June 19, 2016
Joseph | Genesis 40
- Genesis 40:1-23
- Rev. Dr. Jerry Deck
In many ways, so far in the Joseph story, it seems like we’ve been seeing things from a lens far away that is giving us the overall view of what’s happening. But this week it feels like we are getting a little closer to the story and beginning to hear more details. And the details of this passage seem to offer a little bit for everyone. There are dreams and humor, fear and gore, hope and dismay.
Joseph, as we were told last week, has worked his way up in the eyes of the chief jailer, and so he is in charge of taking care of the other prisoners and even, it seems play psychologist, futurist and dream interpreter for them. Two of the Pharaoh’s finest, the cupbearer and the baker, have gotten in trouble apparently and so they’re thrown in jail. Both of these jobs have some importance in the kingdom. The baker, of course, has control over the food that Pharaoh eats and so obviously you want someone who you know is not going to try and kill you, someone who is trusted to be in that role. The cupbearer, we’re told, usually had an even more important role in that not only would he hold the cup for the Pharaoh (apparently this was before they had invented coasters), but he would also give advice to the Pharaoh when needed. We don’t know what either of them did to get themselves thrown in prison or whether they were connected in any way, we just know that they’re in the prison that Joseph is looking after.
And we know that they’re sad. Now, you would figure that they wouldn’t exactly be in great moods, but it seems that their moods are even worse than one would anticipate because Joseph comes in and sees that their faces are disturbed and they are disturbed, interestingly enough, not because they’re in prison but because they’ve had dreams that they can’t have interpreted. It should be pointed out that dream interpreting was a big deal in Egypt and, in fact, we have books from ancient Egypt that are filled with dreams and their accompanying translations. But now you have the cupbearer and baker who no longer have access to the dream interpreters of the court and they are lost and clearly despondent. So, they tell Joseph their predicament to which he quickly says, “Well, don’t interpretations belong to God?” And then he promptly begins to interpret them, because well, Joseph knows a thing or two about dreams.
And so he listens to the cupbearers dream, “uh huh, uh huh, right…interesting.” Okay, here’s what it means. In 3 days the Pharaoh will lift up your head….and restore you to your office and you’ll be holding that cup again and giving advice. And while we don’t get any response from the cupbearer, we can rest assured that this interpretation pleased him.
And I love the reaction of the baker because you get a real sense just how excited he is. Genesis says that when he saw that the interpretation was favorable that then he told Joseph his dream. You almost get this sense that he was waiting to see how the first interpretation went before he volunteered his own dream up. And so he tells Joseph his dream and Joseph listens. “Uh huh, uh huh, interesting.” Okay, here’s what your dream means. In 3 days the Pharaoh will lift up your head…from your body. And you’ll be hanged and birds will eat the flesh from you.” I mean can you imagine having to interpret that dream? How do you follow that up? “Croissant?”
We aren’t told the reaction of the baker either. We are, however, told that in 3 days everything happens exactly as Joseph had said. It is another piece of evidence to the fact that Joseph is aligned with God and that God is using Joseph. As we said last week, Joseph continues to be faithful to God even when it seems that things are not going his way and even when things are not exactly as Joseph had imagined they would be.
In looking at this passage there are a lot of really fascinating areas to focus on. But one of the things I think is always important to do when looking at scripture, especially stories in scripture, is to make sure you look at it like a good moderator looks at a committee meeting. What I mean is that committees are usually made up of lots of different kinds of people. People who are loud or quiet or thoughtful or passionate or who see things in black-and-white or in shades of gray. And one of the things I’ve learned in leading committees is that you have to be careful and make sure that you are paying attention not just to the loud and passionate people, but to those who may be quiet and who easily get lost in the shadows. Oftentimes it is the quieter folks who don’t say much until they are called on and focused upon who will end up making the largest contribution to the conversation.
And I bring that up this morning because it would be easy for us to get caught up in the exciting dreams or in the gory demise of the baker and completely overlook the quieter part of this passage that may have the most to say to us today. And that quieter part is the 14th and 15th verses. Joseph has just finished interpreting the cupbearers dream when he turns to him and says, “But remember me when it is well with you; please do me the kindness to make mention of me to Pharaoh, and so get me out of this place. For in fact I was stolen out of the land of the Hebrews; and here also I have done nothing that they should have put me into the dungeon.”
And all of a sudden, we are exposed to Joseph in a new way. I mean we’ve seen the Joseph with great dreams, the one who is at least borderline arrogant. We’ve seen, as we said last week, the remarkable Joseph who is sold to Potiphar and continues to be faithful to God right then and there and then gets unjustly thrown into prison and begins to be faithful to God right then and there. It is a picture of a confident person who continues to trust God despite his circumstances. And I believe all of those things are true and right. But here, in this brief request, a request made with kindness, but also earnestness, a request made with grace and with desperation, the coat of Joseph gets pulled back a bit and we get a glimpse to the inner pain, the inner struggle, the inner desires of Joseph. “Please be kind to me. Please help me get out of this place. I shouldn’t be in here. Please remember me.” In that moment this determined follower of God, intent on being faithful no matter the circumstance shows us that he is also in many ways a desperate young man who is in great need. And his greatest need right now is that he not be forgotten. Not by the cupbearer, and most importantly, not by God.
