Genesis 37:1-11

I know that for many of us January is a time for New Year’s resolutions like getting back to spending less, eating better, or exercising more, and if that’s you, may God bless you on that journey. As for me, I’ve decided to put all of that off until Lent at the earliest…

But there is one January discipline to which I am returning this year, a practice we’ve kept at Grace for a number of years, and that’s returning to Genesis. We began back in 2020 with Genesis 1 and ever since, each January we’ve read through a portion of this first book of the Bible. This January we start the final saga of the book, the story of Joseph, son of Jacob. This year I noticed that somehow, each January, our Genesis series starts with a reference to the stars. 

Joseph is one of the twelve sons of Jacob from whom the 12 tribes of Israel will later take their names; but Joseph is among the last to be born. He and his younger brother Benjamin are the runts of the litter.

When we meet Joseph, whether it’s because he’s a spoiled younger sibling or because he’s just youthful and naïve, Joseph comes off as super annoying! He’s a tattle tale who can’t read a room and thinks everything is about him. 

I can’t help but be reminded of my own beloved younger brother (who is thankfully not here to defend himself). My brother Austin is a gifted actor who, incidentally, has played Joseph multiple times in the famous musical. Austin was never as bad as Joseph but there was a time when we used to say that for Austin “life’s a party, and he’s the guest of honor.” 

Perhaps that’s just what happens for younger siblings. It’s actually why Joseph’s father Jacob loves him so much. Joseph is the firstborn of his father’s true love, Rachel, who birthed Joseph later in Jacob’s life. That’s why Jacob makes him this coat of many colors. But, as in many families, real or perceived favoritism from parents inevitably creates conflict, and Joseph’s dreams only make it worse. 

Imagine you’re a serious older sibling, working hard shepherding your family’s flocks when your annoying little brother skips up in fancy new threads saying “Guess what I dreamed last night!? I dreamed all of us were stars, dazzling in the night sky when all of a sudden all of your stars bowed down and worshiped me!” 

Again, read the room Joseph! 

We are told his dreams are enough to make his brothers hate him, shun him, and next week we will hear how it even made them ready to kill him. 

His father Jacob scolded young Joseph, “Shall we indeed come, I and your mother and your brothers, bow to the ground before you?” But interestingly, Jacob stops short of passing judgment on beloved Joseph.

See Jacob has been an annoying little brother before too, and he’s seen what God can do for annoying little brothers, so he “keeps this matter in mind,” kind of like Mother Mary “pondered these things in her heart.” 

After all, Jacob must have thought, this is not the first time stars have shown up in a dream in this family’s story!

It was Joseph’s great grandfather Abraham who first saw them, when God got him up in the middle of the night, brought him outside and told him to try and count the stars, saying “That’s how many children’ you’re going to have. So shall your descendants be.” And Abraham (God bless him) he believed. 

This Genesis family knows, intimately, a God who not only employs the stars as signs but put them in the sky in the first place! The stars in Joseph’s dream are a callback to a promise God has been making and re-making all Genesis long, a promise to create, multiply, and bless this little Abrahamic family into a constellation of descendants who will birth priests, rulers, and kings. Through the stars, God had promised to make of this family a people, a nation, through whom God would bless all the nations of the world. 

But for now, they’re just a family, a peculiar, dysfunctional, miraculous family with a grand calling, but also with an annoying little brother, a dreamer in a funny coat who thinks he’s the star of this story. 

And in some sense he is! Over the coming weeks we will follow Joseph as he is betrayed by his brothers, sold, imprisoned, and left for dead, only then to rise to power and be perfectly positioned to save his brethren, even those that had betrayed him. 

In a sense Joseph is the star of this story, but in the end he himself will tell us that this whole saga, this whole story has not been about him at all. It’s been a story about God. 

There is in a lesson in this for a culture obsessed with stardom and celebrity, where our best American dream is about pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps, or self-made men and women who have mastered their own fate. There is pressure on us to be or become the star of our own story, and make sure we do the right things so our story ends with us on top. But in the end the lesson of these Genesis stars is that neither Joseph nor us are the star in the story of God. 

Enter the wisemen.

This whole Genesis story is one we might never have heard of if it hadn’t been for yet another star that led some magi from other families, other nations, to the brightness of its rising, to behold the baby lying in a manger, and in so doing to be welcomed into God’s story, into this family, and into the light of their pride and joy, Jesus. 

For it is Jesus, son of Abraham, son of God who for us and for our salvation came down from heaven, was incarnate of the virgin Mary, and was betrayed by his brethren, sold, imprisoned, crucified, and left for dead, only then to be raised, triumphantly, to a position of such power that he could save those that had betrayed him. Sound familiar? 

Jesus shows up looking a lot like Joseph, only better, and in the end not just the magi but all the families and nations, all the stars, all of creation will come and bow down to him. This is what the wisemen are led to behold, this is who they bow down to, this is the story behind the stars, and this is the star of your story too. 

If you’re like us, by now you’ve taken down almost all of your holiday decorations, but there’s one thing I’ve started to leave up every January. It’s a star. We hang it outside in Advent, and throughout Christmas, and then all throughout the season after Epiphany (or until we get our annual letter from the HOA telling us we have 7 days to take it down). 

This year in particular I think that star will remind me that I am a part of a bigger story now, a story told by God, about God, revealed in the dreams of generations before me, and now made flesh in Jesus Christ. I will take this star as it lights up the winter nights as a reminder to my own peculiar, dysfunctional, miraculous family, and to us all, that we are not the star of the story. Nor are we responsible for making sure it comes out right. 

This star will shine as a reminder that whether our own stars are rising or falling, whether we are living the life of our dreams, or we are laid low in a pit, that there is another star, a bright, eternal, morning star, full of grace and truth, and all our lives, and all our stories are baptized into him, into his story, a story whose end never ends. 

As January 2024 begins, we don’t know what this year’s story holds, but what I can tell you is that we have been welcomed with the wisemen into the story of God, God’s own family, and the whole year ahead is held and will be guided by this Light until that day when, with all the families of the world, we come to bow before him in eternal gratitude and praise. 

This is the promise written in the stars, made flesh in Jesus Christ for you this day.

Thanks be to God.