I Am Joseph Your Brother, Whom Ye Sold, Is Said Without Flinching

A man told me it comes up at about the same point in every family gathering and that he can now predict it within about ten minutes.

It is not said cruelly. That is what makes it impossible to address. It arrives as a joke, or as context for something else, or as a reference so glancing that objecting to it would make him the difficult one.

He is fourteen years past it. He has done everything a man can do about it. The people at that table have all, individually, told him they have moved on, and he believes each of them when they say it.

And it still comes up, and everybody laughs, and he laughs, and then he drives home.

He asked me how to make them stop. I do not know how to make anybody stop and I am not going to pretend to, and the request I would gently hand back is a different one.

There is a scene in Genesis where the worst fact in a family gets said out loud by the person it was done to, and how he does it is the whole lesson.

He says the fact in full

Here is the sentence.

And Joseph said unto his brethren, Come near to me, I pray you. And they came near. And he said, I am Joseph your brother, whom ye sold into Egypt. (Genesis 45:4, King James Version)

Whom ye sold into Egypt. He says it. He does not soften it, he does not say what happened between us, and he does not pretend it was a misunderstanding.

And he says it in the same breath as come near to me, which is an invitation, and which they obey.

That combination is the thing worth studying. The fact and the invitation are in one sentence. He does not require the fact to be untrue before they can come close, and he does not require them to come close before he will state the fact.

Most families run the opposite arrangement, where the fact has to be kept quiet in order for people to sit at a table, and then it leaks out sideways as a joke because it has nowhere else to go.

You are able to hold a hard fact and an open hand at the same time. Genesis 45:4 puts come near to me and whom ye sold into Egypt in one breath. It is His Spirit, Ephesians 4:3 keeping the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace, who makes a sentence like that possible in a room.

What he says next, and what he is careful about

Read the next verse, because it is where the tone gets set for everything after.

Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life. (Genesis 45:5)

Be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves.

He is not only forgiving them. He is trying to get them to stop punishing themselves, which is a further and harder thing and which most people never get to.

And notice what he does not do. He does not say it was fine. He does not say they meant well. Years later, at the end of the book, he says plainly ye thought evil against me, and he says it to their faces without withdrawing anything he said here.

Both are true and he holds both. The thing was evil and the outcome was used, and neither cancels the other.

You are allowed to name the thing as it was and stay in the room. Genesis 50:20 says ye thought evil against me and but God meant it unto good in one sentence. It is the Holy Spirit, John 16:13 the Spirit of truth, who lets a person be accurate without being armed.

The limit Paul draws, again

For a man who wants his family to stop, Paul draws the line where it actually is.

If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. (Romans 12:18)

As much as lieth in you. He caps it deliberately, because peace takes more than one person and he will not hand anybody a job that requires somebody else's cooperation.

Which means the question how do I make them stop has no good answer, and asking it is what wears a person out. The available question is different: what do I do at that table, given that they may not.

And Paul gives the instruction for that as well, and it is not a technique:

Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye. (Colossians 3:13)

Forbearing is a word about putting up with something on an ongoing basis. It assumes the thing keeps happening. It is not a word you would use about something that got resolved.

You are given an instruction that assumes the thing keeps happening. Colossians 3:13 uses forbearing alongside forgiving, and it is the same Spirit, Galatians 5:22 naming longsuffering among His fruit, who supplies what a person runs out of at about the fourth Christmas.

And if the table has begun to take more out of you than it gives, say that out loud to a person: a doctor, a counselor, a pastor you trust, or the 988 crisis line, which answers every hour there is. Being the family story is a particular weight, and nobody should carry it in silence for fourteen years.

What actually changes at a table

Here is the practical part, and it is small.

A joke about a thing works because the thing is unspeakable. That is the whole mechanism. The energy in the room comes from everybody knowing the fact is not going to be said plainly, and the joke being the only permitted route to it.

Joseph took that route away by saying it plainly first, out loud, without weapons.

I have watched people do a version of that at ordinary tables. Not a speech. One sentence, said calmly, at the moment the reference arrives, naming the actual thing in ordinary words, and then carrying straight on with the food.

It does not stop everybody. It stops the joke, because the joke needs the fact to be unsayable, and it has just been said by the one person entitled to say it.

You are entitled to say the plain version of your own story. Genesis 45:4 has the man it was done to naming it in full. It is the Spirit of God, 2 Timothy 1:7 giving power and love and a sound mind rather than fear, who supplies the calm that a sentence like that requires.