Full service HERE.
Epiphany 7C
February 20, 2022
Genesis 43:3-11, 15
Luke 6:27-38
INTRODUCTION
More difficult words from Jesus today. As a reminder of what’s happening, Jesus is still giving his sermon on a level place. He’s just finished all those blessings and woes that felt so good to hear last week (ahem), and now, for those who have stuck around after that, he goes on to offer some of the most well-known and most difficult teachings in the Bible: love your enemies, pray for those who abuse you, turn the other cheek, judge not lest you be judged, forgive as you’ve been forgiven. He is describing what that life is like on this level place, this place that reflects God’s vision for the world. And friends, it ain’t easy!
It also ain’t new. Our first reading is a part of the stunning conclusion of the Joseph Story. Joseph was the favorite son of Jacob, and despised by his brothers, who sold him into slavery and told their father he was dead. He was brought to Egypt, and a wild turn of events has landed him a position second only to the Pharaoh himself! Joseph, you see, was able to interpret the Pharaoh’s dreams, and anticipate and prepare for a seven-year famine across the land. When Joseph’s brothers show up at his doorstep, asking for help enduring the famine, he recognizes them, but they don’t recognize him. He has a little fun with them, but eventually he reveals his identity. And that’s the part we will hear today.
These lessons may be well-known, but they are not easy! There will surely be something in today’s readings that really leaves a pit in your stomach. Let it, my friends. That is the Spirit trying to tell you something. Listen to those urgings of the Spirit. Let’s listen.
[READ]
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Well, I thought the part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Level Place that we heard last week was difficult! Here, it gets even more difficult, as Jesus describes what life looks like when we take the previous blessings and woes seriously, when we really do strive to level the playing field and love the way God loves. And he does not simply say, “Go to church, put something in the offering plate, and pray for your family and friends.” Nope, Jesus urges us to do things that go against our sensibilities and our self-protecting tendencies, even things that offend us, things that would make it seem like we are doormats, ready to let bad things happen without accountability.
And perhaps the most difficult teaching of all, tucked in there at the end is this: “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” I’m not sure we’d like to admit that this is the most difficult, because we know that forgiveness is such a big part of our faith. It’s right there in the Lord’s Prayer, and we start each Sunday worship with it. And yet I’m sure every one of us here has had something happen in their lives that was incredibly difficult to forgive (whether your own action or someone’s action toward you), and perhaps even something that you felt you had every reason and right to hold onto.
So today I’d like to talk a bit about forgiveness, using our first reading, the climax of the Joseph story, as a guide. In my introduction I filled you in on some of the story that leads up to this point, but let’s dwell on that a little longer, because we must understand that Joseph’s story is an incredibly traumatic one. In his early life Joseph was mocked and despised by his older brothers, which would be a lot for any kid. Then they throw him in a pit, threaten to kill him, then mercifully (?) sell him instead into slavery in Egypt, and tell his father he is dead. Joseph is cut off from his family for years to come. Again, that family trauma would be enough to really mess a guy up for the rest of his life. But it gets worse. Joseph does his best to make a life in Egypt, but then gets falsely accused of sexual assault by a powerful women, because he had denied her advances and she was mad. So he gets thrown into prison… it’s just one devastating mishap after another with him.
Finally, thanks to his gift for interpreting dreams, Joseph finds himself at Pharaoh’s side, in the 2nd most powerful job in Egypt. And his life is looking up. He’s got himself a gorgeous Egyptian wife, the best job in the land, and even a couple kids. He has put his trauma behind him, not to be bothered by it again. In fact, he even names his firstborn Manasseh, which means, “making to forget,” saying, “For God has made me forget all my hardship and all my father’s house.” He has forgotten all that pain, can you believe it? This guy has definitely moved on, right?
But then. Then his traumatic past literally shows up at his doorstep, when his brothers come to Egypt seeking help getting through the famine. And he’s thrown into a whirlwind, as one often is when something we thought was behind us suddenly rears its ugly head once again, triggering again all that pain. Can you imagine the knots in his stomach when he sees them, the shallow breathing, the sweat breaking out on his brow? When this story shows up in the lectionary, we only get the stunning conclusion of the story, the part where Joseph forgives his brothers and invites them to live with him. “Even though you intended to do harm to me,” he says in the final chapter of Genesis, “God intended it for good, to preserve a numerous people.” It’s very evolved, right? An example of faithful living! What a beautiful and inspiring story!
