Joseph and the (hidden) faithfulness of God

Reading intro:

Last week we heard about Abram and Sarai traveling to and through the land of Canaan, following where God shows them. Throughout their lives they continued following God’s lead, sometimes faithfully and sometimes taking matters into their own hands, sometimes demonstrating God’s care and sometimes demonstrating human cruelty, sometimes trusting and sometimes laughing at God’s plans. [talk about Hagar and Ishmael?] Eventually, at age 90, Sarah gave birth to Isaac. Isaac married Rebekah, the granddaughter of Abraham’s brother. Together they had two sons, Jacob and Esau, who did not get along. Eventually Jacob married two sisters, Leah and Rachel, and also their maids, Bilhah and Zilpah. Between the four of them they bore Jacob twelve sons. The second youngest was Joseph, who was his father’s favourite. Jacob gave Joseph a fancy, long-sleeved coat or dress, as a sign of his favour. The other brothers were, of course, jealous, and one day they conspired to get rid of him. They sold Joseph to passing traders, and took his fancy coat, dipped in animal blood, home to their father to pretend he was dead. Jacob was inconsolable. We pick up the story today partway through what is sometimes called “the Joseph novella” which helped the people of Israel to answer the question of “how did we end up living in Egypt anyway?” as they told and retold their own story. Preserved for us in Genesis chapter 37-50, today, we’ll just look at one chapter in this story… from the middle of the story, really, in chapter 39.

As Neil comes to read, I invite you to pay special attention to two things in particular… 1. the ups and downs of this part of the Joseph story. And 2. Where is God? And what is God doing or where do we see God present in the text and in the story?

Will you please stand?

Reading:

Genesis 39:1–23 NIV

1 Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt. Potiphar, an Egyptian who was one of Pharaoh’s officials, the captain of the guard, bought him from the Ishmaelites who had taken him there. 2 The Lord was with Joseph so that he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. 3 When his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord gave him success in everything he did, 4 Joseph found favor in his eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned. 5 From the time he put him in charge of his household and of all that he owned, the Lord blessed the household of the Egyptian because of Joseph. The blessing of the Lord was on everything Potiphar had, both in the house and in the field. 6 So Potiphar left everything he had in Joseph’s care; with Joseph in charge, he did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate. Now Joseph was well-built and handsome, 7 and after a while his master’s wife took notice of Joseph and said, “Come to bed with me!” 8 But he refused. “With me in charge,” he told her, “my master does not concern himself with anything in the house; everything he owns he has entrusted to my care. 9 No one is greater in this house than I am. My master has withheld nothing from me except you, because you are his wife. How then could I do such a wicked thing and sin against God?” 10 And though she spoke to Joseph day after day, he refused to go to bed with her or even be with her. 11 One day he went into the house to attend to his duties, and none of the household servants was inside. 12 She caught him by his cloak and said, “Come to bed with me!” But he left his cloak in her hand and ran out of the house. 13 When she saw that he had left his cloak in her hand and had run out of the house, 14 she called her household servants. “Look,” she said to them, “this Hebrew has been brought to us to make sport of us! He came in here to sleep with me, but I screamed. 15 When he heard me scream for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.” 16 She kept his cloak beside her until his master came home. 17 Then she told him this story: “That Hebrew slave you brought us came to me to make sport of me. 18 But as soon as I screamed for help, he left his cloak beside me and ran out of the house.” 19 When his master heard the story his wife told him, saying, “This is how your slave treated me,” he burned with anger. 20 Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined. But while Joseph was there in the prison, 21 the Lord was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden. 22 So the warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison, and he was made responsible for all that was done there. 23 The warden paid no attention to anything under Joseph’s care, because the Lord was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did.

In our call to worship today, we heard these words from Psalm 42… “By day, the Lord commands His steadfast love, by night His song is with me...

Can you relate?

Can you think of a time in your life when these were words that described your life? (Or maybe you don’t have to reach very far? This is the gift of the Psalms - and this is why we learn to pray them - even if sometimes we don’t feel like the psalmists are expressing what we would want to say to God. Eventually, we might need those words. And in the meantime, we recognize that we pray with and alongside people whose experiences are very different to our own.

I think Joseph likely could. Even though the Psalm was likely penned long after his lifetime.

But his tears must have been his food at least a few times in his life.

Psalm 42:3 NIV

3 My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”

And even as we look at Joseph’s story, we might be tempted to equate his seasons of rising with God’s presence. And if we do that, what do we make of the downturns, the disasters in Joseph’s story? Do we skip over them? Do we minimize them? OR do somehow blame Joseph for them? Find a cause? Perhaps even say that God caused the bad things? You can see how we quickly could find ourselves in a bit of a theological muddle.

