Proper 15 (A): Come Closer to Me

Proper 15 (A): Come Closer to Me

Genesis 45:1-15

By: The Rev. Jazzy Bostock

I love the story of Joseph. I think it’s because I’m partial to musicals – and the musical, “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” is one of my favorites. Whatever the reason for my initial love of this story, there are always lessons to learn from it. In the story of Joseph, there are themes of betrayal, family dysfunction, oppression, rising from the ashes, and, perhaps most unlikely of all, forgiveness and reconciliation.

In the portion assigned for today, we meet Joseph close to the end of his story. After having been brutally betrayed and sold into slavery by his brothers, he is taken captive to Egypt. After a period of imprisonment, he rises into one of the top-ranking officials in Egypt because of his ability to interpret dreams for the Pharaoh. His brothers, meanwhile, have fallen on hard times – there is a famine in the land—and their only hope is to go to Egypt and beg for mercy and assistance. Joseph recognizes them, but they don’t recognize him. In our reading, Joseph makes some admirable choices: first, to reveal who he is to his brothers; and second, to treat them with love and kindness, despite the cruel ways they treated him.

As I read through this passage, the part that stood out to me was when Joseph says, “Come closer to me”. In those four words, I think we see the beginning of reconciliation. “Come closer to me” is an invitation, a digging in, a pulling near. How often are we bold enough to ask those who have wronged us to come closer? Our human instinct is surely to pull away – to retreat, reject, and distance. And yet, here we have a man who has endured unimaginable hardship at the hands of his own brothers, and when faced with an opportunity to retaliate, he chooses instead to reconcile.

None of us, I hope, have been through the particular kind of excruciating betrayal that Joseph went through. And yet many of us have been hurt – by those we love and by those we don’t know very well. So often, in that hurt, we recoil; we retreat into our shells. This reaction is completely normal. It comes from a place of self-protection, and fear of being further hurt. But when we do that, the distance in the relationship widens. When Joseph is confronted by his brothers, instead of recoiling, he pulls in to close the gap in the relationship.

What would it look like, I wonder, to invite people who have wronged us to come closer to us? There are, of course, situations when reconciliation and “coming closer” are not possible—such as when doing so may put us or those whom we love in danger. Indeed, sometimes the wrongs other people cause are deeply personal and painful. But often, particularly in our current political climate, we harbor resentment towards others because they don’t believe the same things we do. We harbor resentment because of who someone chose to vote for, or what they believe in. The algorithms on social media make it so easy to let space creep in between us – to widen the chasm, instead of closing it.

One of my favorite prophecies in Isaiah says that those who offer their food to the hungry and work for liberation will be called the repairers of the breach. In our world, we live in the breach. Far more seems to separate us than unite us – and all of us are caught up in a web of distance, confident that the only way to treat others who are different from us is to create chasms between us, judging one another by our own standards.

But our world needs repairers of the breach. We need people to call, “come closer to me” after there has been a hurt, or a wrong. Joseph looks at his brothers who have wronged him – but who are now starving, and hungry – and he calls them in closer. As Christians, our call is to have the courage to do the same – to call in those who are hungry, those who are on the margins, those who have faced oppression. We are to call in those who think differently, those who voted differently, those from different racial and economic vantage points.

I love this story of Joseph because of the model it gives of what it might look like to live, reconciled. I pray that we all might learn to say and to live the words, “Come closer to me.”

The Rev. Jazzy Bostock is a kanaka mail woman, who loves walking barefoot, the warmth of sunshine, and planting seeds in her garden. She serves as a curate at St Peter’s Episcopal Church in Honolulu, Hawaii and is in her second year of priesthood. Serving God’s people is a joy and a privilege, and she laughs along the journey daily.