Once there was a man of business who came out on top no matter what situation he found himself in. His name was Joseph. In the end, he found his business success satisfying, but not enough. Deep within his aging, crusty self, there still lived a wounded little boy who wanted the love and security that his dysfunctional family denied him. At the climax of this story, the man of business would have to choose between the satisfaction of getting payback and the more difficult road back to the center of his wounded soul. The story ends with reconciliation among dysfunctional family members. The story also ends with Joseph arriving at the heart of his own self. The pleas of Joseph's brothers are echoed in the pleas that we hear from the Canaanite woman in Matthew's gospel. "Lord, help me," - three words that we can say, but only if we, too, are ready to put aside our distractions. To make my point about these three words, I need to retell the story of Joseph.
Joseph lives in a well-off but dysfunctional family. Joseph has 11 brothers. And they hate him. Joseph is the youngest, the sweet little apple of his father's eye. Jacob, the father, is not discrete about his favoritism. Unwise. Jacob makes the mistake that many parents do when they have a baby in their "old age."
The oldest of the 12 boys was born when their father, Jacob, was a refugee, financially strapped and running for his life from Joseph's uncle, Esau. By the time Joseph comes along, the family has settled down and become prosperous. And daddy decided that his little boy wasn't going to have to work - that's the point of him giving Joseph the multi-colored robe. Joseph's robe had long sleeves. That was a mark in Joseph's society of a person who was set aside not to do menial labor.
You can imagine how his brothers felt. They had to go out into the fields and work. But not Joseph! Joseph didn't have to get his hands dirty. He didn't have to go take care of the goats. The little (ironic tone) twerp didn't have to do anything! The brothers wanted to kill him. Brothers throughout history have had urges to kill each other. But most don't do more than grumble, as Joseph's brothers did. They were pushed over the edge when it started to look like the (ironic tone) little jerk was going to be put in charge of the family business.
They decided, for real, to kill Joseph. And I'm sure that the brothers, once they crossed that moral line, had plenty of rationalizations for it. They probably thought that Joseph "deserved it." Some probably thought that they were doing the deed "for the good of the family." Then the sold Joseph into slavery. And some of the brothers probably rationalized this as an act of kindness thinking, "at least he's not dead."
We tell ourselves many little stories to keep our consciences at bay. "No one will ever find out." "I'll never get caught." "The government will only waste the taxes." "I deserve it." "They don't deserve it." "It's for the good of the church." But the lies we tell ourselves become barriers to our life's journey.
One of life's greatest challenges is to journey within ourselves to discover who we really are. We are all born with innate talents and inclinations. We may foster these talents while growing up. But we also are often wounded. We also create rationalizations for the things we do. And we create defensive shells that protect us. But they also prevent us from knowing who we were meant to be in the first place. The journey of the spirit is more than communing with God; it's a journey within to discover who God meant us to be; and then speaking to God with that voice, the voice of the heart. It's a journey past rationalizations and other barriers to true personhood. Joseph is just a little boy when he is sold into slavery. He is wounded. And it is at this moment that he creates a defensive shell that is as full of rationalizations as the ones being uttered by his spiteful brothers.
He grew into adulthood and experienced success wherever he landed. He was Pothiphar's slave, but ended up running Potiphar's business affairs. After refusing the advances of his boss's wife, he landed in jail. But he ended up running the business end of the jail. He had a talent for interpreting dreams and this got him an in with the Pharaoh. But his business acumen, not his dream interpretation, earned him the top spot of running Egypt's economy. He was talented, smart, economically savvy, and, if you were to listen to Potiphar's wife, physically attractive. He had it all.
Today we would put his picture on the cover of Fortune 500. He would head the President's Council of Economic Affairs. Perhaps he would replace Alan Greenspan as head of the Federal Reserve System. He'd be welcome in the halls of power in Washington as well as the chic clubs in Manhattan. He'd never have to stand in line. Women would fawn over this handsome and powerful man. Men would envy him but want to be seen playing golf with him. Everyone would want to be him. Most would assume that he was happy. After all, who could ask for anything more in life?
Our celebrity-crazed culture is focused on present-day Josephs. Celebrities are supposed to be happier, richer, possessed of a je ne sais quoi. We call them graceful, as if they are connected to divine grace. They have fan clubs. They have it all. And then one of them crashes and we are reminded of how all that is just an illusion created by PR firms and our own desire to worship earthly gods. Then the tabloids are full of lurid stories. The gossips have a field day. And Jesus' admonition that "its not what goes into a mouth but what comes out of it that defiles us," rings so so so true.
