It Stops with Me

Genesis 45:3-11, 15; Psalm 37:1-11, 39-40; 1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50; Luke 6:27-38

“Be merciful,” Jesus said to his disciples, “just as your Father is merciful.”

Our first reading today tells the story of Joseph forgiving and reconciling with his brothers who sold him into slavery in Egypt. Presumably the folks who put together our calendar of Scripture readings thought this story would illustrate the teaching of Jesus in today’s gospel about loving our enemies.

I have learned, however, a lot about the Joseph story from Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg. And she thinks the really interesting part of the story is not that Joseph forgives his brothers, but why he does it at this particular moment in the story. She doesn’t think Joseph forgives because he’s just a nice forgiving guy … there’s a reason for it, and I think her interpretation of this story helps us understand even better how we might practice this difficult teaching of Jesus.

The story starts with Abraham. God promised descendants to Abraham and Sarah, and indeed they had a baby together when they were both very old. Abraham had other children by other women, but only Isaac was the one chosen to carry on the promise. The other children were sent away or ignored.

Isaac and his wife Rebecca had twin boys, Esau and Jacob. And, like his father, Isaac played favorites among his children. Isaac preferred the older twin, Esau, while Rebecca made up for it by favoring their younger twin Jacob. Isaac plans to give his one and only blessing to his favorite son Esau, but Rebecca and Jacob conspire to trick Isaac into giving the blessing to Jacob. When the ruse is discovered, Isaac and Esau are furious, but what’s done is done – only one son can get the blessing, and Jacob stole it. Esau is so angry that he wants to kill his brother Jacob; Jacob has to flee for his life. After more than 20 years apart they finally meet amid great tension. They sort of reconcile for a moment, but then they go their separate ways. The parents play favorites, the children learn to compete with one another for a limited supply of love and blessing. The result is strife, mistrust, broken relationships, violence.

You would like to think that Jacob would have learned something from the way that he was raised, that he might have tried to do things differently in his own family – but he did not. Jacob had two wives, two sisters, Leah and Rachel. Jacob really loved Rachel, but his father-in-law tricked him into marrying Leah as well. And Jacob never even tried to pretend to love his wife Leah. Things got awkward as Leah kept bearing Jacob child after child, while Rachel had no children. Every time Leah gave birth to another of Jacob’s children, she thought finally, now, her husband would give her love, but Jacob always made it clear that he only cared about Rachel. Jacob also had children with two enslaved women, Bilhah and Zilpah – which, as common as that may have been in the ancient world, really is not cool. And let’s just say Jacob had even less regard for these unfortunate enslaved women than he did for Leah. Between Bilhah, Zilpah, and Leah, Jacob eventually had ten sons – but he didn’t love or really care any of these women, only Rachel.

Finally, Rachel has a child, and that’s Joseph. Then Rachel was pregnant a second time, but she died in childbirth, when the youngest child, Benjamin, was born. And when Rachel died, Jacob was simply devastated. In his grief, Jacob made it clear to everyone that Rachel’s eldest son Joseph was his favorite child. You probably know that Jacob gave only to Joseph, and not to any of his other children, a “coat of many colors,” in Hebrew a k’tonet passim, literally a striped tunic. Maybe you learned about that in Sunday school.

Here's something I’ll bet you didn’t learn in Sunday school – there is only one person other than Joseph in the Hebrew Bible who is said to have worn a k’tonet passim, a striped tunic or coat of many colors. This is Tamar, the daughter of King David. 2 Samuel 13:18: Tamar was wearing a k’tonet passim, “for maiden princesses were customarily dressed in such garments.” It’s also said in Genesis that Joseph was very beautiful; the particular Hebrew word for “beautiful” is used elsewhere in the Old Testament only for women – for Joseph’s mother Rachel, for Queen Esther, and others, but always for women. We shouldn’t read too much of our modern understandings of gender into Biblical times, but there was something up with Joseph, and in fact many queer Christians and queer Jews today are fascinated with Joseph, this Biblical character who, at the very least, seems not to have conformed to gender stereotypes.

But some things are consistent across the centuries, and like many spoiled androgynous pretty boys in any time and place, Joseph could really be a jerk. One day, Joseph was talking to his ten older brothers, wearing the princess outfit their father gave him, and Joseph was explaining that that he had a dream where he, Joseph, was the master , and the other ten brothers were his servants. These brothers, who all their lives had seen how poorly Jacob had treated them and their mothers, suddenly had enough. They threw Joseph down a well.

While they were debating what to do with him, one of the brothers, specifically Judah – remember that name – Judah noticed slave traders were in the area. Let’s sell him to the slave traders, Judah suggested, and we’ll just tell Dad that he died. And that’s what they did. And Jacob was crushed. First Rachel, now Joseph. The brothers got rid of Joseph, but the sickness in their family was not cured. And Jacob doted even more on Rachel’s remaining son, Benjamin.

