Genesis 37:1-4; 12-28; August 13, 2023; Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost
Little baby Jonathan was born happy and healthy. He ate, he pooped, he smiled, he laughed. He was everything that his parents could have wanted. Except for the fact that he had disrupted sleep patterns. His parents took him to the doctor who told them: “he’s fine, perfectly normal, it seems he just likes to dream more than most, which, as you’ve seen, wakes him up.” “But is he maybe experiencing nightmares?” they would ask; “no, I don’t think so,” the doctor would say “unless of course you are giving him a reason to be scared; no, it seems he just has a heightened imagination and an overactive creative center in his brain. And if you’re asking me, you should be encouraged by that!” But his parents, who weren’t asking him, went home discouraged, and prayed, vehemently, for little baby Jonathan just to sleep… creativity and wokeness be damned.
Well, some years later, after he had learned to sleep (thanks be to God), and learned to draw (thanks be to his dad), his favorite shape that he doodled was the triangle. He loved its angles, its sides, and that as long as it connected at three points, it was a triangle all the same. He had a particular affinity for the scalene triangle. The one where all the sides are different, none measuring the same length. His least favorite was the equilateral. It was too plain and perfect, and even from a young age, he felt that few things in life were ever so straight or symmetrical.
One day his mother, while watching him, asked him to draw a square instead, adding that there was something inherently unpleasing about his triangles, for life, after all, prized conformity and order rather than irregularity and unevenness. Confused, but obedient, Jonathan took out his pencil and started to match his lines, corner to corner to make a perfect square, and in response, his mother smiled at him, and said, “there, now you’ve figured it.” But when she left the room, he began drawing his favorite scalenes again, 20-70-90; 30-50-100, on the underside of his desk.
About a decade later in upper school, Jonathan found himself, perhaps unsurprisingly, struggling to fit in. If people liked blue, he liked green. If people enjoyed meat, he preferred fish. If people laughed with Joey, he would side with Ross. He was made fun of and bullied and would hear a common refrain from all corners saying, “why can’t you just be like us, like, normal!?”
And upon pick-up one day, his mother heard this, and said, “see, I tried to tell you; you should have practiced your equilaterals more. It would have saved you a load of trouble…” But Jonathan responded, “Why do I need to please them? Why is their side of what’s right anymore valid than my own?” His mother shook her head and said, “Jonny, people don’t like different. It threatens them, and what they think that they know. You need to make a choice in life. Fit in; match your shapes, sides, and angles with theirs… or be thrown out and become a lone voice lost in the wilderness.” To this, Jonathan shrugged his shoulders and went up to his room.
Three years later, Jonathan was accepted into his second choice for university. His mother hugged him goodbye, and whispered, “just play by their rules, okay?” But upon pulling away, Jonathan said, “sorry ma, but I’m simply obtuse. And one day, people will not only thank me for it, but respect and celebrate me for it.”
And that, my friends, is where the story ends… my story, in fact. You see, the last time I did something like this in a sermon, some of you asked me where I got the story from and thought that maybe I had borrowed it from another author. Nope. I’ll never do that, at least not without citation. No, this is all me, and from my strange, overactive, irregular brain. But all the same, this is where the story ends; so…what do you suppose happened to Jonathan? Do you think his mother would be proven right in the end; that he would be ignored and discarded for the scalenes and his dreams? Or do you think that he and his peculiarities would be welcomed and affirmed?
Judging by our history I think the answer is clear…that, no chance would it have worked out for him. Like, one percent maybe at best. For the idea that you can dare to be different, and still get through life unscathed, let alone be celebrated or revered, is largely, mostly, a fiction, even if it’s a fiction I still choose to chase after myself and promote to my son and to others. No, the uncomfortable truth is, is that it’s really, really hard to be both irregular and successful, and even more so to remain a voice in the wilderness crying out for what is right if you become successful. No, it takes a lot of things to bounce your way, and a lot of scaffolding to be in place, as well as an unwavering belief in yourself and your convictions, and a reoccurring dream that yes, you in fact can (and should) do it.
In sports, they call this “irrational confidence.” In church they call this being a pastor. And, in Genesis, they call it being Joseph… For here was a guy who was the second youngest of twelve, which in antiquity times meant that he had ten others before him with stronger claims to the tradition, to the business, and to the family inheritance. And yet here we are told that not only did Israel/Jacob/his father love him more than his brothers, but also that he, Joseph, dreamt dreams of one day presiding over them. Listen to the verses our lectionary skips over:
5Once Joseph had a dream, and when he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. 6He said to them, ‘Listen to this dream that I dreamed. 7There we were, binding sheaves in the field. Suddenly my sheaf rose and stood upright; then your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf.’ 8His brothers said to him, ‘Are you indeed to reign over us? Are you indeed to have dominion over us?’ So they hated him even more because of his dreams and his words.
And this is why they say to each other in verse 19: “Here comes this dreamer…” For you see, Joseph had that irrational, irregular, somewhat obtuse confidence. And they hated him for it. Just as they hated him because they thought his dreams and ideas were too youthful and ignorant. We are told in our text today that Joseph is just seventeen years old when he receives his father’s favor, and thus I suspect that there was some good old-fashioned ageism at play here amongst his brothers, thinking to themselves, what does this young, oblong kid know of the world? What does Joseph know that we don’t and haven’t proven out already?
Well, in verse two it says that Joseph brings a bad report of his brothers’ shepherding businesses to their father… he comes in from the field, and he plainly tells him that what they were doing wasn’t working anymore and that he, Joseph, knows of a different and a better way. And it’s after this report, that we are told that Jacob/his father appreciates and loves him more than his brothers. Right or wrong, that’s what it says. And yes, it was for his energetic youthfulness, but also for Joseph’s clear vision, and his new ideas, on how to get things done.
But after learning of this, instead of hearing him out and seeing what he has to say for himself, his brothers plot to kill him, to throw him in a pit and feed him to the wild beasts; and they not only do that, but they also strip him naked, expose him, mock him and belittle him for his dreams, and then they leave him there alone to thirst and to starve. And just when you think they get a conscience about it, and try to do the right thing by rescuing him from the pit, they decide, nah, let’s sell him to another congregation for twenty pieces of silver.
Hmm.
Well, of course all of this should be reminding you of not only my own story with Jonathan and his angles, but even more appropriately, of Jesus and his dreams. For our Lord and Savior was also mocked and beaten, and betrayed for silver, and then thrown up on a cross and killed for daring to question the system. For daring to ask if there was a new and better way. For daring to play against the rules, while conceiving of a different normal, of a world and a Kingdom where all points and people were connected to each other by equilateral respect, even if they were first and always irregular, coming from different lengths, measurements, and sides.
My friends, before us today, we have a choice, though some might name it a calling, to dream with Christ so that we too might wake up. Becoming alert and aware to the Inspiration that is happening around us, even if it is yet unfamiliar, untraditional, and even uncomfortable.
For being a Christian means to be in new relationship with God; and a new relationship with each other in a new world order. Not simply promoting the ways it’s always been, but thinking in eschatological terms towards a coming future, when what is known as normal is also what was known as different, and yet that which was always right…where there is sight for the blind, and food for the hungry, strength for the meek, and justice for the oppressed; where welcomed and celebrated are all of our neighbors; yes, even the strange ones and the outcasts, the Jonathans, and the scalene triangles.
Amen.
