Like Joseph's Brother

Like Joseph's Brother

He had been used to hearing that tone

in others, so he knew how it sounds,

cringing when it's now, making rounds

in his own prayers, “not to heaven” flown.

That quality making home was a whine,

of “Oh, poor me! On brother lay a curse!

I'll feel soothed and my resentment nurse,

crying in, and drinking of, salted wine.”

His brother love was twisted, dark wry,

not wanting him dead, but out of the way,

while brother hate wasn't black, but gray,

mirrored with envy out of a golden eye.

Reuben laments the doing of past deeds ill,

while brother in “Egypt”'s, spirit is here still.

The Lectionary for the 9^th of August, 2020 continues the Jacob Saga in Genesis with the rivalry in Jacob's own household, between his sons. His children repeat for him what he had thought was long past. The Jacob saga continues now with a novel about Joseph. The story may have been heavily influenced by an Egyptian novel of the XII Dynasty, The Tale of Sinuhe. It is a story of man who is forced to leave Egypt and goes to Canaan where he become rich and powerful, and then is able to return to Egypt to live his life out and be buried in his homeland. Joseph, like Sinuhe, like Jacob, due to the forces of envy, has to leave his home to find himself with a descent into a kind of hell, but finds himself, as always under God's care, even in the hells we find ourselves in. All of the brothers, and Jacob himself, have to go down to Egypt. Like the Moses story, all of us have to make a trip down to our Egypts to find a way to be free.

It is a universal story of how competitive envy is replaced by grace and forgiveness. Reuben is the oldest child of Jacob, the one who is “Turbulent as waters” according to his father's last blessing. He was the one who did not want Joseph to be killed, but envied Joseph so much that he wanted him out of the way, suggesting instead selling him to go down to Egypt in slavery. Reuben, the first born, is the Liberal of the brothers; he does not want to fully face his complicity of the sins of the past and yet longs for reconciliation. As historical atonement, the tribe of Reuben create cities of refuge for those under threat.

I am trying to get into Reuben's heart and how that heart would react to what is happening today. That is where my reflection would go, if I were still in the preaching habit.