When I was growing up in the seventies, movie heroes were a complex lot. Actually, they were more anti-heroes than they were heroes. The kind of people you weren’t sure whether you should root for or not. When you did, you felt slightly guilty. Dirty Harry was a great example. He perfectly encapsulated our frustration at the time with America’s legal system and guilty criminals perceived as getting off easy. He did all the things we secretly wanted done to those degenrates. With our ambivalence awakened, we simultaneously cheered him on and felt revulsion toward him as he doled out revenge.
Joseph would have made a perfect seventies anti-hero. When we first meet him he is thoroughly unlikable and a behaves like a spoiled brat. His jealous brothers throw him down a well and sell him into slavery in Egypt. While there, he works his way up to being the number two man in the country. He rebounds from all his bad fortune and overcomes the horrible things his family did to him. So years later, when his brothers come groveling before him and don’t even recognize him, we imagine it’s the perfect time for Joseph to get his revenge. With his brothers, bowed before him just as his dream predicted, we want Joseph to look down at them and with a Clint Eastwood squint say, “Go ahead. Make my day!”
Like any good (or is it bad?) anti-hero, Joseph has a complex mixture of qualities that appeal to the best and worst in ourselves. Last week, we explored his admirable traits - the way his avoidance of self-pity, adherence to his values and willingness to engage his new culture enabled him to thrive there. He was able to fit in without selling out.
But like us, Joseph’s life is messy. Today we see his petty side. Although in the past, he seemed to be able to keep his resentments and past hurts in check, having his brothers bowed down in front of him is too tempting to resist.
This is the fulfillment of a dream for Joseph, quite literally. He will have to decide whether this dream is one of revenge or of forgiveness. Unfortunately, Joseph chooses the former, at least at first. When his brothers arrive in Egypt, looking for food during a famine, Joseph takes the opportunity to play games with them. He pretends to accuse them of being spies, he holds his brother Simeon as hostage, and sends the remaining brothers back home to Canaan to bring his youngest brother Benjamin back to Egypt. These are all actions which he knows will cause great distress to his brothers and his father Jacob. Yet he goes even further. He plants evidence of stolen silver on his brothers, recalling the silver they received when they sold him into slavery. When they do return, a few chapters later, with their youngest brother Benjamin, Joseph parties with them and then plants his silver goblet in Benjamin’s backpack, portraying him as a thief and a liar too.
Throughout these events, the brothers begin to believe all this is God’s punishment on them for what they did to their younger brother years before. Not recognizing Joseph, they plead with him every step of the way, explaining that any further tragedy in their family will break their father Jacob’s heart. A couple of times, Joseph turns away from them and cries.
But the lure of revenge is too great. With the power of the Egyptian empire behind him, Joseph plays with his victims the way a cat plays with a mouse. As a reader, I feel empathy for Joseph at first, but as his actions unfold, I become more and more uncomfortable. At a certain point, his actions just seem cruel and narcissistic. Sure, he has a legitimate gripe with his brothers. Their actions were inexcusable. However, as Joseph continues to manipulate the situation, causing his family even more pain, it starts to look like he is just twisting the knife.
We cringe at Joseph’s vengeful actions, but do we cringe at our own? All of us have been hurt by other people. All of us face situations in which we have to confront people over things that anger us, or were unfair. If I were to ask most of you if you are seeking revenge on anyone you would probably say, “No”. Revenge conjors up images of sitting up late out night in our basements, creating elaborate schemes involving diagrams of homemade weapons. Few of us are that far gone. However, many of us are dwelling in our psychological or spiritual basements over past hurts and while we may not be building nuclear weapons we construct verbal weapons. We devise schemes to hurt those who have hurt us.
Have you imagined being mistreated by someone, before you even interact with them? Have you ever been insulted by someone and found yourself wandering your house talking to yourself and crafting the perfect comeback? Have you had entire conversations with yourself while driving, rehearsing confrontations that haven’t even happened yet? This behavior is much easier to hide than it used to be since the people who see you arguing with yourself in your car will just assume you’re talking into a Bluetooth headset.
