Finding Grace in the Story of Joseph

If there is anyone in the Old Testament for us to root for, it's Joseph, that unlucky guy who was sold by his own brothers into slavery, and then falsely accused of attempted rape and imprisoned unjustly for it. We know that everything about this is unfair. He has gotten a punishment he doesn't deserve.

When a couple of men who personally know Pharaoh join him in prison, he thinks he's got a ticket out.

Joseph to Pharaoh's cup bearer:

Genesis 40:14 "And please remember me and do me a favor when things go well for you. Mention me to Pharaoh, so he might let me out of this place. 15 For I was kidnapped from my homeland, the land of the Hebrews, and now I’m here in prison, but I did nothing to deserve it.”

How many nights did Joseph stare at a rotting, festering ceiling and pray, with chains on his ankles, that God would free him? How many mornings did he wake to find that there was no answer? When he begs the cup bearer to plead with Pharaoh on his behalf it seems to be a move of desperation for Joseph, as if Pharaoh and not God has the power to free him. He is clinging to a spider's thread of hope that if God was willing, or perhaps if Pharaoh was willing, he might get to sink his toes into the desert sand as a free man again.

My heart breaks for him. I can't imagine the conditions of an ancient Egyptian prison where these human lives were worth less than livestock. But my heart doesn't break for the third prisoner, the baker, who is executed three days later in a disgusting and agonizing way, and I wonder why. Part of it is due to desensitization, thanks to a world history that makes impaling, beheading, drawing and quartering, gutting, and other horrific ways to die commonplace. But part of it is because I assume he was guilty of whatever he must have done to "offend his royal master" (Gen 40:1).

It is in our nature to want justice. The guilty should be punished. They get what they deserve.

But Joseph is guilty too, of his own offense. By chapter 40 we see a faithful, humble, intelligent Joseph, an endearing underdog who is no longer using dreams to tear people down, but to lift God up. But don't forget how we watched him in previous chapters goad his brothers to jealousy and hatred, (fueled also by their father) in a childish display of self-serving arrogance. Make no mistake. He is guilty too.

So, Joseph and the baker deserve the same fate, really. While we're at it, let's take this all the way to the top. Pharaoh deserves that fate too, as an unbelieving man, and I suppose his fate will ultimately be the same as the baker's, only it will likely be much less gruesome and will come much later. But what difference does it make how tidy your death is when it's what comes after that matters?

Pharaoh thinks it's his job, his prerogative, to administer this type of justice but that's just a game we humans play. God is over all. He's over life. He's over death. He's over dreams, and prisoners, and Pharaohs, and cup bearers who forget. He's over mercy and he's over judgment.

He was over Joseph at the close of this chapter, as Joseph faced another night staring up at that rotting, festering ceiling, with the chains still firmly clamped around his ankles.

When the time was right, God would act. He would not give Joseph the fate he deserved. Instead he would lavish mercy on Joseph. Before the end of the next chapter, Joseph would know freedom and luxury beyond what he imagined or dared to ask for during those late night prison prayers.

This is the kind of God we serve.

The kind who does not treat us as our sins deserve, but instead condescends to bend down to us, to hear our cries, and to deliver us from our chains, to exalt us in ways far greater than we can imagine.

Responding to Grace

Tis not the work of force but skill

To find the way into men's will.

Tis love alone can hearts unlock.

Who knows the Word, he needs not knock.

Richard Crashaw - 1652

Grace loved Chester but Chester didn't love Grace in return.  She knows it.  You can feel her insecurity in the letters she wrote to him in the summer of 1906. 

My Dear Chester,
...I think I shall die of joy when I see you, dear.  I will try not to worry so much and I won't believe the horrid things the girls write...

You can also tell that Chester wasn't a very good person but Grace didn't mind.

...You have said you would come and sometimes I just know you will, but then I think about other things and I am just as certain you won't come....

She loved him anyway and held onto the hope that he would come for her.  She had given him everything there was for a girl to give to a boy and she waited anxiously for him to respond to her proclamations of love.  He never spoke affectionately in the 3 letters he wrote back to her dozens.  She even apologized in one letter for how affectionate she was in hers and tried to mimic his curt, businesslike tone.  But by the next letter, she was back to worrying over why he hadn't written, and proclaiming her love again, and wondering when he would come.

