From Prisoner to Prince

The scriptures referred to are Genesis chapters 37, 39-45.

At the heart of the film Signs is a speech in which a widowed priest lays out 2 ways of looking at events. As he and his brother watch news events of uncanny sightings worldwide, the Reverend Hess says, “People break down into two groups when they experience something lucky. Group one sees it as more than luck, more than coincidence. They see it as a sign, evidence that someone is up there, watching over them. Group two sees it as pure luck, a happy turn of chance.” The freak accident that deprived Hess of his wife and his children of their mother has convinced the former clergyman that life is random. But his family will soon find itself in some dire situations that will push them to choose between the two ways of viewing existence. And their choices will mean life or death.

In today's reading of Genesis we have jumped to the end of the story of Joseph. Just last week we read the beginning of Joseph's woes. I wish those who selected the lectionary passages had given us more of the story, stretched over several weeks. To make sense of this tale, just as with the movie Signs, you need to know just how bad things got for the main character.

Joseph is the first son of Jacob's favorite wife, Rachel. For years she was barren. Then she conceives and bears Joseph and later, Benjamin. She dies in childbirth and this makes her sons even more precious to Jacob, who is also called Israel by this time. But Joseph is a tattletale and has dreams in which everyone bows down to him. This does not endear him to his brothers. Furthermore, Jacob gives Joseph a special robe, either expensively dyed with many colors or with long sleeves, depending on how you translate it, but both are inappropriate for doing manual labor. It's the kind of thing a clan leader would wear. And since Joseph is the second youngest of twelve, this cements his brothers' hatred of him.

Joseph is wearing this robe when he is sent to seek out and report on his brothers, who are grazing the flocks. Seeing him approach in his lordly attire, some of his brothers want to kill him. The oldest, Reuben, persuades the others to simply throw him into an empty cistern. Reuben plans to pull Joseph out later and return him to Jacob. But in the interim, Judah talks his other brothers into selling him to a passing caravan. To explain his absence, they smear his fancy coat with goat's blood, letting their father think he was devoured by some beast.

Joseph is sold to an Egyptian, Potiphar, captain of Pharaoh's guard. Joseph proves to be smart and hard-working and so he does well, rising to be in charge of the household. We are told periodically that “the Lord was with Joseph.” But that doesn't mean Joseph didn't have troubles. Potiphar's wife is attracted to Joseph. When he refuses her advances, she sets him up and charges him with attempted rape. Joseph is thrown into prison.

Joseph becomes a trustee and eventually is running the prison for the warden. Still it's a prison and a foreign one at that. Though he prospers in every position in which he's found himself, Joseph is still a slave and now a prisoner. He hasn't seen or heard from his family in years. Did he know his brothers faked his death? Did one of them maliciously tell him what they were going to do? Did he lay there at night imagining how his father and his younger brother Benjamin took the news? This also meant no one would be looking for him. There must have been times when Joseph wondered what God was doing, letting all this misfortune happen to him.

Then two high-profile prisoners are thrown in jail with Joseph. The Pharaoh's chief cupbearer and head baker have fallen out of favor. Each man then has a dream. In a culture that sees dreams as prophetic, the two men want to know what their dreams mean. Saying, “Don't interpretations belong to God?” Joseph asks each man his dream and interprets them. The baker will be hanged but the cupbearer will be forgiven. Joseph asks the cupbearer to remember him. But the cupbearer forgets Joseph when his fortune changes. For 2 more years, Joseph languishes in what he describes as a dungeon on false charges.

What finally jogs the cupbearer's memory is a hard-to-interpret dream that Pharaoh has. When none of his advisors are able to give Pharaoh a satisfactory answer, the cupbearer suggests Joseph be called. Joseph not only gives the interpretation of the dream—7 years of bumper crops followed by 7 years of famine—but as someone who organized a wealthy household and a prison, Joseph suggests a way to weather the coming catastrophe. And Pharaoh thinks Joseph is just the person to administer the plan. Joseph rises from prisoner to second-in-command of Egypt.

When the famine comes, it spreads to the land of Canaan. Jacob sends his sons to Egypt to buy grain. But he keeps his youngest, Benjamin, his last reminder of Rachel, at his side.

Joseph spots his brothers among those who have come to buy grain from the surplus Egypt stored during the good years. He accuses them of being spies and has them thrown into prison unjustly, as he had been. They tell him they are just a starving family with a father and younger brother waiting for them at home. What Joseph does next seems cruel, if justified. He will release the sons of Israel if they bring back the youngest son. And to make sure they cooperate he keeps Simeon. Lastly, he has his servants secretly return his brother's money to their packs, so when they leave Egypt it looks like they've stolen the grain. This makes them very reluctant to return to Egypt. As I said, it looks cruel but Joseph is testing his brothers to see if they still put other things before the welfare of their family members. And at first it seems they do. They only return when they have run through the grain.

But first they must convince Jacob to let Benjamin go with them as Joseph stipulated. Only when Judah personally guarantees Benjamin's safety does Jacob relent. Unknown to Jacob, Judah is the one who came up with the idea of selling Joseph into slavery rather than killing him.

When they return to Egypt, the brothers apologize, bring a gift and double payment for the grain. Joseph appears to be magnanimous but this time he has a valuable chalice planted in Benjamin's pack. When it is discovered, Joseph decrees that for this offense Benjamin will remain in Egypt as his slave. In a moving speech, Judah says that such a turn of events will kill their father and he offers himself to be Joseph's slave in Benjamin's place.

