The story of Joseph and his coat of many colours is probably one of the best known in the bible. It was made into a musical with classic songs like Any dream will do and close every door to me, and an Elvis-like Pharaoh. The story starts with a family of 12 brothers from 2 mothers, a father who plays favourites, and a special son who rubs it in the faces of his brothers either intentionally arrogant or woefully naive. The special son, Joseph, goes to give his brothers a message and they take the opportunity to get rid of him. They throw him in a hole in the ground and then sell him as a slave in Egypt.
The brothers then take Joseph’s special coat, tear it and cover it in goat’s blood. They present it to their father, telling a tale of how they found it in the desert, that Joseph must have been attacked a killed by a wild animal. Their father is heartbroken, his favourite son is dead. The brothers secretly rejoice, although life doesn’t exactly become smooth sailing. Read Genesis to find out what they get up to.
Joseph gets bought by Potiphar and serves him well. But Potiphars wife tries to seduce him and when that doesn’t work gets Joseph thrown in jail. He stays there for years, interpreting a couple of dreams along the way and eventually gets dragged before Pharoah to interpret his dream. Off the back of that he winds up overseeing the food for Egypt during a famine.
Back home, his father and brothers are starving. The brothers go to Egypt to beg for food. Joseph recognises them, they don’t recognise him. A little bit of back a forth they Joseph reveals himself. There is no resentment, just compassion for his brothers. He sends them to get their father so they can live in Egypt without worry for food.
This is the bit that interests me. The brothers go back and tell their father that Joseph is alive. Its not clear how much of the story they tell him. Did they come clean and spill the beans on what had really happened to Joseph all those years ago? It’s never mentioned. The passage doesn’t say that the brothers come clean, but neither does it say that Joseph drops them in it. There’s a lesson there on true forgiveness – when we have truly forgiven, we don’t tell others about what has happened. (But that’s a post for another day…)
I wonder how the brothers felt. Coming clean could have led to their father disowning them, but keeping quiet meant their father could find out another way. The guilt and uncertainty would certainly have made for a difficult time.
It’s next mentioned (sort of) after their father’s death. The brothers make up a message for Joseph from the father. They want to Joseph to know their father wanted Joseph to forgive the sins of his brothers (which Joseph had already done, but maybe the brothers hadn’t forgiven themselves). Does that mean they told their father and he chose to forgive them too? Or does it mean the guilt was still eating them up and they feared the consequences that their actions deserved but which they hadn’t yet received?
I guess that’s not something we’ll ever know. But it does raise an interesting point. Joseph’s brothers feared consequences and couldn’t accept forgiveness. What if they had come clean and brought it all out into the open? What if they didn’t have any secrets to hide? They wouldn’t have had as much to fear, and maybe they would have found it easier to forgive themselves and accept the grace Joseph had given them.
And for us, replace Joseph with Jesus. Are there things we hide, actions which we are still waiting for the consequences of, but which Jesus has forgiven and instead offered grace? Are there things we still keep in the dark, holding them over ourselves so we live in fear?
There is a solution: come clean. Bring it to God, honestly, and see what he says. Offer the guilt and the shame to God, repent and say sorry, and accept the gift of grace Jesus offers in return.
We weren’t meant to live in fear, so don’t trap yourself by holding onto something that allows fear to grow. Jesus wanted more for you than that, that’s why he died on a cross.
Come clean, and be forgiven.
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