A Meditation for Monday after the First Sunday in Lent
By The Rev. Garrett Puccetti
Guitar Hero
On Christmas day when I was 12 years old, I unwrapped the gift I had been waiting longingly for the past year. My first electric guitar, along with a Beatles songbook and a set of chords to some contemporary Christian worship songs that were popular at the time. Learning to play the guitar had been my dream for quite some time, and I can vividly remember the awful sound that came out of the little Fender amplifier as I excitedly attempted my first “G” chord. The sound was beautiful to me, however, as it sparked my imagination. I was going to be a rockstar, admired by people all around, just as soon as I could figure out how this instrument worked. While my friends played the popular “Guitar Hero” videogame, I would be learning that secret wisdom which would set me above my peers, as a real musician. This little blue Fender Stratocaster was surely my ticket to glory and the admiration of all my friends and family.
These childhood dreams of fame were as short lived as the Guitar Hero craze itself, but secret (or not so secret) dreams to be affirmed and recognized as important by those around me continue as a subconscious motivator, and I suspect I am not alone.
In our reading today from Genesis chapter 37, Joseph, already seen as the favored child of his father, informs his family of dreams he has received.
In Joseph’s first dream, his family, represented as sheaves, gather around the sheaf that is Joseph and pay him homage. And, as if telling his older brothers that they would bow to him weren’t disrespectful enough, he also depicts his own father, the patriarch, bowing down to him.
Even more dramatically, Joseph paints a picture of the heavens themselves bowing down to him–the sun, moon, and stars. Here we begin to slip into dangerous territory: the cosmos is to proclaim God’s glory, not Joseph’s. The sun, moon, and stars reflect the glory of their Creator, not that of a mortal man. Indeed, as the Psalms remind us, “the heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork” (19:1), and the heavens are to “praise him, sun and moon, praise him, all you shining stars!” (148:3). 1
It appears, then, that Jacob is correct in rebuking the perceived vanity in his son. Although it is true that Joseph’s brothers would later unwittingly bow before their younger brother and savior in time of famine, to perceive oneself as the center of all creation is vanity. The glory shown in Joseph’s life, and revealed in Joseph’s dreams, is God’s own glory. God used Joseph to show it is God who is at the center of the universe and master over circumstance, death, abundance, famine, and, indeed, all creation.
Ultimately, Joseph’s story shows that it is Christ himself at the center of all creation, as Joseph’s life prefigures the future ministry of his Lord. As St. Ambrose articulates, “Who is He, before whom parents and brothers bowed to the ground but Jesus Christ?” 2 Seen in a christological light, the glory of Joseph is the glory of Christ, whom he represents here. Like Joseph’s brothers, the world did not receive Christ’s message, and, like Joseph’s brothers, the world gave Jesus up to suffering and death. In suffering, Joseph, like Christ, would learn obedience to God (Hebrews 5:8) and out of that suffering, God would bring about salvation.
In his life, the debatably prideful young Joseph learned obedience to God, and so God showed his glory and proclaimed the gospel through him. Joseph learned that salvation would never be brought about by his own disordered exaltation, but that salvation comes about in God’s glory, in God’s time.
My own adolescent dreams of being a “Guitar Hero” were short lived, but I treasure each and every moment I spent practicing out of my Beatles Songbook–not because I ever impressed my friends and family with “Blackbird,” but because in all those hours I fell in love with an instrument, and with music, and learned to appreciate what God has made true, good, and beautiful in musical expression. Any lasting meaning given to me when I received my first guitar that Christmas day was the same meaning Joseph received in his dreams. All creation glorifies God, and salvation is found only when it is Christ standing in the center of everything.
I hope for opportunities this Lent to examine how I may view the things God has given me and those around me in a disordered light. For those good gifts which I see in others, sometimes sparking envious thoughts, I might reflect on how God is using those around me to further the gospel through the gifts he has given them. For those gifts which God has given me, those gifts which I vainly appropriate as tools for my own glory, I hope to remove myself from the center, so that God alone may be glorified in my life and in the lives of those around me.
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1) R. R. Reno, Genesis, Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2010), 263.
2) Reno, 264.
The Rev. Garrett Puccetti is a newly ordained transitional deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of Central Florida and a senior M.Div student at Nashotah House. Garrett and his wife Erin came to Nashotah from Louisville, Kentucky, where they attended St. Francis in the Fields Episcopal Church. Garrett is looking forward to his final semester at Nashotah House and to future service in parish ministry. The readings for the preceding devotional may be located here from Forward Movement.