While these imaginary confrontations may not seem vengeful in and of themselves, they do lay the groundwork for bad confrontation and feed an attitude of getting even. Perhaps you have had a conflict with a coworker. You go off and stew about it for a few days. You imagine all the great comebacks and little digs you could say to them. Then, a few days later, you approach them to solve the problem. If you’re number one concern in that conversation is to get even with them, I can guarantee that conversation will not go well and will not resolve the problem.
The same is true when it comes to our family relationships. How many of us live for years with something we want to say to an in-law, a spouse or a parent? We fantasize how good it will feel to put that person in their place and say all the things we should have said to them during that argument we had last week, last month, last year - even last century. Think of all the time and emotional energy we put into these fantasies of getting even. Rarely do we stop and ask ourselves, if we have this conversation and get in all the clever jabs we have so carefully crafted, what will be the end result?
These vengeful fantasies aren’t limited to confrontational conversations. Some of us have spent years of our lives seeking revenge through our actions. The people in our life to whom we no longer speak. We have seen friends play games and manipulate ex-spouses, often to the detriment of their children. We all know people who pursue revenge through the legal system, often for years, and rarely does it end with satisfaction for the wronged person. We fight with neighbors, friends at school or people in church and rather than seek to resolve the conflict, we seek to get even and escalate the conflict even further.
In the end, whether in conversations or courtrooms, what is the end result? When we head down the path of getting even with others, do we stop and think what the end result will be? What will that relationship look like when our revenge is complete? What will our life look like? Will we be healed? Or will there be two injured parties instead of just one? How does having more hurting people further God’s purposes in the world?
Look at Joseph. Was he really seeking an apology from his brothers? Or was he feeding his own need for power and control? Had he continued all his manipulations and head games with his brothers, what would have been the end result? If he kept all his brothers, including little brother Benjamin in jail, all he really would succeed in doing is causing more pain to his father. His father Jacob would have been crushed with grief. Most of his brothers would probably have died in prison and his family, the family through which God said the world would be blessed, would be no more. The story would be over.
Joseph’s family was a family of promise - a messy dysfunctional family but a family of promise nonetheless. You and I are part of that same family and those same promises. God promised Joseph’s ancestors that God would work through them to bless the whole world. God’s promises were ultimately fulfilled in Jesus and as his followers, we are the inheritors of that promise. As his church we are that family today.
Like Joseph, our lives our messy too. Our families and relationships are dysfunctional. We are often on the receiving end of hurtful words and actions. It is so tempting to be like Joseph and respond by getting even, to manipulate, to cause others to suffer as much as we have. But when we pursue that path, we, like Joseph, cause pain and grief to our father. We hurt and grieve God.
The age of the Hollywood anti-hero ended by the time I was in high school. Most film critics attribute his demise to release of Star Wars and its revival of the concept of clear heros and villains. By the early eighties, my film school friends and I eagerly awaited the release of each Star Wars sequel. One day in the production office, a student hung a bootleg poster he obtained of the next film to be released. All that was on the poster was the name of the movie, “The Revenge of the Jedi.” In the months that followed, many fans started a campaign to change the name of the film. Revenge , they said, was an inappropriate concept for noble Jedi knights. Revenge, the purists said, was an attribute of the dark side of the Force.
Could it be that a bunch of Sci-Fi nerds had a better handle on what it means to be a follower of Christ than some of us do? If the concept of revenge is an anathema to fictional knights in another galaxy, shouldn’t it be abhorrent to Christians in the real world today?
We are here because we are followers of Jesus Christ. When we have been hurt, or angered, or treated unjustly, our goal is not revenge. Our goal is to reconcile, to renew, to recreate. When we do that, not only do we spare ourselves and God, grief and pain. We also bring a little more of God into the world.
A message from Genesis 42 by Don Heatley, pastor of Vision Community Church, Warwick, NY
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