Joseph

One of my spiritual disciplines is to read daily, or almost daily, the readings from the Daily Lectionary. (These readings can be found in several places, including the Book of Common Worship and The Mission Yearbook for Prayer and Study, both the print and online versions). For the last several days I have been pointed to the story of Joseph, which begins in chapter 27 of Genesis and ends with the end of that book, chapter 50. Every time I read it I find myself asking the same question:why does it take so much space? Chapters 37-50 (with the exception of ch.38, which tells the story of Judah and Tamar) are devoted to the story of Joseph, his father, and his brothers. That’s 13 chapters out of 50, more chapters than are devoted to Abraham (11:27-25:11) or Jacob (27-35, though of course the story of Joseph is an extension of the story of Jacob). The story of Joseph could have been told much more succinctly, perhaps as the Revised Common Lectionary does, for the 19th and 20th Sundays in Ordinary Time: Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28 and Genesis 45:1-15. But that doesn’t do justice to the evident importance of the story of Joseph, et.al. in the eyes of the Genesis redactor. It struck me the other day that the detailed list of Jacob’s descendants who went to Egypt (Genesis 46) suggests that the sojourn to Egypt was just as important to the nation as the departure from Egypt and the journey to the Promised Land.

Now, here’s a stretch, or maybe not: what if we saw the sojourn in Egypt as a necessary formative period for the people of God, but one from which of course they had to be freed? When Joseph sent for his father and brothers it was their salvation, but eventually it became their prison.

Could we see the Constantinian compromise in a similar light? Constantine saved the Church from persecution, but he (and his successors) also ensured that the Church would remain in a sort of captivity, a bird in a gilded cage as it were. Luther spoke of the “Babylonian Captivity” of the Church (Prelude on the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, October 1520), but it might be worthwhile to think about the Egyptian Sojourn of the Church. The history of the Church could be seen as the history of our attempt to leave Egypt without doing without its comfort and security. Someone at the Transformation Conference two weeks ago said “the children of Israel could never have left Egypt if they hadn’t taken the bones of Joseph with them” (Genesis 50:24-25; Exodus 13:19; Joshua 24:32).

Maybe it’s time for us to revisit the story of Joseph. What does this dramatic narrative have to say to us as a Church learning how to be Church in a time and place different from what we grew up in?