August 10-- True Leadership

Passages: Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28; Psalm 105:1-6, 16-22, 45b; Romans 10:5-15; Matthew 14:22-33

Of all the great stories of the Hebrew Scriptures—some inspiring, some troubling, some just plain bizarre (Lot and his daughters, anyone?)— the Joseph story ranks up there as one of my all-time favorites. One reason for this stems from the fact that my little sister sang in our high school production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat… which means I saw the musical six times in two weeks. Although I am therefore forever cursed to read the story with a chorus line singing, “Go, go, go Jo!” in my head, it also means that I know the story pretty well.

More importantly, though, I’ve always liked the Joseph story because, as Madeleine L’Engle put it in Sold into Egypt, it “is the journey of a spoiled and selfish young man finally becoming, through betrayal, anger, abandonment, unfairness, and pain, a full and complex human being” (15). Joseph’s tale strikes me as a paradigmatic story of growing up and, through that process, growing into leadership. Many throughout history have been born into leadership, whether or not they actually made good leaders. Great leaders, on the other hand, are those shaped and molded by adversity, those who have experienced being the abandoned and dispossessed. Great leaders are the ones who, in spite of it all, ground their call in something wider and deeper than their circumstances. Ultimately, this is the story of Joseph.

The lectionary gives us two pieces of the Joseph narrative in the next two weeks, this section in chapter 37 and then the climax of the story in chapter 45. So I’m going to bear with the “Go, go, go Jo!” on auto-repeat in my head and stick with this story for a bit. For this week, we’ll look at Joseph in the beginning of his tale.

Chapter 37 signals a change in tone from much of the Abraham/Issac/Jacob sequence, which really focuses on Israel’s chosenness—God promises to make of the descendents of Abraham a great nation. With the beginning of the Joseph story, God’s overt presence recedes into the background. But the theme of being chosen is still there. This time the human parent, Jacob, chooses Joseph over his other eleven sons. Not, we find out, a good way to promote familial harmony.

The symbol of Joseph’s privilege is the infamous “coat of many colors” Jacob makes for Joseph, which is more accurately translated as a “a long robe with sleeves” (Gen. 37:3)—it doesn’t give nearly as much scope for the imagination, but in either case the point is that this robe wouldn’t make it easy for Joseph to get down and dirty tending flocks. It sends a clear message that Joseph, apparently through no merit of his own, has been born into power and privilege. He’s the ancient equivalent of a trust-fund baby, of a Paris Hilton.

Now if you, like me, find yourself filled with annoyance at the mention of Paris Hilton’s name, you might be able to tap into some of the animosity Joseph’s brothers felt toward him. For naïve Joseph used his power primarily to perpetuate his own privileged lifestyle. As verse 2 tells us, Joseph was a snitch. Worse, he was a snitch on the children of Bilhah and Zilpah—because their mothers were the slaves of Rachel and Leah respectively, they were Jacob’s least favored children (cf. Genesis 33:1-2, where Jacob places them on the front lines for an anticipated attack). Very easy targets, then, if you want to make yourself look good. Thus the first four verses of this chapter tell us some very important things about this young inheritor of privilege—he is chosen simply by birth, he has power over others, and he abuses that power to his own gain. It sounds like a template for any number of leaders throughout history, and for several in the corridors of power today.

But as the text later tells us, God has also chosen Joseph. In reading the lectionary passage again this time, I was struck by Joseph’s words to his father when told to go find his brothers: “Here I am” (v. 13). Joseph’s response echoes the words of the prophets when they were called by God, including Samuel (1 Samuel 3:2-10) and Isaiah (Isaiah 6:8). And indeed, this episode of being sent marks the beginning of Joseph’s call as a leader. Joseph accepts the task, without a clue of the difficulties that lie ahead.

Finally, we come to that climatic scene, in which Joseph’s world of privilege turns upside down. His brothers ambush him and throw him into a pit, eventually selling him to some slave-trading Ishmaelites. God seems to have intentionally called Joseph down a path on which he will be degraded and dehumanized, a path on which he will become the most vulnerable on the social ladder. Yet it is through this path of marginalization that Joseph ultimately blossoms into the leader of Egypt.

In our own world, privilege and power surround us. We were born into some of it—perhaps through the wealth of our parents, or the color of our skin, or the nationality stamped on our passport. But Joseph’s story seems to suggest that when God calls us, it often means the loss of some power we take for granted. When Joseph said, “Here I am,” the result was the loss of all the comfort, all the power, he had enjoyed throughout his life. We, too, by answering Christ’s call, risk losing the luxuries those around us claim that we need to be complete in life.

Yet as Christ says, in losing one life we find another (Matthew 16:25). And in losing everything, Joseph begins to follow his call as a leader for others.