Sunday sermon: 'Any dream will do' - Joseph series pt1

A three week series on Joseph...

READINGS: Psalm 30:1-3  Genesis 37:1-11

SERMON
Let’s pray: May the words of my mouth and the thoughts of all our hearts,
be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

‘I closed my eyes, drew back the curtain
To see for certain what I thought I knew.
Far far away, someone was weeping,
But the world was sleeping,
Any dream will do.’

Well...how could I not quote words from ‘that’ musical?
For most of this week, various songs from 'Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat'
have been annoyingly floating about in my head.
But this particular song ‘Any dream will do’ makes me wonder:
will just any dream do?
Because the exceptionally weird one about a zombie apocalypse that I had the other night
would be one that I don’t think would do at all...
And I hadn’t even eaten any cheese before bed.

In Genesis chapter 37, we’re told:
‘this is the account of Jacob’,
but almost immediately, Jacob takes a back seat in the story.
While technically it may be about what happened to Jacob –
Jacob, who is Abraham’s grandson,
and Isaac’s son - 
the same Jacob who will become known as ‘Israel’
because his sons will form the 12 tribes which become that nation...
while it might be about Jacob, the spotlight turns straight to Joseph:
And what do we have?

In the very first verse concerning Joseph, we discover several things:
he’s seventeen;
he has brothers;
they’re a farming family – for he’s out tending flocks;
oh, yes, and, he’s a wee clipe.
He comes back to the family tent and tells tales on his brothers.
Not nice.
In the following verse, we learn a little more about this son of Jacob:
while there are many other children,
it’s young Joseph who is the apple of his father’s eye –
a child born to Jacob in his advancing years.
Joseph is singled out for special attention:
alone of all his siblings, he receives a magnificent present,
a richly decorated robe –
or, if you prefer the musical version, the coat of many colours.
'I wore my coat, with golden lining
Bright colours shining, wonderful and new
And in the east, the dawn was breaking
And the world was waking
Any dream will do'

Whatever the coat looks like, one thing’s for certain
as he parades about in it, looking grand:
his brothers all know that no matter what they do, what they achieve in life...
it won’t ever hold a candle to Joseph.
It’s as if they’re just the hired help,
and Joseph’s the shining, golden child.
And they hate him for it.
They hate him so much, that they can barely speak to the lad.
We’ve already seen where sibling jealousy can lead, in the story of Cain and Abel.
And here we have this situation rising up again,
as we look into this clearly dysfunctional family of Jacob’s.

But back to Joseph:
at this early stage in the story, Joseph doesn’t come across well.
Either he’s a wee bit clueless regarding the way his brothers feel;
or, he revels in being the favourite and pretty much rubs their noses in it.
This, more so, when he has his first dream about sheaves of corn bowing to his own –
basically, a dream where he, the youngest, is in a position of power over his older brothers.
I think he’s enjoying both the dream, and the telling of it to them.
They hate him all the more –
this laddie is getting way too big for his britches.

Joseph, the dreamer, then has another dream, another big dream:
not only will his brothers bow down to him,
but so will his father and the rest of the family.
The dream is so outrageous in its ambition, that, favourite though he is,
Joseph is soundly rebuked by his father, Jacob.
Remember, this is a culture in which all authority rests with the father –
the patriarch of the family.
His word is ...law.
He has the power to welcome or banish;
the power to bless or to curse;
the power to arrange who you will or won’t marry.
It is from his hand, that you make your living.
The father is both the dispenser of justice,
and the dispenser of money and goods.
Joseph’s dream is seen as deeply disrespectful:
it overturns tradition,
it’s seen to show ambition and a desire for power.
The dream challenges the perceived natural order of things –
placing power with the one who is the least of all his family
as far as power and succession should go.
This second dream only serves to make his brothers even more jealous –
while Jacob, who loves him, is now...a little wary.
While the musical tells us that:
‘any dream will do’, this set of dreams  will certainly not do,
if his family’s reactions are anything to go on.

We know what happens next:
it’s almost as if Jacob sets Joseph up to be the family sneak –
he sends him out to check up on his brothers who are off working,
and it seems as if, with all this to-ing and fro-ing and checking up,
that Joseph gets off work rather easily.
Yet another reason for his brothers to resent him.
Joseph heads off – a longer trip than he expects,
for his brothers have gone much further afield.
Is it deliberate?
Where they’ve chosen to go appears to be rather handy to regularly used trading routes.
And they’re watching him approach.
A plan is hatched:
time to take this laddie down once and for all.
they’re going to kill him, this ‘dreamer’, just like Cain killed his brother before them.
It’s a drastic plan –
and one of the brothers begins to get cold feet; he can’t do it.
Another plan: chuck him in the well; that way, while he will eventually die,
it will be of thirst and exposure,
and not at the end of their bloodied hands.
Behind the plan, Reuben is looking at coming back to rescue his young brother –
he’s been out of favour with his father and this might just do the job of building a bridge.