Unrequited love is so unfair.  I see Grace as a young woman who has taken a gamble by baring her soul to a man who may or may not love her back.  She stands there trembling and naked before him, while he remains fully clothed and buttoned up, from his hat all the way down to his boots, arms firmly crossed over his chest, revealing nothing, risking nothing.  That way she is the only one who stands to lose.

This happened once in the bible.  Not in a romantic way but the risk was no less inherent in the gamble Jonathan took when he proclaimed his undying loyalty to his friend, David.  1 Samuel 18:3-4: "And Jonathan made a solemn pact with David because he loved him as he loved himself.  Jonathan sealed the pact by taking off his robe and giving it to David, together with his tunic, sword, bow, and belt."  We don't know what David's response was because the bible doesn't give it.  The scene shifts abruptly and Jonathan is left standing there, naked and defenseless, and without a response to this lavish display.

We know a little bit about Chester's response to Grace through her letters.  He accepted her affection enough to get her pregnant before almost totally ignoring her.  She begged and pleaded with him to take responsibility and not be a coward, to come to her parent's house where she was burdened with her secret--his baby--and take her away.  She worried to the point of making herself ill and confessed to fainting when she received a letter from a girl Chester knew, admitting to things that Chester did in Grace's absence.  But it was too late for her to walk away with any dignity.  She needed him to come for her and she desperately wanted him to love her. 

Forget for a moment that life was different for an unwed mother in 1906.  These are things we all long for.  When we have physically, emotionally, and spiritually given all we have to give, we want it to be given back in full measure.  We will be forever incomplete and feel cheated if it's not.

In the surprise of the young century, Chester did show up at Grace's door, told her to pack her bags, and took her away.  You can just bet that everything about that day got instantly brighter for Grace, can't you?  The twinge of morning sickness evaporated.  The shadows on the front lawn, which once seemed so ominous and foreboding, were now merely dappled evidence of the sunshine which was finally going to beat down on her face as she joined her savior on the front stoop, carpetbag in hand, future secure.  I imagine the relief, the feeling of pure joy, that must have seeped through her veins at the sight of him standing there before her.  I imagine the way she must have thrown her arms around his neck and basked for a wonderful moment in the assurance of his love for her. 

They went to a resort in the Adirondacks and stayed in a hotel for the night.  Grace must have assumed he would take her to a chapel or to a Justice of the Peace to marry her quickly and quietly.  But he didn't.  The next day he killed her and dumped her body in Moose Lake.

Tragically, Jonathan lost his life too in a senseless killing.  Not because of David, though.  In fact, we learn in 1 Samuel 20 that David fully reciprocated Jonathan's friendship and loved him just as fiercely.  They often risked their lives for one another and kept each other alive when King Saul would have killed them both.  It was the original bro-mance!  So why did the prophet Samuel, author of his first book, leave us hanging for two whole chapters, wondering at David's response to Jonathan?  Maybe what's left out of the bible can be just as telling as what's left in.  Maybe by leaving David unresponsive, Samuel is giving us a sneak-peak at the coming of a Savior who would give of himself so lavishly, all that would be left would be his naked body, trembling, and dying in front of people who didn't know what to make of Him.  He still evokes a range of responses in us.  Some of us fall on our faces in a twisting anguish of undeserving gratitude.  Some of us weep quietly and make a simple promise to start going to church again.  Sometimes there is no response at all.  He knew this was a risk He was taking but it didn't stop Him from coming and giving everything there was to give.

What's your response?  Are you preoccupied like Chester?  Are you too busy living life, and having fun, and skirting responsibility, and doing things your own way to stop and notice what's already been given to you?  You can stand there with your mouth shut like David in chapter 18 and leave Him hanging.  You can even turn away from it and ignore Him.  That's your right as a human being who was made to choose.  But it's been done so you have to choose one way or the other.

