By Reverend Laurie DeMott

Our scripture for today begins: "This is the story of the family of Jacob," and the first words of the story are these: "Joseph was shepherding the flock with his brothers... and Joseph brought a bad report of them to his father." In the next verse we are told that Jacob loves Joseph more than any of the other sons, and in the third verse the narrator informs us that his brothers hated Joseph. "This is the story of the family of Jacob", the storyteller begins, and in three short sentences paints a bleak picture: "The youngest was an arrogant tattletale, the father played favorites, and the rest of the family was filled with hatred." And yet from this discouraging beginning we travel through the plot twists of eight chapters to arrive finally at a scene in Egypt in which Joseph and his brothers weep in one another’s arms at the joy of being together and together they make plans for the care and happiness of their elderly father. How did this family get from “a” to “b”: from rivalry to reconciliation, from jealousy to acceptance, from hatred to love?

We read the story of Jacob's family and are drawn into the familiarity of the tale because we, too, have dealt with sibling rivalries or questioned the depth of a parent's love for us. Some of us are fortunate to have families that are more like the end of the story where reconciliation and happiness with each other reign, and some come from families that are all too similar to the beginning of the story; families fragmented by suspicion or even abuse. Most of us, however, most of the time live in that continuum between the two: our families have known times of happiness together, but we have also known times of tension and regardless of whether we are working to maintain that harmony or working to try to make things right with one another again, we know that it is the rare family relationship that requires no work at all. And so it is with great expectation that we read the story of the family of Jacob because this is our story, with a too familiar beginning and a yearned for end, and we hope that in hearing about their transformation, we too can figure out how to get from rivalry to reconciliation, from jealousy to acceptance, even from hatred to love.

Family relationships can be some of the most rewarding and some of the most difficult of our lives. Because our ties to families are not ones we choose but ones that are thrust upon us, being part of a family means spending a considerable amount of time with people who think differently than we do. One writer said, “The great gift of family life is to be intimately acquainted with people you might never even introduce yourself to, had life not done it for you.” (Kendall Hailey) In fact, the knowledge that you are related to these people can often make the stress more intense because you feel as if you should understand them or they should think more like you do because, after all, you share the same genetic material. I have often thought that, as the parent of an adopted child, I may have had it easier in some ways than biological parents because when John does something that completely baffles me, I can blame it on his mystery DNA and I’m sure he has taken refuge in the same explanation. When we do share genes or grow up in the same household, we are disconcerted when that shared heritage doesn’t always lead to a similar outlook on life. People that should be open books to us remain as confounding as strangers and yet, in spite of sometimes extreme differences in personality and worldviews, sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, must regularly share holidays and homes and even make life decisions together. No wonder such relationships can be difficult to navigate.

But I also think that family relationships are more intense that our relationships with friends or colleagues not only because of the way in which we are thrown together but because of the way in which our family forms our identity.

Imagine for a second that a colleague tells you that the tie or scarf you are wearing is ugly. You’d probably just laugh it off, thinking to yourself, “What an impolite brute!” But now if you imagine that, as you are walking out the door to work, your teenage son says, “Geez, I can’t believe you are going to wear that in public.,” the comment that you would laugh off in the office may cause you to snap back some equally sarcastic rejoinder, or it may rankle for hours. When criticism comes from a teenage child, it gets all tangled up with issues of respect and proper attitude. Your son’s tone implies that your choice of wearing apparel is an indication that you are an old fuddy duddy who he can barely tolerate being related to, and so the slight cuts deeper because it feels as if your son is not only questioning your choice of clothing but is raising doubt about your capacity to function as an intelligent human being.

The journalist and author, Gail Lumet Buckley said, "Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present, and future." I suspect that when Buckley said that, she was thinking about the wonderful gift of having people around who share your past memories or who you know will be there for you in the future, but when I think about family members being like mirrors, I can’t help but think that the reality is that most of us don't actually like looking in mirrors. We prefer the image that we carry around in our heads of ourselves to the reality of what stares back at us from a mirror. So too, when we look at the mirrors that are our family, we may not like what we see. Instead of thinking of ourselves as grown-up and self-reliant, we look into the mirror that is our mother and see our ten year old self who is anxious and insecure. We like to think of ourselves as masters of our own destiny, but then we look into the mirror that is our father and wonder if we are doomed to become just like him. And of course, it is unsettling to think that our children may be looking at us and worrying about the very same thing! Family relationships strike at the core of our identity because we give them the power to determine whether we see ourselves as loved and competent or as judged and wanting by how we see ourselves reflected in those family mirrors.

