Joseph Embracing Benjamin, by Yoram Raanan.
Then Joseph said to his brothers, "Come closer to me."
In that sentence can be found all the wisdom of God.
Let’s begin with the brothers. Joseph’s brothers aren’t just scared. They are terrified. They are in a life-and-death crisis. Their aging father is anguished, and may die in despair because of something they did. Their people are enduring a famine. They have just found out that someone who holds their lives in his hands is the same person they sold into slavery, and nearly murdered. He could easily have them executed. But —
Joseph said to his brothers, "Come closer to me."
In that sentence can be found all the wisdom of God.
Now let’s reflect on Joseph. Joseph isn’t just someone who has been harmed. His brothers brought him to the brink of death. Can any of us imagine having several siblings who reject us so badly that we lose our freedom, our home, our extended family, our future? This is a massive rejection, and a massive act of violence. Their crime robbed Joseph of his identity, of his humanity. And now these terrified scoundrels are utterly, desperately at his mercy.
If you were in Joseph’s position, what would you do? What would I do? Can we answer these questions honestly?
Jacob’s whole family is struggling to recover from an immense act of wrongdoing. To destroy a human life — even if you finally fail in the attempt — is a crime against humanity, but also a crime against nature. It is an act of un-creation, an act of world destruction. If something is unforgivable, surely it would be something like this. And how this family recovers — how they choose to proceed — will not only shape their own future. Their choices will shape the historical identity of their people. Their choices form us today.
And Joseph, looking at his brothers, appreciating their vulnerability and their panic, but also remembering the dreadful injury they inflicted on him all those years ago — Joseph makes this great and terrible choice:
Joseph said to his brothers, "Come closer to me."
Come closer, but not to be violently cast out of this life-saving place. Come closer, but not to be scolded, incarcerated, even summarily executed for what you have done, even though that is what you deserve. Come closer for reconciliation.
Do we do this? Do we really do this? Let’s be honest. Real talk: we rarely practice such forgiveness here, forgiveness the way our patriarch Joseph models it, forgiveness the way Jesus teaches it. If we did, we would know about it. We would talk about it. We would speak of little else. If we practiced forgiveness of this kind, our community on this urban street corner would be in the news. We would draw attention to ourselves. (Attention cuts both ways, of course: Jesus practiced forgiveness like this, and look what the authorities did to him.)
Now, I feel genuine awe when I reflect on all that is going on here at this parish. I really do. What we are doing here is truly awesome. Not “Oh wow these french fries are awesome!” No, truly awesome: I am startled, I am awestruck, I am gobsmacked by the many wondrous things going on here.
But I sense that the forgiveness Joseph models, the forgiveness Jesus describes, may still elude our understanding, and our practice.
I sometimes imagine us creating a “School of Reconciliation,” a center of action and contemplation that takes up the topic of forgiveness as the ultimate, divine, world-saving act that it is. Would you like to design a center for forgiveness?
True forgiveness, I mean. Not cheap forgiveness, which denies that the wrongdoing was as bad as all that, or worse, denies that it ever happened. None of the twelve brothers did this. How could they? The eleven were guilty as hell. They all knew this. Their terror was quite rational. If Joseph just blew it off, if he said “Hey y’all, bygones, it’s all good,” that would not soothe their quaking hearts. Joseph would still retain immense power over them, the power of the wronged against the wrongdoers. And they would retain immense power over him, the power of the wrongdoers against the wronged. They would not be reconciled. Any peace they broker with cheap forgiveness would be Kleenex-deep. No. That won’t work.
At our School of Reconciliation, we would study the harder path. The severely harder path. Let’s begin with Joseph. For Joseph to forgive his brothers, he needs to fully acknowledge to himself, and consciously claim, the truth of his trauma. And we find in this story that Joseph does just that: He weeps several times in the story, and each time his weeping is more intense.
At our School of Reconciliation, we would then consider what Joseph needs from his brothers before offering them forgiveness. First, Joseph needs to know whether his brothers are ready and able to reconcile, ready and able to hold themselves accountable for what they have done. In the closing chapters of the book of Genesis, he tests their honor by cleverly setting them up for failure in an intriguing sequence of interactions. This little novella about the brothers reads like an ancient comedy, ‘comedy’ in its deepest meaning: a story with a happy ending, but a happy ending that is hard-won, like Dante’s Divine Comedy.
Joseph frames his brothers for theft, and forces them to return home and retrieve the youngest brother, Benjamin. If they truly have reformed, then they will handle these challenges honorably, honestly, bravely. They will prove that they have changed their ways since nearly murdering him, that they have grown morally and ethically. To Joseph’s immense relief, they pass the tests, largely because the brother Judah brings his best self to the crisis, and guides them all to do the right thing.
