Jacob’s Favoritism
Today’s scripture tells one of the most celebrated stories of the Old Testament. It has featured in many diverse settings, from Sunday School to Broadway. Most people refer to it as the story of Joseph and his coat of many colors. I remember as a child in Sunday School grabbing a handful of crayons and carefully coloring in the numerous stripes on Joseph’s special coat. Joseph is indeed the hero of the story, the special one whose dreams ultimately help to redeem a tragic situation.
But today I want to step back from focusing on Joseph and focus instead on Jacob and his family. Because that is how the storyteller himself introduces the story: “This is the story of the family of Jacob” (37:2). Now, readers have commonly interpreted the conflict in today’s story to revolve around Jacob’s favoritism, and I wouldn’t exactly challenge that. We learn early on that Jacob loves Joseph more than his other children, because Joseph is the child of his old age (37:3)—and, we might suppose, because Joseph is the son of his beloved late wife, Rachel. We learn that Joseph may be a bit of a spoiled brat, or at the very least an ignorant child with his head in the clouds. He tattles on his brothers (37:2). He not only has grandiose dreams of his family bowing down to him, but he also shares these dreams with his brothers. No wonder they resent him and cannot “speak peaceably to him” (37:4). Yet Joseph seems unconcerned. I imagine it is because his father’s love makes him feel special. Precious. Untouchable. A parent’s love is powerful indeed. If his father is for him, who can be against him?
The Love That Is
Present Is a Good Thing
Should we fault Jacob for loving Joseph? Is that really the problem in the story? Here, I think a bit of nuance is helpful. The problem with favoritism is not the love that is present, but the love that is missing. To be clear, then, with the first part of that proposition: the love that is present is a good thing. The way that Jacob treats Joseph, making him to feel special and cherished, reminds me a little bit of God’s address to Jesus and to all of us: “You are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased” (cf. Mark 1:11). Jesus hears this right before he endures the wilderness for forty days, and it grounds him and sustains him for that experience. Likewise, I believe that Jacob’s love for Joseph is what strengthens him for the ordeal he will face. He will be thrown in a pit and sold as a slave. He will be falsely accused and imprisoned. He will live for twenty years in a foreign land separated from his family, some of whom are responsible for his tragic fate.
The traditional interpretation, of course, applauds Joseph for his faith in God, his reliance on God in the interpretation of dreams, and I wouldn’t want to dismiss his faith for one minute. But what I would want to suggest is that Joseph’s faith doesn’t come from nowhere. Faith is difficult when God’s love is only an idea for us, only an abstract concept, and not an enfleshed reality that we can feel or touch. Have you ever been in a difficult or lonely spot, and a well-intentioned friend reassures you that God loves you, but it rings a little hollow? You may think to yourself, “Well, that’s great, but what difference does it make? I’m still in this spot.” If you’ve had this experience—good! Your honesty gives expression to a central tenet of our faith, which is that God’s love means so much more when it takes on flesh and touches us. That’s why the incarnation is such a big deal. For us followers of Christ, God’s love is not just an idea. God’s love is meant to take on flesh in our world and walk alongside us, suffer alongside us, speak comfort to us, laugh with us, touch us with healing and hope.
What I mean to say is, I think Joseph’s faith in God is not a coincidence. It doesn’t come out of nowhere, as though he’s just a biblical hero who is specially gifted with more faith than most of us. I think Joseph’s faith in God, rather, is deeply rooted and nourished in the special love that he has known from his father, Jacob. He has heard what Jesus heard on the banks of the Jordan, “You are my beloved son; with you I am well pleased.” When he is in the pit, when he is in prison, when he is living as a stranger in a strange land, he is not defined by these conditions but rather by the love that he has known, that tells him he is special and of infinite worth.
I am reminded of one of the psalms of ascent, which begins, “Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord” (Ps 130:1). Joseph spends a great deal of his time in the depths and undoubtedly calls on God from there. The same psalm concludes, “With the Lord there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem” (Ps 130:7). And indeed, in the life of Joseph, God’s steadfast love expressed through Jacob will demonstrate great power to redeem, as Joseph does not give up but trusts, year after year, that good can come from evil.
The Love That Is
Lacking
Jacob’s love for Joseph is not the problem in the story. The problem in the story is that Jacob’s love is lacking for his other sons. And here’s why that’s a problem. It is more difficult for them to know God, because it is more difficult for them to feel God’s love, because God’s love for them is just an idea, not the flesh-and-blood reality that their brother Joseph knows. Genesis is filled with juicy tidbits about how each of them acts out in unhealthy ways—and I think the reason for their waywardness is found in today’s scripture. They do not know that they are loved and precious. You’ve probably heard the wisdom, “Hurt people hurt people.” That saying helps to explain the behavior we see among Jacob’s other, less loved sons. The eldest son, Reuben, becomes intimate with one of his father’s wives (35:22). The next two sons, Levi and Simeon, are filled with such anger that they essentially massacre an entire town (Gen 34). Judah simply departs from home to live with a woman of the land (Gen 38). Lust, anger, disenchantment. Jacob’s less loved sons live in a very different world than their brother Joseph.
The Sun and the
Clouds
Their experience reminds me of a story I heard once. A woman in recovery from addiction shared how she’d grown up in a home wrecked by trauma. Her single mother, who provided for her, was always angry and bitter, sometimes even violent. When the woman left home, she became estranged from her mother. Much later in life, she learned that her mother’s health was declining and that she had also been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. She knew her mom had no one else in her life, and so she decided to come back into her life. Trembling with fear, the woman walked into a nursing home to see her mom for the first time in decades. Her experience was surreal. On the one hand, her mom clearly recognized her. Her eyes lit up. She spoke with energy. On the other hand, she made very little sense. But what surprised the woman more than anything, was the tone of her mother’s voice. Her nonsense was in the conversational lilt of someone who was happy. The woman broke into tears as she described what she felt for the first time in her life. Her mom’s love for her. She concluded that it had been there all along—as the sun is always there, even when it is obscured by clouds. It’s just that her mother had had a lot of clouds in her life. I wonder if the same could be said for Jacob. His love for his other sons was always there. It’s just that there were a lot of clouds in the way, a lot of hurts and hangups that obstructed Jacob’s love for them.
Jacob’s favoritism is a real paradox. It contains both the conflict of the story and its resolution. The conflict is that the less loved sons, the hurt sons, act out in a very hurtful way. The resolution is that the loved son, Joseph, trusts in God’s love and helps to bring good from evil. The good news of Jacob’s family is the same good news of the woman in recovery. God’s love may be blocked, but it never stops. The sun is always there, even when it is obscured by clouds. What does that mean for me today or you? I’m not certain. If anything, Jacob’s story reveals the complexity of our experiences, how we may be dealing with different weather, sunny, cloudy, rainy. Joseph felt the sun on his face. His brothers saw a sky full of clouds. I suppose the invitation remains the same in any case—namely to trust that whatever the weather, God’s love is steadfast (like the sun) and has the power to redeem. Whatever our various problems, the resolution is the same. It is God’s love given flesh that brings good out of evil.
Prayer
And yet in all things,
Sometimes we feel the radiance of your love,
And so faith is simple.
Sometimes there are clouds,
And it is not easy.
…
We cry out from the depths of our heart,
Be with us, as you were with Joseph,
That your tangible love would redeem,
And would bring good from what is not good.
In Christ, who leads the way: Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment