Author Neil Gaiman once wrote, “People think dreams aren’t real just because they aren’t made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.” Dreams are a bit of an enigma to us. We’ve come to use the word in a couple of ways, but for now let’s talk about those dreams we have while in a state of sleep. We all have those sorts of dreams. But we don’t always remember them. And the ones that we do remember often don’t make sense. Still, since the dawn of time, humans have sought to find meaning in their dreams. Sigmund Freud, in his book The Interpretation of Dreams wrote, “The interpretation of Dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious activities of the mind.” Freud put a lot of significance in the study and interpretation of our dreams. Dreams are such an interesting thing that a whole field of study has formed around dreams called Oneirology. Yet I’d be curious to know how many people in this room have had a dream that changed the course of your life? Raise your hand if that’s true for you.

As we kick off a six week sermon series on the person of Joseph from the book of Genesis, the story begins with Joseph having two dreams. And both of them turned out to be significant. But in this story, they were not viewed very positively. Now, dreams in the time of Joseph had a different significance than dreams do in America today. It was the belief of the ancient Israelites, and many of the other cultures around them, that dreams connect our world with the world of the deity. Dreams take us someplace between heaven and earth. They lift us up to meet with the divine.

For example, the story is told that Egyptian prince Thutmose IV fell asleep one day while lying in the shadow of the Sphinx. In his dreams, he encountered the Sphinx who said to him, “Look at me, my son. I am your father. The kingdom shall be given to you.” And he tells Thutmose that in order for this to happen, the prince needs to clear all of the sand off of the Sphinx. Thutmose does as the Sphinx asked and he later became Pharaoh. That dream became a reality. In the ancient world, that sort of dream, especially for a prominent figure, was pretty common.

So, when Joseph had his first dream, he felt like the message of it must be significant. In the dream, he and his brothers were in the field gathering wheat. Then Joseph’s sheaf of wheat stood upright and his brother’s sheaves bowed down to it. When Joseph has dreamed this dream, he immediately goes and tells his brothers about it. At this point, we might question Joseph’s sanity. He is sure to know that his brothers already don’t like him much. And then to go share a dream in which he appears superior to them does not seem the greatest idea in the world. The question that arose for me here was WHY? Why would Joseph share this dream with them? Was he an arrogant braggart? Was he dense and didn’t foresee how his brothers would react to the dream? Or is there another explanation?

But before we get into that too much, we should address the fact that Joseph then had ANOTHER dream and AGAIN told it to his brothers. In this one, the sun and the moon and eleven stars were bowing down to Joseph. And the text tells us that he went then and told his father and his brothers together. Now, you’ve probably heard the saying that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” But here we see Joseph doing the same thing he’d done earlier that made his brothers HATE him. He has another dream that seems to depict his family bowing to him in veneration. This brings us back to the questions we asked earlier. Was Joseph arrogant? Was he clueless about how these dreams would look to his family? Or was it something else?

I’ve seen it suggested that Joseph shared these dreams needed to be shared because they were from God and they were a message about what was to come. And as those who know the rest of the story, that makes some sense. We know that eventually Joseph comes into power under the Pharaoh in Egypt by interpreting the Pharaoh’s dreams. Joseph foresees in those dreams seven years of abundant harvests followed by seven years of famine. The Pharaoh enlists Joseph to be in charge of storing up the abundance of the first seven years so that they can utilize it to make it through the following seven years. Then when the famine hits, Joseph’s family comes to him, not knowing that it is him, and begs for food. The dreams come true. The message Joseph received from God all those many years earlier was true. The dreams depicted a future that God foresaw. So, the argument then is that Joseph knew the dream was from God and would come true. And that is why he needed to share it with his brothers and father despite the consequences that were sure to come. As Jesus said, “no prophet is accepted in his hometown.” Was Joseph being prophetic in sharing these dreams?

I will admit that when I started planning this sermon, that was pretty much the conclusion I thought I would come to. I had this great quote I wanted to use from George Bernard Shaw that said, “You see things; and you say, ‘Why?’ But I dream things that never were; and I say, ‘Why not?’” And I had this idea of talking about people who had visions of greater futures and how their ideas were often rejected…especially by those closest to them. I had this great story to share about Ralph Baer who grew up a Jew in Nazi Germany until his family fled to New York when he was 16. When money for his family got tight, Ralph took a job in a factory. While there he created his first invention, a machine that punched holes in synthetic leather. He went on to eventually study about radios and then televisions. And eventually he had an idea for inventing a way to play games on the television. When he proposed this idea to several places, they rejected it. So he dropped it. Then a few years later, he returned to the idea again. He found a company interested in exploring the idea and the Magnavox Odyssey came to life in 1972. But who knew what the small idea of putting games on a television would become? It is estimated that in 2022 the video game industry made almost 350 billion dollars. Yet when Ralph Baer first proposed the idea, it was met with disdain and disinterest. Wouldn’t that have been a perfect illustration for a sermon about a prophet or a dreamer being rejected only to discover that they were right?

But I can’t use it anymore. I can’t use it because I think there is actually a different message in this story about Joseph. In fact, I don’t think this story is meant to tell us anything about Joseph really at all…except to illustrate something important about God. This story is meant to show us who God is, not who Joseph was. Joseph may have been a little arrogant. He may have been a little dense. He may have been a prophet. He may have been all or none of those. The text doesn’t specifically say because the text is not specifically focused on Joseph. The Bible, in all of its stories and sermons and prophecies and poems, is all about God…all the time. This narrative about Joseph is no different.

So who is God in this narrative? There are three truths about God that I see in this part of Joseph’s story. The first truth is that God has a plan. Whatever you believe about dreams and their significance for our lives, I think we can only see that significance in hindsight. You’ve probably heard the joke “How do you make God laugh? Make a plan.” The idea behind that is that our plans are not God’s plans. And I think the same can be said for our guesses about what God’s plans are. What we think God’s plans are probably aren’t actually what God’s plans are. Only God knows God’s plans and all we know is what God chooses to share with us. But God does have a plan.

The second truth about God in this story is that God uses our messiness to accomplish good things. Ultimately, Joseph’s story turns out good, but it starts off as a bit of a hot mess. Joseph’s brothers hate him. They plan to kill him, but then decide to sell him to slave traders instead. Not such a great beginning for someone destined for greatness as his dreams were understood to mean. But isn’t that true of most everything in life? I love one scene in the movie Rookie of the Year. The main character, Henry Rowengartner, and his friends have been spending some of their free time working to repair this shell of a boat. It was a mess that didn’t float and looked like junk. And in the scene that I love, Henry and his friends are sitting at a lunch table and talking about the girl Henry likes. And Henry wants to talk to her but doesn’t know what to talk about. One of his friends says, “ Talk about the boat. Her dad has a boat. We have a boat.” And his other friend replies, “We don’t have a boat. We have wood in the vague shape of a boat.” We are like wood in the vague shape of a boat. We are messy and unfinished. But God has a plan that involves us, even in our messiness, even before we are anywhere near complete. And God makes a boat because God can use our messiness to accomplish good things.

And the third truth about God in this story is that God’s ultimate plan is for our salvation. We know from the rest of the story that God preserves Joseph through his time in slavery and in prison. He saves him in order to save others…a lot of others. And those others ultimately include the brothers who had hated him and sold him into slavery. This story sets the stage for what God is about to do for Joseph, for Egypt, for the nations around Egypt. God’s ultimate plan in the story of Joseph was salvation for the people. And God’s plan for all of us is ultimately the salvation of the world. That’s a dream worth pursuing. Amen!