The Technicolor Family

               Before we begin this morning’s sermon, let’s get to know each other a little better.  I’d like all persons who are comfortable doing so to please stand.  Thank you.  Now, if you are an only child, would you please sit down again?  Thank you.  Now, if you are a child with just one other sibling, please sit down.  Now, if you had three and three only, two plus you, please sit down.  (The list goes until everybody’s seated, with a word of “oh my!” if somebody’s still standing when I get to “ten kids in your family, including yourself”).

               And now I have another question, so everybody up on your feet, as able!  The question is this:  please remain standing if you have never once had an argument, hurt feelings, estrangement, or a cross word with a sibling.  (Everybody sits back down, except of course for the “only child” folks.)

               It’s easy to note the basic facts (i.e. I come from a family with X number of sibilings and some configuration of parents).  It’s quite another to speak about what it’s like to be in a family.  We’d like to think we grew up with the Waltons. Secretly, we wonder if we grew up with the Simpsons.  (And even more secretly, we wonder if some of our family experiences mean we were raised among wolves….).  Stories about families are carried around by each of us, yet quietly we hope it’s not time for “confession”.

               I stir the pot a bit this morning to get us thinking about “families” not to open old wounds but to provide a gateway into one of the great family stories of the Bible.  No, this is not necessarily the story in a “family Bible” prepared for parents to read “bible stories” at bedtime.  We may tell the story of an amazing colorful “dream coat”, but the serious student of Genesis will realize that the story of Joseph is far more about his “Technicolor family”.  Technicolor is an old film term, hailing from the day when it was a big deal to show a film made with vibrant colors rather than the dull tones of black and white. 

The full story of Joseph may begin with colorful garments, but soon the coat of many colors is in tatters, as Joseph’s older brothers collude to deceive their father Jacob that Joseph is no more.  The story winds up years later in Egypt as Joseph has rose up, despite the odds, to a place of privilege in Egypt.  The same brothers arrive, on orders from their father to find help when a famine has overcome their homeland. And guess who’s sitting on all the food reserves?

Reading Joseph’s story, you realize that you can’t make this stuff up.  The tendrils of family fueled jealousy, animosity, and reconciliation only after a long period of time sounds too much like family trees we know all too well.  We may not have been thrown in a pit and sold off to an uncertain fate in a far-away country, but we’ve likely heard it suggested by a sibling at one point or another. (My personal favorite was telling my little sister to go play in traffic.  After a moment, she came back into the living room and said, “Mother said we don’t have traffic ‘cause we live on a dirt road.  And Mom would like to see you right away.”)

The Joseph narrative serves as the final section of Genesis’ cycle of stories, where each section of Genesis builds upon the same cautionary tales about humanity and God’s ongoing woes trying to keep this part of Creation from doing itself in.  The story of Joseph, the favored young son, turns upon his elder brothers behaving less like Abel and more like Cain.  Also, the elder brothers reflect the heritage of their father Jacob, who was no stranger to deceit against sibling and parent alike.  The generations may separate Joseph and his family by many a begat and a begot, but the stories repeat the oldest story in Genesis of the great-great-great-great grandparents Adam and Eve.  We may have God’s pronouncement of our “goodness” along with the rest of Creation, but we spend more time than we care to admit being like these families in Genesis.

In turn, Genesis reminds us that we are not the sum of our families.  (Can I hear an AMEN?  When I made a similar observation in a previous congregation where a high percentage of the congregants were indeed family, the AMEN was thunderous.)  Genesis speaks to God’s investment in humanity, working through the men and women populating the burgeoning human race to live a way closer to God’s primal intent for creating us in the first place.  The people God chooses may not be the textbook case study for righteousness, yet by God’s grace, the story of humanity is shaped by something other than our own plotting.  (And again, you can be thunderous on the AMEN.)

What we see in the Joseph story is a young boy of great promise being given a dream.  It could be what the brothers believe it to be: a loss of their power and status and yet again too much favor being placed on their little brother Joseph.  Instead, this dream is a hint of what is to come.  The brothers try their best to derail the dream by passing Joseph off as dead and Joseph receiving a one-way ticket to servitude in Egypt.  Nonetheless, this dream comes back full circle as the brothers find themselves before Joseph, though they do not recognize him all these years later. 
               In Joseph, we see a man who has struggled through much adversity, yet he has earned a place in the Egyptian power structure, no mean feat for a kid from a distant land.  He may toy with his brothers a bit, enjoying their ignorance of his true identity and keeping them groveling.  (The little sisters and brothers in the audience may suggest that there’s never enough groveling when an older sibling’s over a barrel.)  Despite the adversity, Joseph is fulfilling the dream from long ago.

The two stories of Joseph’s dream and the Technicolor family reunion serve as bookends of a greater narrative at work.  God is in the midst of this family drama, which may be an odd idea to think about when you know your own family drama and wonder where God might be in the midst of times that make the world seem chaotic and disorderly at best.   What we have in Joseph’s story is a celebration of God’s presence, even in the midst of difficult times, including those arising from “family stuff”.    Despite the complications arising from human arrogance, hubris, and other bad behaviors, you see the dream sent by God has not been derailed. God does not abandon us, even if our “next of kin” have.

               The story speaks to the hope of a dream God has for our lives that “life” may complicate to the point we can only see traces or “hints” of that grand dream’s possibility (here, Bruggemann’s Genesis commentary is influential).  The story of Joseph is considerably more demure about God’s presence in life when compared to the stories of his father Jacob and Grandpa Abraham and Grandma Sarah.  The other narratives revolve around stories of God’s “hands-on” approach (cf. Jacob’s wrestling match).  Some may live their lives with a profound sense of direction, while others may find God’s intent only when looking back and seeing the weave of one’s life, even if you thought at the time that your life was nothing but loose ends.

               Joseph’s story brings Genesis to a close, a cycle of stories about humanity veering off the path.  Families love and live, fight and cry.  Reading these stories of murder and mayhem, challenge and adversity in this first book of the Bible makes one wonder how the human race made it to the end of Genesis, let alone the present day.  In Genesis, we see the worst of humanity and the same old/same old of life playing out, with brief glimpses of Creation as it is meant to be.

               These days, religions tend to be blamed for what goes wrong with the world.  In some cases, religious beliefs, practices, and worldviews can indeed contribute to what ails humanity and belittles efforts to weave together a common good.  Yet I believe faith, ritual, sacred text, and the gathered community who take up these religious values and practices are part of the way beyond the world just trudging on through pain, suffering, and conflict.  The story of Joseph is given to us, along with all the others among the prophets and matriarchs, priests and rulers, cautionary tales sobering us to “there’s nothing new under the sun” when it comes to the human race, no matter how sophisticated and advanced we deem ourselves to have become. 

               As we prepare to gather at the Table, I offer us a hymn written by Scottish writer John Bell, whose hymns often resound with a word about the world and its injustice and the world God summons us to inhabit through keeping the faith.  For this day, as we have engaged the stories of families too colorful for their own good, as we contemplate our own stories of life when we have been the dreamer and when we have been those who would do our best to derail it, the hymn invites us to take “the sorry things we have done” and lay them down at the reconciling and merciful Table of the Lord. 

               Let us sing!