Genesis 37:1-28; Luke 4:1-13
March 27, 2022
- Pride, envy, and arrogance in our dreams for God
Congratulations! It is always nice to begin a sermon with a “congratulations.” Not only have you made it this far in the worship service but you have also joined us for this huge moment in the book of Genesis that will carry us the whole rest of the way and even through the rest of the entire Bible, in fact. Joseph takes over now as the main human character through the rest of the book, and there is a reason for this. Spoiler Alert: he is the ONE PERSON who brings his family, the entire people, down to Egypt; it is there that they eventually become slaves to the Egyptians; then, it is from there that God leads them to liberation under Moses; on the way out as a liberated people, God gives them the Passover Meal as THE story to remember God’s salvation and deliverance; it is that crucial meal that Jesus shares with his disciples the night he is arrested, the day before he is crucified, as he promises them salvation and deliverance, again. All the dominos are starting to line up to fall into place, and it really begins right here with Joseph who gets them going.
Forget for a moment, now, all that I just told you. What I need you to remember right now is that this is a very important moment, and like all important moments in the Biblical story, it is full of flawed people. Put aside your Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat or King of Dreams if you saw that cartoon movie adaptation. There is no sparkle or wonder or singing or movie magic or Donnie Osmond here. What we DO have a dysfunctional family having a dysfunctional moment. We may all know why Joseph is the favorite son: he was the firstborn of Jacob’s favorite wife Rachel who for so long did not have children. We certainly have a pretty good idea why it is a lousy idea to have a favorite child. This is entirely lose/lose. The favorite will be hated and despised by the others who feel less valued, if valued at all. So, yes, this will end poorly – at least for now.
But, this is also God’s fault. None of this family conflict would be exacerbated to the point of murder if God had not given Joseph these dreams at all. Just think about that. The dreams are the moving factor here and why God is the principle actor. The dreams are instigating this tension that leads to murderous intent and actual slavery. On a side note, it is interesting that through selling Joseph into slavery, their family will ALL one day become enslaved, and it all begins here with these dreams.
Dreams can easily be a threat. They rock the boat, show us a different way life might be, give us a picture that is outside our current life. Dreams can rewrite the narrative, even ones that are just spoken as a dream, such as by Martin Luther King, Jr. Dreams can call attention to what needs to be changed and show us what that change looks like. They can be very good and helpful and important because of the call for change. They can also just be unsettling. When I was a child, I used to regularly dream situations that would come to pass. It did not happen all the time but certainly on regular enough of a basis that it was not a surprise when it happened. These déjà vu moments would come and go. They were never huge events or important things, more like regular life moments, but they had largely quit for me until just last week, when it happened, again. I was just walking through a room, and the exact picture of that exact moment was something I had dreamt many years ago before I had any idea I might be living where I am today. I was stunned in the certainty of my dream memory. That’s it. I saw something in my dream that was impossibly different, something I could not have just imagined, and then it came true. I find it unsettling now.
Joseph, on the other hand, was born to dream. This is his one, big gift. Of course, his real gift is the interpretation of dreams. For those of you who REALLY want to know, that is called oneirocriticism. That’s one of those words I find worth keeping. What is even more interesting is that Joseph starts out apparently oblivious to his dreams’ meaning. Everyone else seems to know BUT Joseph – that they will bow down to him. Joseph is either clueless about any of this or he does know and does not care how his family will react. Even his father is upset with his dreaming. Everyone is upset but Joseph for showing them a future they did not want to know. No one wants to bow down to Joseph. Arrogance, envy, and pride are all mixed into this story so much so that no one can see God’s hand at all.
Pride is the greatest of sins according to 20th century Christian writer, C.S. Lewis, as he states in his book Mere Christianity…
According to Christian teachers, the essential vice, the utmost evil, is Pride. Unchastity, anger, greed, drunkenness, and all that, are mere flea bites in comparison: it was through Pride that the devil became the devil: Pride leads to every other vice: it is the complete anti-God state of mind…
… it is Pride which has been the chief cause of misery in every nation and every family since the world began.
