Have you ever been trying very hard not to cry until you could get somewhere private?
Maybe you were at work, or sitting in a doctor’s office. Maybe you were in a room full of people and knew that if you could just make it to the bathroom, or your car, or your bedroom, you could finally let go.
There’s something very human about that. You hold it together. You answer the question. You smile if you have to. You do whatever needs doing.
And then you close the door.
Joseph knew something about that. Not Joseph, the stepfather of Jesus. Joseph in Egypt. That Joseph.
We’ve been spending a lot of time with Joseph lately. Because his story contains so many dramatic turns, it’s easy to think of him mostly in terms of what happened to him.
You remember. His brothers threw him into a pit. They sold him into slavery. His owner’s wife falsely accused him, and he got sent to prison. He interpreted dreams. Eventually Pharaoh put him in charge of Egypt.
That’s quite a résumé. But there’s another detail in Joseph’s story that I don’t think I’ve paid enough attention to over the years.
Have you noticed? Joseph cries. A lot.
We’re not to this in our sermon series yet, but we’ll get there soon. When his brothers first come to Egypt looking for food, they don’t recognize him. Joseph recognizes them, though. At one point, while they’re talking among themselves, they begin remembering what they did to him all those years ago.
They don’t know Joseph can understand them. They talk about seeing his distress when he begged them for mercy. They remember refusing to listen. And Genesis says Joseph turned away from them and wept.
Then he pulled himself together, turned back around, and continued doing what he needed to do.
I read that and think, yes. I know that move. Turn away. Get yourself together. Turn back. Just about every funeral I am called to conduct, that happens.
Later, Joseph sees his younger brother Benjamin. Benjamin wasn’t part of what the other brothers did to him. This is his little brother, the other son of Rachel, Joseph’s mother.
And Joseph is overwhelmed. Genesis says he hurries out because he is “overcome with emotion” for his brother. He goes into a private room and cries.
Then he washes his face, comes back out, gets control of himself, and says, essentially, “Serve the meal.”
Again, I know that move. Maybe you do too.
What strikes me is that by this point Joseph is not a frightened seventeen-year-old boy at the bottom of a pit. He’s one of the most powerful men in Egypt. People answer to him. He carries enormous responsibility. He’s survived things that could have destroyed him. He’s built a life. He has a wife and children. He has status and authority.
And he still has to leave the room to cry.
I think somewhere along the way many of us picked up a strange idea about strength. We imagine that becoming stronger means becoming less affected by things. We think maturity means you don’t cry as easily, or that faith means you aren’t shaken anymore. Maybe we think healing means you can tell the story of what happened without your voice catching.
If something from twenty years ago can still bring tears to your eyes, we may think you haven’t really gotten over it—as if, somehow, you should get over those things.
I’m not sure Joseph would agree. Seeing his brothers brought it all back. Hearing them talk about that day affected him. Seeing Benjamin tore him up.
Later, when Joseph finally tells his brothers who he is, he doesn’t calmly deliver a carefully prepared speech about reconciliation. He weeps so loudly that people outside the room hear him.
That’s not somebody who has learned not to feel.
Oh, sure, Joseph has changed. The boy his brothers sold into slavery has become a man capable of carrying tremendous responsibility. He has survived. He has grown. God has been with him through years of circumstances he never would have chosen. Running Egypt? Absolutely no doubt he learned to tackle tough situations and make hard decisions, to be strong.
But apparently God did not make Joseph strong by making him hard. I like that. I need that. Because sometimes we confuse healing with hardening.
We think the goal is to reach the point where nobody can hurt us anymore. We build walls. We learn not to expect too much. We become careful about whom we trust.
Sometimes those things are necessary for a while. Sometimes boundaries are wise. But there’s a difference between having boundaries and becoming a person who can no longer be touched.
Joseph can run Egypt and still cry. Those aren’t contradictions. Joseph’s tears tell us something important about what God has been doing in him all those years. After all his suffering, he still retains his capacity for tenderness.
Pain can make us bitter. Betrayal can make us suspicious. Loss can make us afraid to love anything too deeply because we have learned what it costs to lose.
Sometimes we have good reason to protect ourselves. But the great danger is that in trying to protect the wounded places, we can slowly close ourselves off from everything else too.
But Joseph still feels, still loves, still grieves, still longs for connection. Eventually, he can even forgive.
Maybe forgiveness doesn’t grow out of pretending the wound never happened. Maybe it becomes possible when we can acknowledge that the wound mattered very much, and yet discover that it doesn’t have to determine who we become.
That doesn’t happen quickly. Joseph’s story takes years. Even after all those years, he sheds tears.
So if you’ve ever thought, “I should be past this by now,” Joseph might be good company.
If a memory can still catch you unexpectedly, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve failed to heal.
If you can be doing perfectly well and suddenly find yourself crying in the car, that doesn’t erase all the ways you’ve grown.
If you need to leave the room for a minute, wash your face, take a breath, and come back, you’re in pretty good biblical company.
Sometimes faithfulness means discovering that God’s grace is strong enough to hold the part of you that still hurts.
God doesn’t have to turn our hearts to stone in order to make us strong. Maybe one of the miracles of grace is that after everything we’ve been through, we can still have hearts soft enough to be moved.
Let’s pray.
Father, thank you for staying with us in the places that still hurt. Give us strength without making us hard, and healing without asking us to pretend the past didn’t matter. Keep our hearts open to you and to one another, even when that openness sometimes comes with tears. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
