Trinity Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

Sermons 

Title: "How Not to Dress Your Child for Success, or, Didn’t Jacob Learn Anything?"

Text: Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28

that last week I said, after Jacob’s wrestling match with God,

it seemed like he had finally got his life in accord with God’s way?

Well, I take it back.

To be sure, Jacob did become reconciled with his brother Esau

after a couple of decades of enmity,

and there’s much to be said for that …

To that extent,

he did allow God to be a transforming presence in his life.

But here we are,

only about four chapters further into the story,

and we find that Jacob is still behaving in some mighty puzzling ways.

You may need a pencil and a piece of paper

to sketch the family tree and begin to make sense of this!

But stick with me …

You remember from a couple of weeks ago

how uncle Laban tricked Jacob into marrying Leah first,

and only after that did he get to marry Rachel.

Well, Leah has children almost right away – sons, of course, being the most important –

but Rachel doesn’t manage to become pregnant

despite being Jacob’s favorite

and all that that implies.

So, she sends her maid to Jacob,

and she gives birth instead,

whereupon Leah sends her maid to Jacob,

who appears only too happy to cooperate,

and in due time, this maid also begins producing sons.

Finally, after many years, Rachel does conceive,

and the son she produces is Joseph.

Today’s text tells us that Jacob – Israel –

loved Joseph more than any other of his children,

because he was the son of his old age.

Actually, the youngest son was Benjamin, not Joseph …

and Benjamin was also a son of Rachel,

only I guess he couldn’t be the favorite,

because Rachel died giving birth to him.

So that left Joseph.

Who is 17 years old at the time today’s story begins.

Which means that quite a few of his brothers are adults,

with the oldest probably being in their late 20s or early 30s.

As our story begins,

we learn that Joseph is supposedly

helping some of his older brothers with the flock …

half-brothers, that is, the sons of Leah’s and Rachel’s maids.

We also learn, however,

that because Joseph is so special to his dad,

Jacob/Israel has had made for him "a long robe with sleeves."

Well, actually, we don’t know for sure exactly what the thing was.

Most of us probably learned it as a "coat of many colors,"

or if you prefer, an "amazing technicolor dreamcoat."

The Hebrew is unclear, as they say.

The word that gets translated as "coat" or "robe"

is one that’s sometimes used to refer to a priest’s garment,

and at other times is used to mean a "dress," a woman’s garment.

So about all we know for sure

is that it’s a long garment, maybe below the calf or even to the ankles,

not like the short, sleeveless tunics

that men wore when they were working.

We know that Jacob had it made for him:

So this was not your usual hand-me-down from

Reuben to Simeon to Levi to Naphthali to Issachar

to Asher to Dan to Zebulun to Gad to Judah to Joseph.

Oh, no … this was Joseph’s own special robe.

And we really have no idea whether this garment

was multi-colored, or had long sleeves,

but it doesn’t really matter,

because what it boils down to is the same:

this was not a garment for a working-man to wear in the fields.

Jacob’s message in giving such an outfit to Joseph was:

This son is special.

He gets special privileges.

Maybe I do make him go out to the fields with the sheep and the rest of you,

but you can see from this robe

that I don’t expect him to be doing

any hard work, any dirty work.

It’s difficult to believe, isn’t it,

that this is the very same Jacob

who suffered so much from not being his own father’s favorite.

Didn’t he learn anything at all from that?

Or maybe, did he not even consciously realize

what he was doing?

Not so long ago,

I would have thought that was impossible,

but that was before I spent five years

married to a favorite son.

He was the third of four sons …

but the other three – two older, one younger – were adopted.

And although his parents tried very hard

to treat all their sons equally …

they did not always succeed.

And as best I can tell,

although everyone else could see what was going on,

they truly never did.

Good people …

and very good to all of their sons …

but one was more special.

So I now realize,

maybe Jacob didn’t even realize that he was privileging Joseph

over the other eleven.

Must be hard to keep up with that many kids, anyhow!

Joseph’s brothers, however,

harbored no such illusions.

They knew.

And they didn’t like it.

In fact, the text tells us that they hated him,

"and could not speak peaceably to him."

So those tending the flocks with him –

again, the half-brothers, children of the maidservant –

conspire against him:

"Let us kill him and throw him into one of the pits;

then we shall say that a wild animal has devoured him."

Which, you must admit,

is even worse that what Jacob did to his brother Esau.

