Musical Prelude and Service.

Genesis 37
I’ve made this argument a great many times over the years, in particular in scripture studies. What
we take from scripture can change depending upon the circumstances we are experiencing when we
read them. So, the way God speaks to us through scripture can change quite radically from reading
to reading.
As I started reflecting on today’s story from Genesis about Joseph and his relationship with his father
and his brothers, I had just returned from a week of traveling with my brother Owen. We drove to
our hometown of Dryden, spent several days visiting our mother and other family and then drove
back. Now, please don’t take from that, that there was a temptation to kill Owen or to sell him into
slavery. But I did find myself reflecting on my relationship with him over the decades, and honestly
for the most part, it has been a warm and loving relationship. There are times when I struggled to
understand how this musician came to be moved to compose contemporary orchestral pieces with
apparently very little popular appeal, but that is who he is and I love him and respect him. But as for
our relationship growing up, he is five years my junior and often he seemed like that little brother
you need to tolerate. As we have aged and watched our families grow, we have settled into a loving
and supportive relationship.
And then there is my sister. The middle child.
Let me start with saying that we love one another and have a warm and caring relationship. I admire
my sister greatly. But for much of our youth I think the charitable description of our relationship
would be fraught. As I learned in later years, she felt that as the eldest I was also the favourite. We
lived with a great deal of friction. I will let you take things from there.
I was oblivious to much of this, but when things blew up and they inevitably did, I defaulted to
defensiveness and lashing out in my own way. We did resolve things for the most part before I
departed for university.
So, reading the drama and the violence of the story of Joseph and his brothers this past week, I have
found myself reflecting on my own relationship with my siblings. Like so much of Genesis as it follows
the lives of Abraham and Sarah, then Isaac and Rebeccah and then their children Jacob and Esau
and Jacob’s wives Sarah and Leah, as well as Bilhah and Zilpah, these stories are driven by
dysfunction. Human frailties and fraught relationships. And it carries on into Reuben, Judah and all
the brothers and their resentment of Joseph.
The lectionary recommends editing out the talk about the dreams, but I find it important to include it.
It helps to emphasize that Joseph seems incapable of reading the room. He is a tattle tale and uses
his dreaming a way of sewing discord.
This is not to excuse the horrid decision of his brothers. Their actions are clearly cruel and could be
argued to be evil. And this is the family the Hebrews draw their roots back to. In the legends the
Jews tell themselves about where they come from, they place their roots with a squabbling, resentful
and bickering family. I find that remarkable. They do not paint a pretty picture about these people.
Let’s try to remember here that in time it is the lineage of Judah that provides the kings of Israel.
Christians will place Jesus in the line of Judah.
The writers of Genesis, whether it is Moses or many priests and Levites over the years offer us a
squabbling and dysfunctional family whom we most very likely can identify with all too much. We can
see ourselves and our own relationships in this family. Maybe, hopefully, not to such an extreme, but
those emotions probably seem familiar.
What do we take from this story? Well, I think it is important to remember it is part of a far larger
narrative. The story doesn’t end with Joseph being dragged off to Egypt while his brothers sit with
the consequences of his actions and his father falls into intense grief. There is more to the story
which we visit next week, but I don’t think I am giving away too many spoilers to say there is
reconciliation. There is reconciliation.
And God is in this story. Which at first glance might be a challenge to find. God is not mentioned in
this chapter of Genesis. But God still sits in what we read. God is at work here; at least that’s my
reading and the reading of many scholars. Because again, this is not the end of the story. Or even
the beginning of the larger narrative.
I don’t see God pulling every string and forcing the decisions of each and every character. Joseph
and his family are each free to make their own decisions. But each hateful choice, each action which
leads to disaster has its own consequence. And God continues to work to offer a new opportunity for
healing and reconciliation. God continues to love these bothers and their families. God still sees how
they each have a role to play in the larger vision of Israel and all of creation. God looks at these petty
and cruel men, this family struggling through dysfunction, hatred and jealousy and says, ‘I can work
with this.’
Much earlier in the story, Rebecca and Jacob conspire to trick Isaac into giving Esau’s birthright to
Jacob. It leads to him fleeing to escape Esau’s wrath. He is then tricked into marrying Leah and only
later being allowed to marry the sister he truly desired, Rachel. Trickery, deceit, bickering and petty

mindedness is spread throughout Genesis and culminates in Joseph being sold into slavery. People
struggling to survive in a world that is all too often lacking compassion and kindness. And yet, God
keeps urging us to respond with love, with compassion. To welcome the stranger and remember
where we come from. This chapter starts with a reminder that Jacob settles in the land his father
lived in as an alien. They were strangers in this land and found a home.
God sees who we are. God sees our flaws. God sees us at our worst. But God also sees who we can
be and keeps encouraging us to live up to that possibility. Our God is a God of second and third and
fourth and so on chances. God never gives up on us, even when we keep straying and causing harm
and disaster. Yes, we need to own those catastrophes and live with them. But we don’t need to stay
there. New opportunities come our way, and reconciliation; healing and a new world are just over the
horizon. If we are ready to seek it out and put in the work.
We are not condemned by our past or our ancestry. God does not judge us by what we have done.
God sees who we can be if we are moved by compassion, by love, by welcoming the stranger. God
sees us as God’s beloved children and keeps inviting us into that deeper and more complete
relationship. May we be ready to yes. Here I am Lord.
Thanks be to God. Amen
Rev. Warner Bloomfield

Music provided with permission through licensing with CCLI License number
2701258 and One License # A-731789