All families are dysfunctional.
Especially God’s family.
I have always found comfort and encouragement in this biblical truth.
Today and next Sunday we hear some of the story of Joseph, the dreamer, his family, his angry brothers and the beginnings of God bringing good news to a world full of bad news.
This story is ultimately about the dream of God and those who would kill the dream, and the surprise that God’s dream persists and redeems despite everything.
Joseph was a spoiled child, a favored child and a tattle tale. He also was gifted by powerful dreams of divine import, giving glimpses into the future, not so much predicting the future as seeing that the future belongs to God and that God can be trusted.
Joseph was part of a large and eccentric family. His father, Jacob, is a scoundrel, cheating his slow witted brother, Esau, out of everything. Jacob even wrestled with God, and walked with a limped ever since then. He never knew when to quit.
Joseph’s many brothers were much older and very jealous of the favoritism showed toward Joseph and angry with how Joseph treated them.
They ambushed him. Sold him into slavery and lied to their father saying that Joseph had been slain and torn to pieces by a wild animal. The dream supposedly died with the dreamer.
What exactly is this dream?
Who are those who carry and are carried by this dream?
How is it that we kill this dream?
How does the dream persist and redeem despite all else?
Dreams.
Dreams have historically enduring interest. How we have thought of dreams over the millennia has changed again and again, but interest in dreams has persisted.
Dreams are a mysterious part of our lives that defy definition and understanding. Dreams are beyond our control, they intrude when we are most vulnerable, and they elude us when we grasp at them.
They have the aura of the holy-of exposing disturbing perception-from which we can hide nothing.
Sometimes dreams are the only place left where God can be heard. The rest of our lives can become so closed off, so well defended, that God can no longer be seen or heard, no longer believed in or hoped for. Dreams then become the only opening left for God to be known, the only way that life can slip back into the valley of the shadow of death.
Some of us long for the mystery of dreams, searching for enchantment to fill a dreary emptiness. Some of us search and chase dreams hoping for clarity in the turmoil of existence. Some of us simply forget them. Some of us run away. Some of us lash out and destroy.
Every once in awhile a dreamer is born who is gifted with dreams that see God’s future, a future that is different from the life that we know, a different way to live that threatens those who are invested in the world as it is.
Sometimes God’s dream breaks into the lives of a whole people, a whole nation through the life of one of these dreamers. Some love the dream, some forget it, others run away and then some strive to kill it out of fear of being exposed, of being seen.
But the dream persists and it redeems all those who forget, run and kill.
Even Joseph’s family in the end are saved by God’s dream-even though they ambushed, enslaved, lied and connived its demise-they too are given a future by this dream that filled their spoiled brother.
What is this dream?
It carries all of us. It proclaims the future that belongs to God, that God can be trusted.
This dream brings hope.
It raises the dead.
All families are dysfunctional.
Especially God’s family.
I find great comfort and encouragement in this biblical truth.
No matter what the dream persists and redeems.