God sends dreams to two Josephs, centuries apart, and their dreams come to life in only-God-could-have-done-this ways.
God sends dreams to two Josephs, centuries apart, and their dreams come to life in only-God-could-have-done-this ways.
Advent Day 7, The Dreamer.
What do we do when God seems absent?
Our dreams dry up like dust, and we find ourselves in pits of our own making or someone else's.
More to the point, what kind of people will we be when our dreams die and suffering comes?
Two Josephs centuries apart learn the answers to these questions.
The first learns it through suffering.
He discovers to his dismay that his father's favoritism extends only so far.
It cannot protect him from his own vanity, nor does it afford him safety among his brothers.
But in losing his status at home, he gains a deeper understanding of who God is and what God is like.
It teaches him to prize justice and kindness.
The second Joseph also exhibits a devotion to kindness and justice.
Where he developed that devotion is unknown.
But both men desire to act justly and mercifully, and that makes them men through whom God can work to accomplish his dreams, which are higher and better than theirs.
The first Joseph starts off well.
He is Jacob's favorite son, the first born of Jacob's favorite wife, Rachel.
This status, along with his dreams, defines who he is.
He chatters about his dreams incessantly, and he wears the beautiful robe Jacob gave him constantly.
His brothers hate him for it.
His unmerited position with their father and his words about his dreams.
Then Joseph's life goes off course.
His brothers toss him into a pit and sell him into slavery.
They take his robe and they shatter his dreams.
What in your life is off course in this season of Advent?
What dreams or hopes feel especially fragile?
Joseph, the favorite son, now a slave, rises to a favored position.
His master Potiphar entrusts his household to Joseph.
Then disaster.
A false accusation flings Joseph down into a dark, dank prison cell.
When have you been falsely accused or had your motives questioned?
How did you respond?
Joseph waits.
For what he doesn't know.
He waits and he works and he rises again.
The warden gives Joseph oversight of all the prisoners.
Throughout Joseph's life, a key phrase repeats, the Lord was with Joseph.
It is the metronome of his life.
Joseph excised from his family and as good as dead is remembered.
God hasn't forgotten him.
In fact, God's favor blazes so brightly that Joseph's masters can see it.
First with Potiphar, then with the warden.
How is the Lord's favor different from Jacob's?
But just because Joseph experiences the Lord's favor as a slave or in prison doesn't mean he wants to remain a slave or a prisoner.
He begs one of his fellow prisoners, a cupbearer to Pharaoh, to be kind to him and remember him.
Only remember me, Joseph says, and please do me the kindness.
How is this different from the boy who wouldn't stop talking about his dreams or wearing his special robe around his brothers?
The cupbearer, though, forgets.
He does not remember Joseph.
The Lord, the Lord remembers Joseph.
And the Lord is with him wherever he goes.
Where Joseph goes is the halls of the king.
When Pharaoh's magicians and wise men cannot offer a valid interpretation of his troubling dreams, Joseph can.
The cupbearer who forgot Joseph now remembers him and brings him to the king.
Joseph rises again, but not because of who he is.
Pharaoh, like Potiphar and the warden, recognized the God of gods and their midst.
He responds by giving Joseph authority over his kingdom.
More than that, he clothes Joseph and gives him a home.
Joseph's new life can never replace his previous one or cancel out what he has lost.
But how might this new life have been a comfort to him?
Joseph couldn't have dreamed this life, but God did.
And God prepared him for it through suffering.
God saw farther than Joseph ever could.
What his brothers meant for harm, God turned to good.
When has something hurtful or harmful turned out to be a blessing in disguise in your life?
Centuries later, God's people wonder if God has forgotten them. 400 years since the last prophecy.
Since then, nothing, no prophets, no rescuers, no land or king that can claim as their own.
How long, oh Lord?
Then a dream.
Sent to another Joseph who goes to sleep troubled.
He has learned his betrothed is with child.
And though he wants to believe the words she tells him, his story defies his imagination.
He wonders how to do right by her.
He falls into a fitful sleep.
An angel appears to him in a dream.
Don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife.
Everything she told you is true.
She will have a son and you will call him Jesus.
For he will save his people from their sins.
Joseph awakes, the dream hovering in his mind's eye.
This isn't the dream he would have chosen for his life, but it's the dream God has given him.
And who is he to deny God?
The wait is over.
The Messiah is soon to be born.
Advent invites us to consider how God's dreams are always better than and different from our dreams.
An infant resting in a manger will be the savior of the world?
Yes.
The path to hope and life through suffering and death?
Yes again.
God is in the business of upsetting our dreams with his.
What are your dreams this Advent?
Invite God into them.
Now as best as you can offer your dreams to God.
Ask God to remember you and to bring you into his dreams in ways which are higher and more magnificent than ours.
Let's pray.
Heavenly Father, you make a way where there seems to be no way.
In you, a curse can be a blessing.
A dream can die to be born again.
Give us better dreams, ones we could never imagine but are obviously from you.
Help us to wait patiently, devoting ourselves to kindness and justice.
As we wait and as we dream, may we blaze with your presence the way these two Josephs did.
Amen.