not of this world

like most within the Judeo-Christian tradition, i’ve been familiar since childhood with the story of Joseph of the many colored coat and his jealous brothers, but when i heard the full story chanted in a Pre-Sanctified Liturgy* wednesday night, its illumination of the mystery of iniquity really opened me. on any given day, God’s confessed ability to bring the highest possible good out of the greatest of evils is one of the harder mysteries to dwell in with a trusting faith.

Salvation history subsists, or rather conquers, through one happy fault after another, over and over again, and the Creator ever redeems and ever mines our basest acts both for His glory and towards our elevation.

Most Christians have played around with the thought experiments of how things “might have been” if Eve hadn’t listened to the serpent, or if Adam hadn’t listened to Eve, etc.; likewise, most who have wrestled with the doctrine of predestination have striven to comprehend the seamless existent reality of both God’s omnipotent, all supreme will, combined with the freedom of man’s, pre and post fall.

The story of Joseph seems to be up there with the most dramatically brilliant illustrations that both 1)things truly will not be otherwise than what they have been eternally in the mind of God, with all their fallen and resurrected twists and turns, without 2) taking from the reality that man is led (but never forced) by an awesome God Who, while respecting man’s freedom to be treacherous to his fellow man (even his brother!) nonetheless remains a benevolent master craftsman who bequiles with His wisdom, evincing the most exquisite shapes even from the most flawed materials.

Like the psalmist muses, What is man that you keep him in mind? The son of man that you take him into account? - as we read these stories in Scripture, or look at our own lives with an honest eye, it seems clear why the wonder would arise, really, why do You bother?

But Scripture is also clear that [His] delight is with the sons of men

He sees in an eternal present the hearts that will respond to his beckonings, those who will seek Him despite their accumulated filth, casting eyes upwards, thirsting and panting - while often only knowing such thirst and want from self inflicted strayings.

He loves first, loves long, loves patiently and loves relentlessly.
the hearts that allow themselves to be transformed by wrestling in His unbearably tender, awful embrace are receivers of a gift that is simply yet supremely being able to love back, freed from obsessive preoccupation with getting something back.

Joseph’s faithfulness through the bleakest days of apparent abandonment, both by God and his own blood, in a precious type of Christ’s faithfulness, turns out to be preparation of a fertile ground through which God and the very brothers who betrayed him and left him for dead - and all mankind to follow - are glorified and blessed respectively.

Joseph’s brothers in their shame bowed before him, he who had every right to condemn and cast them off. But he could genuinely only look at them with love, and invite them out of their famine into the feast that their sins had unknowingly been in some part the benefactors of.

Faithful to The Faithful One, Joseph was able to receive, in imitation of Him, the greatest treasure of all, to love those who had scorned and despised him, unto the calling forth of their own love in return.

May we all strain to be so faithful as to receive such a giving gift.

amen.

*In the Eastern Rite there is a tradition in the Lenten season of fasting even with regards to celebrating the Liturgy, except for Sundays. Instead they celebrate the Presanctified Liturgy wednesday and friday evenings, a communion service of sorts in which the sanctified gifts from the Sunday Liturgy are dispensed, accompanied with much singing of psalms, delving into long readings that prepare the way for the Easter Vigil service and the prostrations that have long since faded from the Western Mass.