i feel myself unraveling

tell me you love me anyway

The conclusion of the Joseph family saga:

Today’s passage is the very end of the lovely Joseph saga. I commend it to you, Genesis 37 through 50. I’d like to read the entire story, but we’d run out of time. 

So this passage might land the punch it packs, though, I’d like to give you a general idea of this story’s overall shape.

To do that, I’d like to lead you through a little exercise. This is borrowed straight from the author, Kurt Vonnegut. You can YouTube his “shape of story” lecture. 

He does this thing where he charts stories on a simple graph. The horizontal axis has a “B” on the left end and an “E” on the right, for Beginning and End. The vertical axis has a “G” at the top and an “I” at the bottom, for Good fortune and Ill fortune. 

Now, Vonnegut works through this exercise to illustrate how most stories have the same trajectory, and nearly always lie. They presume to know more about life than we actually do. 

If you have time, you ought to watch his lecture. It’s thoughtful. But you don’t need to, because the Joseph sage gives the same lesson. Only probably with more nuance and and certainly more theological sophistication…

Joseph is one of the younger children, usually landing you on the G/I axis’ low end. However, as that narrator tells us, he’s actually the apple of his father’s eye. And judging from Joseph’s dreams, Jacob’s not the only one. Joseph has these dreams where the rest of his family bows down to him…

From the start, Joseph seems destined for great things.

All this attention, though, only serves to make Joseph’s brothers hate him. And one day, they see their chance to take Joseph down. 

As Joseph comes to check on them, the brothers spot him at a distance. (Probably because he was wearing that ostentatious coat.) They plan to ambush him, kill him, hide his body, and then tell their father a wild animal killed him. 

Reuben tries to stop the plan so he can be the hero. But, before everything is said and done, the rest of the brothers decide to sell Joseph into slavery. 

That way, they can all at least make a little coin on the side…

Joseph in a foreign country, Egypt, as the slave of Potiphar (Gen. 39). Joseph quickly finds favor with Potiphar, though, and is promoted. 

Although Joseph is a slave, at least he’s a slave with a little liberty. 

At this point, Potiphar’s wife takes notice of Joseph and hatches some plans of her own. Joseph tries to do the right thing, but only manages to lose what little he had gained.

Potiphar’s wife tells her husband Joseph tried to make a move on her. Now Joseph is in prison. In a foreign land. Without any family.

There, though, he meets a court official down on his luck, too (Gen. 40). One night he has a dream, and Joseph interprets it for him. In no time, he’ll be restored to his post. 

Then, Joseph asks the cupbearer to remember him when he’s free. Which the guy promptly fails to do.

For two more years, Joseph sits in prison! However, one day Pharaoh has a dream he can’t understand. Which jogs the cupbearer’s memory! He tells Pharaoh about this prisoner he knew who could interpret dreams.

Pharaoh calls Joseph up and tells him about his dream. Joseph interprets it for him; there will be seven good years of harvest, followed by seven bad ones (Gen. 41). 

Then, in an entrepreneurial move, Joseph suggests some grain be set aside during the good years in preparation for the bad ones. 

This idea so pleases Pharaoh that he puts Joseph in charge of the project. Which is how Joseph becomes second in command.

Everything comes to pass as Joseph said, and Egypt turns a hefty profit on the stockpiled grain. 

…In the meantime, though, Joseph’s family back in Canaan have been affected by the famine, too (Gen. 42). Jacob sends the brothers to Egypt to buy some grain. 

When they arrive, they cross paths with Joseph. Although they don’t recognize him. Joseph, however, recognizes them. 

He toys with them to see if they’ve changed. But seeing them scared out of their whits only melts his heart, and he can’t keep his identity a secret any longer. 

After a tender reunion, the whole family moves to Egypt (Gen 43-45). 

After all this, you’d expect the story to end with a “happily ever after” for Joseph and his family. But that’s not what happens.

Instead, their father dies and the brothers worry that maybe now Joseph will get his revenge. (This was in our passage for today.) To protect themselves, the brothers concoct another lie. They tell Joseph their father asked him to forgive them. 

With this lie, all the old dynamics are reintroduced back into the story! Threatening to undo everything. But in response, Joseph says some of the best, and most faithful words in the Bible! A sentiment that reaches all the way back to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And all the way forward to Jesus himself…

“…(F)or am I in the place of God,” Joseph asks. Quitting the game Adam and Eve tried to play. 

And then, in wonderment, blurting out, “…ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good…” (KJV)

After all the twists and turns, the unforeseen lows and the improbable highs, Joseph sees that we don’t see clearly. That when it comes to good and evil, we don’t know one end from the other! That you have to take the graph of good fortune and ill fortune and flip it on its head!

Which is precisely what Jesus reveals on the cross!

God is a farsighted god! The further you feel from God, the better God sees you. The smaller you feel, the bigger you are in God’s eyes!

This is a God you can’t see by charting progress on a G/I axis. This is a God you only see from the cross! And only in hindsight. You don’t see Easter Sunday on Good Friday. And don’t trust those who say they can.

God’s ways are not our ways, says Isaiah (Is. 55:8). God’s power is perfected in weakness, says Paul (2 Cor. 12:9). God gives eternal life through the cross, an instrument of death. And righteousness to none other than sinners. It’s all backward! 

But, HIDDEN in that upside-down work of God is salvation itself!

Which means all the junk that’s got you down, is right where God gets closest to you!. Where God is busy working redemption. Planting the life-giving cross right in the middle of your life! 

…And at that, I leave you. You are promised that hidden in all of this and that of your life is the pierced hand of your savior…