And finally, at our School of Reconciliation, we would consider the event of the reconciliation itself: What gifts and strengths do the twelve brothers bring to the encounter? What can we learn from them to guide us in our own spiritual, reconciling work? What did Joseph have to give up, let go of, release into the universe, to prepare himself to forgive? And what did the eleven wrongdoers have to give up, let go of, release into the universe, to make themselves both worthy and ready for Joseph’s forgiveness?
Can we even imagine the pain, the struggle, the wrenching, self-mortifying work they all had to do, to achieve genuine reconciliation? Joseph has to give up the safety he enjoys as a wronged person who refuses to forgive. The brothers have to hold themselves accountable, and give up the safety of wrongdoers who do not face squarely what they have done.
So… I wonder again whether we really do this ourselves. And I sense again that if we do, we do not do it all that often. I can count on one hand the times I have done even part of this reconciliation work, both as one who has done wrong, and as one to whom wrong has been done. Just a half handful of times. And this is what I have identified as the one thing that makes me a priest! Reconciliation is my watchword; it is my jam; it is my deepest desire. Reconciliation is the one thing that gives ultimate meaning to my life. I have sat still in a chair while artists pierced my arms painfully to permanently tattoo my body with stories of reconciliation. This, just this, is what I want most.
Yet I’ve done it only a half handful of times, and I believe my story is commonplace. Forgiveness is profoundly complicated. People feel genuine, well-founded fears about it. We do not want to excuse bad behavior. We do not want to deny, to paper over, what happened. Cheap forgiveness truly is an atrocity — an atrocious act of injustice.
It was complicated, therefore, when people offered forgiveness to a white man who attended a bible study at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, one evening in June 2015. He participated in the bible study, then stood up and opened fire, killing nine people. He was not sorry; he remains not sorry. He may simply have chosen to participate in great evil, or he may suffer from mental illness that has gravely damaged his humanity, and makes it impossible for him to participate in reconciliation.
But some of the family members of the victims offered their forgiveness nonetheless. Even while the shooter defiantly held to his evil beliefs, this is what these family members did:
The families of the victims at Mother Emanuel AME Church said to the shooter, "Come closer to us."
In that sentence can be found all the wisdom of God. But are we so sure about that? The civil rights activist Millicent Brown said that this act of quick forgiveness, this rush to rise above and respond to an act of evil by seeking pardon for the perpetrator — this is not necessarily an uncomplicated, awesome good deed. “We are the result of — and, in some ways, still operate like — a plantation,” Millicent Brown said, voicing a concern that black folks in that community are problematically eager to reassure their white neighbors that they are not a threat. At one of the funerals, AME Bishop John Bryant spoke movingly about love defeating hatred, and declared that “[the shooter] wanted to start a race war, but he came to the wrong place.” But Millicent Brown made a strong counterpoint. “Anger at this kind of mayhem is a normal and natural reaction. I am extremely resentful of what is going on in our community,” she said.
This is wrenching, hard work. Most everyone here has been wronged. You have been injured. You know how hard it will be, how much faith you will need, how much power from God you must receive, to even begin this work, to even begin to discern whether the forgiveness you are contemplating will lead to justice, or outrageously minimize or even excuse wrongdoing.
And most everyone here is guilty of something. You have hurt someone. You know how hard it will be, how much faith you will need, how much power from God you must receive, to even begin this work, to even begin to discern whether you truly seek reconciliation, or you just want to get off the hook.
Often, often, one or the other person — or community — will be unwilling or unable to do this reconciliation work, no matter which side they’re on, whether they are one of the eleven wrongdoers, or the injured Joseph. And it’s usually hard to tell whether a person or community’s motives are pure. (Or it’s easy to tell that they aren’t.) Sometimes God simply helps us to survive trauma, even when reconciliation is not — or should not be — part of the story.
But we Christians can get better at all of this, with God’s help. And we heard some encouraging Good News today. We heard that as complicated as all of this is, God is present and powerful in these complicated, even dreadful encounters, and that some encounters will lead to just and redemptive reconciliation. Here are two life-saving, world-changing, awesome, resurrecting sentences we hear from Holy Scripture on this glad morning:
Then Joseph said to his brothers, "Come closer to me."
And they came closer.
***
Preached on the Seventh Sunday after Epiphany (Year C), February 23, 2025, at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Seattle, Washington.
Genesis 45:3-11, 15
Psalm 37:1-12, 41-42
1 Corinthians 15:35-38, 42-50
Luke 6:27-38
The article quoting Millicent Brown: https://www.npr.org/2015/07/02/419405863/charlestons-black-leaders-want-justice-as-much-as-forgiveness.