Joseph arrives, is thrown down the well, and the brothers promptly...
sit down and have their lunch.
That’s pretty cold and callous.
I’m not sure where Reuben’s got to – but he has gone somewhere.
And while he’s out of the picture,
the brothers spot a handy caravan of travellers and cheerfully sell off young Joseph.
So, they haven’t killed him – but they have made a slave of him.
Reuben comes back and is horrified.
The brothers mess up Joseph’s coat with goat blood and take it to their father.
At the end of this part of the story,
we have a distraught father, so consumed with his grief over one son,
that all his sons and daughters together cannot comfort him...
And, we have Joseph, the son, arriving in Egypt, bought by one of Pharaoh’s officials...
How the favourite has fallen.
As the song goes:
'A crash of drums, a flash of light
My golden coat flew out of sight
The colours faded into darkness
I was left alone.'

We’ve worked out very early on, that the brothers have no love for Joseph –
but what I find interesting about the text
is that they have even less love for his dreams:
it’s the dreams that scare them.
Joseph’s dreams aren’t fanciful wee daydreams:
these are dreams that challenge the accepted way of doing things;
they overturn the given understanding of power.
If his dreams come true, his brothers will lose their allotted place –
won’t receive the honour they feel they are due.
His father will lose status.
To kill Joseph is to kill the dream:
that’s what they’re desperate to do –
to destroy it,
to smash it down at any cost,
even at the cost of their brother’s life.
But Joseph lives,
and because he does, so do his dreams.
As we follow Joseph’s story over the next few weeks,
we’ll see how those dreams turn out.
And, other dreams will be added to the story.
The dreams are important.
They’ll be vital not only for Joseph’s survival, but for the survival of his family,
and, the survival of the nation where he’s just been sent as a slave.

Throughout both the Old and New Testaments are scattered
many stories of people who have dreams.
For the most part, the dreams are big.
They also speak of overturning the expected way of doing things;
of power being given, not to the mightiest, but to the least of these;
they are dreams in which captives are liberated,
where no more poverty, or suffering exist –
for all are accorded equal shares in God’s kingdom.
They are dreams of justice, and mercy, and compassion.
On occasion, there are those desperate to try and crush or silence, or even kill the dream –
but the dream lives on regardless.

Through the power of the Spirit, the stories of those dreams inspire us to dream:
of a better way,
of a better world.
Of a world in which all thrive and where no food bank donations are needed,
because food banks won’t be needed.
Shortly, we’ll be singing a hymn referencing that great, radical social justice dreamer,
Martin Luther King who had a dream that people would be judged
not by the colour of the skin,
but by the content of their character.
That was a dream that cost him his life –
because, for some, that dream was too big,
too hard,
would cost them what they felt was their own place at the table...
a table that was more than big enough for all.
Any dream, but that dream.
Like Joseph’s brothers, they tried to stop the dream, but the dream still lives on.

In the darkest reaches of the night, what are your dreams?
That your family is not just safe, but that it prospers...?
That they are loved and cared for
and as they make their way in the world, that they do well,
and that people are kind to them...?
Or, that same dream for yourself:
that you are loved, cared for,
experience the kindness of others...?
And wider?
That our neighbours and villages are good places to live –
where good neighbourliness exists,
where all treat each other with kindness and respect?
And perhaps, the dream is wider still:
that our world is a good place to live –
where peace prevails,
where the hungry are fed,
the sick are tended,
where all do more than just merely survive, but flourish.

Scratch underneath any civil rights movement, and you’ll find that’s the basis of the dream.
Scratch underneath the words of Jesus,
or the stories of the kingdom in the bible...
and there, you’ll find the dream.
For the flourishing of humanity,
and of creation,
is written on God’s heart,
and sent to us, in dreams,
by the prompting of the Spirit.

Coming back full circle to that song:
‘Any dream will do.’
No. Not just any dream,
but the dream of what our lives could be like,
the dream of what our world could be like,
that’s the dream we’re called to follow, and to bring into being –
for that is the dream of building God’s kingdom of heaven on earth.
And only that dream will do.
Let’s dare to dream and see what God will do -
let’s dream, and let’s dream big.
Amen.