TRIGGER WARNING: GENESIS 39:1-23 REFERS TO AN ACCUSATION OF RAPE.
Hey, Sarah [Liturgist]! I got a joke for you. How do you put milk in the refrigerator? Ok, how do you put bacon in the refrigerator? Would you put a whole pig in the refrigerator the same way? What about an alligator? No, silly, first you take the pig out so the alligator can fit! Thanks for playing, Sarah! [She sits.]
That joke reminds me that some time ago my mom taught me that there are times when it is really important to tend to big issues first – like when you are packing a car, or paying bills, or trying to sus out a conflict with someone you love. Sometimes the “big things” can help you make sense of the best way to do the little things. There are, of course, exceptions. Everyone has their own way to load the dishwasher, and many of us would come to blows over it if challenged.
All of that is to say that there is an elephant that came into the room with the Old Testament reading, and we need to deal with it before we go any further into the text. Our Old Testament reading involves an accusation of sexual misconduct – an attempted rape – in which a woman wrongfully accuses a man and he is imprisoned for it. The reason this is so problematic is that the odds of that happening, although it does happen even today, are highly improbable, and stories such as these are part of a centuries-old tradition that vilifies women and anticipates male aggressors' claims of innocence and victimization and contributes to the silence of actual victims.
Don’t believe me? Just last Spring a high school student that I know told me of an event in her school in Baton Rouge in which boys and girls were separated to talk about the importance of consent. The girls were told to be mindful of their behavior. The boys were assured that they would be accused of sexual battery at some point in their lives.
I won't say that naming the elephant “deals with” the awkwardness of this text. I will say that we must not forget the need to talk openly about the fact that we expect too much of women and girls and not enough of boys and men, and the church needs to take its role in setting these norms seriously.
I won’t get into the weeds of statistics, but the reality is that this issue has probably impacted every person in this room or at least someone that you know – whether you know it or not. That’s our context, or at least part of it, as we approach this story. I want to talk a little more about Joseph’s story, but first I do want to say something about Potifar’s wife.
Take note that she is unnamed. Take note that another non-Jewish woman, Tamar, used her sexuality aggressively in Genesis 38, and she is considered a hero. Potifar’s wife is instead the villain of this story and is not even given a name. Consider, for a moment, that she may have been as much of a possession of Potifer as Joseph, and she was left with his garment in her hands. What else was she to do?
Maybe she had more power than I think. Perhaps she could have made other choices – starting with not pressing a servant into a service that dehumanized him (as if being another person’s property wasn’t enough), and also not cheating on her husband. This is, of course, why she is the villain in this story.
Joseph is meant to be our hero, and before we identify too strongly with him, let’s be clear about some of the power differentials in this story. Joseph only has power, agency, and the ability to make decisions and manage resources because he is trusted by the people who actually have power. If that’s not you, you might not be Joseph in this story. I’m not assessing value on anyone except Potifer’s wife. (I already called her a villain.) I’m just acknowledging the power differential that is a key part of the story.
Maybe you are someone with little or no power. Most of us live with mountain loads of debt, so maybe you do only have resources because someone trusts you. Still, many of us are actually more like Potifer or the King’s Jailer or the household staff or the trader that brought Joseph to Potifer in the first place. It doesn’t really matter except that we, especially those of us of European descent, tend to think of ourselves as the hero. Culturally, we often identify with the scrappy underdog, but based on the power dynamics of many of the stories in the Bible – and really most hero's journey stories from the Iliad all the way to Star Wars – we might actually be a part of the empire.
That’s between you and Jesus to work out – in fact, the one verse we read from his sermon on the mount encourages us to move toward the role of the one who is ridiculed and reviled for standing up for our God-given rights to…wait. Sorry. That was for when we are falsely accused of something and we bear that accusation in order to demonstrate the love and mercy of God.
Somehow, that seems to pair with this story about Joseph like a fine wine – the kind we bless and share with bread to remember the loving kindness, the chessed of God that we talked about with Ruth (another outsider that taught us about the faith we think we know so much about).
