“The Long View”
Genesis 45:1-15
Psalm 133
Sometimes the plot twists of a story are so compelling, the details so dramatic, that we all but miss the moral of the story. The story of Joseph and his brothers—told matter-of-factly over 13 chapters of the book of Genesis—is one such story.
It takes place in two very different places and cultures over a period of many years. There’s family dysfunction and all manner of bad behavior: arrogance, self-centeredness, jealousy, betrayal, abuse, greed, dehumanization, deception—and that’s just in the first act. Then there’s political intrigue, more betrayal and deception, bad luck, and what looks like the end but turns out to be the beginning of a hard-to-believe success story.
Joseph, the brat who was sold into slavery by his brothers, who then told their father he’d been killed by a wild animal, becomes right-hand man to the pharaoh of Egypt. While a global famine is ravaging entire populations, Joseph uses his survival skills and powers of dream interpretation to keep the Egyptians secure and well-fed.
See what I mean? How can we not get caught up in such a story?
So before we go any further, let’s flag at least a few things I hope we will take away from this story:
The first is that we are all siblings. All people are related to all other people. We are family, and we need each other. Always have and always will. More than that, both this story and our entire faith tradition suggest that our healing, our hope, our redemption, and sometimes our literal survival come through the least of us all, the very groups and individuals we had cast out and walked all over, the ones we have oppressed and hated, the ones we have sold into Egypt or nailed to a cross.
Second: We all do bad things; we all suffer bad things. If we don’t own up to our bad behavior, we’re likely to be eaten up by guilt, shame, regret, self-deception, and isolation. Repentance and forgiveness are the only way out. And if we fail to find ways to address the hurt or injustice we’ve suffered, we’re likely to be eaten up by anger, resentment, bitterness, even hatred. Forgiveness, which has to come before healing can happen, is the only way out.
In the Venn diagram of people who hurt people and people who’ve been hurt who ultimately found healing and reconciliation, the overlap is forgiveness.
And third: While God is with us in every moment, to see the working of God’s mercy and grace in our lives sometimes requires taking the long view. When we take the long view, we may come to understand that while God didn’t cause bad things to happen to us, God can take even awful things and turn them around so that they produce good outcomes for us and for others.
When Joseph’s 11 brothers come to Egypt in search of food for their families in Israel, they have no idea that man who will determine their fate is the brother they sold into slavery. They had done their best to forget the little brother they had wronged, but Joseph could not forget them—and he recognized them immediately.
As his brothers beg him for help, all Joseph’s long-buried wounds resurface with a vengeance. He has to keep leaving the room to weep. There is a lot of weeping in this story because there’s so much unhealed pain. There is repeated weeping. Loud weeping. Wake-up-the-dead and crack-open-the-hardhearted weeping.
Joseph weeps not only for his unhealed pain but also because he knows what his brothers do not: They are family.
And still, because his pain is so deep, because success is not the same as healing, Joseph has a hard time doing the right thing—even for his family. Because he is so torn up inside, because he wants to forgive his brothers but can’t quite manage it yet, he plays for time. He sends his brothers home with orders to bring back the new baby of the family. When they return with his brother Benjamin, he plays still more tricks on them. He cries still more tears.
But he finally sees that forgiveness is the only way forward. He finally sees that his painful journey has opened the door not only to his family’s survival, but also to healing and reconciliation.
“I am your sibling,” he tells them.
And then everyone weeps.
But this is not only Joseph’s story. It is also our story, and the human story write large.
The world is a holy mess because we have forgotten that we are siblings—not only with other humans, but also with all creation. We have treated the earth as something to use up. We white folks have lived through and profited from centuries of incredibly savage racism and white supremacy. We have stolen this land from our Native siblings. We have bought and sold our Black siblings; we have segregated them and oppressed them, stripped them of their rights and imprisoned them. Even as some of us have begun to repent of our racist ways, we white folks still benefit from racist systems, and our Black, Native, and queer siblings still suffer from them.
Blinded by our white privilege, we fail to understand that our healing will come from the flourishing of the very people we have persecuted for centuries on end. But we must first honor their familial claims. We must repent and make reparations. We must do the work to make forgiveness possible. We must do the work to create a new system based on equity.
It is hard work, and many will refuse to do it. Many are refusing to do it. It is hard work, and there will be much weeping along the way. But our mutual survival depends on it.
This is not only Joseph’s story, and it is not only our story. It is also God’s story, and God has never been very good at leaving well enough—or bad enough—alone. God knows the seeds that slavery sows. God knows the legacy that injustice leaves. God knows that pain unhealed becomes pain passed on. And so it is that in God’s story, the evil humans do and the injustice humans suffer becomes invitations to presence and providence. And so it is in God’s story that the redeemed victim becomes the savior of his oppressors.
Joseph found the strength to forgive when he looked back on his life—all the searing pain and the unexpected grace of it—and saw the hand of God. He found the strength to forgive when he looked at his life and realized that his success, his blessings, his power were not meant for him alone but to be shared with his oppressors. He found the healing of forgiveness when he followed God’s ways, opening his hurting heart to love again, identifying with his brothers and—out of love for them and their father—giving them what they did not deserve.
“What you meant for evil,” he told his brothers, “God used for good.”
Beloveds, the evils of our time threaten to undo us—but God is waiting for the opportunity to use them for good.
So let’s remember that there is no us versus them; there is only us.
Let us let the suffering of others open our hearts to compassion and love.
Let us find the strength to forgive.
And let us open our eyes to see the loving hand of God.