Sure, sin is sin and it is all bad, but pride can turn your heart away from God and keep you there faster than you can blink. Pride is putting yourself above God ultimately. You make yourself into your own little god and replace the true one in your heart. There is no room for humility or meekness or patience or understanding or compassion or forgiveness with a proud heart. Pride can stand in the way of it all. Faith with pride becomes SELF-belief; love with pride becomes SELF-love. It seems like Joseph might have been tasting from that well and was beginning to drink too much. His beautiful robe was the picture of his pride. Once he embraced the robe of royalty, it was over. He father showered him with a prince’s gift, and Joseph was fine showing off.
As difficult as the next section in today’s passage is, that pride had to go. The envy of the brothers had to go. Arrogance from every-which-way had to go. The brokenness of that family was feeding more brokenness. What the brothers did was inexcusable, but it also forced them all to strip away the bad to get to the good. This is exactly what Joseph eventually admits to them several chapters later.
Jesus faces the same thing with Satan in the wilderness. You heard from C.S. Lewis that Satan is primarily a creature of pride. The temptations of Jesus were therefore tied into pride and self-love. Satan hit Jesus when he was most down and weak and offered him ways to show us all how special Jesus is. All three tests are proofs of how great Jesus is, how special Jesus is, how powerful Jesus is. It does not seem like it was a real struggle for Jesus to turn Satan down, but we all know how Jesus DID eventually show us how special and powerful and great he is, and it was the opposite of pride to die the worst way imaginable in utter humility. There was NO pride at the cross. Any trace of pride was dashed against the cross. You could not be more humiliated than to die that gruesome, inhuman way.
Pride can still get us into all kinds of trouble today, though:
The moment we think we are better than anyone, that’s pride.
The moment we think the world would be better off without someone, that’s pride.
The moment we think others should be/live/do like us, that’s pride.
The moment we assume others are wrong or evil because they are different, that’s pride.
Even coming to church can be an act of pride… if we are here to be seen and recognized as Christian and therefore right people. Being here for the wrong reasons is pride. I know good people out there who would never consider themselves worthy or acceptable enough to even come to church. What does that say about how we conduct ourselves and our assumptions of our self-worth? Hear me carefully: what makes us inherently worth any more than someone who is afraid or ashamed or intimidated by coming to church? This place, this time, this experience does not belong to us. It is not ours. Worship belongs to the Lord, and he gives it freely to whomever he chooses in the Spirit.
Pride cometh before the fall. Joseph found that painfully true when he was thrown down into that well, as his brothers were haggling how he should be ended. I give Reuben no credit. I think he was trying to make up to his father after hurting him in the past, as we have seen. I don’t think he really cared that much for Joseph, or he would have quashed the idea of doing him harm from the beginning.
Joseph was a child by our years but a young man in their world. You had to grow up quickly in ancient times. Joseph, however, was still babied so much and spoiled that he had no clue what it meant to grow up. He found out the hard way once his pride was stripped from him, and he had to rely on the grace of God. Once he was forced out from under his father’s robes, he had to sink or swim in the real world. That’s next week.
That real world is a world where we see each other as we truly are, without the screen of pride. We are all hurting inside. We all have problems and hang-ups and issues and brokenness. We have more failure within us than we would ever actually tell anyone. While we certainly do also have successes and celebrations, they can be overshadowed by what is wrong with us.
So we should do our best to not let pride be one of our wrongs. We should work diligently to stop pride at the door and refuse its entrance to our church, our families, our lives. We should, instead, help others to see their worth as a gift from God and how much they can be loved as part of God’s family. It is humbling to even stand here before you and say this because I recognize just how unworthy I am to do this job, but God invites me anyway.
God used Joseph’s personality flaws to bring about the salvation of the Hebrew people. That is impressive enough, but the pride of Joseph had to be ended for the story to continue. Our story is also right here being written each and every day. It is my prayer that no one sees our story title as “The Church with a Royal Robe.” To God be the glory. Amen.