Joseph’s Brothers Sell Him into Slavery Gen 37:1-4, 12-28 – 2024/8/25

August 25, 2024

Anything but Ordinary
“Joseph’s Brothers Sell Him into Slavery”
Gen 37:1-4, 12-28

Rev. Dr. Heather W. McColl

Gen 37:1-4, 12-28

Jacob settled in the land where his father had lived as an alien, the land of Canaan. These are the descendants of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was shepherding the flock with his brothers; he was a helper to the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives, and Joseph brought a bad report of them to their father. Now Israel loved Joseph more than any other of his children because he was the son of his old age, and he made him an ornamented robe. But when his brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, they hated him and could not speak peaceably to him.

Now his brothers went to pasture their father’s flock near Shechem. And Israel said to Joseph, “Are not your brothers pasturing the flock at Shechem? Come, I will send you to them.” He answered, “Here I am.” So he said to him, “Go now, see if it is well with your brothers and with the flock, and bring word back to me.” So he sent him from the valley of Hebron. He came to Shechem, and a man found him wandering in the fields; the man asked him, “What are you seeking?” “I am seeking my brothers,” he said; “tell me, please, where they are pasturing the flock.” The man said, “They have gone away, for I heard them say, ‘Let us go to Dothan.’ ” So Joseph went after his brothers and found them at Dothan.

They saw him from a distance, and before he came near to them they conspired to kill him. They said to one another, “Here comes this dreamer. Come now, let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits; then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him, and we shall see what will become of his dreams.” But when Reuben heard it, he delivered him out of their hands, saying, “Let us not take his life.” Reuben said to them, “Shed no blood; throw him into this pit here in the wilderness, but lay no hand on him”—that he might rescue him out of their hand and restore him to his father. So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the ornamented robe that he wore, and they took him and threw him into a pit. The pit was empty; there was no water in it.

Then they sat down to eat, and looking up they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead, with their camels carrying gum, balm, and resin, on their way to carry it down to Egypt. Then Judah said to his brothers, “What profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? Come, let us sell him to the Ishmaelites and not lay our hands on him, for he is our brother, our own flesh.” And his brothers agreed. When some Midianite traders passed by, they drew Joseph up, lifting him out of the pit, and sold him to the Ishmaelites for twenty pieces of silver. And they took Joseph to Egypt.

 

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Joseph’s Brothers Sell Him into Slavery Gen 37:1-4, 12-28

Where do we even begin with this text? What are we even supposed to do with this text? Here we are three generations into the family narrative of Abraham and still…still the pattern of family fighting continues, still the pattern of favoring one child over the others continue, still the pattern of broken family ties continue. But this pattern of family fighting takes a horrible turn. Suddenly, no longer is this family flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. Now one is seen as a disposable thing. This time the pattern of family fighting goes beyond the imaginable… this time, selling a brother into slavery. 

Stop and think about that for a minute. How did this family get to this place, the place where it is okay, even permissible for brothers to sell another brother into slavery? When we go back and look at the verses which are left out of our reading, we find answers to this. Please hear me say, these answers don’t excuse the brothers’ behavior. They just help us see that there is more to the story than we first assumed.

What we know is that Joseph is seventeen and Israel loves him more than all the other brothers. We also learn that Joseph is a tattle-tell and you know how the saying goes…snitches get stitches. We are told that he gives a bad report to his father about his brothers. It does not matter what he says in his report. All that matters is that Joseph is set apart from his brothers and this setting apart allowed him the freedom, gave him the permission, whatever you want to call it, it allowed Joseph to embrace the stance that because he was the favorite, he can and does whatever he wants without repercussions.  

The second thing that is left out is Joseph’s dreams. We may remember these. Joseph has two dreams, the first one where he and his brothers are binding sheaves. Suddenly Joseph’s sheaf rose about the others and the brothers’ sheaves bowed down to him. Then Joseph has a second dream where the sun, moon, and eleven stars all bow down to Joseph, meaning all the family would bow down to Joseph. Needless to say, this didn’t go over very well. Even Israel rebuked Joseph and called him out for sharing such a dream.