Meanwhile, Joseph is taken off to Egypt. Through skill and good luck he finds himself what we’d today call the prime minister of Egypt. His platform is to buy up all the excess grain in Egypt during the good times, so that when drought comes and the crops fail, the Pharoah’s vast grain reserve would be the only source of food, and he could sell it for any price he wanted, and Pharoah would get rich. And in due course the famine came. Not just to Egypt, but everywhere, even in Canaan where Jacob and his eleven sons and their families were hungry. So Jacob sent the ten oldest sons to Egypt to buy food. But Jacob insisted that Rachel’s last son Benjamin stay home, saying it was a dangerous journey, I’m afraid something bad might happen to Benjamin. I guess the ten sons from the other mothers were expendable, as far as Jacob was concerned. At least I wouldn’t blame them for feeling that way.

So the ten brothers go to Egypt, but by now many years have passed. Joseph is wearing Egyptian prime minister clothes and speaks the Egyptian language, and his brothers do not recognize him. Joseph gives them food but tells them if they come back again, they have to bring their other brother too. Well, the famine drags on, the brothers have to return to Egypt to buy more food, they remind Jacob of what the prime minister told them, so – very reluctantly – Jacob allows Benjamin to go with them.

While they are there, Joseph follows his father’s footsteps, Benjamin is treated much better than the other brothers, in obvious ways that everyone notices. And then Joseph plots to play a trick to get only Benjamin to stay in Egypt with him. As the brothers are getting ready to leave the second time, Joseph secretly puts Pharoah’s silver cup in Benjamin’s suitcase. The brothers leave, then Joseph sends the police after them. Someone has stolen the king’s silver cup! We did no such thing, the brothers say, go ahead, search our luggage, you’ll find nothing. So they open Benjamin’s suitcase, and, well, there it is. Benjamin is arrested. The brothers follow him back to Egypt. And Joseph the prime minister says, I’m going to have to keep this thief Benjamin here in custody, but the rest of you can go.

That is Joseph’s plan, but then, Judah speaks up. Remember Judah, the one whose idea it was to sell Joseph to the slave traders and tell Dad that Joseph was dead. But Judah is older now, wiser, and sadder. His own family has suffered tragedy. At least two of his children have died. Judah badly mistreated his daughter-in-law, his son’s widow, a very R-rated story you can read in Genesis 38, which ends in his having to admit publicly that she was in the right and he had done her wrong. Perhaps his own losses and his own humiliation have changed him, given him a different perspective.

In any event, Judah speaks up. No, he says to the Egyptian prime minister, no, we can’t leave Benjamin here with you. It would destroy our father. If you need to arrest one of us, take me instead. He doesn’t explain, but he doesn’t need to; his brothers understand. He is thinking: I crushed my father once before, by taking away from him the son he loved more than me, because I was jealous. I’m not going to do it again. This is my chance to make amends.

And this is the moment when Joseph is overcome with emotion and asks all the Egyptians to leave. When he’s alone with his brothers he reveals to them: Look, I am your brother Joseph. They’re stunned, too shocked to speak. So Joseph goes on. You did some things. OK, maybe I did some things. But look what God has done – God has taken all that we’ve done, all that we in our family have done to each other for generations, and given us an opportunity. It’s been two long, hard years, and more hard times are ahead. Go home, get Dad, get your families, and let’s all come here where there’s enough to get through the hard times. And let’s do it together as a family, all of us.

And so they do. And when Jacob dies, there is no competition among his twelve sons for the one and only final fatherly blessing, the way there was between Jacob and his brother Esau. The book of Genesis ends with Jacob giving a separate and individual blessing for each of his twelve children, and their twelve families become the twelve tribes of Israel. At long last, the family trauma has been healed. And as Rabbi Danya has taught me, the turning point of the story is not Joseph’s decision to forgive. The key moment is Judah’s decision to repent. To choose a different path. To say, I’ve been hurt, I’ve been belittled and disrespected, and I’ve hurt others in return. But now I’ve had enough, and I’m not going to do it again. I’m not going to repeat what was done to me. It all stops with me. I don’t care what it’s going to cost me, this madness will stop with me.

And can it be a coincidence that, thirty-some generations later, when God enters the human story to say once and for all: It all stops with me. All the violence, all the killing, all the competition over supposedly scarce resources, all the disrespect, all the exclusion, all the hatred, all the fear, all the lashing out in despair and anger, all the sacrifice of human beings in the name of power and in the name of God, all of it, I don’t care what it costs me, it all stops with me. – When God takes flesh in Jesus of Nazareth to do these things, God does it in the body of a direct descendant of Judah.

And for those of us who desire to be followers of this Jesus of the tribe of Judah, we also are invited in today’s gospel reading to participate in what Jesus does by our own taking responsibility, in whatever circumstances we are presented with, to say: Enough. It stops with me.

“Love your enemies” doesn’t mean be a doormat. “Turn the other cheek” doesn’t mean let yourself be a punching bag. “Pray for your abusers” is not a way of justifying or allowing the perpetuation of abuse. It’s a way of identifying with the God revealed in Jesus, the God revealed in Jesus’s distant ancestor Judah. The God who has already said: I don’t care what it costs me, but the madness is going to stop and it’s going to stop with me. The God who (like Judah) gives us this gift, so that we (like Joseph) will be set free to take the opportunity to do the same in our own lives, in our own families, in our own communities.