Sermon Genesis 45:3-11, 21-28 How Joseph Became a Gift-giving Man <\/p>\n
By The Rev. Charles Hoffacker<\/p>\n
Today let’s look at one of the best stories in the Old Testament,
and consider how its principal character,
whose name is Joseph,
changes from a man full of himself
to someone who gives the gift of life.
In the name of God:
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
What we heard this morning from Genesis–
Joseph’s brothers shocked to find him alive
and the ruler of Egypt;
their return, laden with gifts, to their father Jacob;
Jacob’s resolve to see his son again,
the one he had given up for dead–
all this occurs late
in the long story of Joseph.<\/p>\n
Joseph’s story resembles a novel
more so than does anything else in the Old Testament.
This story, this novel,
woven of material from various sources,
extending throughout fourteen chapters in Genesis,
is something complex, complicated, convoluted.
Here is how Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel,
Jewish scholar and storyteller, describes it:
“an incredible epic, unfocused, panoramic,
disdainful of detail
and lacking the terseness and sobriety of a work of art.” 1<\/p>\n
Again, today’s reading places us late in the story.
The viceroy of Egypt, second only to the Pharaoh,
reveals himself to be none other than Joseph.
His brothers are dumbstruck, terrified!
Years before they had seen him
taken away in slavery.
They thought
they would never lay eyes on him again.
Now he appears before them,
a ruler with tremendous power,
and they come as victims of famine,
desperate to buy food for their families.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Joseph who stands before them
is a gift-giving man.
He bestows life.<\/p>\n
On the nation of Egypt he bestows life
through his administrative ability.
Despite a long and severe famine,
there is, thanks to him,
food enough and to spare safely stored away.<\/p>\n
On his scoundrel brothers he bestows life
through his generous forgiveness.
He remembers how they hated him
and sought his destruction,
but he does not want revenge.<\/p>\n
On his ancient father he bestows life
by inviting him to a new home.
The old man, once brokenhearted by his loss,
experiences resurrection
because his son still lives.<\/p>\n
Yes,
the Joseph who reveals himself to his brothers
is a man who gives the gift of life.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It was not always so!
Joseph began life as a brat.
The child of his father’s old age,
he was his father Jacob’s pet,
and reminded the old man of his deceased wife Rachel.
You can be sure that the other sons
were wounded by this favoritism.<\/p>\n
Worse yet,
Joseph was a tattle-tale.
He would tell Jacob
all the bad things the other boys were saying,
recount them in detail.
Joseph was very effective
at making himself despised.<\/p>\n
And then there were those dreams!
Joseph was a dreamer.
He saw his family bowing down to him in homage.
He made the mistake of telling these dreams
to his already exasperated brothers.<\/p>\n
Finally, they have had enough!
To avoid outright murder,
they throw the obnoxious brat into an empty well.
They take his fancy coat, the one his father gave him,
mess it up with animal blood,
and tell Jacob that wild beasts tore apart his favorite son.
Their father almost dies from sorrow.<\/p>\n
Joseph, meanwhile, is pulled out of the well
by traveling merchants who sell him into slavery.
He’s strong and sturdy, they see,
fit to labor on Egyptian building projects.
This itself is a sentence of death.
Such slaves do not survive for long!
Indeed, they come to yearn for death.<\/p>\n
That’s what happens to Joseph on the outside.
Can you imagine what happens on the inside?
There in that empty well abandoned forever by his brothers?
There in chains of slavery, being led to a distant land?
The old Joseph, obnoxious and full of himself,
dies a painful death.
In his place appears a different Joseph,
who on the exhausting trip to Egypt
realizes he has been a fool.<\/p>\n
Once he arrives in Egypt,
something unforeseen happens.
Joseph does not end up as a quarry slave.
He is sold to an army officer,
and begins the far better life of a household servant.
He fulfills his duties so well
that in time his master gives him responsibility
for the entire household.<\/p>\n
But his troubles are far from over!
His master’s wife keeps trying to seduce him,
and he keeps rejecting her advances.
A lesser man might have given in,
but Joseph feels an obligation
to the master who has shown him such favor.
He has been entrusted with great responsibility,
and refuses to betray that trust.
No longer is he obnoxious, full of himself.
Now there is room in his life for other people.<\/p>\n
Feeling frustrated and rejected,
his master’s wife insists that Joseph tried to rape her.
This false charge sticks.
A slave has no recourse.
Joseph finds himself in a prison cell.<\/p>\n
When his brothers threw him into that empty well,
Joseph was indeed an arrogant person,
but now he is blameless.
If his experience in the empty well
and his journey into slavery
burnt away his arrogance,
his time in prison works in him
an even deeper change.
Through his utterly unjustified suffering,
Joseph realizes he has a companion.
As we read in Genesis,
“the Lord was with Joseph
and showed him steadfast love.” 2<\/p>\n
Joseph in prison remains a man of dreams.
Through these dreams God speaks to him.
This familiarity with dreams,
Joseph’s wisdom in understanding them,
results in a remarkable chain of events
that brings this lowly prisoner
to the attention of the Pharaoh, the king of Egypt.<\/p>\n
For the Pharaoh has dreams to be interpreted.
Joseph recognizes that these dreams concern
not the Pharaoh alone, but the entire country.
Joseph knows that these dreams warn
of a long and severe famine.
Not only does he interpret these dreams,
but he proposes a plan of action to rescue the nation.<\/p>\n
Impressed by Joseph’s wisdom,
the Pharaoh appoints him to a high government post
where he implements his plan to counteract the famine.
And it is as an important official
that Joseph meets his hungry brothers
who come to Egypt seeking food.
They do not recognize him at first.
That comes as no surprise.
No longer is he an arrogant, inflated youth.
He is now a humble prince, a gift-giving man,
one who bestows life.<\/p>\n
That Joseph is a person of great ability
is not the point.
The point is that he suffers,
sometimes for a reason, sometimes for no reason,
just as you and I suffer.
He does not allow his suffering to crush him.
He gains something valuable from it.
Like us, Joseph has no choice
as to whether or not he suffers.
But, like us, he has a choice
as to whether this suffering destroys him
or transforms him.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
There are many stories about Joseph
that add to what we find in the Bible.
One of them takes place
when he and his brothers return home
from their father’s funeral.
On the way back,
Joseph makes a detour
and stops at that empty well
which once held him captive.<\/p>\n
For a long time he stands at the well’s edge
and looks down into the darkness.
His brothers assume that he does this
to remind them of how they once mistreated him.
But that is not the reason!
He stares into the well,
that place where his transformation began,
to remember his past
and express gratitude to God.<\/p>\n
Joseph is thankful
for everything that has happened
since that long-ago time. 3<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I have spoken to you in the name of the One
who is ever at work bringing about our transformation:
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n
1. Elie Wiesel, Messengers of God: Biblical Portraits and Legends <\/em>(Random House, 1976), 128.<\/p>\n 2. Genesis 39:21.<\/p>\n 3. Wiesel, 153.<\/p>\n Copyright 2001 Charles Hoffacker. Used by permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sermon Genesis 45:3-11, 21-28 How Joseph Became a Gift-giving Man By The Rev. Charles Hoffacker Today let’s look at one of the best stories in the Old Testament, and consider how its principal character, whose name is Joseph, changes from a man full of himself to someone who gives the gift of life. In the … Continue reading “Genesis 45:3-11, 21-28 How Joseph Became a Gift-giving Man (Hoffacker) – Bible study”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3750","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3750","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3750"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3750\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3750"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3750"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3750"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}