And perhaps for some of us this is the way that the story of Joseph speaks to the deepest part of who we are. That deep within all of us is that desire, that God-given desire, to not be forgotten. Almost all of us, I imagine, have this fear of being forgotten. I can remember as a child waiting for my mom and dad to come pick me up at daycare or school and if they were even just a few minutes late the fear would come flooding in, “Did they forget me?” Even as we get older those fears of not being forgotten, those desires of being remembered do not subside. Whether it be a birthday or an anniversary there is great joy when we are remembered and profound sadness if we have been forgotten. In conversations I have had with those who have grown older in years I have noticed that what is worse than the countless doctors appointments, aching joints and loss of independence is the fear of being forgotten, of being left in a place where no one even realizes that they are gone.
This same fear of being forgotten fills the psalms. Psalm 10 cries out to God, “Do not forget the helpless. Psalm 13 wonders, “Will you forget me forever.” The 79th psalm asks God to not forget the live of his afflicted people and Psalm 106 simply says, “Remember me, oh Lord.”
And at the heart of this desire to be remembered, to not be forgotten, is the question of importance, the question of whether or not we matter to anyone. Make no mistake that the question that Joseph is asking is not simply, “Hey, don’t forget me,” it is, “Do I matter enough to be remembered?” To a cupbearer? To my family? To my God? Does it matter to anyone that I’m in this dungeon, in this pit? This is the intimate and honest question that Joseph is willing to ask. It’s a question that we oftentimes try to hide from.
Today is Father’s Day, of course, and so not surprisingly this week I’ve thought a bit about my own dad. One of the stories about my dad that I will always remember is the time when my family was visiting Tokyo. We had just eaten at Wendy’s (which I know may sound strange, but we can talk about that another time) and afterwards as we walked along a busy Tokyo street I noticed that my mother’s cup was empty. Though I was only 8 at the time I felt like I was at least 20 and so told her I’d seen a trashcan a few stores back and that I’d go throw it away on my own. I ran back to the trash threw it away and then came back to where they were, or at least where I thought they were. But they were gone. I looked around for them and I realized, perhaps for the first time, that here I was, an 8 year old kid, who spoke only English, who looked very different than everyone around him and who was all alone. I knew though that I couldn’t look lost lest someone take me and so I did everything I could to not look scared.
I started walking around with what I was certain was a look of confidence. But still I couldn’t find them. I remembered that my parents had said we were going to take a subway and so I walked down to the subway, just in case they had already gone down, just in case they had forgotten me. It was swarming with people and they were nowhere in sight and so I came back up the stairs where I saw a police officer. I felt convinced that he would take me into the station if I looked like I didn’t know what I was doing so I kept walking bravely…until, I couldn’t. And when I could no longer disguise my fear, my pain, my lostness, I walked over to the side of a building, leaned against it, slowly crumbled to the ground and began to cry. I felt alone and afraid, forgotten, like I mattered little if at all in the swirling, busy world that was surrounding and even engulfing me. And as I sat there certain that this was it, that I was simply lost and that hope was nowhere to be found I looked up through my tear-filled eyes and saw a man halfway up a light post. It was, of course, my father, who despite his fear of heights was not going to let anything get in the way of finding his son, of letting his son know that he was not alone, that he had not been forgotten, that he mattered. And I will never forget that feeling of having been seen by my father and the embrace that ensued that said I did not forget you, you matter so much to me.
And I can imagine that as God heard Joseph make the request to the cupbearer to not forget him, that he was saying, “Hold on Joseph.” You will soon see that you have not been forgotten, that you are remembered by me, that you matter so, so much. And as I thought about those of us gathered here this morning, I thought that there are so many of us who need to be reminded today that you matter to God. Some of us, as we’ve talked about over the last couple of weeks are in a pit and you need to know that you have not been forgotten. But there are also many of us, I have a feeling, who do not think we are in a pit, and yet we work and run from this activity to the next and try to be as successful as we can be and we don’t even realize that perhaps a reason we’re doing all this is because we think that by so doing we will matter. To which God says, “No, you matter not because of what you’re doing, but because I love you and have created you.” I will remember you, not because you’ve made this much money or raised the perfect children or served on the most church committees. I will remember you because you are mine. Do not forget that you matter to God right now, right here.
And, of course, a part of our call as well as Christ’s body is to do whatever we can to help others to know that they matter, they are important, that they have not been forgotten. In the wake of this week’s terror in Orlando and the political maneuverings that always seem to follow I have kept feeling the need to remind us as a church that our first commitment is always to lead with simply saying that everyone, everyone matters. This is clearly what the life of Jesus taught us and it is the call of every one of us who have experienced that love. That no matter who you are, not matter what you do or what you have done that you are remembered, that you matter. Like a father climbing up a light pole in order to find the child he loves, so too has God in Christ done everything he can to show us that we have not been forgotten, that we are loved, that we matter to him.
Sisters and brothers in Christ know this: no matter where you are, whether it’s in a physical, emotional or spiritual prison or whether you have worked up to the top of the heap. The most important thing for you to know is that you are loved by God. That no matter what situation you are in that you have not been forgotten. That you are remembered, that you matter. Joseph will discover this in the weeks to come and my hope is that you will discover it or remember it this very day. “Remember me...” Joseph said. And God will say, “I have never forgotten you.” May we have the ears to hear it and the courage to believe it. May it be so. Amen.