Loyal to the Trust that Frees Us

Readings: Genesis 39:20-23, 40:1-23, Secrets of Heaven #3969:3 (see below)
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Photo by Mike Hindle on Unsplash
We continue today with the story of Joseph, the favorite son of the Old Testament patriarch, Jacob. When we last left him, he had been sold into slavery by his brothers and taken to Egypt. There he found himself in the service of an Egyptian official named Potiphar. Even after the trauma perpetuated at the hands of his brothers, Joseph excels in the household of Potiphar and soon becomes indispensable. Sadly, Potiphar’s wife tries to seduce him and when Joseph refuses, she discredits him with her husband and Joseph is thrown into jail. This is where we find him in our text for today.

Not surprisingly though, Joseph’s diligence and honestly causes him to excel in the prison as well, and soon he is functioning as an assistant to the warden. One day, two former servants of the Pharoah arrive in the prison, both having displeased the Pharoah. They confess to having had strange dreams, and it turns out that Joseph is able to interpret the dreams for them.

We remember from last week that Joseph represents a part of us that yearns for divine truth, a longing to live in accordance with the wisdom of God. One of the ways that this can manifest is a desire to do what is right and good for others. In this part of the story, even under challenging conditions, Joseph models the way that a deep spiritual impulse towards love and wisdom can still motivate and guide us. 

I know for myself, when I am experiencing challenges of some kind, it can sometimes be really hard to connect with this Joseph part of ourselves. Difficult experiences can exhaust us, bring us into a dark or cynical state of mind, cause us to feel angry or afraid or avoidant. All of these feelings are understandable reactions to hard times. And, they can make our Joseph self harder to see. They can imprison us in cycles and stories that are not true, just as Joseph was in prison unjustifably. Yet, Joseph remains steadfast even in prison. This part of us still recognizes the value to looking beyond ourselves and our own difficult experiences to a sense of larger truth that might help us. 

And so our Joseph self can tell us something about our challenging times, if we are willing to listen. The dreams of the cupbearer and the baker reveal to us dynamics of our experience that are useful for us to know. In Swedenborg’s interpretive landscape, wine represents truth or wisdom and bread represents goodness or love. And there are two really important pieces of ourselves that interact with these things. Our intellect is the vessel that receives and holds ideas, perspectives and narratives - things that communicate the truth of how we see the world, others and ourselves. Based on these truths, we decide how we are going to live. Our will is the vessel that receives and holds our emotions, desires, and impulses - things that drive how we show up to the world, others and ourselves, how we feel about them and experience them. Our will is the engine and our intellect is the windshield. When our engine runs on love and when our windshield is clear, we can know we are going somewhere good.

And so, we can read these dreams of the Pharaoh’s servants in this context. The cupbearer pouring wine into the Pharaoh’s cup pictures our intellect continuing to take a servant approach towards larger ideas than the ones that just serve ourselves. Perhaps we can see this in the context of our relationships with others. In any partnership or relationship between two people, there are times when in the midst of our own challenges, we might be tempted to lash out at the other person. Why do we do this? Because it feels good. It can relieve feelings of helplessness to cause something dramatic to happen, it can feel powerful and righteous to give in to anger. It helps us to regulate a sense of emotional disarray. This is a personal true thing about humans, and it is very common. But it also causes damage to the relationship, and that is a larger universal truth about what happens when people interact with each other. And so the question becomes, which truth am I most loyal to? The one that makes me feel better but hurts another. Or the one that acknowledges that relationships thrive when I am accountable for my own behavior and I treat a partner with dignity. In the dream, when the cupbearer pours the wine into Pharaoh’s cup, as opposed to drinking it himself, this represents our understanding that there are truths worth being loyal to that are beyond the ones that serve the self. And this stance is what ultimately allows for our freedom from cycles or behaviors that metaphorically imprison us.

Conversely, the baker shows us what happens when we allow false ideas to fly away with or destroy the good that we could potentially do. From our previous example, a false idea might be “I was upset so it was okay to lash out,” which destroys the opportunity for connection in a relationship that might have occured if we chose vulnerability instead. Other false ideas in other contexts might be “you’re not good enough so why even try” or “those people don’t deserve help” or “it’s not my problem” and so on. I know that I often don’t try to do good because I’m worried that I might fail, or worried that if I don’t do it the best then it won’t count or I might be judged. Likewise, human beings often try to “other” people so they don’t have to consider them their “neighbor,” try to carve out an exception for them and argue they don’t deserve dignity or care. We see the latter occuring in politics and world affairs all the time.

And so, we need to resist letting those false ideas peck away at our love of what is right and good, or fly away with our motivation to act in service of these things. The baker should not go back into service. We need to let that baker part of ourselves, the part that was careless enough or afraid enough or distracted enough to let those birds really have at it, we need to let that baker part of us go. And maybe hire a baker who really values what they (meaning we) have the potential to create, who will guard against the birds that would prevent us from nourishing others, physically, emotionally, spiritually.

