“Brother against brother” is a phrase that we associate with the Civil War, but it applies to large parts of the book of Genesis as well. Just think about the conflicted relationships between Esau and Jacob, Isaac and Ishmael, and of course Cain and Abel. The Bible is full of stories about how brotherly love can go terribly wrong.
Last week, the lectionary began what some call the Joseph saga, wherein a younger son provokes the ire of his older brothers and is severely punished for it. Whether or not Joseph posed a real threat, other than to his brothers’ egos, is up for interpretation. Mostly he just doesn’t fit in the humble role that the next-to-youngest brother was supposed to play in a big family of boys. It was bad enough that his father exhibited so much favoritism toward him—worse yet is that Joseph seems to believe that he deserves to be the favorite, that he really is all that special. His refusal to hide his light under a bushel gets him into a heap of trouble.
We probably all remember the part of the story that was recounted last week. The band of brothers turn into a band of ruffians, throwing young Joseph into a waterless pit with the plan to let him die there, until one of them suggests that they sell him as a slave instead.
The lectionary completely skips over what happens for the next several years, so I’ll try to recap it briefly. Jacob’s remaining sons go home and report back to their father that their brother Joseph has died, using a blood-stained remnant of his coat as proof. At first their plan seems to go off without a hitch, but over time their fortunes take a turn for the worse. In the end they find themselves at the mercy of a court official in Egypt, a terrifying and powerful man who frames them for a crime they didn’t commit and seeks to take their youngest brother Benjamin as payment for their alleged theft.
Time, or misfortune, seems to have softened the brothers’ hearts. When they disposed of Joseph all those years ago, they knew it would break their father’s heart and they did it anyway. This time they are appalled to think of his grief should another brother be lost; they worry that their aging father will not survive losing Benjamin. Trying to find a way out of the dilemma, Judah offers himself in place of Benjamin, pleading with the harsh Egyptian for mercy, knowing full well that if he does take his brother’s place his own life will end in bondage and misery.
Today’s passage begins just at that moment: Having heard Judah offer to sacrifice himself in order to save Benjamin, the Egyptian ruler finally reveals the truth that he has been withholding. He tells them, through his tears, that he is in fact their brother Joseph, explaining that he not only survived after being sold into slavery but rose through the ranks to become the most powerful man in Egypt, advisor to the Pharaoh.
This is all quite a saga, to be sure, a story that has been the basis of films and novels and a very famous musical that imagines Joseph in a technicolor dream coat. But the takeaway for us as church, as a community of believers, is often lost in translation in these popular retellings. If you think about how far Joseph has come from that day when his brothers sold him into slavery, you see an obvious and important “reversal of fortune” theme. The brother who was cast out from the family, who had literally sunk to the lowest depths, a slave and then a prisoner, has been raised up to the highest position in the land.
It’s a satisfying rags-to-riches story and we can easily imagine it ending there—the jealous brothers have been brought low, the outcast Joseph has been raised up, and his triumph over them is complete. “The End.” Instead, though, that reversal is only a prelude to the real high point of the story—the reconciliation of all the brothers, the restoration of relationship, of community, of shalom.
This might be one of the most powerful scenes of reconciliation in all of Scripture. In the episodes leading up to this, there have been several mentions of Joseph fighting back tears, but here he finally gives in to his feelings and is wracked with sobs. So many popular stories revolve around that moment when all is forgiven, when the estranged child is welcomed back into the fold, or the couple whose relationship has foundered finds their way back into one another’s arms.
Biblical reconciliation, as evidenced by the story of Joseph and his brothers, and perhaps even today’s Gospel story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman, is not that simple. The path to reconciliation is hard; it requires effort and a disciplining of the will. In almost all cases both sides will have to have a change of heart.
Although Joseph is the aggrieved party, the stories about him in Genesis make it clear that he’s no angel. There are moments after the tables have turned when it seems like he is enjoying watching his brothers suffer fear and humiliation. In the end, though, he does the right thing—not just telling his brothers the truth, not just forgiving them, but doing all in his power to restore full honor and dignity to them and especially to his father. Neither Joseph nor his brothers indulge in sentimentality or empty words; there are real actions and real consequences involved. As someone once said, you can’t think your way into a new way of living; you have to live your way into a new way of thinking.
Above all else, the Bible tells us that reconciliation is the work of God and the true calling of all who want to be part of God’s plan of salvation. Joseph struggles with his emotions and with the decision about how to treat his family after his rise to power. Two things push him in the right direction. For one thing, love. He loves his father and is moved to hear that his father still mourns for him. For another thing, Joseph finally connects his story to God’s story, to the fact that he is part of God’s promise to his ancestors.
Joseph’s God, after all, is his father’s God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who promised that his people would number as the stars in the sky or the grains of sand in the desert. At some level Joseph understands that to be part of that legacy, to be a co-creator with God in the working out of God’s purposes, he must reconcile with his family. He must help them survive and even thrive. This is his role and perhaps even the reason he has been given so many gifts, gifts which until now he has used primarily for his own advancement. Reconciliation is a key step to keeping alive the promises God made.
Finally, let us not forget the importance of truth-telling in the work of reconciliation. The brothers have to speak their truth and Joseph has to share his own for reconciliation to happen.
Truth and reconciliation are both desperately needed in our world today and we can’t have one without the other. Theologian Miroslav Wolf recently wrote, “We are drowning in fake news and complain about it. But it’s ubiquitous partly because we actually crave it. We fear truth about the world and replace it with fantasy—just as we fear truth about our own hearts and flood ourselves with a steady stream of our intimate ‘fake news.’”
There are a lot of hard truths our country is struggling with right now. In some families the “brother against brother” conflict is playing itself out all over again. There are hard truths in most of our lives, too, truths we may not want to face ourselves, let alone share with others. But we can’t have reconciliation without truth. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The mission of the church, as defined in our Catechism, is to reconcile all people to God and to one another. We can be part of that work only to the extent that we allow truth to penetrate into our lives, into our relationships, into our society, and into our church. With God’s help, we can be beacons of truth and agents of reconciliation. Amen.
