Text: Genesis 39:1-23

Well, here we have yet another Biblical story that I have to struggle with liking or appreciating. I look at this story and at Potiphar’s wife (who, by the way, I really wish had a name that I could use) and I think, you’re making us look bad! When women are so often dismissed and blown off and disbelieved, Mrs. Potiphar really just exemplifies the trope of women making up stories to get good men in trouble. Harpies who work up false accusations as revenge.

So I don’t much like Mrs. P. She is not doing anyone any favors. But come with me to look at this story through the lens of power alongside gender.

The key players are Potiphar, whose role is something like the head of Pharoah security. He’s a higher-up in the pharaoh’s guard. He’s the one with all the power: male, proximity to Pharaoh, many people under his command, can delegate or not as he chooses. Mrs. Potiphar, his wife, who as a woman is basically property. Any power she has is because she can appeal to her political husband. She may or may not even run her own household, as Joseph seems to be Potiphar’s go-to manager.

Which brings us to Joseph. He is property. As an enslaved person he is completely at the whim of his enslavers. He is experiencing relative freedom and given considerable responsibility within that context but he is basically a pawn in this story, being acted upon and used. His foreignness is emphasized and he is repeatedly othered in this way.

Finally, though it’s less obvious in translation there is also a lot of speculation in Bible scholarship that he is either gender non-conforming or effeminate or otherwise embodies what we might now consider a queer identity. That is based on the description of him as ‘well built and handsome,’ phrasing only seen elsewhere to describe Esther, and because of the garment that he received from his father which got him into so much trouble before this, the coat of many colors. That garment is described in ways that similarly describe the dresses of women – specifically princesses – in other places in scripture.

So between his youth and his beauty and his potentially his queerness, puts him in a very vulnerable position. Enslaved persons were used not just for their labor and skill but as sexual partners available to their enslavers, male and female.

Those are the human characters. Where is God?

God is and has always been with Joseph. God is with the most vulnerable.

What I really want in this story – and this is another reason that this story and others like it in scripture are so infuriating – is for God to break Joseph’s bondage. Freedom for Hebrew people will not come until 400 years later, for the descendants of Joseph and his brothers. We’ll hear about that later in the fall.

What I really want is for Joseph to get his own revenge. For the tables to turn, soap opera fashion, and for Mrs. P. to dramatically get her come-uppance. I’m a little too young to have experienced “Dynasty.” but in my head I do see this story with a lot of gold lame, shoulder pads and sweeping staircases. I did watch Days of Our Lives for a long time and I think I could see a story-line similar to this in that setting as well.

Anyway there is no revenge. What one Hebrew Bible scholar I pay attention to says of stories like this in her Jewish tradition is that if you see something in the Biblical text that you don’t like, there’s not much you can do about it. But there is something you can do about it in your own life or in your world.

So I started to ask, where do I see vulnerable sexual minorities or gender non-conforming people being threatened. I immediately thought about the upcoming ballot initiative to exclude trans girls from school sports and subject all girls to invasive medical exams in order to participate in school sports. Bill I-638, is one of the most extreme measures of its kind, and there have been over 800 similar bills being proposed at various levels of government across the country this year.

Girls and women have already had an uphill battle to find a place in the world of athletics. Any woman who doesn’t perform femininity in her role as an athlete is already questioned and looked at side-long. Is she really a woman? Boys and men do not undergo this same kind of scrutiny in sport or in most areas of life. No one is asking men to prove what’s in their pants before suiting up and taking the field.

My friend, Pastor Katy Sachse wrote beautifully about this in FaVs News (a publication highlighting faith and values in the PNW and I will link it in the eMemo this week). She talked about the calling of Christians to remember that just as God created day and night, God also created dusk and twilight and dawn and every place in between. And just as God created male and female in God’s own image, God created and contains all gender identities and expressions.

We see that expressed in the person of Joseph and we see it already marginalized and oppressed in the narrative of God’s people. And yet God themself has not abandoned Joseph but been Joseph’s companion and champion, ‘prospering’ Joseph in every circumstance he finds himself.

Pastor Katy concludes with this:

The truth is that these initiatives remove protections from kids who need trusted adults at school when the adults at home aren’t safe. The truth is that these initiatives punish any girl who wants to participate in school sports by demanding invasive and expensive exams from which boys are fully exempt. 

 

There are other truths, too. That transgender persons are far more likely to be the victims of crime than the perpetrators. That there are 5-10 transgender athletes among the more than 200,000 school sports participants in Washington State — hardly the threat they are portrayed to be. 

 

But it’s also true that our relentless human tendency is to find those who are already marginalized, already at risk, already hurting, and cast them in the role of villain. History is full of these stories, and the damage we have done to one another. We can’t change the past, but we can learn from it. And we can choose a different way

Powerful people who want to maintain or exercise or gain more power will stir up trouble for the most vulnerable. Those who seem to threaten that power, will amplify threats that are not present in order to do so.

MLK reminds us that the moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice. In this moment of the biblical narrative it took 400 more years to lead to liberation. A very long arc. 

We can put some bend in that arc. I hope. We can remember that God’s place was and has always been with those who are vulnerable and scared and under threat. When we stand alongside those folks we stand with the one who created all people in their image. We can’t do anything to change Joseph’s story, to remove power from Mr. and Mrs. P. But we can do something for our queer kindred now. May God work justice through us and prosper and bless the queer and trans women and girls who just want to play soccer with their friends.