The Good Friday Gospel According to Joseph
Today we’ve come to the end of a great work of art—a masterpiece and a wonder—and I feel a sense of loss. It’s bittersweet to have finished the Book of Genesis, because reading and working through it these last 3 months has one of the most thrilling experiences I have ever had with scripture. I am in awe at the beauty and power of the first book of the Bible and am deeply moved that the Lord who can create light with one word would choose one man and one family as the means by which he would save the world. “From you,” the Lord says to Abraham, “all the nations of the earth shall be blessed.”
Genesis is the book of beginnings, but until the Lord returns and the New Heavens and New Earth are begun, all things in this world must come to an end. And so, here we are.
And yet every ending is also a beginning, and the ending of Genesis is no different: it ends and the story of Israel begins.
The final chapter of Genesis also contains one of the greatest descriptions of the grace of God in all of the Old Testament, and even, perhaps, outside of it.
Jacob has died, and the brothers immediately fear that Joseph will now seek vengeance on them for the evil they did to him so many years before. Joseph, as I have been saying, is a complicated moral figure, but here—perhaps in spite of himself—he so perfectly captures what the grace of God is like that I’m not sure anyone apart from Jesus himself has ever said it better:
“What you intended for evil, God intended for good.” [Genesis 50:20]
Is there a better verse for Good Friday?
What we intended for evil—the Crucifixion of the Son of God—God intended for the ultimate Good.
Cross before Crown, yes, but don’t ever forget that Crown follows Cross.
The rest of the entire Bible—which is really one unified story that leads to Jesus—will be about God using human evil to bring about the Good News of the Gospel.
Amen.
P.S.
Like all great stories, Genesis ends with a note of sadness and with a few loose ends. Joseph dies, but unlike Jacob, he is not buried back in the Promised Land. Before his death, I think he sees clearly the mistakes he has made in Egypt by turning his back on his heritage; he tells his descendants that they will need the help of God to get out of Egypt and return to the Promised Land, and he makes them promise that when that day finally comes they will carry his bones with them back to the land of his fathers.
And then he dies, and is embalmed after the custom of the Egyptians.
And so Genesis ends with Joseph as a mummy in Egypt.
P.P.S.
But the Children of Israel never forgot their promise to Joseph. And generation unto generation, they were reminded that the day would come when God would bring them out of slavery, and that when that day came, they were to carry the bones of their brilliant ancestor Joseph with them. And so, this is what happens when the long-awaited Exodus finally occurs, so many centuries later:
19 Moses took the bones of Joseph with him because Joseph had made the Israelites swear an oath. He had said, “God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up with you from this place.” [Exodus 13:19]
I said before that Genesis ends without all the loose ends tied up. That may be true, but you know what?
In God’s time, all loose ends are eventually tied up. There are no details that the author of Creation forgets.