THE COAT HANGER AND THE CROSS
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THE COAT HANGER AND THE CROSS
Genesis 42:1-11, 21-25
From the sermon “The Return of the Past”
In the story of Joseph, we see God’s fingerprints all over the events. Everything that happened had a purpose. Joseph’s dreams coming true shows God to be faithful in delivering something he promised many years before.
The brothers’ guilt coming out shows that God does not allow sins to go unpunished or guilt unresolved. Jacob’s grief coming back shows that God wanted Jacob to learn to let go of what was his security in his son.
But more than these lessons God is teaching Jacob and his family, we see the higher purpose of God. All that has happened has been fore-ordained, fore-ordained for a purpose, that is, to save the family of Jacob. That is because God had made a promise that, from his family would one day come the Messiah, Jesus.
If anything should happen to this family, if it should be wiped out, by anything like a famine, then how could God keep his promise? So the big picture of the story of Joseph is God working, behind the scenes as it were, to preserve this family.
Then there is more: not only are the events fore-ordained, Joseph is a fore-shadow, a foreshadow of the coming Messiah, Jesus.
When we were living in Hawaii, we went to watch a stage performance of the famous re-telling of Joseph’s story by Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Webber, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat.
If you have heard or seen the musical, you will know that the writers took some liberty with the biblical account. For example, Pharaoh is made into an Elvis Presley singing rock-and-roll style.
The stage performance we saw was put together by a Christian high school. While I didn’t agree with some of the lyrics, I thoroughly enjoyed the music and the drama. But the best part came at the end, which took all of us by surprise.
In the last scene, the grand finale, Joseph is singing, “I closed my eyes, drew back the curtain, to see for certain, what I thought I knew. Far, far, someone was weeping but the world was sleeping, any dream will do…”
In the final lines of the song, when he sang, “Give me my coloured coat, my amazing coloured coat!” the coat of many colours was lowered towards him from the ceiling. Amidst all the applause and cheering, Joseph took the coat from the coat hanger, and lo and behold, the coat hanger turned out to be a cross!
As the lights dimmed on the stage, the spotlight focused our attention on the cross. It was a most beautiful end to the musical!
How true, I thought, that Joseph is but a foreshadow of Jesus. When Pharaoh told the people of Egypt, “Go to Joseph, and what he says to you, do!” (Gen 41.55). He may as well be saying to all of us, “Go to Jesus, and what he says to you, do!”
Yes, there are so many ways Joseph presents to us a picture of Jesus. Like Jesus, he is a supreme, before whom we all fall on our faces in reverence. Like Jesus, he looks into our hearts and draws from us our sins and guilt.
Like Jesus, Joseph weeps for his brothers, loves them, and provides for them. Like Jesus, Joseph remains the only hope for the brothers and their family to survive in a world of famine. Go to Jesus, and what he says to you, do.
