GENESIS: Week 6

August 28th, 1963.  

The now famous words rang out across Washington D.C, and soon after, across the world. 

“I have a dream...” 

Martin Luther King Jr delivered a speech that made a huge impact. His words reflecting a vision of a better future.  

But whilst the dream is remembered, not many people connect that with the years of organising, negotiating, campaigning, speeches, strategy, legal action and political engagement that surrounded it. 

The story of Joseph in Genesis presents a similar tension. It begins with dreams, but it ends with food policy. From God’s guidance to practical politics. 

In Genesis 37, Joseph receives extraordinary dreams. They point towards God's future, but Joseph himself doesn't know what they mean or how they'll happen.  The dreams give direction, not instructions.  

God reveals the destination, but not the roadmap. 

But then, after the dreams, there is a long, long time.  

Now, Joseph isn’t just sat around waiting. After being sold into slavery by either his brothers, the Ishmaelites or the Midianites (it’s not clear what happened – 37:36, 39:1 and 45:5 all disagree on this), he gets stuck into life in Egypt. 

He serves Potiphar faithfully, ends up managing a household, learns about Egyptian culture. Then he administers a prison, interprets dreams, develops his leadership skills and gains political credibility. 

Then we arrived at chapter 41. 

Two whole years after being left behind by the cupbearer and baker he met in prison, Pharaoh has a dream he needs interpreting. Eventually, Joseph gets a chance to talk to Pharoah about the dream. And, though he appears to emphasise that God is the one who offers the meaning of dreams, the reply is very pragmatic. 

Joseph immediately proposes appointing commissioner, collecting a fifth of produce, building storage cities, distribution of grain and making preparations for the years of famine.  

None of this comes from the dream. It comes from wisdom. It appears as though the divine revelation is only half the story. The rest is competent administration. 

The dream explains what is coming. Wisdom determines what to do about it. 

Sometimes Christians imagine a dynamic where God speaks and humans simply obey. 

Genesis points us to something more tangible but also more complex. 

God gives vision. Humans must think. Plan. Budget. Organise. Negotiate. Govern. 

Joseph doesn't become less spiritual as he enters politics. His political wisdom becomes one of the means through which God's purposes unfold. 

At Bible School last week, we thought about who we might recognise as Prophets today – and many of the people mentioned had some political or activist role. The Biblical prophets were often invited into political spaces to speak God’s word into important, often national, situations. 

There is, it seems, a connection between those who carry God’s vision and those who God places in the political sphere.  

Joseph is an example of just that.  

Genesis invites us to believe that God's purposes are often worked out not instead of human wisdom, but through it. 

Something to think about... 

We can be quick to celebrate Joseph’s proposal as effective policies which save Egypt from great hardships. Through the political lens, however, these policies have the effect of centralising power with Pharaoh.  

That’s all well and good when Joseph is still knocking about, but what about after that?  

Now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. - Exodus 1:8 

Did Joseph’s recommendations create the very system which a different Pharaoh then used to oppress the Israelites? 

Maybe even less comfortable to think about, could that have been God’s intentions behind Joseph’s wisdom and interpretation?