I share all this because we assume when we look at the text, Joseph is all innocent, and all the brothers are all at fault. When in reality, that is not the case. 

What the author wants us to understand is that this family is still in crisis. They are still in complicated relationships. That they are still in messy community with one another but…but it is the choices the brothers make which throws this dysfunctional family into an unimaginable spin.

So again, what are we to do with this text as people of faith? Sure, we can do what we always done when it comes to this particular story in the narrative, that being we can skip ahead and say, “Well, it all works out in the end. God uses this horrible incident to bring about good.” But I’m not sure that really answers the question of what we are supposed to do with this text. It is in our sacred text for a reason and that reason can’t just be to get Joseph to Egypt so that he can save his family in a few years. If God is the God we say God is, there are other ways for that to happen, ways which don’t include seeing as a disposable thing, ways which don’t include selling your brother into a system of oppression and degradation, ways which don’t include breaking family ties beyond repair.

So, we are back to where we started… What do we even do with this text? This text which puts profit over people, this text which highlights the continued family fighting which happens across multiple generations, this text which shows us what happens when we do not do the work to break unhealthy patterns passed onto us from our ancestors? Where do we even begin with this text which shows how easily relationships can be damaged, this text which shows how easily community can break down to the point where we are no longer supporting or caring for one another? 

Like I said, we have a few options when it comes to this text. We can skip ahead a bit in the text and pretend that it has nothing to say to us in our current context. After all, who really wants to talk about any of that? Who wants to really sit with the realization that still today we choose profits over people? Who really wants to admit all the times we allow hurt and hate to cloud and distort our narrative? Who really wants to do that hard work of unlearning patterns of behavior just so the hope of God’s Beloved Community can come to fruition here on Earth?

It is just easier to skip ahead to the parts we like, you know that part where God uses something bad to bring about something good. Who cares if Joseph’s brothers could have prevented something bad from happening? Who cares if we would only do the hard work of relationship building, of connecting in community, of talking and listening to one another, of seeing each other as Beloved Children of God, of you know, breaking the cycles of generation trauma and realizing that those patterns were never working in the first place, that instead we just got good at hiding it and not talking about it.

But sure, let’s skip the parts we don’t like and only pay attention, only acknowledge the parts of our sacred text which allow us to leave here feeling good about ourselves, which allow us to construct a false, sugary sweet narrative of perfection and wholeness. After all, that’s what we have been doing for generations, isn’t it?

Except…it isn’t working any longer. Except that these unhealthy patterns of ignoring and skipping to the parts we do like never worked. And the reality is these patterns won’t work in the future. So maybe, just maybe…hear me out on this, maybe just maybe, it is time we don’t skip over this text. Maybe we don’t clean it up any longer. Maybe we simply sit with it for a bit, and we invite it to open our eyes, our minds, and our hearts to the wisdom God is bringing to us this morning. Maybe we invite this text to challenge us to begin the hard work of healing and wholeness. Maybe it is time as people of faith, we sit with this text and figure out just what to do with this text, this text which speaks out against putting profit over people, which speaks out against continued family fighting which has happened across multiple generations. Maybe it is time we sit with this text, this text which shows us what happens when we do not do the work to break unhealthy patterns passed onto us from our ancestors, this text which shows how easily relationships can be damaged, this text which shows how easily community can break down to the point where we are no longer supporting or caring for one another.

Maybe just maybe…just hear me out….if we sit with this text for a bit, we may learn a little bit more about who our God is, we may just learn a little about what it means to be in relationship with one another. Maybe just maybe we will realize that we can’t just skip over the parts we don’t like. And maybe just maybe, we will embrace the challenge of this text to do the hard work of healing and wholeness, not just for ourselves but for all of God’s people, our God who is anything but ordinary.

Amen.

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