The Case of the Missing Brothers: The Eleventh Sunday After Trinity (August 20, 2023)

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be alway acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

I want to start by amending something I’ve said over the past few months. As many of you know, we’ve been going through the book of Genesis and a refrain I have repeated in multiple sermons is “Their story is our story.” In other words, the Scriptures are a mirror for us and when we read about the story of Abraham, for example, we are reading about something in our own selves. In St. Luke’s Gospel, Jesus is resurrected and, before revealing himself publicly to his disciples, he joins two of them on the road to Emmaus and the Evangelist tells us that as they walked, “beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.” So I would like to amend our saying that “their story is our story” to say that “their story is Christ’s story which is our story.” Now chapter 15 of the first epistle to the Corinthians begins an extended argument for the resurrection. Part of St. Paul’s point is that the Jesus story, especially his death, is “according to the Scriptures, language that we borrow for the Nicene Creed. Today, I want to test this theory with the story of Joseph: their story is Christ’s story which is our story.

The story of Joseph is a story we all know pretty well; it’s the story of one of Scripture’s most dysfunctional families. Jacob, the father, loves Joseph, the son of his old age. The rest of his brothers resent Joseph because of the technicolor dreamcoat his father gives him (maybe you’ve seen the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical) and because Joseph dreams a dream in which he sees them bow down to him. Jacob, the father, sends Joseph to his brothers while they’re out tending sheep to bring them provisions. They’re not at the first location but Joseph meets an unnamed man who tells him the brothers have moved on to Dothan, a place that means “desertion,” giving us some foreshadowing. As the brothers see Joseph nearing, they decide to kill him. However, they eventually heed the words of Reuben and Judah, deciding instead to strip Joseph of his cloak, throw him in a pit, and eventually sell him into slavery. This is the kind of brotherly love you could only expect today in a city like Philadelphia.

What’s interesting about this story is the way the early Christians were drawn to it as a type or allegory for Christ. Joseph is viewed as Jesus: the beloved of his father, sent to bring nourishment to the brothers just like Jesus, the Word, is sent by the Father to bring about our salvation. Joseph can’t find his brothers, going from Shechem to Dothan, a picture of how Christ seeks after us. We might think of the parable of the good shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep in search of the one. The brothers, of course, reject Joseph, violently attacking him just like the Jews end up rejecting Christ. We may even read the ineffectual appeals of Reuben to his brothers to be something like the pleading of Pilate for Jesus not to be killed. And finally, we can say that just as Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers to the Ishmaelites so Jesus was received not by the Jews but by the Gentiles. But, like we said, their story is Christ’s story but in what way is it our story? The point is for us to see ourselves in what’s happening here.

When we self-narrate our lives, we are, more often than not, not only the main character but also the good guy. If Joseph is a Christ-figure, however, who are we? The answer is probably the brothers. God in Christ comes to each of us and our inclination too often is fight or flight. When he comes to us, we try and run away through the act of compartmentalization: “Jesus can have my Sunday mornings but not my work week or my Friday night.” But even worse, other times when Jesus comes to us, we lash out violently at him; we spit on him, we slap him, we want to kill him because he places demands on us. When we’re stuck in the old way of being, a way that centers around self-gratification, we lash out when we’re called out. But here’s the beautiful thing. The theme of the Joseph story is articulated clearly at the end, after Joseph is promoted to second-in-command in Egypt and is in the process of being reconciled with his brothers, he tells them, “ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good.” When God comes to us in Christ, nothing is wasted and no time is too late. Even those times we ran away from God and resisted his grace by doing what we shouldn’t or not doing what we should, while maybe not ideal, aren’t wasted, he can use those moments to teach us. Of course, as Paul says, should we sin that grace may abound? Of course not. Sin is a dangerous teacher because we get stuck in those patterns and there’s no guarantee we get pulled out. Further, sin, especially mortal sin, is a painful, dull ache that’s spiritually deadening. No one should want that. But, when we do sin, we know we’re being chased by a hound of heaven who doesn’t give up. He’ll go all the way to Dothan, all the way to the place of desertion, to find us and bring us back.

Recognizing that we’re probably the murderous brothers in the story of Joseph helps us orient ourselves in our response to God. We see two possible responses to him in the Gospel reading from this morning, that parable of the Pharisee and the Publican. The Pharisee doesn’t see a problem with himself; quite the opposite, in fact. He is quite taken with his own perceieved righteousness: he checks off all the boxes, he does all the right external actions. But note what violence still lurks in his heart: “God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.” His pride causes him to blinded to his own flaws while hypercritical of others: “I’m so good and they’re so irredeemable.” This is the violence of the brothers against Joseph in another form. What we are called to, friends, is the response of the publican who won’t even lift up his eyes towards heaven and prays, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” When we truly understand who we are and what God has done for us, this can be the only response.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.