“Turning away from them, he wept.”
The story of Joseph bears many
characteristics of a great story of rivals and of countless actual
interactions that are so typical of human life. There is jealousy,
there is hatred, there is betrayal. There is a rise in power and
prosperity, even to the point of being second only to the ruler of a
great empire. There are threats, there is imprisonment, there is
fear.
But something is different about this
story. Despite the fact that Joseph's brothers were jealous of their
father's love for him, despite the fact that they sold him into
slavery and told their father he had been slain by a wild animal,
despite the fact that Joseph had the power to give them life or death
when they unknowingly approached him in Egypt... his reaction is not
hatred. He does not seek revenge. Instead we are told the
following: “Turning away from them, he wept.”
With the motion of a finger, Joseph could have had his brothers sent away with no food or even put to death. He was one of the most powerful men in the Mediterranean. He could easily have sought revenge, seething with anger and frustration... The anger and frustration he must have felt from being torn away from his beloved father, sold into slavery, brought up in an alien land, wrongfully accused and imprisoned. And yet he cannot even face them. All he can do is turn away and weep.
Literary critic Rene Girard notes that
in this action God works through Joseph in a way that both humanizes
him and at the same time unmasks the violent tendencies and cycles we
so often enter into, when we are filled with jealousy and remorse.
Joseph, instead of retaliating, responds with tears of pained love
and mercy and joyfully welcomes his lost brothers to Egypt. He
cannot bear to see the separation and bitterness furthered. He knows
that it must end here.
All this reveals something peculiar
about God and how God responds to our sinfulness.
God does not revisit our sins with
wrathful indictment.
God does not desire to condemn us when
we fall away from the path of righteousness.
And God does not sit there plotting our
demise because we have placed something else—whether that be
television, the internet, sports, or even at times our loved ones—at
the center of our lives while our faith is pushed to the side.
No. God responds to our sinfulness
with Christ. Christ who gives himself so fully to us that he would
endure betrayal, mockery, and injustice, even unto death before he
would ever abandon that love. And still Christ's response is not
even primarily about our sinfulness. It is about the communication
of who God is to us: one who endures in love even to and beyond
death.
Did Joseph's brothers deserve harsh
condemnation? By every human standard, yes. That anyone would do
such things to another person is horrifying, never mind that it was
to their brother. But today we hear that our idea of justice is not
always God's, and that it is mercy, that it is Christ, who must take
over when our justice falls short.
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I'm really struck by Joseph's response to his brothers and I wonder how this plays into our every day lives, especially here in Dallas County where violence and racism in particular have played such heavy rolls. How does one respond in mercy to hate crimes? How does one respond with compassion to murder? How does one answer the injustices of racism with an enduring love that challenges both the hater and the hated? And finally how do we, regardless of where we are and in what situations we find ourselves, respond to those who have betrayed us, those who have hated us, those who walk on us, in a way that communicates the undying commitment of Christ to all?
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