Gen 50.15-21, Matthew
18.21-35
There
aren’t that many Bible stories that seem to be really familiar to people who
don’t come to church these days. Even those who do come to church are often a
bit hazy. The birth of Jesus, Noah’s Ark, perhaps – but the story we heard part
of in our first reading often lurks at least on the edge of people’s
consciousness, and that’s mainly thanks to Andrew Lloyd Webber. It’s the tail
end of the story of Joseph, of technicolour dreamcoat fame, and his highly
dysfunctional family.
Joseph
is the favourite of his father’s twelve sons – the special coat he gives him is
a sign of that. It turns out to be a very unwise gift. Infuriated by the way
their father treats Joseph, his jealous brothers sell him into slavery, telling
his father that he’s been killed by wild animals. They present him with that
dreamcoat, torn and bloodied, as proof. But many years later, to their horror,
they come face to face with Joseph in Egypt where they have come to try to find
food during a famine. Far from sinking into obscurity, or being worked to death
as slave he has, by the help of God, risen to become Pharaoh’s right hand man,
the controller of the food supplies that they are hoping to buy.
They
don’t recognise Joseph at first. He eventually reveals himself to them, but only
after he has made them bring his beloved younger brother Benjamin down to
Egypt, so Joseph knows he is safe. After all, if they had tried to dispose of
one brother, who is to say they won’t do the same to another one too? The
revelation that this Egyptian big wig is Joseph terrifies them, but much to
their surprise he welcomes and forgives them.
It
seems like a happy ending, but there’s a sting in the tail, and the passage we
heard today reveals it. Even after that initial reunion, the wounds still run
deep in Joseph’s brothers. It is hard carrying around such a load of guilt,
their awful shared secret, year after year, decade after decade. Surely, sooner
or later, Joseph will want to even the score and get his own back? When Jacob,
their father, dies, all those old anxieties resurface.
Joseph’s
brothers insist that Jacob had told them on his deathbed to tell Joseph to
forgive them – these were his last words, and last words matter. In fact, if
you look at the text you find that this wasn’t so at all. It is another bit of
manoeuvring from this manipulative bunch of men. They can’t believe that they
have been forgiven, that they are safe. Their fear gets in the way. They know
that they wouldn’t have forgiven themselves if they’d been in Joseph’s place,
but Joseph names their fear and reassures them “Have no fear; I myself will
provide for you and your little ones. In this way he reassured them, speaking
kindly to them.”
Forgiveness
is rarely straightforward. It often takes a long time, and it doesn’t
necessarily look the way we think it will – a slate wiped clean, a happy
ending. As I said last week, love – and the forgiveness that is a part of love
– doesn’t mean that we should put ourselves, or others, in harm’s way. Joseph
doesn’t forgive his brothers until Benjamin has been brought to him – he needs
to know he is safe. Forgiving someone doesn’t necessarily mean we have to be
close to them. Nor does it mean we will suddenly feel all warm towards them.
Forgiveness isn’t an emotion. It is an action, a decision, a commitment.
Genuine
forgiveness sets others free, rather than shackling them to us emotionally, and
therefore sets us free to. It allows them to grow and change, and we can then
grow and change to. Forgiveness means not letting what went wrong between us
define the rest of our lives – or theirs.
It’s
much easier to say it than to do it, of course, and it’s especially hard to
give others that space to grow and to be, if we have never experienced that for
ourselves.
Through
all the terrible ups and downs of his life, Joseph has learned to trust in the
generous love of God – he’s had to, because he hasn’t had the power to help
himself. He’s discovered that God is with him wherever he is, even in a prison
cell, with his life in danger. He knows he is safe in God’s hands, and that
enables him to be generous with his brothers, in a way they can’t even imagine.
Generosity
is an essential part of forgiveness – a word with “give” right there in the
middle of it. But we can’t give what we haven’t received, and Joseph’s brothers
don’t ever seem to have known – or let themselves know - what it feels like to
be securely loved. They grasp and manipulate, as if it is all down to them to
ensure their place in the world. The play games – often very dangerous ones.
They are constantly calculating the odds instead of trusting and being open.
There’s
an attempt at calculation going on in the Gospel reading too. “How many times should I forgive?” asks Peter.”
Seven times?” “No, seventy-seven times”, says Jesus. Some translations read
“seventy times seven”. Either way, the point is that the number is too big to
keep track of – if you tried, you’d soon find you couldn’t remember whether
this was the 37th or 38th time you’d forgiven, and you’d
have to go back to the beginning and start again. “So” - Jesus is saying “ don’t
try to keep track - Just be generous to one another, as God is generous to you.”
The
story he tells is an exploration of that. When we forgive, it’s like cancelling
a debt we have come to realise is unpayable. If someone has hurt us, there is
no way they can wind back time and unhurt us again. Words that have been said
can’t be unsaid. When someone cuts us, there is always going to be a scar,
however well it heals. However much we punish others, that won’t change. When
the king in the story Jesus tells forgives the first man’s debt, which is
unimaginably huge, he knows is a cost to him. He has lost that money – a lot of
money – and he’ll never get it back. But he decides that the future is more
important than the past.
The
tragedy is that the man he’s forgiven doesn’t understand or value the gift he
has been given. Perhaps he tells himself that it’s his own cleverness that has
persuaded the king; thinking like that puts him back in control of the
situation, which, in reality, he isn’t. Maybe throwing his weight around with
the fellow slave who owes him money – a far smaller amount than he did – helps
him bolster his sense of power again after the humiliation of having to plead
for his life. But the king is not
impressed, and the result is that he is rearrested, and after all, condemned to
be tortured “until the debt is paid” which will be never, since it is so huge.
I don’t think we need to take this literally as a picture of God – parables
aren’t meant to be read like that – but it reminds us of what happens when resentment,
fear and lack of trust take hold of us. We suffer just as much, if not more,
than the person we have failed to forgive.
The
stories we have heard today are tough ones to get our heads around. They challenge us to forgive, but also, and
perhaps more importantly they challenge us to ask ourselves whether we know
that we have been forgiven, whether we are loved and secure.
They
challenge us to step out of the world of “don’t get mad, get even”, and to
accept that some debts are unpayable, including ours, and that we, like Joseph,
need to learn to draw on the inexhaustible love of God, so that we can find the
healing and the hope he wants for us and share that with those around us too.
Amen
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