Ups & downs. Human stories are full of them. And the Joseph story is no exception.

So where is God in this story?

Genesis 39:2 (NIV)

2 The Lord was with Joseph so that he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master.

Genesis 39:21 (NIV)

21 the Lord was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden.

Ups and downs.

Sold into slavery by his brothers - because their jealousy and hatred for the brother was so unbearable that breaking their father’s heart seemed like a better way forward.

But there, living as a slave in an Egyptian household, God was with Joseph.

And then after all the rising and falling, Joseph is in prison. And where is God? With Joseph.

And I know this story. Perhaps you know this story, too. But I saw things this time that I hadn’t seen before. I had seen that God was with Joseph. How even now, as Joseph will say to his brothers later, that God was taking things that others meant for evil and using them for good. Insert neatly tied bow on a little package here.

But I was jumping straight to resolution. I was skipping over the whole “being sold into slavery” thing. And now, with this part of the story as the focus, it’s like you can’t skip to the resolution, because the resolution hasn’t come yet.

Notice the situations within which Joseph is experiencing God’s presence and the flourishing of what he’s doing....

In the first instance, he is still a slave in Potiphar’s house. He lives in a nice place, yes. He lives with access to Potiphar’s household. And he’s even given responsibility over much of it. But don’t miss this, as I did, he’s still a slave in that household. Potiphar is his master. Potiphar owns Joseph.

In the second situation, having been kicked out of Potiphar’s house, Joseph is in prison. (And now here’s where, if you know the story, you begin to see where the next chapters will take us…) But he’s thrown in prison. And he stays there awhile.

Two things about the situation with Potiphar’s wife: what Joseph and Potiphar’s wife have in common and what they don’t.

Both Joseph & Potiphar’s wife are the property of Potiphar. I had never seen that before. She has the upper hand as we’ll see in a minute, but in the grand scheme of things, these two humans both belong to Potiphar.

Pastor and author Ashley Wilcox write this…

“There are complicated power dynamics in this story. Joseph is enslaved in Potiphar’s house, but he is also in control of everything. The passage begins by describing Joseph’s handsome physique. The Hebrew repeats itself to emphasize how handsome Joseph is. This gives Joseph a kind of sexual power. Potiphar’s wife is theoretically in a position of power, as the lady of the house, but when she tell Joseph to lie with her, he refuses by pointing out that she belongs to Potiphar. Even though she is free and he is enslaved, he sees her as an object owned by her husband.

What they don’t have in common is their access to power. There is still a power imbalance.

socially: Slave vs. wife.

But also ethnically: Hebrew vs Egyptian.

They are not equal but different in this moment. And, we need to imagine the violence of those words, but as they come from Potiphar’s wife’s lips, but also as the Israelites hear the story retold as they are in exile in Babylon. The would fill in the history of slavery in Egypt that will follow the Joseph story as well as the Exodus. But that’s not the end of their story, much as Joseph’s rise to responsibility in Potiphar’s house isn’t the end. They’ve now been taken into exile, where once again the power imbalance is not at all in their favour. They’re in a foreign land again. Not as slaves this time. But as foreigners. And they are longing for some hint of exile not being also exile from the presence of God.

And one thing about the whole rise and fall… God is present and in both cases, Joseph is not simply waiting for the situation to improve, but he’s given agency and gets to participate in the situation. He doesn’t have the power to change it entirely, but he works with what he’s given and flourishes within that realm.

So where does this connect with us? With 2022?

Do you like to jump to resolution, skipping over the real harm that has happened and the real pain of being betrayed, abandoned, distanced from family,…

Or maybe from earning trust only to have it evaporate even though you didn’t actually do anything to betray that trust?

Or maybe you have just encountered that lovely human experience of things just not always going well. Of occasionally falling apart completely. Or mostly. Of slowly climbing a hill only to lose your footing and slide all the way down again.

So where is God in all of these moments?

Well, according to the Joseph novella, according to the writers of the book of Genesis, according to the Israelites reflecting on their own story as they were in exile and wondering about their own future…

God is there. Present. Inviting flourishing while not necessarily freeing us from the situations in which we find ourselves. Joseph remained a slave in Potiphar’s house. Joseph was still a prisoner even as he gained trust and was given more and more responsibility.

What does the faithfulness of God look like? And when can we see it?

Well, I can’t answer that for you, but I can answer it for myself.

Can you? These are the stories we must tell.