Thomas J Parlette
“To Preserve Life”
Genesis 45: 1-15
8/20/23
Lately my family has been taking cruise vacations. I’ve never been on one myself, but I hear the stories and share the pictures from cruises my mom and dad and my two sisters have taken. If you’ve ever been on a cruise, you’ve certainly experienced the mandatory exercise known as the “lifeboat drill.”
It usually happens on the first day, before you even leave port. Everyone is instructed to go to a certain part of the ship and there you join a select group of a dozen or more passengers, along with several crew members. Those crew members may be waiters, cleaners, clerks, even casino dealers, but for a few brief moments, they’re all sailors.
In the event of an emergency, they’ve been trained to escort your little group over the rail and into a lifeboat, which for the moment, is hanging ominously overhead.
It all seems kinda weird. There you are, all ready to begin your vacation at sea, when you’re solemnly reminded that – in certain highly unlikely circumstances – the ship you’re standing on might go down.
There’s something else they teach you to do during the lifeboat drill: put on a life preserver. There you stand with your fellow vacationers with this puffy vest around your neck. Your friendly crew members teach you to cinch it tight across your chest. They point out that it has a whistle and a battery-powered light – then they sound the ship’s horn to signal the end of the drill. You happily hand over your life preserver and head to the lounge to get that image of the boat sinking out of your head. But it is nice to know that a life preserver is waiting for you at your designated muster zone if need be.
Today’s story from the Hebrew scriptures is about a life preserver of a different sort, Joseph, of Technicolor Dreamcoat fame, declares, “God sent me before you to preserve life.”
These words that Joseph speaks are among the most extraordinary in all of Scripture – because they are terribly difficult for Joseph to say. In a single day, he travels from death to life, and becomes a life preserver for his brothers.
There are a number of Joseph’s in the Bible, but only two of them can be called leading characters. First, there is Joseph the earthly father of Jesus – he’s the strong, silent type. And then there is this Joseph, the son of Jacob. This Joseph is one of 12 sons Jacob had by four different women. Jacob was married to Leah and Rachel at the same time, and also had children by Zilpah and Bilhah.
This was not unusual in that time, tribal chieftains like Jacob often had multiple wives and concubines. As you might imagine, this often led to hard feelings and a lot of family drama.
Among all the women in his life, Jacob had a favorite – his wife Rachel. Among his 12 sons and an unspecified amount of daughters, Jacob also had a favorite – Joseph, who just happens to be the son he shares with Rachel.
Thanks to Andrew Lloyd Webber, most of us can recount the basics about Joseph and coat of many colors, and how his brothers got sick and tired of their father’s favoritism. When Jacob sends Joseph out one day to check up on his brothers, their resentment boils over. They decide to beat some humility into Joseph. Things quickly get out of hand, and before they realize what they’re doing, they’ve thrown Joseph into a pit and sold him to some passing slave traders. As a cover-up, the 11 brothers smear some animal blood on Joseph’s coat and take it back to their heartbroken father as proof that wild beasts have killed his favorite son.
Fast-forward a decade or two and Joseph is by now, only a memory to the family he unwillingly left behind. Everyone assumes he died long ago, including his brothers, who knew the truth.
A terrible famine has come upon the land. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so Jacob send his sons packing off to Egypt in a last-ditch attempt to broker a grain deal with the Pharoah’s chief of staff.
Little do they know – this high and mighty Egyptian official, Pharoah’s number-one-advisor, is none other than their brother Joseph. Against all odds – he has survived, and actually thrived!
Through an unlikely series of events, he has gone from slave to dream-interpreter, to butler to prime minister. Joseph had plenty of time over those long years to brood over what he might do to his lousy, back-stabbing brothers if he ever got the chance. And now – quite unexpectedly – that day has come. Joseph finds himself face-to-face with all 11 of them once more. But this time, they’re on their knees, bowing to him – and Joseph holds all the cards.
“Revenge is a dish best served cold,” says the old proverb. If that’s true, the emotional atmosphere in that Egyptian royal hall was well below freezing. All Joseph had to do was call for the palace guards, and his brothers would be hauled off to jail, or the slave market or even killed outright.
But before he says anything, Joseph examines his brother’s faces. They still don’t recognize him in his customary black headdress and Egyptian robes. Their faces are so much older and ragged looking than when he had seen them last. Reuben was losing his hair. Simon’s brow was deeply creased with wrinkles. Issachar walked with a limp. Joseph realizes how much time has passed. These are not the same angry, jealous faces that he stared up at from the bottom of that pit so many years ago. And Joseph is overwhelmed thinking of the ties that bind them all together.
Suddenly Joseph realizes that if he doesn’t break the grim cycle of anger and revenge – if he doesn’t do it right now, today – no one ever will.
Finally, Joseph speaks. “Send everyone away.” His guards and scribes can’t believe it. Someone asks, “But my Lord, have I heard you rightly? These are foreigners, and palace security guidelines dictate…”
“Send them away,” says Joseph, a little more forcefully.
The 11 sons of Jacob wonder – “What is this all about.” This Egyptian lord, on his golden throne, clad in elegant linen garments with his jet black hairpiece, is looking back at them with the strangest expression on his face. Now he’s standing up and coming down the steps. Are those tears in his eyes – is he weeping?
The Egyptian lord sits down on the bottom step, his head in his hands. He looks over at his brothers and gestures for them to come closer. His voice is barely a whisper. “I am Joseph,” he says. “Is my father still alive?”
