February 20, 2022

As soon as I saw our first reading from Genesis today, I thought of that wonderful old musical called Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat – which I never actually saw, but I felt its cultural presence in various ways. I’m guessing most of you have heard of that musical, and you recall the Hebrew Bible story about Joseph and his coat-of-many-colors? The sources seem to agree that at its core, especially given today’s reading from Genesis 45 – this is a story about love, redemption and forgiveness. As we discussed this reading at Bible Study on Thursday we thought about the fascinating earlier parts of this story, and how out of twelve sons of Jacob, Joseph was one of only two sons of Rachel. You may recall how as a young man, Jacob worked for seven years for Laban so he could marry Rachel whom he loved. But at the last minute after dark, Laban sent his older daughter Leah into the wedding tent instead. It’s a complicated story with the potential makings of the Bible’s biggest soap opera, so we won’t dwell on its many details and plot twists today. But the point is that Joseph’s coat-of-many-colors made his brothers jealous and resentful of their father’s favoritism towards him. Naïve young Joseph, supposedly not understanding this obvious fact, made matters worse by telling them about a vivid dream he had, in which all his brothers were bowing down to him (Gen 37). As none of them could possibly guess at that time, this was a prophetic vision of Joseph’s future role distributing Pharoah’s food supply during a famine. You may remember how Joseph’s talent for interpreting dreams ended up predicting this upcoming time of famine, allowing Pharoah seven years to organize and prepare, with enough food stored to help many people survive the famine.

In today’s reading from Genesis, we have the awesome story of Joseph finally revealing his identity to his brothers, and anticipating their dread and fear over having sold him as a slave many years prior – he tells them not to be distressed, or angry with themselves for having done that – because it was actually God who sent him on that tortuous journey, full of twists and turns -- ultimately landing him in this high-level role as Pharoah’s minister in charge of food distribution during these long years of famine. Our reading ends with the wonderfully emotional scene of Joseph kissing his brothers and weeping with love and joy, after which his terrified brothers finally talked with him, instead of just being afraid.

Have you ever had vivid dreams that are hard to understand, but later their meaning unfolds in some significant life events? Like many other people, I mostly do not remember my dreams, but occasionally there’s something more compelling, and later I can look back and say – oh now I get it. Dreams and dream interpretations are often relegated to something of the occult or of pop psychology, but many ancient sources have relied on them for wisdom, and as potential forewarnings to prepare for a challenging upcoming event. My ninety-year-old Canadian ‘mother’ – a type of godmother – lost her first baby to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. And not long before that happened, she’d had a vivid dream of riding her bicycle with the baby in the bike’s front basket … and when she rode over a bumpy bridge, the baby fell through the wires of the basket, and then on through the spaces of the bridge deck, and down into the deep river below. A terrifying dream that nonetheless began to prepare her emotionally or psychologically for the sad tragedy that lay ahead.

Another Joseph, Mary’s husband in the New Testament, also heard and believed God in at least two of his dreams – both about Mary having become pregnant by the Holy Spirit, and then later about having to escape into Egypt with wife and child. Dreams in the Bible are to be taken seriously; and are often the means by which God speaks to people.

Our gospel seems to be much more pragmatic in comparison; and is ultimately about the Golden Rule – that great shared ethic amongst most of the world’s religions. Sometimes it can backfire if we presume that what is best for us is also best for others. And we have to be careful, of course, about promoting things like ‘turn the other cheek’ given the realities of one woman or girl in Canada dying from domestic violence every 2.5 days. However, in general, the compassion it’s meant to elicit ideally means that we all treat other people with as much compassion as possible. It doesn’t mean … ahem, that they can drive a truck over us … but we try to be merciful as God is merciful, and so on. When I read verse 30 – give to everyone who begs from you -- I remembered that I’d given a nice donation to a man sitting begging outside a big store in recent weeks. And then walking towards my car I saw a dusty old canopied pick-up truck that had a sign supporting the so-called Freedom Convoy. I resisted a momentary urge to go back and ask if that was his truck, and if so, please hand me back that $20 bill. Clearly I have a long way to go before becoming half as generous as God is to ‘saints and sinners’ alike.

So, what can we take away from today’s readings? Trust your dreams, treat others as you would like to be treated, and try to carry smaller change in case of beggars – no, sorry, that last point is a terrible conclusion. Hopefully instead we can live out the love, redemption and forgiveness that is an ongoing pervasive theme throughout so much of our beloved scriptures. May it be so, Amen.