You can choose to respond like Chester did when he dumped his gift in the lake, preferring life without it.  But your choice won't be ignored forever.  Grace was known by the people in Chester's life.  She was missed when she was gone.   The authorities drug the lake and recovered her body.  The truth could not stay hidden and Chester would have to answer for his choice.  He went to trial in a case that captivated America.  Grace's letters were read to the jury and when they heard her plaintive cries for his love, and felt her vulnerability as she sat and waited for him, it moved them to recommend execution for young Chester, who only ever wanted to have fun.  He died by electrocution on March 30, 1908.

Friends, if you think there is nothing more to this life than having a little bit of fun before you die, go ahead.  No one will stop you.  You may not go to the extremes Chester did to cling to that thin thread of independence, but you know your life will one day come to a grinding halt.  Maybe tomorrow.  Maybe in 70 years.  But know too that you have been given a lavish gift.  Consider it with awe and wonder.  Respond to it.  Reach out to Grace now.  Take its hand, and then let it throw its arms around your neck and say into your ear, "Finally.  I've been waiting for you."



Quotes from Grace's letters come from the book, "A Northern Light" by Jennifer Donnelly.  Information about Chester's execution comes from (I know, I know) Wikipedia.

Delivered

Evelyn settled herself into the cushioned chair, set her purse on the floor, and used her orthotics-clad foot to slide it under her seat.  There were 20 or 30 chairs in this small, shadowy room and thanks to the thoughtful design of stadium seating, the spectators would get a great view.  As if they had come here to watch a movie or a ball game and not to watch somebody die.

There was an armed guard standing in the corner, wearing a baseball cap of all things (the casualization of society, she called this), watching people trickle in.  There were a few she figured were reporters.  Who else would want to memorialize this event with a yellow legal pad and a ballpoint pen?  Some faces she recognized from the trial as families of the victims.  One of them was a victim.  Evelyn tried not to look at her.  She sat two seats away and one row down.  The woman had been shot and raped and left to die but somehow survived.  Her testimony at the trial was horrific and is probably what convinced the jury to vote unanimously for death.  In a perverted sort of way that Evelyn would have denied if anyone had asked her about it, she hoped the woman got some kind of satisfaction out of today.  Then at least one good thing would come out of her son's life.

She kept her eyes on the window in front of her and wondered if it was a one-way glass.  Maybe Richard wouldn't even know she was here.  Maybe it was best that way.  She thought of him as a boy and how he would stick out his hand, and wave a big goofy wave, and say, "Hi, Mom!" when he saw her, the way he did when she was 15 minutes late picking him up from school once.  He was the only student left and stood on the sidewalk with a teacher who lifted her watch and stared at it when Evelyn arrived.  Richard never doubted that she would be there for him eventually.  She hadn't once come to visit him in prison.  

Time had stopped for her around the time he was convicted 11 years ago.  She knew intellectually that he was no longer a boy and that a grown man of 29 would walk through the door on the other side of that glass, but she preferred to live in her memories, a time of promises made, before she knew they wouldn't come to pass.  Not in Richard's lifetime anyway.

The door to the room beyond the glass opened and Richard walked through in his baggy orange jumper, hands behind his back, followed by a physician and a man in a suit.  Richard said, "You want me to sit?"  Evelyn was shocked she could hear voices.  She thought it would be sound proof and panicked a bit at what she might hear in his last moments.  Despite everything, she didn't want to hear him suffer.  The man in the suit told him not to sit just yet and took the handcuffs off.  He bumped Richard lightly as he moved around him in the small space and Evelyn heard her son's voice again saying, "Pardon me," as he rubbed his wrists.

They nudged Richard toward a gurney in the center of the room and sat him down on a plastic green mattress and hooked him up to a heartrate monitor, which seemed to her like a waste.  Thin black velcro straps dangled limp from the sides of the bed, jostling with Richard's weight in a grotesque little dance. 

Richard was calm.  More calm than she'd ever seen him, though to be fair, the last time they were together he was on drugs.  For six excruciating years, his eyes were either dilated and darting all over the place or glazed over, hollow and sunken.  Now they were clear and blue.  His face was clean shaven.  He looked so...healthy.  There wasn't even a tremor in his hand as he stretched his arm out to have the inside of his elbow swabbed with alcohol by the physician, another waste of time it seemed to her, and have an IV started.  

