This is another in the series of “Noon Wine” postings this week about home and family in the Bible.
SCRIPTURE READING: Genesis 45
KEY VERSES: (4, 5) “Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come closer to me.” And they came closer. He said, ‘I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life.'”
Sartre–the philosopher of that old existential dread fame–famously and cleverly defined “hell” as “other people.” (It’s always the others–if only they’d get their minds right we’d all get along real good.)
He might have added, “And then there’s family.”
Families can be hell on each other like nobody else. But as I mentioned yesterday, that’s a story as old as the Old Testament itself, going back to the world’s first couple and their boy Cain offing this own brother Abel!
There may be no better story to further illustrate the dysfunction of homes and families in OT times than the story of Joseph and his brothers. The dozen brothers so resented their father Jacob’s favoritism toward Joseph that they plotted to leave him for dead in a dry pit far from home.
But then, in an act of twisted mercy thanks to merciful brother Reuben, they decided to spare Joseph–by selling him into slavery!
With family values like that, who needs enemies?
“Joseph Weeps.” Illustration by Owen Jones from “The History of Joseph and His Brethren” (Day & Son, 1869).
Then, in an act of what I call “spiritual terrorism” aimed at their own father–as payback for his sin of loving Joseph so much as to show too much favoritism–they went back home to Daddy Jacob and reported that his most favored son had been ripped to death by animals! It’s hard to imagine the immense suffering that that vengeance inflicted on Jacob.
For sure, the proverbial “moral of the story” of Joseph and his brothers is ultimately about the good things that came out of Joseph’s steadfast commitment in obedience to God. He showed radical forgiveness and mercy toward his brothers when the tables were turned and he held the power to pay them back big time. As grim as the family history of Joseph gets, the story’s ending underscores how there is always hope for reconciliation and extravagant mercy of the sort that Joseph showed his brothers.
But that good ending was enabled by Joseph’s relentless faith and trust in God.
“Joseph and His Brethren Welcomed by Pharaoh,” watercolor by Joseph Tissot
I have a friend who is a family court judge who always says that “dysfunctional family” is an oxymoron. “All families are dysfunctional,” she asserts. From where she sits on a court bench, it must appear that all families indeed are. There’s a reason that family courtrooms always have the most watchful security possible–the intensity of ugly emotions in divorce and custody battles are not of this world.
But dysfunctional homes and families are by no means some kind of modern development. They are as old as the first murder ever reported in the Bible. And even the Bible’s Old Testament, with all those stories that are the enduring stories of us with all our raw and intense conflict in homes and families, ultimately contains lessons in how God’s love and mercy work for the good for those who yet believe and trust in the ultimate Parent.
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