The beauty of the Joseph narrative is that you get to see a family story about repentance and reconciliation from both sides of the drama. Last week we looked at Joseph’s unjust treatment by Potiphar’s wife, something which led to him being stripped and thrown into prison. Today, though, we see the world through the experiences of Joseph’s brothers, the ones who sold Joseph into slavery in the first place and who have been living a life burdened by that sin ever since. There’s the old advice that before you judge others, you should walk a mile in their shoes and try to see things from their perspective. The biblical drama of Joseph and his brothers invites us to do just that.
For healing to occur in a relationship between two people, both sides need to desire reconciliation and both sides need to be prepared to ask for forgiveness. The Joseph story reminds us that, in this life of pervasive human sin, no one is ever absolutely innocent. Joseph, for example, is no saint. He was spoiled, a tattletale, and a dreamer who flaunted his father’s affection by rubbing this favoritism in his brothers’ faces as he paraded around in his coat of many colors. Yes, they overreacted and cruelly sold him into slavery. But when Joseph ascended to power as Pharaoh’s right-hand man, he never himself tried to make things right. He never sent word to his family, to his heart-broken father back in Palestine, that he was alive. And the cat-and-mouse games he plays with his brothers when he does see them again were downright cruel.
Forgiveness and reconciliation require honesty and repentance from both parties. Having said that, rarely are the sins absolutely equal. Being an annoying little brother is not an equivalent offense to selling someone into slavery and faking their death. Injustice must always be called out and named, especially when its victims are unfairly kept silent or marginalized through racism, sexism, heterosexism or militarism. But the point is, reconciliation is ill-served if we are intent on itemizing who sinned the most against the other. Forgiveness is not a quantitative act, but a qualitative act. It is more about coming together than about making sure things equal out.
To illustrate this point, let’s walk for a mile or so in the sandals of Joseph’s brothers, especially the eldest brother Reuben. Reuben’s father, Jacob, in order to marry Rachel, the woman he loved, was forced to also marry her elder sister Leah. And Leah bore him a son first, making Reuben the oldest male child but not the favorite male child. Reuben is a flawed character. He had enough authority to stop the other brothers from outright killing Joseph, but not enough to convince them to leave him alone. Instead he said out loud, “Throw him into this pit out here in the wilderness” while inwardly, cowardly, he said to himself, “And I’ll come back later and rescue him.” But since he was unwilling to stand up and openly protect his younger brother, it is no surprise that while Reuben is away, the others sell Joseph into slavery and Reuben’s secret plan comes to naught. Notice what Reuben shouts when he discovers the pit is empty: “The boy is gone; and I, where can I turn?” The sin of his moral failing fell heavily upon him. Reuben even makes it worse by helping concoct a lie about Joseph’s death by smearing goat blood on his brother’s long-sleeved robe. Now his cowardice and deceit fully surround him and there is no place he can turn or hide to get away from it. Psalm 139 speaks about the all-encompassing knowledge of God in positive terms: Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. But for Reuben, those same words only remind him that his sins are ever before the Lord. And for years, that reality will shape his life and the lives of his brothers.
Oscar Wilde he said that when it comes to sin, the problem is not so much in what we do, but in what we become.1 To abuse drugs or liquor is wrong, but it is much more serious when we become an addict or alcoholic and our life is totally shaped and controlled by that disease. To tell a lie is wrong, but living a life built around a lie is much more serious and debilitating, as Reuben soon discovered.
Let’s jump ahead to the next scene that features Reuben. Joseph predicted that a huge famine would fall over all the land. His advance warning allowed Egypt to pile up huge reserves of grain. But Palestine, and in particular, the children of Jacob, were not so lucky. In time, Reuben and his brothers traveled to Egypt to buy food so they could survive. It is there that they encounter Joseph again, and although he recognizes them, they don’t recognize him. The power of the lie has affected both their spirits and their vision. When the brothers came before Joseph, as overseer of all grain sales, they bowed down before him – fulfilling the dream Joseph had had when he was just a boy. Joseph decided to test them. He accuses them of being spies, to which they said, “We are not spies; we are all sons of one man.” Never was a truer statement spoken, since the brothers and Joseph were all sons of one man. Joseph selfishly asks about his own full-brother, Benjamin, and then throws the entire group into prison – mimicking their earlier harsh decision to throw him like a prisoner into the empty pit. In the end, he sells them the grain they need, but he makes one of them, Simeon, stay behind, as insurance that they will return and bring Benjamin back with them.
