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Debie Thomas, The Work of Forgiveness (2022).

This Week's Essay

Psalm 37:1, "Fret not yourself because of evildoers."

On January 27 last month the world observed International Holocaust Remembrance Day. This year marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the concentration camp in Poland where the Nazis murdered 1.1 million people — mostly Jews, but also Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, gay people, blacks, Jehovah Witnesses, Freemasons, disabled people, and other "enemies" of the state.

Should we forgive such unspeakable evil? Could we, even if we tried? Those are the sort of complicated questions raised by the story of Joseph and the words of Jesus for this week, and they aren't just academic. They offer us strong medicine, and take us into dangerous territory.

The story of Joseph and his brothers who tried to kill him takes up one-third of the book of Genesis. In the end, the victim forgives and the perpetrators repent. In his book Not in God's Name (2015), Rabbi Jonathan Sacks suggests that this sort of sibling rivalry is "the most primal form of violence," and "the dominant theme of the book of Genesis." Think about it — the first religious act by the first children of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, precipitated the first murder. 

Joseph's servants fill his brothers' sacks with wheat, late 15th century illuminated mss. by Raphael de Mercatelli.

Sacks gives other examples to show how in Genesis sibling rivalry is revealed for what it is and then subverted. God chooses Isaac, but he doesn't reject Ishmael. With Jacob and Esau, Jacob returned the blessing that he stole from his blind father Isaac to Esau. Rachel and Leah exemplify the "rejection of rejection." Sibling rivalry is natural, says Sacks, but it's not inevitable.

The Joseph story in Genesis 37–50 begins when he is seventeen and ends with his death in Egypt at the age of a hundred and ten. That's ninety-three years exiled from his family. The story features three sets of two dreams, all six of which are construed as divine messages.

Joseph had two dreams as a teenager, one about sheaves of grain and another about the stars in the sky. Both of them foretold of bitter sibling rivalry — that the younger brother would rule over his older brothers.

The next four dreams feature Joseph as the interpreter of dreams, although he insists that it's not him but God who gives the interpretation. He deciphers a good dream by the cup bearer and a very bad dream by the baker.  He then interprets Pharaoh's two dreams about future years of feast and famine.

These six dreams turned Joseph's life into a living nightmare. Some of the deepest hurts that we experience come from our own families, and often through no fault of our own. Such was the case with Joseph.

Joseph with his father Jacob and brothers in Egypt from the 16th century illuminated mss. Zubdat-al Tawarikh in the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum in Istanbul, dedicated to Sultan Murad III in 1583.

His brothers resented their father's favoritism, epitomized in his "coat of many colors" that privileged him above them. So they sold Joseph to Midianite merchants (slave traders?), who in turn sold him to an Egyptian official named Potiphar. This began thirteen years of slavery, exile, and imprisonment for Joseph (37:2–3, 41:46).

He was later falsely accused of rape by Potiphar's wife. Languishing in prison for crimes he didn't commit, he was forgotten by the cup bearer, who had gained his own freedom thanks to Joseph.

As history unfolded, though, the roles were reversed. Back in Israel, Joseph's brothers and extended family became beggars in a famine, whereas he was elevated to Pharaoh's second-in-command. When their fratricide was exposed, the brothers rightly expected retaliation. But in contrast to his brothers who tried to kill him out of jealousy, Joseph forgave his brothers out of a sense of God's providence.

He believed that God had a providential purpose in the wrongs that he had suffered, namely, to preserve a remnant that would fulfill the promise to Abraham. "Don't be afraid," Joseph assured his brothers. "Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good" (Genesis 50:20).

At least four times Joseph reassures his nervous brothers that "it was not you who sent me to Egypt, but God" (Genesis 45:5, 7, 8, 9). It's a radical idea, that nothing I experience happens without divine design. In the words of the song Like a River Glorious by Frances Ridley Havergal, "Every joy or sorrow / Falleth from above / Traced upon our dial / By the Sun of love." 

