Delivered on Sunday 18 March 2007 in St George's Chapel

Genesis 37:3 - 4; 12 - end.

The bestseller lists are now something of a commonplace.[1] It was not, however, always the case. It was really only at the beginning of the last century that such lists had any kind of popularity. The first really big seller was Charles Monroe Sheldon's Christian epic In His Steps, first published in 1895 and now long forgotten. The first book to sell ten million copies was the 1950's version of Desperate Housewives that is Grace Metalious' New England story Peyton Place. Since then Stephen King has routinely sold in the multi-millions and Dan Brown has outsold every previous bestseller with his The Da Vinci Code, which only goes to show - at least in my opinion - that several million readers can all be wrong.

I started thinking about bestsellers when last Monday, I looked at the first reading we have just heard this morning. That story is more or less the start of what we might call the adventures of Joseph. And the material is the stuff of novels; it has all the makings of a bestseller. Here we have visions and dreams, we have torture and opportunism, we have bedroom seduction and political intrigue, we have irony and suspense, and for the sake of Hollywood we even have a happy ending. It is no wonder that the critical commentaries examine the story of Joseph and decide to call it a little novel, for that is what it is. But it's not just any little novel, it has, as I've said, all the ingredients of a bestseller.

I am a great fan of these early biblical narratives; they have an earthy quality that is admirable and altogether realistic. Take this story of Joseph. We join the story with Jacob, Joseph's father, presenting his seventeen year old son with a piece of designer fashion. We usually talk of this garment as a coat of many colours but actually the Hebrew is decidedly more tasteful and discreet - this is a long robe with sleeves. Just the ticket for the man about town, the Jack Wills seasonal number for one of the best dressed men in the ancient world. Not content with his new wardrobe Joseph showed all the naïve enthusiasm of an excitable young man by telling his brothers about his latest dream. No need for any Sigmund Freud analysis here, the brothers knew full well that Joseph was telling them about a power play in which they would come off second best. Little wonder then, that the brothers were a touch angry. And little wonder that, when Joseph visits his brothers out tending their flocks in the middle of nowhere, they threaten to bump him off. But a better plan appears in the shape of passing traders; let's not kill him, let's sell him as a slave. There was the little problem of a grieving father but they could deal with that, they could deal with most anything once that spoilt kid, with ideas well beyond his station, was well out of the way.

But as we know this was not the end of the story; the adventure continued. In the same way as many bestsellers, the plot thickens and develops until Joseph finds himself placed as a top dog in the Egyptian empire. So is this a story of country lad made good in a foreign city? Hardly. The stories of the great men of Genesis, the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are stories about men of faith but also men of patriotism. True they hadn't quite got to that part where they actually had a country of their own but God had promised them that he would make them into a great nation, and they were holding fast to that promise.[2] Joseph, by contrast, was most certainly a man of faith but he didn't seem to share the same sense of patriotism. He didn't work hard for the future of a nation not yet born; in fact, he worked against it. Yes, it's true he came to the rescue of his starving brothers, and in so doing showed a commendable ability to forgive, but he also showed a willingness to comply with Pharoah's plans for economic and territorial expansion. As what was effectively Home Secretary, Joseph had prudently gathered in huge stocks of grain at a time when there was food aplenty. But when the dreadful famine hit that part of the world he traded his food surpluses for all kinds of goods, for money, for land, and eventually he sold seed in return for human life itself - he became a slave trader. [3] He is, for these reasons, the ambiguous hero and anti-hero, who juggled his belief in God with the pragmatic politics of the empire. You might even go so far as to say that the later story of the Exodus, the story of the Israelite release from slavery, is the unravelling of Joseph's carefully constructed political ball of wool.

Joseph has his good side and his bad side. He has mixed motives. He is all too human. He sounds like, well, one of us. We too are conscious that while we are not entirely bad we are also not entirely good, we muddle through, doing the best we can. We identify with Joseph because we see in him something of ourselves; we identify with him because just as he is at the centre of this story, we feel ourselves to be at the centre of our story. But here there is a catch. With its usual lack of literary refinement the lectionary does not start the adventures of Joseph at the very beginning. Had it done so we would have heard that these are not in fact the 'adventures of Joseph' but rather, as the text reads, 'the story of the family of Jacob'.[4] To begin the story in this way is very typical of the Old Testament way of doing things. There is a real sense of relatedness is the Hebrew scriptures. No one person sits at the centre of the human story, we are all related and we all have, in some curious way, an impact on the other. In this particular story the point is made by explaining that this is really the story of Jacob's family. As we read these last thirteen chapters of Genesis as we have been doing by coincidence, every evening over the last couple of weeks, we hear of Joseph's adventures - of course - but we also hear about his brothers, and his father, Jacob, and his mother, Rachel, who had died in childbirth when Joseph was only a youngster. We hear about the entire family but in particular about his father and mother who nurtured him and supported him. We hear about Jacob's delight at having seen his son again and pleasure at having had the opportunity to meet his grandchildren. And even though Rachel has long since passed away we hear of her; she is remembered with affection and honour.

The story may well seem odd for Mothering Sunday but in fact it works well. The hero or anti-hero is placed in a story about his whole family. There is the clear recognition that he belongs to a greater whole, to people who will mother him, who will care for him and about him, just as he is. And we like Joseph, enjoy the support of family, friends and colleagues who mother us, who support us, even though we again, like Joseph, are cracked jugs, imperfect creatures. And it is this mothering that we celebrate and give thanks for today; for we recognise that we depend on this mothering for the strength to keep going.

But just as Jacob was cut out of the start of this story there is another who is absent in our reading altogether; absent but always present. When we celebrate those who mother us, those who care for us and on whom our lives are dependent; we are duty bound to turn to almighty God; the creator and sustainer, on whom everything that is, is absolutely dependent. To him who maintains our very being, who cares for us as we are, who mothers us, be thanks and praise, now and always. Amen.

[1] See John Sutherland, How to Read a Novel (London: Profile Books, 2006)

[2] Genesis 12:2

[3] Genesis 47:13-26

[4] Genesis 37:2