A sermon for Joseph and his brothers, as well as the rest of us. Year A Proper 15

Forgiveness is a transcendent thing. Mercy, the unlimited and unlimiting grace of God, “For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable”; the gift of the Cross, the love of God that surges like a wave through the salvation story, drowning out sin and guilt over and over, washing us clean; these endure. 

But this story of Joseph and his brothers, the power dynamics (literally) at play, remind me that while to forgive is divine, we – well, we do our best. 

Let me ask it plainly: Would Joseph have forgiven his brothers so completely if they had not been completely beholden to him? Would he have been so magnanimous if he were not dressed in magnificent robes? Remember, a lot has passed since last week when we heard them throw him into a pit and then sell him to passing strangers, passing slave-traders. He has been in a place of privilege and he has been in prison. He has been in chains and he has been in charge. Now, in the midst of a regional famine, he is the one able to feed the multitudes, or to cut them off. He has played with his brothers, sending them away like thieves, tricking them and tearing his father’s heart in two. Joseph, generous, has nevertheless exacted payment for the food he gave them with the power of the puppeteer: payment in panic, payback for the terror he felt in that dry pit when they sold him down the desert. Joseph has been at least, at the very least, as cruel as he was kind to his brothers in this little drama of forgiveness. Even now, while he weeps upon their necks, he holds their fate cradled in his hands. Is that forgiveness, to refrain from retribution? 

I commend to you L. William Countryman’s Forgiven and Forgiving. He writes that,

“we are apt to think of forgiveness as a kind of complicated transaction between people that usually involves a good deal of misrepresentation, emotional manipulation, denial, presumption, and outright lying. It becomes a formula to be invoked, an obligation to be fulfilled. Then, afterward, we sometimes wonder why we haven’t really succeeded in turning loose our anger about the past.”^[i] 

Don’t we see all of that in the melodrama between Joseph and his brothers?

Is it a stretch to wonder whether the secret bitterness that Joseph still harbours in his heart, that plays out in the way that he plays with his brothers as they cross and recross the desert; does his false witness, do his less kind intentions, defile or diminish his forgiveness? Or do they simply show up, as a CT scan of the soul, the scar tissue of the hurt and harm that he has suffered, that which has to be forgiven if family life is to start over in the shadow of Egypt’s grain silos? Some injuries leave a permanent mark. Forgiveness is part of the healing.

There are power dynamics at play here, there are family histories and hurts, all complicate the story of forgiveness that unfolds, and all are present when we wrestle with how to achieve that holy grail of forgiving. It is the burden of being human. For Joseph and his brothers, that drama will continue to play out, in small and subtle ways, for as long as they live together; forgiven and forgiving, none has forgotten what he did nor what was done to him, and the practice of daily forgiveness, the assumption of grace, will be essential to their settling side by side.

It helps that they all have changed almost beyond recognition since that day in the desert. It is not always so.

There are limits to how much of the complexity of human forgiveness and healing that we can cover in a ten-minute sermon. But it would be irresponsible, too, not to name those obstacles to forgiveness that exist in abusive relationships and patterns, whether those are personal and domestic, or social and systemic. Forgiveness should change us – all of us. God’s forgiveness does change us. It transforms a fallen humanity into one that can look up from the ground, where Abel’s blood is crying out, where Joseph wails up from the pit, and know that God still loves us, that God wants better for us than this.

Forgiveness heals harm. It does not help to perpetuate it. In relationships, systems, patterns of abuse where nothing is changing, the first step to forgiveness may be to tell the truth about the ongoing harm, to hear Abel’s blood crying out from the ground, Joseph from the pit, and to refuse to cover up the crime or cover our ears. God heard them. God hears us. 

If, as the adage goes, to forgive is divine, then forgiveness is clear-sighted, it creates good and does not condone evil, it is creative and transformative and it tells the truth. It brings close the kingdom of heaven, in which there is room for all people, but not for any form of abuse. 

If to forgive is divine, then to live a forgiving life is partnering with God to create new and better ways of being. It means that when we pray, “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive others”, we acknowledge that this is part and parcel of “Thy kingdom come”: a world in which healing interrupts the currents of harm and remembers the love of God that is for all.^[ii] It is transcendent.  

It is not easy, it is often complicated by power dynamics, personal, social, and family histories, scar tissue, and, let’s face it, the very real fear of further harm. But to return to Countryman’s book once more, he concludes, “Love is the powerful attraction that the all-powerful God uses to draw us into relationship with our creator – and with one another. … Forgiveness merely shows the depth and strength of this love, which is not deflected even by repeated failure nor exhausted even by repeated rejection. 
Only the strong can forgive. God, who is strongest, forgives best. But we have been invited to become members of God’s household, sharers in God’s wisdom and knowledge, people strong with God’s strength and generosity. We too, can join in the infinite exchange of love and forgiveness that opens the door to the future.”^[iii]

In those moments of inspiration, of prayer, of grace when we remember God’s forgiveness, that is supreme, and all-encompassing, and perpetual, and healing; when we find ourselves caught up in the salvation story instead of our own, when we remember that to forgive is divine; then, when we know ourselves to be forgiven, as God forgives us, then any future is possible, even the one where love really does win.

^[i] L. William Countryman, Forgiven and Forgiving (Morehouse Publishing, 1998), 11

^[ii] See Countryman, 42-44

^[iii] Countryman, 131

Readings: Genesis 45:1-15, Psalm 133, Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32, Matthew 15: (10-20), 21-28