Forgivness and reconciliation

 

Reflection Sunday 16^th August 2020 Genesis 45: 1 – 15

 

If you’ve ever seen the musical “Joseph and his Technicolour Dreamcoat” I defy you not to start humming some of the songs as we look at our passage for scripture today.

Last Sunday’s Genesis passage introduced us to Joseph, with his brightly coloured coat, and his brothers. We learned how the brothers plotted against Joseph and sold him into slavery.

Today we’ve skipped on – towards the end of the musical if you like – and we find Joseph reunited with his brothers. The brothers have come to Egypt to seek help – there is a famine in their homeland. As you’ll see in the preceding chapters, at first, they have no idea who Joseph is. They think he is an important Egyptian official who ensures that they are given plenty of food to return home with. Though not before Joseph plays some tricks on them. Joseph hides a silver goblet in Benjamin’s sack and pretends Benjamin has stolen it to ensure Benjamin is left behind to become a slave. (See chapter 44.)

Only after all this does Joseph come clean “I am Joseph!” Genesis 45:3

At this point, it might be understandable if Joseph sought revenge on his brothers for what they did. After all he is in a position to do with his brothers what he pleases. Yet his language and demeanour show no evidence of anger. (“He wept loudly” Genesis 45:2) He sets aside his trappings of royalty and brings himself down to the level of his brothers.

Note that earlier I said, “we find Joseph reunited with his brothers”. I purposely didn’t say “reconciled” which might have been a more suitable a word. Reconciled implies I think that people have put aside their differences. And often reconciliation comes about following forgiveness or in some instances reconciliation leads to forgiveness.

You may recall that in South Africa, after the end of Apartheid, Archbishop Desmond Tutu led the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The mandate of the commission was to bear witness to, record, and in some cases grant amnesty to the perpetrators of crimes relating to human rights violations, as well as offering reparation and rehabilitation to the victims. There were some remarkable stories of forgiveness following the work of the Commission.

I think it’s also worth remembering that we can be “reconciled” to a situation. Meaning we are content with it. It might not be perfect, but it is liveable with.

Here Joseph forgives. (Reconciliation will have to wait until chapter 50.) Joseph’s forgiveness comes about because he believes the brothers’ actions were part of God’s plans.

⁵ And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you. ……  ⁷ But God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance.^{[a] 8} ‘So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt. Genesis 45: 5 – 8

Joseph is exhibiting Gospel forgiveness, the Good News forgiveness we think of with Jesus. God, acting through Joseph, has ensured life rather than death. Life in the sense of the family not going hungry as opposed to death via the famine. Life in Joseph not taking revenge and putting his brothers to death. But also new life that follows forgiveness. God has used the actions of the brothers, no matter how reprehensible that action was, as a way of sustaining the life of this family.

You may know the name Corrie ten Boom. She was a remarkable woman. The ten Booms hid Jewish people in their home in the Netherlands during the Second World War. The ten Booms were betrayed and sent to a concentration camp. Only Corrie survived and after the war she developed a ministry preaching about forgiveness and reconciliation.

In her book The Hiding Place, in which she tells her story, there is a remarkable scene. It is 1947 and Corrie has been speaking at a church in Munich about forgiveness. After the talk she was approached by a man who she recognised as having been a camp guard at Ravensbruck concentration camp. (During her talk Corrie said she’d been in the camp.) The man didn’t recognise her. He explained how he’d been a guard and asked for her forgiveness.

Corrie says that when the man offered his hand she froze. Until by saying a silent prayer asking for strength to forgive.

And so woodenly, mechanically, I thrust my hand into the one stretched out to me. And as I did, an incredible thing took place. The current started in my shoulder, raced down my arm, sprang into our joined hands. And then this healing warmth seemed to flood my whole being, bringing tears to my eyes.

“I forgive you, brother!” I cried. “With all my heart!”

That was not the end. Corrie – naturally – felt angry towards the man, and this anger stayed with her for some time. She wrote:

Help came in the form of a kindly Lutheran pastor to whom I confessed my failure after two sleepless weeks.

“Up in that church tower,” he said, “is a bell which is rung by pulling on a rope. After the sexton lets go of the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. First ding then dong. Slower and slower until there’s a final dong and it stops.

“I believe the same thing is true of forgiveness. When we forgive someone, we take our hand off the rope. But if we’ve been tugging at our grievances for a long time, we mustn’t be surprised if the old angry thoughts keep coming for a while. They’re just the ding-dongs of the old bell slowing down.”

And so it proved to be. There were a few more midnight reverberations, a couple of dings when the subject came up in my conversation. But the force–which was my willingness in the matter–had gone out of them. They came less and less often and at last stopped altogether.

We know we are to forgive others. We pray it every time we say the Lord’s Prayer. But equally we all know it is sometimes not an easy thing to do. Maybe some of you reading this will relate to Corrie ten Boom’s story. Not the horror of a concentration camp, but in the difficulty in forgiving or being reconciled with someone who has hurt you.

If you find yourself having difficulty forgiving someone, or being reconciled, please pray about it. But equally know that once we let go of the rope of your grievances, eventually they will stop. And more over, we are all loved deeply by God and forgiven by him as his precious children.