When I adopted John, he was 21 months old and, having been malnourished as an infant, food was very important to him when he first arrived. As an adoptive parent, I had to have visits from Social Services the first few months to make sure that I was treating John well before they would approve the adoption being finalized. I will never forget that first visit. I had given John a hefty snack right before the caseworker arrived but as the caseworker and I chatted on the couch, John asked for some more cheese. When I told him no, he began to weep inconsolably and no amount of sweet talking would quiet him. The caseworker doggedly continued with the interview and, feeling ignored, John went into the kitchen and leaned his head against the refrigerator in a most pitiful stance and begged through his tears for just a little cheese. Unfortunately, experience had taught me that trying to lead John away from the source of food in those early days would elicit a full blown breakdown but conversely, I had learned that too much cheese gave him a terrible stomach ache and so I sat there unsure of what to do and worrying that the case worker would think I was an abusive parent starving her poor child to death who was dying for want of a bit of cheese!

I realize in hindsight I probably should have just explained the situation to the case worker, or taken a break from the interview to see if some Cheerios would have appeased John but I had been a mother for about 10 days and was very nervous about the case worker's presence. I felt right then as if John’s behavior was reflecting on my skills as a parent and at the moment, the mirror he was holding up wasn’t creating a pretty picture of my ability. And what parent ever gets fully over that sense that their child’s choices, successes, and failures announces something to the world about who you are as much as who they are.

And, in greater and lesser ways, we give all of our family relationships the power to shape our self-identity which is why we place such high expectations on those to whom we are related. We tell the story of who we are in the same way that the biblical narrator told of Jacob's -- “My youngest brother was a tattle tale, my father played favorites, and all my siblings hated each other." Well, hopefully your story is not that bleak but the ties and tangles that Jacob’s family experienced are there in our pysches as well, none the less.

So what enabled Jacob’s family to move from resentment to reconciliation? The brothers’ anger against Joseph explodes finally and they sell him to slavetraders on their way to Egypt. Once Joseph is physically separated from his family, a new character takes center stage in his life. The narrator says, “Now Joseph had been taken down to Egypt [and] the Lord was with Joseph and he prospered.” (Genesis 39:1-2) Back in chapter 37, there is no mention of God. The origins of Joseph’s dreams that so annoyed his brothers remain unknown and mysterious. Once in Egypt, however, God steps forward and Joseph comes to know that God is with him. Whether he is in slavery to Potiphar, or in the dank darkness of prison, or serving in Pharaoh’s own house, Joseph comes to realize that it is ultimately God who is guiding him and keeping his life. Everything that had previously made Joseph Joseph, all of those things to which normal human beings look for their identity – family, nation, job, status – are stripped away until the only foundation that is left to Joseph is the knowledge of God’s love for him. The story that was a story of an ordinary family and their complicated dynamics becomes the story of a very different kind of relationship and a different kind of identity. The ancestral family of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Rachel that we have followed throughout the book of Genesis is now, in the story of Joseph transformed into a new family – God’s family. Here the people learn that the only mirror that matters is the one they see when they look upon the face of God.

What would happen if we too stopped seeing our families as mirrors of ourselves and worried only about our reflection in God’s eyes? Perhaps we would free our children to be accepted on their own terms, pursuing their own dreams instead of the dreams of their parents. Maybe we would find it easier to forgive our sisters and brothers for not thinking the way we do, and take our disagreements less to heart. Maybe husbands and wives would think more about what God wants for their partner rather than about what they want from their partner, liberating one another from unrealistic demands. Maybe we would all rest a little more easily in our hearts because we would know that no matter how we have failed, or no matter who has failed us, God’s love for us continues to endure and it is God’s love that makes us who we are.

There is a wonderful quote that says, “When the going gets tough, lower your expectations.” This is the gospel message for us as we live with our families – let them be who they are and do not demand that they also be an appropriate mirror to who you are. The story of Joseph proclaims to us that we are not our brothers or your sisters; we are not our mothers or our fathers; we are not our children, we are not our partners, we are not our aunts or our uncles or our second cousin twice removed even if his nose looks a lot like yours. You are simply and wholly a child of God and God’s mirror is the only one that matters.