Joseph and his Princess Dress

Joseph and his Princess Dress

Sermon Preached by Rev’d Ross Meikle

Sunday 27 July 2025

In my early twenties, I attended a performance slash lecture by a queer Quaker theologian and storyteller, Peterson Toscano. Through Bible study and imagination, Peterson revealed new and valid ways of reading and understanding scripture that affirm the wide spectrum of gender and sexual identities.

One such Bible character is Joseph of the technicolour dreamcoat fame, who we meet later in life in his position of authority in Egypt.

But as a child, we are told that Joseph is very different from his brothers, who are hardy shepherds going out into the wilderness and protecting their flocks from all that would harm them – wolves, weather, and more. They are perhaps more like their uncle Esau – the hairy man’s man – than their own father Jacob, the smooth man who spent his time around the tents, the dominion of women.

In Jacob and Esau we see two types of man.

Esau is hairy and a simple man. When he is hungry he wants food and he gives up his inheritance for a meal.

Jacob is a smooth and intelligent man – and his mother’s favourite. He is conniving and tricks his brother and his father so that he will receive his father’s deathbed blessing instead.

Perhaps Jacob therefore shows preference to his son Joseph not only because he reminds Jacob of his favourite wife, Rebecca, but also because he is, as it were, a smooth man too: a different kind of man to his more rough-and-ready brothers.

Joseph has dreams and ambitions above his station and inheritance.

Joseph rejoices in telling his brothers that he will surpass them.

He’s precocious.

And then comes the coat.

The Hebrew phrase is ambiguous: the phrase is kennet passim, and it is only found in one other place in the Hebrew Scriptures. In the story of Tamar the daughter of King David in Second Samuel where it is described as a dress worn by the virgin daughter of the king. A valid translation could be: princess dress.

Jacob buys his son a princess dress.

And Joseph wears it all the time, even out into the fields as he is sent to his brothers. But they loathe him and they loathe his dress. It’s a further humiliation for them as they brother flaunts his difference to them and everyone who lives and works with and around them.

They plan to kill him. Reuben stops them and they sell him as a slave instead, and they take Joseph’s princess dress and they destroy it. It is abhorrent to them.  If it was simply a nice coat, they would have saved it and kept it for themselves. But no. It must be destroyed like Joseph needed to be destroyed.

This weekend, London played host again to Trans Pride protest and parade. [stats]

The trans and gender non-conforming community are among the most persecuted in the western world at the moment. Billionaire public figures and authors back cruel campaigns that vilify a different 1% who by and large just want to live their life in a way that is bearable. For trans people, it is softer on the soul to endure the slings and arrows of a hateful public than to continue to live a lie.

And as Christians, what is our call?

To proclaim good news to those who are oppressed and freedom to those who feel chained.

Saint Paul writes to the church in Corinth, and in our reading today teaches them the way of holiness – to not become idolators, to not engage in sexual immorality (likely meaning having non-consensual sex with Greek temple priestesses and young boys), to not test Christ, and to not complain.

And he draws all that together by talking about unity within the community and a reflection of the Eucharist. We are one body because we all share in one bread.

These things he lists are about misuse of power and the misplacement of our attentions.

When we complain, we fail to show gratitude.

When we test Christ, we dare to think that we might know best.

When we engage in sexual immorality, we de-humanise people by reducing them to a means to an end.

And when we worship idols, we put false ideas above the commands of our God who has made us, saved us, loved us, and continues to bring us day by day into new life.

Joseph’s brothers made an idol of their kind of masculinity. That became the most important idea to them, and they disfigure and divide their family over it.

The Corinthian church made an idol of wealth and power within their community, and there was division that Paul needed to call them out on.

Today, many make an idol of a gender binary that has never actually existed, and is antithetical to a culture of respect, compassion, and love. And the Church is complicit.

As a gay Christian whose manliness looks different to some others, I was once scared that I caused division in the Church. But the now Bishop of Reading told me that I revealed the division that was already there. Division – whether it is caused by fear, propaganda, or lack of understanding – that is ultimately caused by making an idol of a human way of thinking and ignoring the higher way of thinking that God calls us to: a way of thinking that is Love.

This month, the Church of England’s General Synod almost unanimously agreed to remove a document from 1991 called Issues in Human Sexuality from the vocations process – a document written by the House of Bishops that many regard now to be extremely prejudicial against those of us who aren’t straight or cis-gendered. And whilst there is hope in that move, it leaves a vacuum and begs the question what this current House of Bishops will replace it with, and will that reveal more division and human thinking rather than following Christ in the ways of love.

Let’s return to Joseph’s story, who finds success and acceptance in the land of Egypt – known for a different culture of masculinity – of smooth men, make-up, and flamboyant dress. And his famine-stricken brothers come to Egypt for food and unknowingly before their long-lost presumed-dead brother.

We hear the brothers reflect on their crime against Joseph, their mercilessness, and of Reuben’s regret. And we hear of the un-manly weeping of Joseph as he hears their confession.

And although there is more to the story before reconciliation, it is through a form of confession, penance and forgiveness than brings about a New Unity among the children of Jacob in the land of Egypt.

So may we repent of the idols we make of gender ideologies and expectations that create division within the Body of Christ and the world, and work for the kingdom of God where there is one welcome, one body, one bread.