In Luke 6 for this week we have the uncompromising words of Jesus: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.  If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt.”  And again: “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful. Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned.  Forgive, and you will be forgiven.”

Elsewhere Jesus told an outlandish parable about an "unmerciful servant" who received forgiveness for his own enormous debt, but then instead of extending forgiveness for a tiny debt that he was owed, he imprisoned his debtor. Jesus told us to forgive not merely seven times, but seventy-seven times, or seventy times seven. The forgiveness that characterizes his kingdom, said Jesus, is beyond calculation or even comprehension. 

Jacob and Joseph, unknown, France, circa 1250.

Forgiveness on that scale is wildly disproportionate to the sincerity of the penitent, or even the seriousness of their offense. Anyone who seeks "serial forgiveness" makes us question their motives, but Jesus says it doesn't matter — we still forgive them. Nor should the seriousness of the offense we've suffered compromise the genuineness of our mercy. A straightforward yet radical offer of forgiveness, says Jesus says, made "from the heart," can heal complex, painful and egregious wrongs that we've suffered or committed.

Jesus also said that receiving forgiveness is linked to offering forgiveness. He established a law of proportionality. We can expect divine forgiveness in the measure that we extend human forgiveness: "This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from the heart." In the Lord's Prayer we ask God, "forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." Our own sense of the need of forgiveness is the basis upon which we freely forgive others. We forgive because we have been forgiven. We can only long for ourselves what we lavish upon others.

In her own essay on these readings, Debie Thomas notes how in her memoir, Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott writes that witholding forgiveness is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die. Nora Gallagher writes, "Forgiveness is a way to unburden oneself from the constant pressure of rewriting the past." And Henri Nouwen: "Forgiveness is the name of love practiced among people who love poorly. The hard truth is that all people love poorly, and so we need to forgive and be forgiven every day, every hour increasingly. Forgiveness is the great work of love among the fellowship of the weak that is the human family."

The question about forgiving the Nazis haunted Eva Kor (1934–2019) for a long time. She told her remarkable story in the documentary film called Forgiving Dr. Mengele (2007). Eva and her twin sister Miriam spent ten months in Auschwitz. Along with many other twins, they were separated from their families and subjected to Mengele's horrific "medical" experiments. Her parents and two older sisters were killed in the gas chambers at Birkenau. 

Joseph being sold, Flemish, circa 1525.

Eva returned to Auschwitz for the first time in 1984. She returned in 1995 for the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the camps, and on that occasion she did the unthinkable. She read aloud her personal "official declaration of amnesty" to Mengele and the Nazis. To be liberated from the Nazis was not enough, she said; she needed to be released from the pain of the past. To extend forgiveness without any prerequisites required of the perpetrators, said Eva, was an "act of self-healing." Through the act of "forgiving your worst enemy" Eva said that she experienced "the feeling of complete freedom from pain." 

Many Jews were understandably outraged by what Eva Kor did. How dare she forgive the Nazis? This is the dangerous territory. There's a thin line between honoring God's providence and calling evil good. We should also be wary of enabling or excusing bad family behaviors like sibling rivalry, instead of confronting them. Nor should we ever turn a blind eye to injustices like the Holocaust as if it didn't matter. 

Perhaps such daring acts of forgiveness are something that you can claim for yourself, but that you should never presume for another person. For that strong medicine that might heal us, we have the example of Joseph: "You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good." And the words of Jesus: "Bless those who curse you. Forgive and you will be forgiven."           

Weekly Prayer

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge (1861–1907)

After St. Augustine

Sunshine let it be or frost, 
Storm or calm, as Thou shalt choose; 
Though Thine every gift were lost, 
Thee Thyself we could not lose.

Mary Elizabeth Coleridge was a British novelist and poet.

Dan Clendenin: dan@journeywithjesus.net

Image credits: (1) Wikipedia.org; (2) Wikipedia.org; (3) Getty.edu; (4) Getty.edu.