But Reuben, who is the oldest, the son of Leah …

so not only is he Joseph’s half-brother, he’s also his cousin;

don’t you just love these Bible family trees? …

Reuben says no, no, just leave him here in a pit in the wilderness.

Supposedly, so that he can rescue Joseph later, when the others have gone.

But while Reuben is away, instead, Judah – also one of Leah’s boys –

persuades the others to sell Joseph to a passing caravan of Ishmaelites.

Which is how Joseph ended up in Egypt.

And the brothers kill a goat –

probably from the flock they were supposed to be tending –

smear Joseph’s fancy robe with the blood,

and take it home to Dad with the implicit message,

looks like you’re going to have to pick a new favorite.

What a mess … literally and figuratively.

You know the old saying about

how the sins of the fathers

get visited upon the children?

I don’t think that’s meant to imply that God

punishes children for the sins of their parents …

but rather, to reflect the reality

that we seem to tend to repeat the same mistakes,

generation after generation.

That, despite our best intentions and our often heroic efforts,

we often make the same mistakes our parents made …

of course, we often do the same things right as well …

and we end up causing hurt in ways that are

very much like the ways in which we were once hurt.

It doesn’t even have to be towards our own children;

it seems to happen quite effectively

even with those of us who have no children.

When I was a very young child,

I experienced my father as a very angry person.

He’s really not, particularly, but what I was seeing was this:

A teacher, dealing all day long with teenagers,

in social studies classes that they had to take,

that many of them weren’t particularly interested in …

A very patient teacher, with a sense of humor,

and a real skill not only at teaching content,

but teaching you how to think …

But tired when he got home at the end of they day.

Patience spent.

And the first thing that I or my brother did that didn’t sit right with him,

he blew up.

Not physical violence,

but loud, and angry.

I determined that I wasn’t going to be like that.

I wasn’t going to get angry.

Wasn’t going to get angry.

No matter what, wasn’t going to get angry.

Hold it in, hold it in, hold it in, until …

BANG!

I couldn’t hold it in any longer, and would blow up.

In trying so very hard not to be like my father,

I behaved exactly like him.

In trying so hard not to favor an older son,

Jacob nevertheless behaved exactly like his father Isaac.

And not only that …

Notice how much Jacob’s sons are like him,

particularly in their deviousness.

Reuben tricks his brothers into not killing Joseph,

but doesn’t tell them that he plans to rescue the boy.

Judah waits until Reuben’s back is turned

to persuade the others to sell Joseph into slavery.

Rather than admit what they’ve done,

the brothers then concoct the story of a wild animal,

and bloody up the robe to give it verisimilitude.

These apples didn’t fall very far from the tree, did they?

And if you really want to see "devious" in action,

read Genesis chapter 34,

which describes what the "sons of Jacob" do to an entire city

when one of its inhabitants "defiles" their sister Dinah.

It’s kind of funny,

and incredibly gory,

and recognizably devious.

Well, we will hear next week how the story turns out,

and it’s not giving too much away to tell you

that God helps everyone straighten things out in the end.

But before we get to

"they all lived happily ever after,"

we need to live at least a little

with all the "unhappily" that comes before.

Our own lives are, we hope, a journey toward "happily ever after,"

but there’s sure a lot of stuff that happens in the meantime,

that makes us wonder about ourselves and about God.

We hurt people we never meant to hurt.

We catch ourselves behaving in ways

we said we would never behave.

We "get right with God" in one area of our lives,

and something falls out of kilter in some other area.

God rescues us when we call,

but lets us stew in our own messes when we don’t call.

That is to say,

we sin, and we are sinned against.

Despite our best intentions, and our concerted efforts,

we fall short;

sometimes we fail outright.

And yet, God does not give up on us,

any more than God gave up on Jacob.
God does not give up on Joseph,

even though he was at times a little full of himself;

and God does not give up on Joseph’s brothers,

despite their deviousness and their violence.

Which suggests that we also must not give up on each other,

or on ourselves,

or even, on others who seem to us to be far away from God’s plan.

God has not yet written the final page for any of us.

Of course, Jacob still had a lot to learn,

even in his old age.

So do we, in our old age, or middle age, or young age …

and God is willing to teach.

Or, we can do it the hard way,

by learning from our mistakes!!

Either way, God watches over us,

and never gives up,

and invites us forward through it all to the "happily ever after."

Thanks be to God! Amen.