The story of Joseph and his brothers is the first case study. Joseph was the favored child. He was lavished with attention from his parents. The key symbol of that is the coat of many colors that Joseph’s mother makes for him. Not only is he treated well, but he flaunts that in front of his brothers. They decide they’ve had enough. It isn’t that they put Joseph in his place. No. They decide to get rid of him. They sell him as a slave. Human trafficking. They lie to their parents and say he was eaten by a lion. That would be a hard thing to forgive—to take away his family, his freedom, his special place in the family, all his relationships, his home. To send him to be a slave. And he suffered. Later they met up when the brothers came to Egypt during the drought and famine looking for food and support and found their brother as Pharaoh’s top advisor. They were afraid of their brother’s anger, but instead he welcomes them, forgives them.
The brothers know they have done
wrong. Who knows what they went through
back home in the in-between time. Their
parents would have been devastated. The
brothers probably experienced a lot of different feelings: fear of being found out, maybe relief at
getting their brother out of the way, guilt for what they did and then lying
about it, jealousy because of the intense grief their parents experienced, and
maybe even their own unexpected grief.
All these years they kept their crime a secret, and now it’s
revealed. They are vulnerable because
they need help from Joseph but they know they don’t deserve it, after what they
did. They’re caught between famine on
one side and paying for their crime on the other. They never pictured a time when Joseph could
give them something of value. They only
saw him as taking away from them. They
saw him as a liability, a debt. Joseph
receives them with weeping. But they
don’t know if they’ve really been forgiven.
Maybe he is only holding back out of respect for their parents. That’s the thing about forgiveness—you never
know if the apology is sincere and it’s also hard to tell if the forgiveness is
sincere.
Today’s story comes to the part
where their father dies. Their father
had been seen as the one preventing Joseph from really expressing his true
feelings to his brothers. Now that he’s
gone, the brothers come to Joseph to see whether his forgiveness is going to
hold. They apologize again. It seems their apology is motivated by fear
rather than true remorse—or is that the same thing? Does it matter? They are not going to have another chance to
try again and do better to prove they have learned from their situation. Joseph has to decide whether to accept their
apology. Joseph has grown up a lot from
this experience of the jealousy of his brothers, his experience as a slave, and
his rise to power. He has been
humbled. He has used his powerful dreams
to help people. Again, he reiterates his
forgiveness for his brothers.
In the 2nd story, Peter
comes to Jesus asking him how often he should forgive. This comes right after last week’s Gospel
about what to do if a brother or sister sins against you. Last week we got the how. Now we get the how often. Peter is generous. One would think 7 is more than plenty. Additionally 7 is the number of perfection in
the Bible. The seventh day is the
sabbath day when we rest. After 7 times
7 years it is the 50th year, the year of Jubilee when all debts are
to be forgiven and all slaves freed.
Sabbath is a time of letting go, of forgiving. When Peter suggested 7, everyone from that
time would think of the Sabbath day. And
Jesus names a number so high that surely we would lose count on the way
there. He either says 77 or 70 times
7. Either way, it is a number out of
reach.
What Jesus is saying is to lose
count in our forgiveness. That’s where
we get trapped, when we keep score. I have
lost count of how many times I have been hurt by people I thought owed me. I can name off every little thing I did for
someone else—over 77 things I’m sure, but it really hurts when people don’t
also go out of their way for me. Many
times I have felt slighted, as if someone owed me. Those debts can be hard to write off.
Every Sunday we pray, forgive us
our trespasses, in the Lord’s Prayer.
When I pray the Lord’s Prayer on my own, I pray, “Forgive us our debts,
as we forgive our debtors.” First of all
that is closer to the original language and I am a Bible nerd. Secondly, I am much more familiar with owing
and collecting debts than I am with trespassing on someone’s property. When we contemplate how much we owe God, it
is very humbling. I expect that’s what
Joseph had done. He saw what God had
done with his life—given him insight, experiences, relationships, and gifts
that led to an opportunity to help many nations prepare for and whether a
devastating natural disaster. Unlike
when he was a kid, he was grateful. Of
course who is to say, if his path had gone another way and his slavery and
suffering continued, if he would have been so generous with his forgiveness.
This parable Jesus tells is also
complex. One person owes a few million
dollars. We don’t know if he lost this
money by his stupidity or by bad luck, or by wasting it or whether he lost this
money because of medical bills or even a drought. He is in debt more than he could ever
repay. His master calls for him to pay
up. He begs for mercy, compassion,
forgiveness. The master grants it. However, the person then goes to someone who
owes him ten bucks and demands it be repaid.
The debtor begs for mercy, compassion, forgiveness and he doesn’t grant
it. He doesn’t extend the grace given to
him to another. The first guy is going
to get away with this, but all the people in town see what has happened. They go to the master and tell on him. The master is angry. He tells him he will be tortured until he can
pay his debt, which means he’ll be tortured forever.
The first debtor is now back in
the position he started in. Maybe then
he goes back and begs for mercy and the story starts all over again. Will that master grant him forgiveness 7 more
times? Or 77? How about us?
Are we willing to stop the cycle of collecting debts? We know the harm it causes communities. We know it doesn’t make us any happier. And how do we let go of the debt and forgive
it, while still holding people accountable?
I think of the forgiveness that
some of the victim’s families offered in the murder of the Emanuel 9 at Bible
Study at their church in Charleston by a young man who was a member of an ELCA
congregation. The murderer has expressed
no remorse. Quite the opposite, he says
he is not sorry. Still forgiveness was
offered by some family members. Some
people let go of the debt he owed them—a debt that could never be repaid. Their pain will never go away. But they made a decision not to seek
vengeance and not to dwell on their anger.
But they did more than forgive—they asked for change. The forgiveness they offered was widely
reported in the media, but alongside that these families called for
repentance. They called for an end to
racism, for an end to violence. The asked
for the removal of the loophole that allowed someone to purchase a firearm in
South Carolina even if their background check was not complete. To this day, this loophole has not been
closed. They asked for the removal of
the Confederate Flag from the South Carolina State House, which happened in the
month after the shooting. On the 5th
anniversary of the murders this year the families led a call
for action on gun violence, police brutality, and systemic racism. I want us to
be careful not to use this scripture to demand that someone forgive us and not
hold us accountable. We have to be willing to hear their pain, examine how we
have been part of the problem, and do something about it. We have to be willing to inconvenience
ourselves, be uncomfortable, and act—use our power to not only change ourselves
but also be willing to use that power to make changes to the power structures
including our government and laws. Like
the king, God extends forgiveness but he also wants repentance, a change of
heart and attitude toward others.
Forgiveness
is the flowing of God’s grace and love and generosity. God asks us to get out of the way, that we
don’t block the way of that grace and love flowing through us to others. We cannot be the dam that keeps that grace
from reaching others. We have no right
to be. It is God’s grace and forgiveness
to give not ours. And it is quite urgent
that we don’t, like the man whose debt was forgiven and then he refused to do
the same for his neighbor, hold back on that grace. We have to let our cup overflow, let that grace, mercy, compassion
overflow, for our own sake as well as our siblings and neighbors. Forgiveness comes from God, from our Creator
who loves us and gives us everything good and who shows us mercy, and it flows
through us to others in a beautiful song of the breaking of chains, the release
of captives, the forming of bonds of family, the freedom from fear, the embrace
of the prodigal father, the joyful feast in which all are gathered together.
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