What we don’t hear in any Sunday reading is everything that happened before he got to that point of forgiveness. Since the brothers don’t recognize him, Joseph has a lot of power – so he plays tricks on his brothers. He accuses them of being spies and throws them in jail. He eavesdrops on them, pretending he doesn’t understand their language, his native tongue. He slips silver into their bags to make it look like they have stolen from him. And, and, several times during the story, Joseph slips away out of everyone’s sight in order to weep at the sheer pain of it all! Three times, he weeps.
We have to know this part of the story, too, because my friends, oh, forgiveness does not come easily, especially when it involves family and when there is real trauma involved. It is a process, both to get to a point of forgiveness, or even wanting to get to a point of forgiveness, and even to be forgiven – after Joseph forgives his brothers, you’d think it’s a big happy family, right? But no – they aren’t sure if they can trust him. Once their father dies, Joseph’s brothers are sure Joseph will kick them out, and they devise a plan to protect themselves. They do not trust Joseph’s forgiveness. Because forgiveness requires deep vulnerability, both on the part of the forgiver, and the forgiven. It is letting go of pain, yes, but also feels like opening ourselves up to future pain! Holding a grudge feels more powerful, like you’ve got the higher moral ground. This is so apparent in watching the way Joseph, the 2nd most powerful person in Egypt, treats his brothers before they realize it is him. He uses his power to get them back for some of the pain they caused him, pain he thought he’d put behind him, but which came rushing back in an instant.
But this way of living, in which we hold onto our perceived power and withhold forgiveness, keep the higher ground, judge one another, make assumptions about one another’s motives, hold grudges against instead of love for one another – and all this even against members of our own families – this is not the life Jesus describes on a Level Place. True power, and healing, and transformation, can happen only when we are willing to slog through all that junk we build up around ourselves, all that denial of our pain and all the grudges we hold – and find a way to let it go.
How do we do it?
Well unfortunately I can’t give you a step-by-step guide, because the process is different for different pains, and for different points of the process. But I will offer you some observations that might help on the journey.
First, remember that forgiveness IS a process. It is not instantaneous, like it seems from just reading this one part of the story some Sunday. It is not something that can happen overnight. It requires grieving what was lost, both physical loss and the loss of what could have been had the brokenness never fallen upon you. And it may not be a single process – forgiveness may have to happen again and again. In a famous story about forgiveness, you remember, Jesus tells Peter he must forgive 70 x 7 times – again and again, even the same offense, because you never know when that pain and trauma may show up suddenly on your doorstep.
So yeah, it’s a process; don’t be discouraged by that process – it will transform you and give you life all along the way. If there is anything to learn from the Joseph story it is this: that even things that are meant to harm, to bring literal or figurative death, God can turn them into life. That does NOT mean that God willed that bad thing to happen to you. Please hear the difference there. God does not bring bad things upon us to serve some divine will. But God can enter into that broken place, and the whole journey, just as God entered our broken world, and bring about life and healing there that we may never have imagined, and may never have come upon in any other way.
And that life is what the forgiveness process can help bring about. It is learning to let go of bitterness, anger, and regret. It is forgoing the need for revenge or retribution in favor of meeting one another on a level place. It does not necessarily mean a restoration of our relationship with the one who harmed us – though this is the case in the Joseph story, it is not always safe to do that. But it does mean restoration of our relationship with the God of love, joy, and peace. Forgiveness is placing the role of justice – restorative justice, the type that heals both oppressed and oppressor – in the hands of God, where it rightly belongs.
And that’s really the point: that only with God’s help is any of this possible. Because when God is in the story, we can hope for the resurrection of all things. When God is in the story, forgiveness is possible, and with it, so is transformation and life.
Let us pray… God of life, we are so broken in so many ways. Enter into our brokenness, and show us where the light can come in, bringing about healing, forgiveness, and resurrection. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment