Reframing the Joseph Narratives- Putting some stuff in perspective

It was the Joseph narratives today (January 1, 2002), that caught me utterly by surprise. Same old story, same old version (NIV), same old study Bible for the last four readings notwithstanding, I wept all the way through them, tears streaming down my face. I guess what I was most touched by was the Love throughout the various relationships—in some cases love that emerged later after lovelessness had wreaked horrible wounds in the soul of this family, in the soul of each member.You’ve heard the story many times,

But if you’re like me, you seriously missed the main point. True, there are many, many important points in the story, many life lessons to be gleaned. And maybe you missed it because the people who told you the story had missed it, too.

Start by thinking about the relational dynamics in this family. Can you imagine being the son of the wife who was not loved? To feel that you were NOT enough to satisfy your father because your mother was not enough to satisfy him, something over which you had no control, like the circumstances of all our births. And loving your mother, and seeing her unloved by your father. . . hm, some of us actually know that acute pain. And it is more painful yet when, like a dear friend of mine, your father left you and your mother when you were still a child, and went and married another woman and became the father of somebody else’s son. You left me to become someone else’s father???!!! That pain must be like a stake right through your heart.

Only in Jacob’s family, both wives and sets of children all lived together, right there all under one roof (or tarp, as it were), and let me tell you, this was no Brady Bunch, no "blended family,"-- you had to SEE him loving someone other than your mother, and loving her children more than you, every day of your life. Now that puts things in perspective. Those boys have been maligned throughout history, I feel, in the way the story is told and interpreted.

Those boys had such deep, deep holes in their hearts. And they were powerless to fill them. Imagine how hard they must have worked to try to get their father’s approval, to try to make him love them. And to find that your best was never good enough to make him love you. You were powerless to heal the wound in your family. And in your powerlessness, and all that pain which you were obliged to pack away in your bones, all that suppressed rage. . . you were a murderer waiting to happen. (Kind of foreshadows the great great…great grandson of Joseph, Moses, when he saw the injustices done to the brothers he loved. . . but I digress, just a little sneak preview for later(: ).

This was the context in which the boy with the amazing technicolor dream coat lived and walked, and very probably, strutted. You might even have come to think throwing him in the well was too good for him. If you had to hold your tongue and watch somebody else take all the love you so desperately desired. Yes, I believe there was some bottled up bitterness (and bitterness bites! It bites everybody involved).

So there's some orientation to chew on. . . I'll get to the complicating actions in the next installment. But I'll give you a hint, God loved Leah's sons just as much as He loved Rachel's, and He had a plan to actually use that spoiled boy to save the lives of the sons of the rejected wife, to save them and make them the fathers of millions. And to finally bring love that would bridge the divided house. Oh, and to make Jesus the descendant of one of Leah's sons, not Rachel's Joe Cool (whom God also dearly loved, I'm just saying, God likes poetic justice).

To be continued. . .