He laid down and inched his body up the mattress a bit to position his head on the little white pillow.  The man in the suit fastened the velcro around Richard's arms and legs.  He mumbled something she couldn't hear and Richard looked up at him and nodded.  She thought Richard would be scared but he wasn't.  He was just expectant, as if he was being strapped into a ride at an amusement park and had just been asked by the bored, sweaty, zit-plagued employee if the straps were tight enough.  "Enjoy the ride," the teenaged boy would say, and it would have been vaguely appropriate here but that's not what the man said.  He asked Richard if he had any last words.  Richard stared unblinking at the ceiling and said, "Life is death, death is life. I hope that someday this absurdity that humanity has come to will come to an end.  Life is too short. I hope anyone that has negative energy towards me will resolve that.  Life is too short to harbor feelings of hatred and anger. That's it, Warden."

Evelyn gripped the arms of her chair.  It was all she could do to keep herself from standing up and facing the room and giving a proper statement for Richard.  She wanted them to know that he was sorry for killing his own brother with a 20-gauge shotgun.  He was sorry for shooting those two other women, raping one of them, and leaving them all for dead.  He had to be.  She wasn't mother to a monster. 

She labored for 26 hours to bring Richard into the world.  His head was stuck for so long in the birth canal, when he finally emerged it was misshapen and lopsided and covered in meconium.  His nose never did quite straighten out but she loved him even more for it.  "Look what we did!" she had whispered excitedly to her husband in the dark early morning hours after his birth.  "This is the one.  Our deliverer," she said, welling with pride over her beautiful boy.  He was born with the promise of greatness and he could get Evelyn back home where she belonged.  She didn't deserve to go back after what she had done but the promise had been made and she trusted that it would be kept.  Richard would save them all.

She reminded him of it often, even when he began resenting her for it.  The summer Richard turned 12 was when her faith in him began to waver.  He'd been in trouble more than he was out of it and she stood at the stove, stirring a pot of pasta and letting him have it.  In her mind, she liked to see herself as June Cleaver with her apron, flats, and pearls, in control of every situation, telling him why he needed to stop this behavior and come to his senses.  "We're all depending on you, Richard.  Don't forget that."  But in reality, she was barefoot, uncombed, exhausted, stressed to the point of sickness, and the pasta water had boiled over, hissing and bubbling, scorching the glass stove top. 

"I don't give a (the foulest expletive in the English language, in her opinion) about the promise!" Richard shouted.  Her fingers froze, just short of the knob to turn the heat down, and she stood like a statue while he railed at her.  "Andy never gets this bull(another vile expletive that makes her cringe to remember).  Why don't you do this to Andy?  You leave Andy alone and you're always on my back!"  Of course that was peppered with proclamations of hating her and wishing she was dead, but that wasn't what haunted Evelyn about the exchange.  Later, she scrubbed furiously at the stovetop with her brillo and Softscrub, stunned that he was jealous of Andy.  If anyone had a reason to resent her, it was Andy, who was always being overlooked and disregarded in favor of Richard. She didn't mean for it to be like that but so much was at stake for Richard and Andy just...was.  Andy, eternally sweet Andy, never held it against her.  He loved everyone and did everything that was asked of him without complaint.  He was probably professing his love for his brother right up until Richard shot him.   

Evelyn was constantly going over the years leading up to that nightmare in her mind, redoing scenes in her imagination that might have changed the trajectory, if only she would have known what Richard was capable of.  One scene she would have like to do over was the evening her husband had been working late in the fields.  Richard approached him and demanded to be paid for his labor.  His father laughed in his face and told him his labor was unacceptable, and that it took a lot of nerve to walk up to him in this field with his hand out, as if he owed Richard something.  Richard faunched and fumed and sputtered horrible things about hating his father then too. 

Evelyn would have gone beyond praying if she had another chance at that night.  She would have begged and pleaded with him, disgracing herself if need be, to get him to return to his father with a contrite and humble heart, knowing her husband would never turn him away.  Nothing would have worked though; she knew that now.  Richard's resentment morphed into an all-consuming bitterness.  The whole family walked on eggshells around him.  His anger bubbled to the surface any time he didn't get his way.  Drugs entered their house.  Richard dropped out of high school.  A stolen car led to jail, then probation.  Finally, the unthinkable in a field 16 miles outside town.  An act so heinous, Evelyn refused to believe it until she watched Richard in the courtroom, cold and remorseless, not denying that he had done it.