It is Joseph, our holy and resilient longing for divine meaning, that can see the truth of either or both of these dreams in our experience, if we are willing to listen. Sadly, even as our Joseph-self guides us through challenging times, it might take multiple go arounds before we learn to listen to our Joseph-self every time. The cupbearer forgot Joseph once he retured to the royal court. It won’t be until our next installment that we hear about how Joseph becomes the one who will save the entire nation of Egypt. But even while forgotten, God has provided that this Joseph part of ourselves will always be there. And Joseph was not able to interpret the dreams, or even excel in his work, because of his own intelligence or prowess. In verse 8 we hear:

Then Joseph said to them, “Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell me your dreams.”

Joseph understood that all his ability came from the Lord, just as all goodness and power comes from the Lord. Yet, the Joseph-self also knows its agency, and leans into its discernment in order to do some good. God is always taking care of us, especially in our hard times. There is no “if” in this equation; God is doing it and God is doing it for everyone, all the time. The question is always how much we open ourselves to it. One of the ways that God takes care of us is by flowing into our Joseph-self, continually powering and centering our yearning for meaning, integrity and truth. We don’t always listen. Joseph often ends up in the pit or in prison, meaning we act like this part of us doesn’t exist, in both large and small ways. But our Joseph-self holds within it the patience of God, and our journey will always bring us back to him.

And when we do come back to our Joseph-self, and lay out our dreams, our dynamics, our cycles, our stories, before our honest spiritual discernment, we are going to learn some things. Probably some hard things, but also some liberating things. Another way that Swedenborg describes our Joseph-self is “the good which is from truth.” Truth is not about rules, or about God’s whims, truth is about what frees us and what connects us; about what we owe to ourselves and what we owe to others, truth is about that which is good. And this is all God wants for us, a cup overflowing with goodness, peace, joy and togetherness, for all. Amen.


Readings:

Genesis 39:20-23, 40:1-23

20 Joseph’s master took him and put him in prison, the place where the king’s prisoners were confined. But while Joseph was there in the prison,
21 the LORD was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favor in the eyes of the prison warden.
22 So the warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison, and he was made responsible for all that was done there.
23 The warden paid no attention to anything under Joseph’s care, because the LORD was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did.

1 Some time later, the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt offended their master, the king of Egypt.
2 Pharaoh was angry with his two officials, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker,
3 and put them in custody in the house of the captain of the guard, in the same prison where Joseph was confined.
4 The captain of the guard assigned them to Joseph, and he attended them. After they had been in custody for some time,
5 each of the two men—the cupbearer and the baker of the king of Egypt, who were being held in prison—had a dream the same night, and each dream had a meaning of its own.
6 When Joseph came to them the next morning, he saw that they were dejected.
7 So he asked Pharaoh’s officials who were in custody with him in his master’s house, “Why do you look so sad today?”
8 “We both had dreams,” they answered, “but there is no one to interpret them.” Then Joseph said to them, “Do not interpretations belong to God? Tell me your dreams.”
9 So the chief cupbearer told Joseph his dream. He said to him, “In my dream I saw a vine in front of me,
10 and on the vine were three branches. As soon as it budded, it blossomed, and its clusters ripened into grapes.
11 Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand, and I took the grapes, squeezed them into Pharaoh’s cup and put the cup in his hand.”
12 “This is what it means,” Joseph said to him. “The three branches are three days.
13 Within three days Pharaoh will lift up your head and restore you to your position, and you will put Pharaoh’s cup in his hand, just as you used to do when you were his cupbearer.
14 But when all goes well with you, remember me and show me kindness; mention me to Pharaoh and get me out of this prison.
15 I was forcibly carried off from the land of the Hebrews, and even here I have done nothing to deserve being put in a dungeon.”
16 When the chief baker saw that Joseph had given a favorable interpretation, he said to Joseph, “I too had a dream: On my head were three baskets of bread.
17 In the top basket were all kinds of baked goods for Pharaoh, but the birds were eating them out of the basket on my head.”
18 “This is what it means,” Joseph said. “The three baskets are three days.
19 Within three days Pharaoh will lift off your head and impale your body on a pole. And the birds will eat away your flesh.”
20 Now the third day was Pharaoh’s birthday, and he gave a feast for all his officials. He lifted up the heads of the chief cupbearer and the chief baker in the presence of his officials:
21 He restored the chief cupbearer to his position, so that he once again put the cup into Pharaoh’s hand--
22 but he impaled the chief baker, just as Joseph had said to them in his interpretation.
23 The chief cupbearer, however, did not remember Joseph; he forgot him.

Secrets of Heaven #3969:3
Joseph represents the Lord’s spiritual kingdom, so he represents a spiritual person (since every spiritual individual has the spiritual kingdom inside). There are two elements composing a spiritual person, namely, charity and faith, or goodness and truth. Charity as the source of faith, or goodness as the source of truth, is what Joseph represents.