It feels like Peter often speaks for all of us:
“Jesus, I
get that forgiveness is important to the faith… the common wisdom is you
forgive someone four times—in the Kingdom of God, should we nearly double it
to the perfect number, seven?”
To which
Jesus responds, “77 times—essentially, unlimited forgiveness!” It is THAT
important,
forgiveness can re-train the world, moving us from cycles of revenge and
retaliation
to cycles of forgiveness and grace
—after all God never stops forgiving, we can at least try to mimic that generosity!
After all—God
pours out forgiveness so that our cup overflows;
consider the slave upon whom the king squanders his generosity
—10,000 talents of forgiveness
—10,000 the highest number you can count to in Greek
—literally a Myriad.
But, when
you make forgiveness into a check the box kind of thing,
when you draw a line, 7 and no more
—you miss the difficult but majestic magic of forgiveness.
More than that, you become like this unforgiving slave,
you become miserly with mercy and you condemn yourself,
you imprison yourself in the sins of the past;
they are retained.
Yes, if
it is possible, ere on the side of grace, for we are all sinners looking for
forgiveness.
… Perhaps this Parable doesn’t get you there, so consider
too Joseph. How essential forgiveness was to his story.
Prayer
Consider
the escalation we see in Joseph’s story,
the revenge cycle in full bloom, forgiveness is what puts a stop to it!
Joseph is
his father’s favorite, and he uses that closeness to maligns his brothers
to his father face.
They in turn can’t say a nice thing about him.
Then he
has these dreams where he is the most favored son of the whole world,
and brags about these dreams
—his brother’s jealousy grows,
even his parents become jealous of him.
So, the
other sons:
plot against him…
plan to kill him…
to sell him into slavery,
to lie to their father about him.
Consequently:
Joseph was enslaved and then imprisoned
for a crime he didn’t commit…
And when
the brothers come a calling, now in need, he starts with giving as good as he
got, he begins by returning evil for evil.
-He hatches a plot, just as his brothers had.
-He lies about his identity and their own, just as his brothers had.
-He imprisons one of his brothers for a crime he didn’t commit,
/just as he was imprisoned on their account.
-He threatens to enslave his brother,
/just as he was enslaved because of them.
—but eventually, before it was too late (Killing?), he pulls back from the
brink…
He tearfully
reveals who he is and forgives them, and then, after their father dies, he
forgives them again, describing the magic of mercy he had experienced
“You intended to do me harm, but God intended good.”
He had
stopped himself in mid-revenge cycle…
perhaps Joseph realized how gracious and saving God had been to him:
-Though thrown in a pit, he did not die,
-though enslaved, he found freedom,
-though wrongly imprisoned, he found himself in a position of power
…more than that, a position from which he was able to blunt the effects of
famine and save both his family and the wider world.
Because
he stepped back from the abyss of vengeance:
-he was reunited with his family,
-Jacob, his father, got to see his long lost son, and grandchildren he never
knew he had…
-his father got to bless his whole family,
-the surrounding countries were able to have enough to eat for those 7 bad
years.
Not an
easy thing, forgiveness;
as you may remember two Lents ago, we talked about the mechanics of forgiveness
as presented by Archbishop Desmond Tutu: Tell your story, name the hurt, grant
forgiveness, and then either release or renew the relationship…
it is not an simple process, but the alternative is a world predicated on tit-for-tat
revenge.
And friends,
we are called to the Kingdom of God,
where God’s graciousness splashes out of our already filled cup
and transforms the world into world of forgiveness, kindness, and generosity.
A+A
