Saturday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time
Pop quiz! Who in one of the readings for today posed this question?
- Pontius Pilot
- Saint Peter
- Judas Iscariot
- Saint Paul
- None of the Above
All named are excellent possibilities. Each of them had very good reasons to ask this crucial theological question. And perhaps all of them did in one way or another. But, as you know, the correct answer is 5—None of the Above.
It was Joseph who posed this question. And we might easily imagine that, given the cruelty he endured for years as a slave in Egypt owing to the collective criminal actions of his ten brothers, he might have answered: Heck yes!
They stoked their jealousy of their youngest brother for what they saw as the outsized favoritism that their father, Jacob, had shown him until they finally got to the point where they were determined to do him a grave harm. And if it caused him to lose his life, all the better.
But it didn’t turn out that way. And when famine hit the region and the brothers feared for their own lives, they found themselves in the terrifying situation of having to ask this brother, who they conspired to destroy, for help.
Of course, as they approached him, he must have seemed to them to be a god—a figure who had great power and who could do with them as he pleased. Knowing the ways of people in power who find pleasure in retribution (which they think is justice), the brothers were keenly aware that Joseph could punish them in any way he saw fit. Like a god, he held their lives in his hands.
Offering up an eye-for-an-eye resolution to the situation, they volunteered to serve as Joseph’s slaves. While certainly not a promising future for them, at least they would have a future.
Amazingly, Joseph refused their offer. Not because he had far worse plans for them, but because he wasn’t the guy they thought he was. His question was, of course, a rhetorical one—it presumed it’s answer. Joseph knew he could not take the place of God. His brothers had misunderstood not only Joseph but the one true God.
“Have no fear,” he commands them. Sure, according to the so-called justice of this world, Joseph ought to let ‘em have it. Lock them up. Throw away the key. Or perhaps torture them for a while and then have them killed. So many options open to Joseph if he pursued this retributive sort of “justice.” But he doesn’t.
Instead, he repeats his command: “have no fear.” And with that he tells them his plans for them. Not only is he not going to punish them; he’s going to provide for them and their families during this deadly famine and well beyond that. They were safe, thanks to that miracle (when done by choice and not by force): the gift of forgiveness done in love and with kindness.
Interestingly, Joseph’s refusal to seek retribution and, instead, to forgive his brothers and go the extra mile so that they might thrive in the years ahead does kind of sound godly, doesn’t it? And quite familiar.
In these times, when fantasies abound among those who have become convinced that they will not have peace until they have made their “enemies” pay, we need this story. We need to, as Jesus says in the Gospel reading for today, “proclaim [it] on the housetops.” Tell the truth.
As we know very well, Jesus didn’t enter into his passion to serve as an object lesson for what the powers ought to do to those who resist them. Instead, he was proclaiming in the most visible, tangible, and clear way that God would rather go to the Cross and die than seek our suffering or our pain or our blood in payment for our very real sins. And if God doesn’t want our suffering, by what rights may we desire the suffering of others?
Do we think we can take the place of God? Many have certainly tried over the course of human history. And the results have been horrifying—holocaust, genocide, never-ending war, starvation, torture (the list goes on and on).
Forgiving, merciful, and loving God, may we learn from figures like Joseph who you are and who we most assuredly are not. May we, like Joseph, bring forth miracles through forgiveness and, in that way, imagine God’s forgiveness for us. Amen.
—Sue Trollinger