Speak what we feel
Shakespeare’s tragedy, King Lear, ends with the words “speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.” Yet sometimes it is impossible to say what we feel, to put words to our feelings. And there may be times, too, when we what we feel should not be spoken.
In Chapel in these last two weeks of the bleak mid-winter, we have reading from the story of Joseph and his brothers in The Book of Genesis. An outstanding narrative, it comprises the last thirteen chapters of Genesis. All that we have been able to do is to focus on some of the highlights of this remarkable story. It is challenging, to be sure, and, yet, like all forms of great literature, such narratives speak to our hearts and minds. They teach us something about what it means to feel deeply and to think profoundly about ourselves and our dealings with one another.
The story of Joseph and his brothers, simply put, is a story of betrayal and forgiveness, of the triumph of love over sin and evil. That seems pretty commonplace and as such misses the real intensity of the story and the way in which we are drawn into the story such that there is the possibility of our feeling deeply and profoundly the nature of the contradictions in our own hearts and minds. The story too contributes to our appreciation and understanding of the Christian story of Christ’s betrayal and crucifixion.
The story plums the depths and the heights of our humanity. Joseph is the favoured son of Jacob, also known as Israel, “one who strives with God.” In a way, this story shows us something about what it means to strive with God such that goodness overcomes sin and evil. But that means confronting sin and evil in ourselves. In the story, the other brothers of Joseph, all the sons of Joseph albeit from different wives, resent him because he is the favourite son of their father. In other words, they are moved by the ugliest and most destructive of the seven deadly sins in the later Christian taxonomy of sin, the sin of envy.
Nothing is more destructive of life in community than envy. It embodies our fear of not having something which another says and wanting to have it for ourselves at their expense. Even more, it is our refusal to rejoice in the good of another. That leads to the will or desire to lash out and even destroy those whom we envy. It is a most insidious and destructive evil in our souls: to hate the good of another because we fear that we have been excluded.
Parents want to love their children equally but there is really no such thing as impartial love. We don’t and can’t love our children in just the same way because they are each different and have to be loved in relation to who they are. Sometimes children feel that parents have their favourite children and that leads to resentment and enmity. Envy belongs to the spirit of resentment, resenting a real or imagined good which another has.
In the story of Joseph, his brothers hate him, first, because it seems he is their father’s favoured son and, secondly, because of his dreams. The dreams suggest that they will bow down before Joseph, that he will rule over them. Naturally, that adds to their resentment. They conspire to kill him. That is their intent but one which is checked by a sense of the enormity of killing your own brother, an echo of the story of the murder of Abel by Cain in which God says, “your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground.” Thus, instead of killing him, he is thrown into an empty water-hole, at first to die, but then he is sold to either the Ishmaelites or to Midianite traders – probably different terms for the same group – who then sell Joseph to Potiphar, an official in the Egyptian Pharaoh’s household. Thus, Joseph ends up in Egypt.
The mention of the Ishmaelites and/or Midianites raises another interesting question and one which speaks to our world. There is nothing more divisive than identity politics which pits one identity claim against another. We easily lose sight of an important feature of our ‘global’ world, namely, that we have hybrid identities – more than one identity. The Ishmaelites are the descendants of Ishmael, the son of Abram by Hagar, from which the Arab peoples derive. Ishmael is thus the half-brother of Isaac, the father of Jacob, and thus related to Joseph as well. Suddenly we are aware of the background to the sibling relations (and rivalries) between Jews, Christians, and Muslims, especially of Arabic descent.
The story of Joseph in Egypt is quite compelling. Ultimately, Joseph rises to prominence as ‘the Minister of Agriculture’, we might say. Anticipating famine, he gathers up grain enough to last seven lean years. Because of the famine, the other sons of Jacob, the brothers of Joseph, come down to Egypt seeking food and encounter the brother whom they thought was “no more.” Joseph recognises them but they do not recognise him. What will happen? Will Joseph seek revenge or reconciliation? Joseph “turned away from them and wept and then returned and spoke to them.” He is profoundly moved. We sense the intensity of his feelings and are intrigued about what will happen. That is the point of reading great literature.
“Philosophers have measur’d mountains,” the 17th century poet, George Herbert says in a poem called The Agonie, “Fathom’d the depths of seas, of states, and kings,/ Walk’d with a staffe to heav’n, and traced fountains:/ But there are two vast, spacious things/ The which to measure it doth more behove:/ But few there are that sound them; Sinne and Love.” Natural philosophy, political philosophy, and metaphysics are all suggested here before speaking about religious and ethical philosophy. How to sound the depths and the heights of sin and love? Herbert’s poem takes us to the cross where we confront both our sins and divine love of God in Christ and are drawn into the redeeming love of God for us. “Love is that liquor sweet, and most divine,/ Which my God feels as bloud; but I, as wine,” alluding to the Christian Eucharist. In the story of Joseph, too, we confront our sins and the divine love which seeks our reconciliation but only through an intensity of feeling and thought.
(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy