Envy

The story of Joseph Genesis 37, 18 - 36

I guess this is familiar story to many, perhaps because of the popularity of Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical. In brief the intrigue in this story comes from the brothers' envy of Joseph, and envy is the topic for this week's assemblies.

So why were the brothers envious?
1 Joseph was one of twelve brothers. Their father was called Jacob, and Joseph was Jacob's favourite son. Jacob showed this firstly by telling everybody, and secondly, by giving Joseph a multicoloured coat - a rare treasure almost 4000 years ago, when these events took place.
It always causes trouble when a parent has a favourite child, and it's often made worse if the favouritism is blatant prejudice. Hardly surprisingly, all the other children were envious and jealous. We could say that Jacob, the father, lacked good judgement in this particular matter.

2 A second reason why the brothers were jealous: Joseph had dreams: one involving sheaves of corn (the old-fashioned way of stacking the crop for drying); another dream was about stars. And the message of the dreams was plain; Joseph was more important than his brothers; Joseph had the biggest sheaf of corn and the brightest star in the sky. Worse than that, Joseph seems to have reminded his brothers time and time again of the dreams and of his own importance. His approach lacked a certain diplomacy and subtlety. So Joseph lacked good judgement, as well as his father. It's not surprising the brothers were envious.

So let's not think of Joseph as a completely innocent victim of the brothers' plot. He comes across as conceited and vain, and not a particularly nice fellow.

The brothers were angry. Joseph should not behave as he did. He shouldn't brag and boast. And the brothers were envious because it did appear that Joseph would become more important than all of them (and subsequently he did: he held the highest office in the greatest superpower of the time). And the brothers were envious of Joseph's gift of insight; they were envious that he achieved a great deal through his own hard work and they were envious of their father's blatant favouritism and most of all, they were envious of the coat.

Their envy and anger led them to the point of murdering Joseph, only in the nick of time selling him into slavery. Envy led them into telling lies to cover up what they'd done. The brothers tore up the expensive coat, dipped it in goat's blood and told their dad that his favourite son was dead.

Here we have a first class account of what envy can do to people. If you envy a person - perhaps you know someone with more brains than you, perhaps more money or more friends, more talent at sport or whatever - if you envy them you undervalue yourself. And when you undervalue yourself, you do things you wouldn't normally do, and you're easily led into doing things even worse.

So what's the point of the story for us today?
Is it simply "Be good, or else you might get into trouble"? Life would be much simpler if we could all do that, but we're human. Whatever our high ideals, all of us envy someone's lifestyle, at least some of the time.

What I want you to think about is this: know the feeling of envy within yourself. Ask yourself why you don't like a person, particularly if a person has more talent than yourself. Does that person make you jealous? If so, listen to the warning bells ringing.

Don't let one person's good qualities make you show your bad qualities.