When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was good, he said to Joseph, “In my dream, behold I had three white baskets on my head, and in the uppermost basket there was all manner of sweetmeats for Pharaoh, and the birds ate them out of the basket on my head.”
And Joseph answered and said, “This is the interpretation of your dream. The three baskets are three days, and within three days Pharaoh will lift up your head from off you, and he will hang you on a tree, and the birds shall eat your flesh.”
And it came to pass the third day, which was Pharaoh’s birthday, that he made a feast for all his servants, and he lifted up the head of the chief butler and the chief baker among his servants. And he restored the chief butler unto his butlership again, and he gave the cup into Pharaoh’s hand. But he hanged the chief baker, as Joseph had interpreted to him. Yet the chief butler did not remember Joseph, but forgot him.
So it goes. Once the chief butler became chief butler again, once things were going well for him, he forgot the man who had predicted this.
And the chief baker was dead, and we do not know why. Were there good reasons? Or was it the arbitrary, irrational whim of a ruler with enormous power? Monarchs don’t always behave rationally. Power sometimes causes the powerful to treat other humans as mere objects. But the record doesn’t tell us why one man was promoted, and another was terminated.
And time passed. Joseph was incarcerated in Pharaoh’s prison for two more years, two more long years. By now his adolescence was behind him. He was a fully grown man, and though he had been immature beyond his years when he was a lad, he was mature beyond his years now that he was a man.
His brothers were far away, and even though he was in charge of everything in the prison, no one was bowing to him yet.
And the chief butler had forgotten him. Why does it seem so often to be a human quality to forget those who have done good things for us, and to remember those who have hurt us?
To remember Joseph would have been for the chief butler to recollect his time in prison, and it is a human tendency to turn away from reminders of pain or difficulty. I had a letter from a young friend telling me of her father’s death and that one of the hardest things for her was her friends who said nothing. They did not know what to say, she wrote, and so they didn’t say anything, and she found that she desperately needed some kind of response from them, any kind of response, but they were silent, and so she felt betrayed.
What is there to say? Only, “I love you, and I care,” and sometimes we are afraid to say even that.
One of the hardest things for me after Hugh’s death was meeting people for the first time and finding that they did not know what to say; they felt terribly uncomfortable, and I had to say the words for them, start talking naturally about Hugh. When people die they are not wiped out of our lives as though they had never been; they are still and always part of our history.
My friend’s friends (and mine) were not being willingly insensitive to her needs. But we are embarrassed. Someone else’s death is a memento mori, and we do not want to remember that we, too, will die. Most of us no longer have the old belief in literal pearly gates and golden streets. We no longer know what death means.
Last January I took my nineteen-year-old granddaughter, Charlotte, to north Florida with me, to stay with my friend, Pat, on one of the great tidal lakes. I wanted Charlotte to know something of her Florida roots, which go very deep. My mother’s family settled in north Florida in the late fifteen hundreds with that first wave of French Huguenots—the very first settlers on this North American continent.
One day we drove out to Fleming’s Island—and Fleming is one of my family names. There we went to Saint Margaret’s Church, one of the charming little Carpenter Gothic churches to be found all over the South. To the side of and behind the church is an old cemetery, where some of my forbears are buried. It is a peaceful place, shaded from the sun by the great live oak trees, hung with Spanish moss. Azalea bushes were beginning to bud. The air was moist and warm. We wandered around, reading the inscriptions on the old tombstones. I had been there many times before, but it suddenly struck me that each one who had been buried there had been planted in the earth with the sure and certain assurance that the very body that had died would rise up again from the grave at the last day.
My grandfather, who died when he was 101, would not want to be resurrected in that ancient body. And I don’t believe that he will be, nor that the specific bones, the flesh now long gone, will leap from the grave. When literalism about the resurrection of the body was what the Church taught, people could not be cremated, because God was not powerful enough to recreate anything from ashes.
Hugh was cremated because that was his wish, and I know that God is quite capable of doing anything the Creator wishes to do with Hugh’s ashes, which are now scattered over his beloved garden. But the Church, by and large, has not grown into an understanding of a God who is not limited in what Love can do. So many people do not know what death means, and that is the cause of their embarrassment. My faith affirms that it means something, and I don’t have to know what. I am confident in Paul’s paradoxical phrase, “a spiritual body.” Perhaps my “golden dreams” are a foretaste of what it may be like after death. I do not know. I only know that God will not forsake us, not now, not at the time of our death, not afterwards. Love does not create only to abandon or annihilate.
But the Church has not moved beyond the old literalism. In the Episcopal Church there are sometimes what are called “white funerals” where a white pall is used, and Easter hymns are sung, and it is all alleluia, alleluia, as though the crucifixion had never happened and we could jump right into Easter. After Hugh died it was a long time before I was able to say “Alleluia!” No matter how strong my faith that Hugh was still Hugh, growing in God’s love, my grief still had to be gone through. Life without my beloved spouse was something I was not ready to shout “Alleluia” about.
