By Rev. Heather Blackstone
Special to The Tribune
They weren’t pretty, just a large rectangle, crudely sewn, with the front unstitched and two openings left for the arms. These garments men wore in the ancient Near East were needed only for warmth and protection from rain.
While they were often removed for labor, these simple, somewhat makeshift pieces were worn by every man. Their only variations being slight differences in the flaxseed used and signs of wear, these cloaks were like ancient uniforms marking the wearer as a hard-working member of the community.
One day a young boy showed his older brothers his new cloak. This one was pretty. Carefully made, the edges were stitched, not left ragged. It even had sleeves, long billowing sleeves that would make any physical work impossible. Some believe that it was also very colorful, made with dyes used only for people of high position. Clearly this son, despite having 10 older brothers and being born to his father’s second wife, had been marked as the leader of the family.
As you can imagine, this did not go over well. In this story, one of the most famous in the Bible, the brothers sell the brother into slavery to Ishmaelites — a group created by a whole other awkward brother-father relationship. They dip the famous coat in goat’s blood and tell his father that their brother, Joseph, must have been killed. Their father is devastated and his sons relieved. It was hard to always be second to someone who seemed loved unfairly.
This is one of several classic Sunday school stories we tell over and over without looking at what is really happening. I suppose the idea of a fancy coat makes it seem fun, the colors distract from the idea that this is actually a story about classism. Joseph was a long-awaited son, born to the wife his father loved best, and therefore he was showered with preferred treatment. Joseph’s status was confusing and hurtful to the rest of the family. While all having the same father, education and upbringing, Joseph’s brothers would always be seen as less simply because of who their mothers were.
This story gives us the opportunity to ask the always relevant question: What are our reasons for treating some people better than others? Why are people with more training and leadership experience passed over for someone with none? Why are people with darker skin assumed to be threatening when most of us have never had as much as a negative encounter with a person of color? Why do women still get shut down in meetings and then criticized for not speaking up? Why do we overlook atrocious behavior as simply “boys being boys”?
What Joseph’s brothers planned to do and then ultimately did wasn’t OK, and as a person of faith I can see how God was able to work though their actions and actually turn this into a story of grace. However, God’s working through this and fixing a really bad situation doesn’t excuse the actions of a father who couldn’t see through his own prejudices. This story reminds us that we need to constantly check ourselves, our decisions, our opinions as well as the body language we use toward one another and remember that at our core, we are all cut of the same cloth — we are all members of the same family.
The writer is director of youth ministries at St. Edmund’s Episcopal Church.
