Notes for a sermon at Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Edmonton, Alberta
February 23, 2025
Texts: Genesis 45:3-11, 15; Luke 6:27-38
Families are wonderful, until they’re not! Families have great power to provide loving care and nurture. But there is a downside: they also have the power to inflict enormous hurt upon their members. The high expectations we place on families means that when they fail, they fail badly. The same can be said for churches, the difference being that we can choose our church community, but usually have no choice in belonging to a family. Hurt caused within a family is uniquely devastating to the one sinned against.
Today’s lesson from Genesis is the climax of a story that begins with a massive wrong done to one family member by other members. It began when Joseph’s older brothers were well and truly fed up with him, their father’s favorite and dreamer of troubling dreams, so they planned to be rid of him. Although they did not kill him as they originally intended, he ended up being sold into slavery in Egypt.
We have to fast forward our story for some time, maybe decades, to get to today’s reading. (See Genesis chapters 37 – 43 for the back-story.)
By the time of today’s reading, a famine has spread across all of Egypt and the neighbouring countries. Jacob has sent his ten older sons to Egypt to look for food, because they have heard that Egypt has sufficient stores to feed themselves. What they do not know is that their younger brother had risen to become the second-in-command to Pharaoh, and was responsible for the prudent planning that saved the Egyptians from starvation.
Joseph recognizes the brothers when they come into his presence, but they don’t know who he is. He was a boy of seventeen when he was taken, and years have passed. He might have looked vaguely familiar, but they certainly wouldn’t have expected to see their brother dressed as a high official. It fell to Joseph to make the connection, to reveal his identity to his brothers, who reacted in dismay and fear. Joseph! The brother they had conspired against, now in a position to pay them back. And here’s where the story takes its decisive turn: Joseph is not angry and vengeful, but asks after his father, and calls them to him. He sends them back to bring his father and his brother Benjamin, promising them food, land, and livelihood in Egypt.
Although the word “forgive” doesn’t appear in the text, Joseph forgave his brothers, saying that God had brought him to this place to be a blessing both to the people of Egypt and to his own people. Forgiveness changed the story beyond imagining. It’s easy to see the story taking a different turn. What if Joseph had harbored anger in his heart throughout those years? Thoughts of hatred and vengeance might have ruled his life. At the very least, he would have sent them back to their father empty-handed. At worst? Let’s not go there! We could easily understand a story which went that way, but that way was not God’s purpose. God had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob that a great people would come from their line. Joseph became God’s unexpected human agent in keeping that promise alive.
Rather than lashing out at the brothers who had sinned against him, Joseph displayed the kind of behaviour Jesus held up to his disciples in the second two parts of the “Sermon on the Plain” in Luke’s Gospel. In the NRSV, these sections are titled “Love for Enemies” and “Judging Others.” The commands we read there are almost the same as we find in the “Sermon on the Mount” in Matthew (Matt 5 – 7), with only a few changes in wording.
What Jesus tells his disciples – tells us – is that the kind of behaviour the world has come to expect is not how we are to act. Calls to love your enemies and turn the other cheek are objects of scorn from others, but Jesus’ call is based on love. God loves his whole creation: the good and the bad together. Jesus calls us to act accordingly, regarding all others as God regards them. Other people may hurt us, and the world around may expect us to seek vengeance, but Jesus said:
Instead, love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, for he himself is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.
Friends, nobody said that following Jesus would be easy. In fact, it can be very difficult. As G.K. Chesterton wrote:
The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting.
It has been found difficult; and left untried.
The call to forgive may be the very hardest of Jesus’ hard sayings. I know this personally, and I suspect many of you here today know it too. It’s all too tempting not to forgive, to dwell on past hurts – sometimes long past! – and to consider how you might get back at the other. But as it has been said:
Bearing a grudge is like drinking poison,
and waiting for the other person to die.
If I nurse a long-held grudge, it hurts no-one but me. On the other hand, forgiving the other is a healing act, even when there is no possibility of letting them know of our forgiveness. By letting go of past pain, we move towards the healing that is God’s desire for all people. We can not change another person, but by the grace of our loving God, we can certainly change ourselves. If there is an opportunity to tell the other of our forgiveness, there may well be an opening to healing that relationship.
We can’t change the past. It’s over and done. But we can change the way the past holds on to us. But forgiving is not easy. Henri Nouwen wrote this:
Maybe the reason it seems hard for me to forgive others is that I do not fully believe that I am a forgiven person. If I could fully accept the truth that I am forgiven and do not have to live in guilt or shame, I would really be free. My freedom would allow me to forgive others seventy times seven times. By not forgiving, I chain myself to a desire to get even, thereby losing my freedom. [1]
Forgiving begins at home, in our own hearts, in seeking to see how God’s love may move us towards God’s ideal for us.
Turning back to Joseph, he likely had much time to ponder how his life had turned out, seeing how God was at work, leading Joseph to do good where he had been planted. He probably also had time to reflect on his youthful behaviour that had led his brothers to hate him, leading him to the repentance and forgiveness of himself that made today’s story possible. His insight about God’s purpose in leading his brothers to him was both sudden, and long-prepared.
Did he expect to see his brothers and his father again? We can’t answer that, but we can see how his years in Egypt made it possible for him to forgive them absolutely.
This was God’s work, leading Joseph to reach out in love to his long-lost family, forgiving them, welcoming them, making them part of his world once more.
Friends, let us strive to forgive, setting the past aside, not forgetting it, but not being bound by past hurts. Let us seek only to heal, building and re-building the family of God. In this way, God’s great love may become the basis of all our relationships, in our families, in our churches, and in the world.
May it be so.
- [1] Henri Nouwen, The Road to Daybreak, Penguin Random House 1990
Into the blue... 