wife/surrogate mother (another sad aspect of the time that Rachel could decree that her husband could ‘Here
is my maid Bilhah; go in to her, that she may bear upon my knees and that I too may have children through her.’). 

Bilhah gave birth to two sons - whom Rachel gave names to: Dan and Naphtali (Gen30:6,8).

It gets even weirder: Leah had stopping have children at this point (again not for lack of trying), so she pulls a Rachel - Leah gives her servant, Zilpah to Jacob to have marital relations with.  The result was two more sons for Jacob with what was - in effect - his fourth wife: Gad and Asher (Gen30:11,13).

Leah’s barrenness was temporary because she gave birth to three more children: sons Isshcahr and Zebulan and the family’s only daughter Dinah.

Just to complete the picture, when Jacob was already becoming an old man, Rachel was finally able to conceive and she gave birth to two final sons for Jacob: Joseph and Benjamin.  [Tragically, Rachel died giving birth to Benjamin.]

So, to sum up... Jacob had 13 children with four wives:

©     Seven children with Leah;

©     Two with Bilhah;

©     Two with Zilpah; and

©     Two with Rachel.

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As I said, Rachel was Jacob’s first and true love, so he held a special place in his heart for the children she gave birth to: Joseph and Benjamin.  These two sons play key roles in this two part sermon that will continue next week.

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As was read this morning (Gen37:3): [Jacob] loved Joseph more than any other of his children, because he was the son of his old age; and he had made him a [special robe].  The meaning of the Hebrew is uncertain - based on early greek translations of the Hebrew, the traditional description of the robe is that it was a coat of many colours.  More recently, scholars think it may have simply referred to a long sleeved coat.  Etymology aside, the coat was clearly a unique and special gift that was given to Joseph alone -
because he was his father’s favorite.

The coat was symbolic of what seemed true within the family dynamics - that (in many ways) Joseph was set apart from his older brothers. 

We didn’t read it this morning, but there was also a time when Joseph had a couple of vivid dreams of stars and sheaves of wheat - which he interpreted to mean that one day his brothers would bow down to him. 

As we heard in what we did read this morning, none of this sat very well with Joseph’s brothers.

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You heard what happened when 17 year old Joseph was sent by Jacob to check up how the brothers were doing with the flocks out near Shechem and Dothan.  When Joseph was still a ways off, the brothers conspired to kill him and blame it on an animal attack - ‘we shall see what will become of his dreams!’.  It was the oldest brother Reuben who tried to talk them out of murder - he suggested that they simply teach Joseph a lesson by abandoning him in a dry well.  They stripped off that wretched coat and tossed him in, but it’s not clear if murder was completely off the table.  While the brothers (minus Reuben) ate their supper, the fourth oldest, Judah, got the idea to sell Joseph into slavery instead of murder.  That’s what they
did.  For 20 pieces of silver, Joseph became the slave property of some Midianite traders heading to Egypt.

Later, the brothers would go with the animal attack story with their father - they stained the fancy coat with blood and described the tragic death of their brother. 

Jacob vowed to spend the rest of his life in mourning for his beloved son.

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It is hard to foster perfect relationships - I suspect it is impossible.  Even with the most compassion-filled relationships, there are difficulties.  The deeper the love, the harder we work to get through the problems and conflicts that occur.

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There is an old saying that goes: you can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your family.

When family dynamics are such that relationships become broken - it can be especially difficult, because there is this expectation that (even though you can’t choose your family), you are supposed to ‘love’ them.

I’ve heard some people try and walk this tightrope by saying - of course I love my family; but I don’t really like them.

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Jacob’s children were part of a very complicated family.  There was the complexity of the four mothers (the competition among them and the picking of favorites) - the over abundance of testosterone must have had its impact.

Some of you may have read Anita Diamant’s 1997 novel, The Red Tent, which (although primarily focusing on Jacob and Leah’s daughter Dinah) fills in some of the gaps of the biblical stories of Jacob’s family with an interesting narrative of the various relationships and dynamics of this fourth generation of the Hebrew patriarchs.  I quite enjoyed her take on the various personalities and relationships.

Who knows what the real family dynamics were like beyond the few stories in Genesis, but we can say (with confidence) that there was a lot of brokenness in that fourth generation.

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It is hard to live in brokenness.  It is one of life’s most difficult chapters - for some of us these chapters are debilitating and dominate the anguish we feel.

I believe we are made to desire wholeness and completeness - and so when there is brokenness, we feel that there is something missing in life.

To be fair, sometimes circumstances make brokenness unavoidable.  We accept broken relationships because there is sometimes more distress trying to keep things together.  Sometimes accepting brokenness is the best a number of bad options.  I have some friends that the best hard decision they ever had to make for themselves and their family was to divorce.  Sometimes the brokenness is worse when we have trouble recognizing how broken things really are.

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Throughout the Jacob family narrative is the sense that God is intimately involved in the joys and struggles in their lives.  In a way, Jacob’s love for Rachel - in spite of the societal expectation that she should be bearing children for her husband - is a metaphor for God’s love for all of us.  Jacob’s love for Rachel was not dependant on her ability to ‘pump out puppies’.

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We worship a god of the whole and a god of the broken: a god of birth and death; of crucifixion and resurrection.

We are not alone. 

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As we leave the Jacob story today, we do not have a neat, happy ending.  The text ends today with need for healing - need to deal with the brokenness.

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Many of us have moments like that (from time to time) too.  The goodnews is that our God is the god of the broken.  Our God is a god of presence in time of joy and sorrow. 

We are not alone.

Thanks be to God.

Let us pray:

(ad lib)

Amen.

#642VU “Be Thou My Vision”