This is too much for Joseph. He has wept before during these encounters with his brothers but has managed to hide it. Now he sends his servants from the room and reveals himself to his brothers. They have a hard time recognizing him at first. When they last saw him, Joseph was a Hebrew boy of 17. Now he is a man of 39, dressed in fine Egyptian clothing and clean shaven. He is also a man of authority to whom all bow, as foretold in his dreams.

But what is amazing is Joseph's attitude. He should be bitter. But, no, he says, “Do not be distressed or angry with yourselves for selling me here, for God sent me ahead of you to save lives...So it was not you who sent me here but God.” (Genesis 45:5,8) Later when their father dies and the brothers are worried that Joseph will now feel free to punish them, instead he says, “Don't be afraid. Am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant to harm me, but God intended it for a good purpose, so he could preserve the lives of many people, as you can see this day.” (Genesis 50:19-20) Joseph is able to look beyond the emotions and motivations of the people who did these things to him and see instead the hand of God behind it all. That's real faith.

You could say, “Well, sure, now that he's rich and powerful, he can forgive and forget.” But people usually don't. We tend to brood on old wounds and slights. We keep injustices alive in our minds. And if we achieve success, the temptation is to use our new power and wealth get to some payback. And while some of Joseph's actions do seem to smack of that, as we saw, they seem more calculated to find out if his brothers have changed and are not willing to let one another come to harm. He also wants them to bring his brother and father to see him. He doesn't get pleasure out of his brothers' distress but feels it acutely himself.

What's remarkable is that Joseph can see the big picture. He sees how God was putting everything in place so that Joseph can save thousands of lives, including those of his family. Had he not been sold into slavery, he would never have gone to Egypt. Had he not been sold to a high official and then been accused of rape, he wouldn't have been sent to a prison where he met other high officials in disgrace. If he hadn't interpreted the dream of the cupbearer, he never would have come to Pharaoh's attention. The good Joseph was doing, rather than just being a lucky outcome after his misadventures, was the purpose of them all along. God used the jealousy, equivocation, lust and anger of others to put the right person in the right place at the right time.

It's a good exercise to look back at your life in good times and see how much of what you have achieved is dependent on things outside of your control. The opportunities open to you, the people who help you, any social status that gives you an advantage, and even your inborn talents are all gifts from God. To claim that all you have and all you are has come from your own efforts alone is not only untrue but arrogant. You may have played the cards you were dealt well but who dealt you those cards? And who created those cards in the first place?

Yet as remarkable as it is to be able to look back and see God's loving purpose behind the hard times of the past, it is even more amazing to be able to trust that God is working for good at the same time we are actually undergoing those difficulties. Even during his hardships, Joseph was aware that God's hand was at work in his life and he gave God credit. When he had a chance to make points with Pharaoh and was asked if he could interpret the dream, Joseph said, “Not I! God will answer for Pharaoh's benefit.” (Genesis 41:16) Humility and faith that God is working in one's life go together. The fact is that we don't always see how God is making all things work together for good for those who love him. (Romans 8:28) We simply have to trust that he is.

So how do we live while waiting for God's plan to come together? By doing those things he has commanded us to do—to love him and love our neighbors as ourselves. (Mark 12:29-31) Love our enemy. (Matthew 5:44) Spread the good news. (Matthew 28:19-20) Be respectful of authority but always remember we obey God first. (Romans 13:1-7; Acts 5:29) Live in peace as much as it is in our power. (Romans 12:18) Forgive. (Matthew 6:14) Be honest. Be just. Be chaste. (Philippians 4:8) Be hard working. (Colossians 3:23) Just like Joseph. He never lost his integrity. He could have had an affair with Potiphar's wife and had a cushy life as steward of the household, figuring this was now his lot and he ought to make the best of it. When in prison he could have used his position as chief trustee to squeeze favors out of his fellow prisoners and benefit from the underground economy that often thrives in such places. But he remained faithful to God and his ways. He remained a person of integrity.

When everything seems to go wrong, when we are unjustly accused, when people attack us out of jealousy or anger or greed or fear, or when disease or misfortune seem to follow us, it is hard to see what God is doing in our lives. That is why we must continue to have faith in him. We must trust that he is good and just and that he loves us. We must trust that he has taken what we and other people have given him to work with—the bad emotions and negative motives and the ignorant, stupid and evil choices we and they have made—and that he is fashioning something supremely good out of them. We have to take the long view. From the time Joseph was enslaved until the time he was elevated by Pharaoh was a period of 13 years. And at any time of those 156 months, those 4745 days, he could have given up. He could have said, “This is it. This is my life from now on. I will always be a slave. I will always be a prisoner. I will never see my family again. Why continue to serve God? Why act as if what I do and what happens to me has any greater meaning or purpose?” No doubt he had times when despair seemed simpler than believing in God, like the 2 years when the cupbearer forgot about Joseph. But he held on. He continued to trust that God had a purpose for him, even though he, the son of a nomadic shepherd, could never have imagined that he would be the second most powerful man in the greatest empire of his time. Contrary to all expectations, God took Joseph from prisoner to prince so that Joseph might save thousands of lives, including those of his brothers who had wanted him dead.

In the movie Signs the Reverend Hess concludes: “What you have to ask yourself is what kind of person are you? Are you the kind who sees signs, sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or look at the question this way: is it possible that there are no coincidences?”

What would Joseph say?