My faith tells me that Hugh has gone on to a new challenge, to something new that God wants him to learn. We all have so much to learn—it can’t possibly all be learned in one lifetime. That God has new lessons to teach us in one manner or other seems completely consistent with what Jesus taught. We don’t have to know how God is going to do this; we only have to have faith.
For the ancient Hebrew the terror of Sheol was that it was outside God’s memory, and if you are not in God’s memory, you are not. Nothing is told us of what Jacob believed about Rachel after she died. Perhaps Jacob’s grief continued so unremittingly because he did not believe in God’s continuing concern for his creatures after death (it was a long time before the Hebrew began to conceive of the Resurrection when the Messiah should come, very much as we believe in it when Christ will come again).
But my faith about Rachel, about Hugh, must now be consistent with the metaphor of the universe as we understand it today (though our understanding of our metaphor may change or be made anew tomorrow), and that means that I have to be willing to live with open-ended questions. Many of the old certainties have been washed away. I think of that ancient Florida graveyard, and particularly of the small tombstones. Diphtheria, scarlet fever, and measles were great killers of small children, and it must have been comforting to believe that those beloved little bodies would one day rise again. I believe that, too, but with an unanswered question about how.
While Hugh was dying of cancer, so were two of my close friends, young women, in mid-life. Now Hugh’s sister is dead from cancer. We seem to be surrounded by death.
But that has always been true. It was as true for Joseph as it is for any of us today. And there is more than one kind of death. Joseph had to die to his life as a pampered pet, and live a new life as a slave. He had to die to his life as Potiphar’s overseer, and live in prison. I have had to die to my life as a married woman with a dearly loved husband, and live a new life which, while it is full and rich, is different, totally different.
Joseph’s life as a prisoner came to an e
nd.
And it came to pass at the end of two full years, that Pharaoh dreamed: and behold, he stood by the river. And behold, there came up out of the river seven well-favoured kine and fat-fleshed, and they fed in a meadow. And behold, seven other kine came up after them out of the river, ill-favoured and lean-fleshed; and stood by the other kine upon the brink of the river. And the ill-favoured and lean-fleshed kine did eat up the seven well-favoured and fat kine. So Pharaoh awoke.
And he slept and dreamed the second time, and behold, seven ears of corn came up upon one stalk, full and good. And behold, seven thin ears blasted with the east wind sprang up after them. And the seven thin ears devoured the seven full and good ears.
Pharaoh was troubled by these dreams, and he called for all his magicians and wise men, but nobody was able to interpret the dreams for him.
Then the chief butler, who had been in prison with Joseph, suddenly remembered him, and his interpretation of dreams, and told the Pharaoh about him. Pharaoh immediately sent for Joseph, who shaved himself, and changed his clothing, and was brought from the prison to Pharaoh.
Pharaoh told Joseph about his dream, and that no one could interpret it.
“But I have heard said of you that you can understand a dream and interpret it.”
Joseph answered Pharaoh as he had answered the butler and the baker.
“It is not in me; it is God.”
In this way we are told a good deal about what Joseph thought of God. Joseph in his short life had been through as much radical change as we have gone through in our understanding of Creation, and had been able to accept the change and learn from it.
Pharaoh told Joseph his dreams, and Joseph said,
“God has showed Pharaoh what he is about to do. The seven good kine are seven good years, and the seven good ears are seven years: the dream is one. And then seven thin and ill-favoured kine that came up after the seven years, and the seven empty ears blasted with the east wind shall be seven years of famine. This is the thing I have told Pharaoh: what God is going to do he has shown Pharaoh. There will be seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt, and after them shall arise seven years of famine, and the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt, and the famine will consume the land.”
Joseph continued by telling Pharaoh that because the dream was dreamed twice, it was a sign that it was established by God, and God would bring it to pass. So Joseph suggested that Pharaoh
“look for a man discreet and wise, and set him over the land of Egypt. Let Pharaoh do this, and let him appoint officers over the land, and take up the fifth part of the land of Egypt in the seven plenteous years. And let them gather all the food of those good years, and lay up corn under the hand of Pharaoh, and let them keep food in the cities. And that food shall be for store to the land against the seven years of famine which shall be in the land of Egypt, that the land perish not through the famine.”
We all know the familiar story. What Joseph said was appreciated by Pharaoh, who set Joseph over his house, as Potiphar had set Joseph over his house. But this time Joseph had authority over an entire land, the powerful land of Egypt. Pharaoh took off his own ring and put it on Joseph’s hand, and dressed him royally, with a gold chain around his neck. He gave Joseph an Egyptian name, Zaphenath-Paneah (which fortunately we don’t need to remember); he also gave him an Egyptian wife, Asenath, the daughter of the priest of On. So Joseph went out and surveyed all the land of Egypt.
And Joseph was thirty years old when he stood before Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
From prison to palace. Again it had happened.
From the favoured son of an old man to the victim of his brothers. From being sold into Egypt to Potiphar’s steward. From steward to being the imprisoned victim of Potiphar’s wife’s lust. From prison to palace. Incredible reversals.
