Speaking Out

For most of the last 25 years I am blessed to have participated in a regular, relatively serious Bible study in the context of a Uniform Series Sunday school class at Scottdale (Pa.) Mennonite Church. Although such Bible study has long been out of vogue, to follow the timeless stream of seemingly arbitrarily chosen texts of the Uniform Series (also known as the International Bible Lessons) effectively feeds Bible study as a lifelong avocation. In the course of regular study, moreover, these richest of literary texts serendipitously direct and illuminate our daily lives with the truth about humanity they describe.

Last fall, for example, having just purchased and begun reading The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis by Leon R. Kass, I discovered the Uniform Series had also selected Genesis for consideration. This led me to read the Genesis texts chosen by the Uniform Series in the light of Kass’ fresh and penetrating analyses. Our small class considered the meaning of Creation, Cain and Abel, Babel, the Flood and the lives of the Patriarchs, including the Joseph narrative.

Then I read the Nov. 6, 2007, article “Enlisted,” in which Jennifer Davis Sensenig explores how Christians should relate to the power of the state. Although her article acknowledged that Christ dealt with such “false powers” by “converting” individuals to faith, Davis advocated also that individuals work to “convert” the powers themselves rather than their personal representatives. In this she was ignoring what Christ expressly rejected as demonic temptation, the exercise of political power in order to convert it to his Father’s will.

For these reasons, I found her advocacy of “cultural fluency” to engender “Christian creativity” in relation to the powers unduly sanguine about the possibility of converting those worldly powers without being assimilated and subsumed by them. Moreover, her extolment of Joseph as a paradigm for cultural fluency in relation to the powers was particularly difficult to account for. Imbued with Kass’ perspective on the Joseph story, I have another interpretation.

Although the tension between assimilation and separation—of being in the world but not of it—is prominent in both biblical testaments, the theme predominates in the Genesis account of the lives of the Patriarchs of Israel. Survival of the people God first called to the New Way through Abraham depends on them not being co-opted by the pagan political and religious powers of the day. The Joseph narrative, in particular, is a sophisticated exploration of the dangers of assimilation to the ways of Egypt—the most formidable pagan civilization of the day—which portrays Joseph in semi-sinister strokes as the favorite son of Israel become so culturally fluent he has gone over to the “dark,” Egyptian side.

Joseph, the interpreter of dreams, is the practitioner of the pagan science of divination. Although he attributes dreams and their interpretation to “the gods,” Joseph never acknowledges the God of Israel. By adopting the clean-shaven style of Egyptian dress, he disguises himself from his brothers in order to deceive and threaten them and to trifle with his father. Joseph’s scheme for “reorganizing Egypt’s economy to mitigate the effects of impending famine” entails not “sustainability and sharing” but economic oppression to effect a total accretion of power to the god/king Pharaoh, who levies without compensation all the produce of the land during plenty and withholds during famine what has been seized to the point all of Egypt must sell themselves as Pharaoh’s slaves in order to survive. Joseph does the same for his own family, using his special favor with Pharaoh to entice his family away from the Promised Land and into 400 years of Egyptian slavery. Although his mummified remains are carried out of Egypt with the exodus, no tribe of Israel ever bore the name of Joseph. The children of Israel emerge from Egypt the people of Israel, despite Joseph, not because of him.

That the powers of the world tend to enslave is as true today as in the time of Joseph. That God’s will is done despite our fondness of service to the powers is the biblical story from Genesis to Revelation. These lessons of Joseph the Egyptian are particularly well to remember when we are called to alliances with the powers in his name.

James S. Lederach is a member of Scottdale (Pa.) Mennonite Church.