September 17, 2023
Rev. Mary Erickson
Hope Lutheran Church
Genesis 50:15-21; Matthew 18:21-35
Forgiveness: A New Tomorrow
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
To err is human, to forgive, divine. This old saying rings with a sublime truth. Goofing up is second nature to us. The difficult thing is forgiving one other when we do. Our nature is to goof up. But God’s nature is to forgive.
Our two readings today are focused on forgiveness. Between them we hear a question and two stories. Peter poses a question to Jesus: how many times must I forgive my brother? When someone repeatedly offends you, just how many times do you have to forgive them?
We have a saying, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Nobody wants to play the fool. None of us wants to be Charlie Brown, who never gives up hope that this time, Lucy is going to hold the football in place for him to kick. Nobody wants to be a Charlie Brown, taken for a fool.
Peter throws out what he thinks is a very generous number: seven times. But Jesus multiplies it beyond all expectations. “No, Peter, 70 times seven.”
The first story we hear, from Genesis, records the final chapter in the complicated relationship between Joseph and his brothers. This family is the textbook example of a dysfunctional family! Dad plays favorites – between his wives and among his children. Naturally, this causes resentment and rifts. Joseph is the golden son, and his ten brothers hate his guts.
And then Joseph begins rubbing it in. He tells his brothers about dreams he’s had where his brothers submit to him. Finally, they grab an opportunity to get rid of their grating brother for good. They sell him into slavery and tell Dad that Joseph was eaten by a wild animal.
Joseph’s situation goes from bad to worse. He’s sold as a slave in Egypt. Then he winds up in prison. His prison term finally ends when he’s appointed as the Pharoah’s assistant. Many years later, he reconnects with his brothers when they come to Egypt for assistance during a drought.
Joseph is reunited with his brothers. The entire family relocates to Egypt. At long last father Jacob is joined with his son Joseph. All seems good, but when father Jacob dies, the brothers fear that Joseph may seek to punish them for the atrocious thing they did to him years ago.
They concoct a story that dear old dad made a deathbed request: “Tell Joseph to forgive his brothers.” In some ways, the old family dynamics haven’t changed a bit. The brothers still lie their way out of trouble. Joseph must see through their schtick.
His response is to cry. What’s behind those tears? A lifetime of sorrow? Is he remembering all of the pain and separation he endured, the years of uncertainty hardship, the dread, the loneliness? Is he crying because he realizes that his brothers will never change, that they will always stick together and he’ll be the outsider?
As the tears roll down his face, the story arch hangs in the balance. What will Joseph do? The brothers begin to weep with him. Their future destiny is in Joseph’s hands.
Joseph weeps. It’s the outpouring of all his long suffering. He remembers the pain he endured. The tears are an acknowledgment of his many years of agony. They’re like the releasing of a dam. All he felt – all the resentments, regrets and anger, all his disappointments, his loneliness, his brooding – all of it is released in his tears. Those tears are a catharsis. They release him from the hold his terrible, torturous past held on him. He lets it go, the tears wash away his sorrow. And what they leave is a space for forgiveness.
Dag Hammarskjold, the second secretary general of the United Nations, wrote about forgiveness in his diary. After he died his diary was published as the book Markings. The diary revealed the hidden philosopher and theologian Hammarskjold truly was.
“Forgiveness,” he wrote, “breaks the chain of causality because he who ‘forgives’ you—out of love—takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice.”
When we’ve been offended or hurt, sometimes resentment and anger can feel like our only friends. We nurse them and cling to their bitter company. Forgiveness requires us to sacrifice them. We let go of the rage, the righteous indignation.
When we forgive, we break the chains of our resentment, our anger, the sense of our own deserving and rightfulness. We break the fetters of the hostility, the need to lash out in retribution. Those chains bind the one who wronged us. But they also bind us. They chain us to the past. They rivet us into the deeds of yesterday so that we can never step into a new tomorrow, fresh and free.
Joseph weeps, his brothers weep, and in their tears, all the frozen emotions from their yesterdays melt away. They create a new tomorrow, a land where mercy grows instead of retribution and dread.
What helped Joseph in letting go was looking at all that had happened from God’s perspective. Joseph could see how God had worked through all the evil that had occurred. God brought about something beyond human imagination. Joseph had achieved a position where he was able to preserve the lives of many peoples. In the midst of his own tragedy, he could see the hand of God working for good.
To err is human; to forgive is divine. Focusing on the divine helps us to come to a place of forgiveness.
Jesus tells a story to help Peter reframe his forgiveness question. Jesus shifts the focus from a human perspective to God's perspective. The parable considers who owes what. The main character in the parable owes an astronomical amount to the king, more than he could ever hope to repay in a lifetime. He asks for mercy, for more time to make good on his debt. The king goes above and beyond his request and completely forgives the debt.
Basking in his good fortune, the man leaves the palace. And as he skips along, he sees someone who owes him a small trifle. He grabs the man by the throat and demands payment. But when this man asks for the same leniency, the first man has no time for compassion. He throws his neighbor into prison.
News gets back to the king and he calls the man to account. He asks, “Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?”
Jesus takes Peter’s question: how many times must I forgive – and he reframes it with another question, God’s question to us: Should you not have mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?
We see striking similarities between the parable and our own situation with God and our neighbor. Compared to what we owe to God, our neighbor’s debt to us is trifling. But no matter how great our offense, God is ready to forgive, over and over and over again. God forgives us far more than 70 times seven.
To err is human; to forgive divine. This is most certainly true. Forgiveness flows from God. God is the source of all forgiveness. Forgiveness is indeed divine.
Joseph also asked question that helps to frame his situation from God’s perspective. He asks his brothers, “Am I in the place of God?” At the end of the day, judgment is in God’s hands. And God’s judgment bends towards mercy.
God’s judgment was made perfect in the actions of our Lord Jesus Christ. He came into our sin-sick world and he came on a mission: to be the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. To err is human; to forgive is divine. In his actions on the cross, Jesus absorbed into himself the sin of the world.
Hammarskjold’s words about forgiveness and sacrifice were perfected in Jesus: “Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who ‘forgives’ you—out of love—takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice.”
In dying on the cross, Jesus took upon himself the consequences of all the world’s errors. We have been forgiven and freed: forgiven from our sin, and freed into a new day in Christ, as new as the day he rose from his tomb.
To err is human; to forgive is divine. May the divine mercies of forgiveness flow through us, that we may forgive one another.