Most of our reversals are not nearly so dramatic.
Drama is easier than dailiness. Drama lends us a surge of adrenaline that gives us energy we didn’t know we had. In the midst of crisis we are too busy to worry about ourselves or to indulge in self-pity.
It is never even hinted that Joseph whined or despaired during his long years in prison. The iron that was in his soul strengthened him. If ever he was in an iron collar it can’t have been for long, since he took care of all the prisoners and all that went on in the prison. He managed to remain strong in spite of what must have been a tedious dailiness that we can hardly imagine.
In one of my reference books I read that Abraham left Ur in Chaldea around 2100 B.C. So if we go from Abraham to Isaac to Jacob to Joseph, Joseph must have lived around four thousand years ago. Two thousand years from Joseph to Jesus, two thousand years from Jesus to our own time.
A PRISONER
I know why I am here. I stole. I got in a fight and I killed a man. If ever it is right to take a man out of the light of day and put him in the dark of prison, it was right to put me here.
At night I dream, but I do not tell my dreams, for there is a man here (a prisoner, but in charge of us) who interprets dreams and says the interpreter is God. The butler, he said, would be restored to his former position, and the baker, he said, would lose his head.
And so I do not tell my dreams. I have lost enough without losing my head, too. But I have told him that I killed a man in a stupid quarrel.
I was punished justly, because I was getting what my deed deserved. But this man, this Joseph, has done nothing wrong.
I told him my story: I did not mean to kill. When I stole, I stole knowingly. I am an excellent thief. But knowingly I did not kill. It seems my hands still bear the stain of blood.
He listens to me. Quietly. He speaks words of neither condemnation nor excuse. He gives me work to do, to help him in the prison. I scrub the stone floors, and the water helps wash the blood from my hands. One night when a prisoner, an old man, is coughing his life away, Joseph has me stay with him. I hold the man high against my chest to ease his breathing. Why is he in prison, so fragile and so old? At dawn he dies in my arms and I hold him until his limbs begin to stiffen. After that, I am the one whom Joseph calls whenever death is near. Sometimes he stays with me, talking quietly to the prisoner leaving life. Sometimes I am alone.
I know that I will never kill again, and when Joseph leaves, sent for by Pharaoh, and does not return, I am given his place, put in charge of the prison.
I hope that Pharaoh treats him kindly.
Gad, a troop shall overcome him: but he shall overcome at the last.
GENESIS 49:19
By Gad, there’s not much to be known about Gad! How did his name get taken over as an expletive? Or was it simply a British pretense that one was not taking God’s name in vain?
Gad was Zilpah’s first son, Jacob’s seventh. Moses describes Gad as a lioness and praises him for performing Yahweh’s ordinances. But in the song of Deborah his tribe is chided for failing to participate in the war against Sisera. But Jacob encourages his son Gad, saying,
“he shall overcome at the last.”
By the time Joseph was established as principal ruler in Egypt, most of his older brothers would have been married and the fathers of children. But this story is Joseph’s, and the others come into the story only because, at certain times, they affected Joseph.
Egypt stands in our minds for the fleshpots, the quick, good things of this life, instant gratification, fine foods, and wines, and clothing, and luxurious housing. Four hundred years later, the Hebrew children escaped Pharaoh and were heading back to the Promised Land, and God sustained them with manna, the sweet, flaky substance that fell each day from the sky. But they complained that they were tired of this manna, that they longed for their onions and garlic and all the fresh foods they were accustomed to in Egypt. Slavery began to seem preferable to freedom as long as slavery kept them comfortable.
It is all right to enjoy the “creature comforts” as long as they are not paramount, as long as they do not become little gods, as long as we do not become sl
aves to them. What God created is good, very good, and to be enjoyed, as long as we never forget the Source.
Joseph never scorned the fleshpots when they were offered to him. He wore with flair his coat of many colours, though it became a sign of favouritism rather than simply a beautiful and comfortable garment. More honestly, he enjoyed the luxuries of Potiphar’s palace and the far greater luxuries showered on him by Pharaoh. But when his luxuries were taken away he did not whine and whimper. The fact that he told both the baker and the Pharaoh that the interpretation of dreams comes from God, not from himself, tells us clearly that Joseph had not forgotten God, that the fleshpots were not of prime importance in his life.
Jesus enjoyed eating with his friends, enjoyed the good things (and was criticized for it by the moral majority). And it is all right for us to enjoy them, too, as long as we remember that all good and lovely things come from our Maker, even if we have prepared or crafted them: well-cooked meals, finely carved furniture, embroidered linens. And our enjoyment should be an act of worship. My friend Tallis was talking to a Quaker friend about the Eucharist, and how important it was to him. The Eucharist and the other sacraments are not part of Quaker worship, yet the old lady gently replied that she never sat down to a meal without thinking of the body and blood of the Lord, and giving thanks.
Sold into Egypt Page 10