Richard came back to the house after killing Andy to sleep off a drug-induced high.  He woke up famished, drank half of a gallon of milk while he stood in front of the open refrigerator, and kissed Evelyn on the top of her head before walking out the door to take care of his "business," which she now knew was to pay off a drug dealer with money from an earlier robbery.

She shuddered in her seat, remembering that kiss, as the warden gave a little nod.  Someone somewhere was flicking a switch, or pushing a button, or depressing a plunger that was shooting poison into Richard's body.   Seconds passed and Richard twisted his head back, raising it up off the pillow, to find the warden who stood behind him. 

"Wow!" Richard shouted. Evelyn jumped in her seat at his outburst.  "That is great. That is awesome! Thank you, (that foul expletive again, an adjective this time) Warden!"  His head fell back on the pillow at an angle that looked like it should have been painful.  His mouth and eyes stayed open but everyone watching from the other side of the glass knew the end had come for Richard.  He was gone.  But the promise wasn't gone with him. 

It was foolish of her to believe that it would be her son.  Her own sins were too greivous.  She never thought in a million years that murder would be the result and she would give her life to undo her mistakes.  But she wouldn't spend the rest of her life grieving Richard either.  He always believed he had a right to his anger and his life reflected that.  He chose to hate and to hurt others.  Now, looking at his dead body, Evelyn could see that the one who was really destroyed was him.  

All around Evelyn, hugs were exchanged, sighs of relief that had been held in for 11 long years were expelled.  But the woman who had been raped hadn't moved.  She stared at Richard's body, seeming totally unsatisfied, maybe even feeling a little jipped.  She probably came here to see him suffer or cry like a pathetic, scared child.  Evelyn wished she didn't feel the inclination to apologize to the woman because her son wasn't more pathetic but there it was.  She was burdened for this woman who would walk out of the room this day with a choice to make as well.

People began to trickle out.  They had seen what they'd come for.  Now it was dinnertime and they would celebrate as they broke bread together at the TGI Friday's across town.

After 15 minutes the doctor entered the room and pronounced Richard dead.  They unhooked the heartrate monitor and wheeled the gurney through the door and out of sight.  Evelyn had already checked the boxes and signed the papers for the prison.  There was nothing left for her to do except to leave this room as well and go home to get on with the rest of her life.  She pulled her purse out from under the chair, hooked it over her shoulder, and stood up, realizing that the woman had remained in her chair, staring through the glass into the now empty execution room.  They locked eyes for a second and Evelyn looked away. 

"You had another child," the woman said rather than asked.  Evelyn choked out a hoarse, "Yes."  She cleared her throat and said it again, clearer this time.  On the one year anniversay of Andy's death, baby Seth had arrived via c-section to her aged body.  In the quiet, early morning hours after his birth, she had whispered to her husband through tears of grief, "The Lord has given us another son in the place of Andy."  Her husband had agreed at the time but as Seth grew, Evelyn realized that Seth was different than Andy. Seth was obedient like Andy, but he also had a love for God that came from somewhere beyond Evelyn's doing or understanding.

Evelyn shuffled through the narrow path between the chairs and timidly laid a hand on the woman's shoulder.  "Choose love.  Choose life."  She paused and said, "So that you can live long after this life is over."  The woman remained stiff and unaffected but Evelyn gave a motherly squeeze and left the room.

Seth had a son named Enosh.
Enosh
Kenan
Mahalelel
Jared
Enoch
Methuselah
Lamech
Noah
Shem
Arphaxad
Shelah
Eber
Peleg
Reu
Serug
Nahor
Terah
Abram
Isaac
Jacob
Judah
...
David
...
Jesus, the promised Deliverer, referred to himself as a Son of Adam (Man) more often than as the Son of God.  





This allegory of Genesis 3:15-4:25 is loosely based on the story of Texas inmate, Richard Cobb's execution in Hunstville on April 25, 2013 as reported by Michael Graczyk, AP.
http://news.msn.com/crime-justice/man-put-to-death-for-texas-store-abduction-slaying