In fact, the word chessed, loving-kindness, shows up in v.21, because the Lord was with Joseph and showed him loving-kindness, and gave him favor in the sight of the chief jailer. The “favor of the Lord” is pretty central to this story, and yes, it matters that Joseph always does the right thing (he denied Potifar’s wife because it would be a sin against God – a rejection of God’s blessing), but the important thing is that God is with him and the blessing God promised through Abraham continues through Joseph as well.
If you are not familiar with the whole arc of the Joseph story, I’d encourage you to go back to chapter 37 and read from there, but be ready because it’s as spicy as anything George R Martin ever wrote. Just as a quick summary, Joseph is one of 12 brothers who later became the foundation for the 12 tribes of Israel.
There is some generational favoritism passed down from Abraham to Jacob, and Joseph is Jacob’s pick. Jacob even gives Joseph a special robe that is the kind normally reserved for young women being saved for marriage, and God gives Joseph prophetic dreams that include the family bowing down to him. Suffice it to say his brothers do not like this. They beat him and leave him in a pit, but one of them feels guilty and sells him to a caravan of traders. They take him down to Egypt, which some say is a metaphor for the land of the dead given the Egyptian pantheon and their concern for what happens after death.
Potifar picks him up. His wife accuses Joseph of assault. Joseph goes to jail. It’s kind of an understatement to say that this man’s life is full of what you might call blessings and woes. One might even question whether God was honoring God’s promise to Abraham that all the families of the earth shall be blessed through him.
I wonder if you’ve ever doubted God in the same way. Good for you if you have not, but one thing I know is that life will undoubtedly give us opportunities to shake our fists at God and say, “If you plan on showing up, right now would be great!” Job losses, physical health issues, mental health issues, credit debt – these are just a few of the prison cells we find ourselves in, and that list doesn’t even include war and other forms of needless suffering on a global scale.
It makes me wonder if the other staff in Potifar’s house were too worried about their own concerns, too worn down and tired to even care. It kind of reminds me of one of another reluctant hero, Rick Blaine, the owner of Rick’s Cafe in the film Casablanca, who famously said, “I stick my neck out for no one” while he laid the groundwork for resistance against the Nazis.
Maybe the call of scripture today is for all of us to become a hero like Rick – someone moved from complacency into advocacy and action – but maybe it has more to do with God; as the scriptures often do. What we see about God in this story is that God’s justice does not depend on our ability to be fair. In fact, it may be that God’s justice is not fair at all. Things do tend to work out for Joseph in the end, and God’s blessing continues to be for “all the families of the earth” through Joseph. Even his enemies, those who imprisoned him, benefit from God’s loving-kindness. That’s the part that just doesn’t seem fair. That and the fact that he was wrongly accused in the first place.
Where is God in all of this? God is with him in his suffering. In many ways, this story prefigures the cross and the love and mercy we have through Jesus. Through him, we can also be reminded and assured that God is with us in the prisons we invent and even the times in which we find ourselves to be the jailer, or the accused, or the one who has been injured and wronged.
We know that Joseph will reconcile with his brothers in Genesis 50:20 and tell them, “What you intended for harm God intended for good.” We know that all the families of the known world were blessed in a time of famine through Joseph, and we know that this led to the resettlement of the Hebrew people that would eventually become a source of forced labor by another Pharoh with a hardened heart. Once again God was with them in their suffering and brought them out of bondage so that they might continue to hold the blessing that eventually has come to you and to me and to all the families of the earth.
Next week we will celebrate the release God offered them and the release that God offers us from all that enslaves. For today, let it be enough to know that God is with you, offering you loving kindness and seeking to bless others through you – even those that may wish to cause you harm. Hold fast to your faith in God's love, and let that be the big thing that helps us make sense out of all the other things – for God’s blessing still pours out, even though you; even through me; and to God be the glory now and always. Amen!
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