Date: Sept. 23, 2007

Scriptures: Genesis 39

Sermon: Sexual Harassment – One Man’s Story

****************************************************************************

            There are times when perhaps one might wonder if the Bible ought to bear a florescent warning label stating:

         Caution: this book contains mature subject matter.

         Reader and listener discretion is advised.

         I mentioned to one woman last week, that I was going to preach on the story of Joseph and Potiphar’s wife. She said she knows that story, but realized, that of all the biblical stories about Joseph--from his childhood to his death–she doesn’t remember hearing this one when she was a child. Perhaps this woman’s parents and Sunday School teachers had exercised reader and listener discretion when it came to this biblical story of sexual harassment.

         While statistically, there are more cases of sexual harassment committed by men against women, men are also victims of sexual harassment. And, as we note from Joseph’s case, such occurrences, unfortunately, are not something that have just begun to happen recently.

         Sexual harassment includes conduct that is unwelcome, unwanted, and sexual in nature. Behaviours that could constitute sexual harassment exist on a continuum – ranging from the subtle to blatant, from comments about a person’s body to being propositioned. In Alberta, sexual harassment is illegal. In Potiphar’s house, no such definition – let alone a law that addressed it – existed.

         As in all matters of harassment, at least three people are involved – the bully, the bullied, and the bystander. Potiphar’s wife is the bully. She is in a position of power because her husband, captain of the guard, is an officer of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt.

         Used to getting whatever she wants, Potiphar’s wife tells Joseph to lie with her. But Joseph says ‘no.’ She continues to abuse her power, however, and she speaks to Joseph day after day. Perhaps the first time she coated her words with honey. But on that day when she grabbed his clothes and said “Lie with me!” she was neither asking nor enticing; she was demanding. She could have screamed, “Lick my boots!” and expected the same obedience to what she expected now from Joseph.

         If Potiphar’s wife was the bully, Joseph clearly is the bullied one. After being sold by his brothers to a travelling caravan, he was eventually sold into slavery in Egypt where he rose through the ranks to become the trusted slave and overseer of Potiphar’s house.

         However, despite being a slave, Joseph is not without power too. He is unmovable in his resolve because he says ‘yes’ to God, keeping God’s law and his relationship with God holy. He says ‘no’ to a person whose power Joseph knows to be less than his own and certainly far less than God’s, although the bully herself does not understand this.

         Continued harassment by Potiphar’s wife culminates in her grabbing onto Joseph’s clothes in an attempt to force him to comply to her demand. Joseph slips out of his robe and flees outside. His master’s wife is left holding what she twists into ‘incriminating evidence.’ It is not the first time Joseph has had to function without his ‘royal’ clothes (Gen. 37:23). Much earlier, his brothers had stripped him of his coat of many colours and thrown him in a pit. Now, once again he is confined, this time in prison. And the clothes still do not make this man.

         The bystanders in this case are the other household servants. We hear nothing in the scripture about the servants’ response to the wife’s continual harassment of Joseph, nothing when she calls the household together to see and hear her lie about Joseph lying with her, nothing when their master throws the innocent Joseph into jail. The servants merely stand by, not intervening in what they surely know to be unjust treatment.

         But what could they do? Why should Potifar or his wife pay heed to them? After all, if Joseph, the favoured slave was being mistreated, what would happen if they spoke up?

         Too often we feel tongue-tied or that our hands are tied when we become aware of cases of harassment or bullying. But the bystanders have an extremely important role to play.

         In certain tribal villages in Africa, when a woman is being abused, all of the women in the village form a circle around the home where the abuse is taking place and begin singing. Shamed by the action of the witnesses, the abuser stops his abuse.

         Last week, CBC radio interviewed two of many students at a Halifax high school who witnessed a student new to the school being bullied on his first day of school. He was teased unmercifully by several bullies about wearing a pink shirt. The next day, the bullying progressed to physical abuse. By the third day, one of the two students being interviewed didn’t have a class first period and used that time to go to a local store where he bought 50 pink shirts. He brought them back to the school to hand out for students to wear. They were snapped up in no time. The second student on the radio interview said that he then went to the store and bought another 25 pink shirts and brought them back to the school. Again, the student body responded. When the shirts ran out, people, including the principal and teaching staff, began wearing pink bracelets. The school was a sea of pink. Effectively, and non-violently, the bullies had been disarmed. That night, chatting on line, the bullied student expressed his gratitude to the students of his new school for supporting him in a way he never dreamed possible.

         While such stories give us hope, we know of other cases, perhaps our own, where no one stepped up, where the harassment continued, or where –like Joseph–the consequences of saying ‘no’ were severe. We live life at great risk. “Joseph lives sometimes as victim and sometimes as agent of royal power. Nevertheless, for all its force, royal [or worldly power] does not control the future,” [Eugene F. Roop, Believers Church Bible Commentary: Genesis, (Kitchener: Herald Press, 1987), pp.261. 262] because (as Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann reminds us) “things are confidently settled” [Interpretation: Genesis, (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1982) p. 319].

         At the beginning of this chapter in Genesis, we are reminded twice that the LORD was with Joseph. We are introduced to Joseph in Egypt with the words: “The LORD was with Joseph, and he became a successful man....His master saw that the LORD was with him, and that the LORD caused all that he did to prosper in his hands.”

         Chapter 39 closes in a similar way. This time, Joseph is in prison, “But the LORD was with Joseph and showed him steadfast love;” “The chief jailer paid no heed to anything that was in Joseph’s care because the LORD was with him; and whatever he did, the LORD made it prosper.”

         “Things are confidently settled because God is with us – before, after, and yes...during the struggles too. Verse 4 of Psalm 23 proclaims not that evil would be removed, but that “I will fear no evil, for you are with me.” At Jesus’ departure from earth, this is his ultimate promise to the church: “I am with you always, to the close of the age” (Matt. 28:20).

         Both this story of Joseph and the stories of our lives struggle with the meeting of real life and of real faith. As Christians, we know that things are confidently settled. Immanuel, God with us, is already victor over all that would harass, harm, and kill us. Yet the risks and reality of life don’t always meld easily with this truth. The title of a devotional book for students states the tension so openly and clearly: If God loves me, why can’t I get my locker open?

         God’s presence does not ensure that Joseph’s life--nor that our life --will be lived triumphantly day after day. But because Christ has triumphed, we can carry on – living out the divine purpose God has given us in all circumstances, even when God’s presence is hidden.

         May this be so. Amen.