As we find space over the summer and see our families gather there may well be a taking out of old photo albums. Here’s one of our family albums recording my parents' visit to Madeira in the 1950s. Of course in an electronic age there are other ways of presenting family albums and letting them scroll away on your TV screen.
This morning at the eucharist we continue to browse through the book of Genesis moving on from Abraham and Isaac to Jacob and Joseph. The Bible is a giant family album full of graphic word pictures. It traces the saving purposes of God from the very beginning of human history. This week at daily eucharist we have a record of how God worked through Joseph to relieve a great famine in the Middle East. This bible story has reached many screens through Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical comedy ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat’.
The Joseph story illustrates how God is forever our Redeemer turning wrong to right. In today’s passage from Genesis 41 we hear of the uncomfortable reunion of Joseph and his brothers who sold him into slavery in Egypt. We hear from Reuben, the brother with the most tender conscience: ‘Did I not tell you not to wrong the boy? But you did not listen, and now we are brought to account for his blood?’ At the same time, as we shall hear from Joseph himself at the eucharist tomorrow, ‘I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt… do not grieve… God sent me before you to preserve your lives’ (Genesis 45).
The Christian revelation, the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, is unique but it does not come out of the blue. By encouraging us to read through the Old Testament the Church builds our sense of being in the family of God stretching back to Abraham and reaching forward, as we heard in the Gospel, through the acts of the apostles and the community that has succeeded them up to today. God doesn’t change and is faithful to the family he gathers in each generation. Like Jacob’s sons we are a mixed bunch but God is always ready to turn evil to good with an eye to purposes exceeding our imagining. Joseph’s brothers experienced the famine and saw the brother they rejected had been given divine wisdom to lead famine relief. In years to come there will be pictures in the church’ family album so to speak of how lives redeemed through and from the COVID pandemic linked to the witness and service of people of faith like you and I.
Tracing the history of the people of God is one function of reading scripture. It can inspire a more personal challenge. God is working in the life of each one of us. It is good to take time over these spacious weeks to look back gratefully at his working in our lives and build expectation of his leading us into the months and years ahead. With the songwriter we should be able to affirm that ‘grace has brought us safe thus far and grace will lead us home’. Let us then lift up our hearts and give thanks to the Lord our God in this holy eucharist.
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