Forgiveness is life: The Lives of Joseph and Jesus

I want you to close down all the thoughts intruding into your mind right now and enter into the story of Joseph with me for a moment. Imagine this: you’re going about your life with your family, doing your thing. You are your father’s favorite child and then you have this dream where for some odd reason, all your family bows down to you. Maybe you’re a little naive about how that sounds because you’re young or you’re extremely earnest and honest because like me, you’re a bit autistic, so you tell your family about your dream.

As you might guess, they don’t take it well and they decide to take you out of the picture. First, your siblings decide to throw you down into a well to kill you. Then in a last minute guilt streak, they instead decide to sell you to some merchants and you end up in slavery in Egypt; out of the family picture, left for death and/or slavery, and certainly, with no prospect of carrying on the family line. 

For those who have read the book of Genesis in which this story takes place, however, you know what happens. As the prophetic dream Joseph had reveals, Joseph ends up in a position of power in Egypt where he has been able to direct Egypt’s king to stockpile food on the basis of yet more dreams given to him by God. Joseph’s brothers are starving, desperate, without hope of surviving; and they end up having to go and beg him - not having a clue that he is their brother whom they sold into slavery - for some food. They don’t know who Joseph is; but Joseph recognizes them instantly. 

Oh wow, what an opportunity for vengeance. How easy would it be for him to expose them; condemn them; let them suffer the consequences of their betrayal of him; let them die. What a change in fortunes! The brothers with worldly power condemn their innocent brother. The innocent brother who willingly endures his brothers’ betrayal now, as his dream foretold, has complete power over whether his brothers live or die.

Does this story remind you of anyone else’s story in Scripture? I really hope it does. Because God reveals himself in this story fully and completely: the Father’s letting go and giving his Son, the Son’s willing acceptance to go into the heart of condemnation, even to the point of death, so that he can take on a mission that will save not only his own brothers, but everyone else who is starving and in danger of death, the Son’s triumph and ultimate power over death, giving sustenance and daily bread for life; the Son’s forgiveness of his betrayers. 

Let me stop here. Hopefully you’ve followed Joseph’s story and the way it is fulfilled fully and completely by Jesus, because only Jesus can forgive the betrayal of all his brothers and sisters across all of time; those of Jews and gentiles alike. And it is this very story of Joseph that Jesus is drawing on in our Gospel lesson this morning when he says to Peter that Peter must be willing to forgive not just 7 times, but 77 times; in other words, Peter must be willing to continually forgive when another says, “I know I’ve messed up and I cannot make it better.” Not to become a doormat for hatred, or abuse; but also not to return the abuse. 

Jesus’s parable about the slave forgiven by his master refusing to forgive someone who owes him, is of course directed at those of us who have received God’s own forgiveness and yet refuse to forgive those who sin against us. Notice something: those who receive God’s forgiveness don’t deserve it. You don’t deserve God’s forgiveness. Nor do I. The man in debt who asks the forgiven man to forgive him his debt doesn’t deserve forgiveness. So in one sense of hard justice, the man who doesn’t forgive has no obligation to forgive.

And yet, here’s the catch: the only reason the middle man isn’t in prison or sold into slavery with no ability to demand repayment from his debtor, is because his Lord has forgiven him. So it is with you and I. In Joseph’s story, you and I are the brothers, the betrayers, the sinners. We are starving - in famine like conditions - because the fruit of the sin that orders our lives is rotten and cannot nurture us or allow us to grow in and toward the grace for which we were made. In our baptisms we repent like Joseph’s brothers who recognize our respective sins against one another and our own brother, Jesus.

Like his brothers that now understand Joseph’s dream of his brothers bowing down to him, we too proclaim that we recognize Jesus as the one who provides our daily bread, and so the forgiveness of our sin that grants us life. Like the brothers then, we now fulfill Joseph’s dream; we bow on our knees in thanksgiving for what we have received not because we deserved it, but because God, in spite of our horrendous treatment of one another, and ultimately then, of him, forgives us. But forgiveness, Jesus and through him, Joseph, shows us, is not simply about us. It is something we receive freely, undeservedly, so that our offer of it to others doesn’t have strings attached. 

We like to think of forgiveness as something that gives us a sense of peace or comfort, or that it puts things behind us. So we sometimes attach strings to our willingness to forgive others; only if it works for me, we say. If God did this; you and I would remain in our sin. Forgiveness might offer us peace; but Jesus’s telling us through Peter and Joseph to forgive those who sin against us isn’t primarily about us. God forgives us so that we are set free from fear and despair and all the things that harden our hearts against other people. All the things that harden us and prevent us from relieving another person of the debt that they owe to us that would kill them.

Why? If they cannot love their neighbour they are dead in their sin. And while you might think this is just, remember that you are not in God’s kingdom because you are just, or righteous. You are in God’s kingdom only because you yourself have been forgiven grievous and multiple sins (some of which you are unaware of or have not yet committed). Your forgiveness of another’s sin against you then, is the way you act as Joseph as Jesus did. It is life itself, for as Jesus ultimately showed us, life isn’t your wins, your getting it right; life is your giving and doing for the sake of others so that they might have life too.