It is at this point the brothers name the guilt and lie that they’ve been living with for so long. Vs. 21: Alas, we are paying the penalty for what we did to our brother; we saw his anguish when he pleaded with us, but we would not listen. And then Reuben finally finds the courage to speak up at last, trying to make amends for his cowardice and inaction before by saying: Did I not tell you not to wrong the boy? But you would not listen. So now there comes a reckoning for his blood. Reuben’s brothers have mixed their Jewish faith with a dash of Hinduism, believing that they are being tormented by bad karma – paying the penalty now for their earlier misdeeds with Joseph. Reuben himself has bought into the belief that God is like an IRS auditor, who has reviewed his account and found his moral actions have come up short. Therefore, as he put it, there is coming a “reckoning” for Joseph’s blood.
But here’s where my earlier point becomes appropriate. Forgiveness is not a quantitative act, but a qualitative act. Forgiveness is not about getting good deeds to balance out bad deeds, or doling out just enough punishment to erase any earlier misdeeds. God is not an accountant, nor can we ever pay off our spiritual debts on our own. And the surprising place in this story where this is demonstrated is in the bags of grain loaded onto the brothers’ donkeys.
An old Chinese proverb says, “90% of what we see lies behind our eyes.” How you understand things, interpret things, believe things, shapes what you see. Case in point: Jacob’s sons go to Egypt to buy grain during a famine. They hand over the money; their donkeys are loaded with grain and they set off for home. On the way, they open a bag to feed the donkeys and discover that their money has been returned to them. At this they panic. They lose heart, start trembling, and cry out “What has God done to us?” The brothers have been living a lie ever since they sold Joseph into slavery and smeared his robe with goat’s blood. They have kept that lie from their father, despite the pain it caused him, and now they believe their actions have caused God to inexplicably punish them by getting them in trouble with the Egyptians. Ninety percent of what we see lies behind our eyes – and so everything they saw tied back to their sins, lies and deception.
But re-play these events without the back story about Joseph being sold into slavery. Let’s say they got over their fight with Joseph and all lived together in peace. And yet a famine came; still they had to go to Egypt to buy grain; still their donkeys were loaded up and then on the way home they discovered that their money had surprisingly been returned to them. All the details of the story are the same, but wouldn’t their reaction be one of ecstatic joy instead of terror? Wouldn’t they have leapt up and down, saying “Look what God has done for us! The Egyptians’ mercy and kindness are wonderful. We are so blessed!”
Forgiveness is not quantitative; it is not about a reckoning sheet, an accountant’s ledger of good vs. evil. Forgiveness is qualitative. It is like a whole different plane of existence, one in which money returned to bags of grain is seen, not as a terrible plot to ruin lives, but as an act of unmerited, wonderful grace designed to sustain lives and give lasting hope. It is a different plane of life without addiction, without lies, without the burden of wounded pride, without the voices of self-doubt and “woe is me” self-pity. It is a place of new beginnings, of unmerited grace, of burdens laid at the foot of the cross and walked away from, of sins separated from us as far as east is from the west.
When we accept God’s forgiveness of us, we see things with Christ’s gospel good news determining the 90% of what’s behind our eyes. And when we lead others to places of making amends and forgiveness, it is the difference between seeing God’s richly filled, generously given bags of grain for what they are – instead of living captive to what our broken, sinful, doubting hearts think they are.
One last story: An old folktale tells about a father pursuing a son who’d run far away, from one world to the next world. The father called out, “Please come back!” But his son looked across the great gulf between them and shouted, “I can’t go that far!” So his father yelled to the son, “Then just come back halfway!” But his son replied, “I can’t go back halfway!” So finally his father shouted, “Walk back as far as you can! I’ll go the rest of the way!”2
The problem is not what we do but in what we become. Christ calls us to a new way of life, a way shaped by generous, unmerited forgiveness – which takes us to a new place altogether. And God’s love in Christ is so gracious that it doesn’t measure whether we walk halfway or not. The promise is that as we make amends – as we turn away from lies, from brokenness, from sin and come back, God will go the rest of the way and welcome us home at last.
AMEN
1 Ron Hansen, Atticus, p. 244.