Epiphany 7, Year C | Genesis 45:3-11, 15; Luke 6:27-38
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church
February 20, 2022
the Rev. Jonathan Hanneman
To watch the full service, please visit this page.
Sometimes the Lectionary does some weird stuff, like today where it just tosses us into Joseph’s story at the end of Genesis. Clearly the people compiling it were trying to help us focus on the concept of forgiveness, but like many clergy and Biblical scholars, they must have forgotten that sometimes regular parishioners, even the most faithful ones, simply don’t know or might not remember all of the Bible’s stories. So I thought it might be a good idea to review this one.
Joseph’s story ends the very first book in the Bible. Although he had many half-brothers, he was one of only two children of Jacob’s favorite wife, Rachel, who died during the childbirth of her second son, Benjamin. (Jacob is Abraham’s grandchild, so we’re way back in Israel’s history—pre-history, really—long before any of the prophets or kings or even Moses himself.) Joseph is probably a teenager around the time his story begins, and he wasn’t exactly popular with his siblings. He was his dad’s clear favorite, which didn’t earn him any fans. And unless he was just extremely naïve, his younger self tends to come across as pretty entitled, even a jerk, really.
Anyway, one day Jacob sent Joseph to look for his brothers as they were roaming with their flocks of sheep. They see him coming and decide this would be a great time to get rid of him. The oldest convinces everyone not to kill him, which was the original plan, so they beat him up and throw him in a pit instead. A while later a trading caravan passes by, and a few of the brothers decide to sell him as a slave and take the money for themselves. Then they all go home and convince Jacob that Joseph is dead.
Meanwhile, a government official down in Egypt buys the freshly-enslaved Joseph. He works his way up the household’s ladder until the official’s wife tries to seduce him, and after he runs away from her, she convinces everyone that this slave tried to assault her. Joseph gets thrown into prison, where he ends up once again being so diligent and conscientious that the head guard ends up more or less letting him run things. One night Pharaoh, Egypt’s king, has a terrible dream. One of the court staff remembered meeting Joseph earlier and said he was good at dream interpretation, so they call him up from prison. He explains that there are going to be seven years of plenty followed by seven years of a terrible famine. When he recommends that Pharaoh find someone to plan for how to build up and manage the food stores, Pharaoh tells him to do it, basically making him second-in-command of Egypt.
The famine hits and ends up spreading across the entire Ancient Near East. A year or two into it Joseph’s brothers head down to Egypt in hope of buying some food to take back home. They run directly into Joseph. Although he immediately recognizes them, they don’t know it’s him—they figure he’s long dead—so he plays a few tricks on them. Eventually the brother that convinced everyone to sell him reveals his regret and change of heart, and that’s where we arrive today, with this reunion scene. Joseph quickly moves his entire family down to Egypt where they prosper for several generations until a new dynasty turns them into slaves. And that’s where Moses’ story begins.
Fast forward a couple thousand years, and we find ourselves back with Jesus delivering the Sermon on the Plain that he started last week. Remember, Jesus isn’t particularly timid or mild in Luke. He’s far more interested in this life than the next one. It hasn’t been all that long since he announced that he had come “to bring good news to the poor….to proclaim release to the captives and…to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”[1] Last week alone his “blesseds” and “woes” not only disrupted everyone’s ideas of power and respect in the social arena but even upended our concept of God’s Reign from being a place of self-indulgence and excess to a realm where everyone has exactly what they need: the Kingdom of Enough.
I can understand why the Lectionary pairs this part of Joseph’s story with today’s portion of the Sermon on the Plain, but I also have some misgivings about it. Yes, forgiveness is a noble goal and one of the greatest gifts we can offer someone, but sometimes life is more complex than decades or millennia of history condensed into a few paragraphs make it seem. It’s easy to overlook the fact that Joseph was in a position of power—his was a situation where he could afford to forgive. His brothers no longer had any authority over him. His presence and position were actually a threat to them, one we know they never forgot: as Jacob is dying a few chapters after this, they try to manipulate Joseph into promising he won’t kill them once their father is gone.
Most of Jesus audience, on the other hand, had little to no power or authority. He had just addressed “you who are poor,” but even “you who are rich” were still under foreign occupation. A lot of his listeners didn’t have an option: they had to “forgive” simply due to the power imbalance between them and the Romans. So even though these verses have become the basis of what we call nonviolent or passive resistance, part of what Jesus is saying here is simply practical advice: stay respectful, don’t fight back, don’t worry about your stuff more than your or other people’s lives.
But Jesus has also chosen his words quite carefully. He isn’t telling anyone to make friends with their very real enemies or show them “unconditional love”—those are different terms than what he uses here. This is agape, “love as action,” love that you do. He’s saying to “act lovingly—even to your enemies. Behave yourselves among those who hate you. Speak respectfully to whoever curses you. Pray about those harming you.”[2]
Note that last sentence again, “Pray about those harming you.” It’s a different nuance than “pray for those who abuse you.” Prepositions don’t often seem all that important, and they certainly don’t always line up between languages. However, this particular substitution of “for” instead of a clear “about” feels pretty significant to me. Despite how people may have interpreted and manipulated this verse, Jesus is not telling anyone to remain in an abusive setting or relationship. He’s saying to seek guidance, to discern what they—or you—may need to do!
Forgiving does not require that you stay in an unsafe situation. Forgiving doesn’t mean that a perpetrator won’t or shouldn’t face consequences for their actions. Forgiving doesn’t mean that you ever even have to trust the person again. Forgiveness inherently recognizes the existence of a physical or moral debt between two parties. But it also means that the offended person is choosing, to the best of their ability, to “let it go”—to release the other person from whatever it is they owe.
Yet Jesus’ basis for this nonviolence and forgiveness isn’t simply to be politically savvy or to help his audience remain safe in a dangerous or unstable society. He’s basing this instruction on God’s own character.[3] God is merciful. God is kind, even “to the ungrateful and the wicked.” Jesus is calling us to adopt the mannerisms and behavior of our true ancestor, the God of Heaven and Earth, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. We look back to Joseph and see a model of forgiveness, but we look to God to see something more. God doesn’t just let things go. God is patient. God is kind. God is proactive, lovingly serving even to those who hate, ignore, or reject God. God seeks the good of all creation, and Jesus calls us to do the same. Not simply to forgive, but to actively do good, to share what we have, to live as God’s children and to realize God’s reign here on earth.
[1] Luke 4:18 (NRSV)
[2] Luke 6:27b-28 (my translation)
[3] The power differential between us and God is, obviously, even greater than that between Joseph and his brothers, so I still have some concern about the practicality of all people being able to voluntarily choose to forgive. However, this could also be Jesus calling us to walk not only in God’s character but also with the authority we naturally inherit as God’s children.