O, how the gossips of the Egyptian court must have had a field day when Joseph wept. Here was this combination Alan Greenspan and Russell Crowe with tears running down his face. The tongues had to be wagging.
The Ancient Near East was two years into a famine. Joseph had had the foresight to force the citizenry to put grain aside for hard times. So Egypt was doing well and Joseph was a hero. And people from countries which had not put grain aside were crossing the Egyptian border looking for food. Joseph's brothers were included in this ragged stream of economic refugees.
We don't know what Joseph told others who came before him. Perhaps he was like many of us today who look at economic refugees from poor countries. Maybe he told petitioners that they should go home, that they deserved to be poor because they hadn't saved their grain. Maybe he told them to get out and get menial jobs, the kind of jobs that rich Egyptians didn't want. When I read this story I envision Joseph as having a thick shell around his heart, a shell created by family betrayal when they sold him as a slave. This is the kind of person who would be effective at sending refugees away without shedding a tear.
But one day, Joseph met with a group of ragged refugees and had to leave the room. The word was, the gossip was, that Joseph was seen with tears, tears! Joseph with tears! Tears in his eyes. Whispers were heard all over town. When I read this story I can imagine that some of the whispering was malicious. After all, it was known that Joseph, "mister wonderful" wasn't Egyptian. He was even a slave, for heaven sakes, the whispering went. Mister hard heart has cracked. For the good of the nation, someone had better tell the Pharaoh.
We justify so much and can create so much damage when we whisper things. We need to constantly keep in mind that this is just what Jesus was talking about when he said that "It is not what goes into a mouth but what comes out of it that defiles us."
The court was full of rumors that day, all of them rationalized I'm sure, when Joseph wept. He had looked up from his desk and there, standing on the other side, were members of his family. He recognized them. They were the ones who had betrayed him. They didn't recognize him. And this gave Joseph, already sitting in the position of power, double power over them.
He used his power to torture them. No, he didn't have them thrown into the Pharaoh's dungeons. He was more cruel. He spitefully tortured them with fear. He sent them away with grain but made it look like they were thieves. Then he let them squirm. The part of Joseph that he allowed himself to feel, the shell that he kept around his soul, must have enjoyed itself. He should have been having a ball! He was getting even! His brothers were being driven crazy.
Joseph's mind must have been filled with some of the same rationalizations that his brothers had many years earlier. "They deserve it. They have it coming.' Note that Joseph seems to be of two minds about what he's doing to his brothers. Several times he has to turn away so no one will see him crying. He's crying because there's still within him a little boy who is crying. Within him there's a little frighten boy who has been thrown in a pit by his brothers who can't quite believe that something so horrible is happening.
This is the real Joseph. This is the Joseph that has always been there just under the hard shell. This is the Joseph that finally expresses itself in a flood of tears and reconciliation. When Joseph bursts into tears and cries on Judah's shoulders, he is reunited with himself. He is one with himself. He suddenly sees that he has almost missed a great opportunity. There, in an instant, he sees that he can be reconciled with his family. He sees that the power that he has been exercising to wound his family can be used to help his family. He even sees divine providence in it all. He says, "for God sent me before you to preserve life." All the pain, slavery, near death, all of it, is overshadowed by the opportunity that he now takes.
Many years later a lone desperate Canaanite woman would lay at the feet of Jesus. We don't know much about her, except that there was something terrible happening to her daughter. We know that the problem was bad enough for the Canaanite woman to have been desperate enough to seek out Jesus. If you are a parent, you know just how desperate you can be when your child is in trouble. There's nothing that makes you feel as helpless as you do when something is wrong with your child. You will do anything, go anywhere, talk to anyone, plead with anyone, to help your child. You will be dignified. You will bare your heart and grovel if you have to.
Jesus up to this point has seen plenty of petitioners who only expressed their shells. He has seen people who wanted divine justice to throw down the Romans. He has heard his disciples ask to be judges on that day. He has seen Herod and his ilk make showy religion for all the world to see but kill a holy man like John the Baptist during a birthday party. He has heard people whisper and rumor maliciously. He has just made it rock-solid clear that our tongues could defile us. And then, he sees a desperate, honest, pleading heart - the Canaanite woman.
This morning, it's all about what's in the heart. It's not the expression of the psychological shells that protect us, but the exposed pleading of our hearts that the Father cares about. God cares about the real us. That's the "us" that he made in the first place. He makes our hearts. We make our shells. The Father wants our hearts. And it was a frightened, desperate, honest heart, not a Canaanite, who lay at his feet that day. And to this heart, he said, "Go your faith…" He turns to us, challenges us to be honest; and then addresses these same words to our hearts.