His brothers are speechless - can you blame them. The next words Joseph speaks are gentle and full of compassion. And that’s what brings him to the remarkable words, “God sent me before you to preserve life.”
After all those years of licking emotional wounds and dreaming of revenge, Joseph has caught a higher vision – the preservation of life. He now sees the big picture of preserving not just his life, but the life of God’s chosen people. Joseph now realizes that his life’s vocation – aside from all he has done for Pharoah and Egypt – is to preserve God’s covenant, to be the living instrument, the life preserver, by which God’s promise will be passed on to the next generation.
So standing there in the Egyptian royal palace, Joseph pronounces absolution. He all but commands his brothers to lay aside their guilt, and to cherish instead their precious family tie. His carefully nurtured anger has suddenly left him.
It may have occurred to you that there is a troubling aspect to this story of Joseph’s reconciliation with his brothers. It doesn’t seem very fair. Joseph’s brothers were terrible to him. Don’t they deserve some sort of punishment? The bible has told how this remarkable man Joseph, triumphs over every adversity – story after story shows his guts and determination, cleverness and faith. And we expect that this story should end with some deserved revenge and ultimate, justice.
That may be the way of the world, but Joseph demonstrates a higher way – the way of forgiveness. Forgiving others – especially when the wound is deep – is one of the most difficult things any of us will ever be called upon to do. Yet few tasks are more important, not only for the person being forgiven, but also for the person doing the forgiving.
A wise person has said, “Forgiveness is when you set a prisoner free – and then you realize the prisoner is yourself.”(1)
There’s a story from the Native American tradition that makes a similar point. A boy comes to his grandfather, filled with anger at another child who has done him an injustice. “Let me tell you a story,” says the grandfather.
“I too, at times, have felt great hatred for those who have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do. But hatred wears you down and does nothing to hurt your enemy. It’s like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die. I have struggled with these feelings many times. It’s as if there are two wolves inside me; one is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him and takes no offense when no offense is intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way.”
“But the other wolf – that is a different matter! That one is full of anger. The smallest irritation will set him into a fit of rage. He fights everyone, all the time, for no good reason. He cannot think clearly because his anger and hatred are so overwhelming. It is hard to live with these two wolves inside me – for both of them wish to dominate my spirit?”
The boys eyes have grown wide with the thought of two wolves inside him. “Which one wins, Grandfather?”
And the grandfather replies – “The one I feed.” (2)
Joseph, too, has been living with two wolves inside him. When, at last, he looks into the faces of his brothers, the choice he has to make is clear. He must stop feeding the wolf of revenge. To release that wolf into the wild is not easy – it never is. Over the years, in a strange way, Joseph had come to love that voracious wolf – but he had to disown it, for the sake of the survival of God’s chosen people.
Back in 1999, CBS’s 60 Minutes aired a story about Amy Biehl, a young woman raised in the First Presbyterian Church of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Amy was an active church member, a smart and accomplished young woman. One of the biggest passions in her life was South Africa. She was very active in the anti-apartheid movement in the early 1990’s.
When Amy won a Fulbright Scholarship, no one was surprised when she used it to travel to South Africa, where she immersed herself in that troubled country’s culture and politics.
But Amy’s life ended tragically in 1994, when she was stoned and stabbed to death by a mob of angry militants. To them, she was just a white person, one of the oppressors – they had no idea they were killing a friend of their own cause.
It was a terrible, senseless tragedy. Amy’s parents were devastated by the news. But instead of lashing out in anger, they decided to try and do what their daughter would have wanted. They set out to understand their daughter’s sense commitment to these people of a distant land.
So Amy’s parents immersed themselves in the study of South Africa. Soon, they traveled there. Amy’s mother Linda attended the trial of her attackers. She visited the township where they lived. Linda even visited one of the attackers mothers. She sat with her for a long time. Linda told her she forgave the woman’s son for what he had done. Later she told a reporter from 60 Minutes that, after hugging the woman: “I walked out of that home, there was rainbow in the sky. My heart was very light. I felt I had come to terms. And if that is forgiveness – I felt it. I felt at peace with myself. So to me, that’s forgiveness.”
When they returned to the United States, the Biehl family established the Amy Biehl Foundation, which soon sponsored 15 different programs in South Africa that include job-training and after school programs for thousands of young people.
Among the children who first enrolled in the after-school program was the 12 year old sister of one of the murderers. When her brother and the other two murderers applied for amnesty after serving four years in jail, the authorities told Amy’s parents that they could block the men’s release if they wished. But the Biehl’s decided not to exercise their right to object. The men were freed. (3)
Forgiveness is never easy. It goes against the “eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” ethic that is so prevalent in this world. Forgiveness like we see in Amy Biehl’s or Joseph’s story seem, to some pitifully weak and lacking in justice, soft on crime – but in reality, nothing could be stronger nor more determined. True forgiveness does condone the wrong that has been done – nor does it forget. Forgiveness freely and openly acknowledges past offenses, but then it moves on, seeking ways to preserve and enhance life.
Only the brave know how to forgive,” writes the 18th-century preacher and novelist Laurence Sterne. “A coward never forgave; it is not in their nature.”(4)
Probably all of us here today carry some sense of anger or resentment with us. How long have you fed it, how long have you nurtured it? Maybe it’s time to follow Joseph’s example – and let it go.
The last line of the famous prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi says it well – “For it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”(5)
May God be praised. Amen.
1. Homileticsonline, retrieved July 24th, 2023.
2. Ibid…
3. Ibid…
4. Ibid…
5. Ibid…
