I'm sure we'd all agree it is important to forgive others, and to be forgiven. But we all know that in reality it can be very challenging to forgive those who hurt us deeply and it can also be hard to let go of our own guilt when we have hurt others and to truly accept we've been forgiven. Perhaps we can ask ourselves this morning how much our awareness of God's love and forgiveness towards us affects how we relate to one another? Can we look beyond our own perspective to see the bigger picture where God's grace is at work? Our readings this morning encourage and challenge us to do just that.
We begin with the reading from Genesis, which tells of one of the concluding episodes in the story of Joseph. Some of us have been looking at the story of Joseph over the last few weeks in our online Bible stories and a number of us met together for a fun evening to watch the musical Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat. Let's remind ourselves of the story.
Joseph is his father Jacob's favourite son and this certainly does not endear him to his other 11 brothers. Their resentment and anger towards Joseph is exacerbated when he tells them his dreams which involve his father and brothers bowing down to him. Joseph's brothers find him insufferable and decide to kill him, but when the opportunity arises instead they sell him to some traders and he is taken away in slavery to Egypt. But that is not the end of Joseph, because God is with him. Joseph's skills and capacities are recognized first by Potiphar and then, after various setbacks including a miserable time in prison, by Pharaoh himself. After successfully interpreting Pharaoh's dreams, Joseph is established as the second in command over the whole of Egypt, and given the task of overseeing the food stores of the country at a time of famine. Meanwhile, Joseph's family are suffering from terrible famine back in Canaan and, hearing there is food in Egypt, the brothers travel there to buy food.
When Joseph sees his brothers he instantly recognizes them, but in his guise as an Egyptian lord they don't recognize him. Eventually Joseph reveals to them who he is and there is a very emotional reconciliation scene with much weeping and embracing. We heard that scene read a few weeks ago in church and David reflected on it in his sermon.
We might think that was the end of the story. But in today's reading we have a further episode in the story of Joseph and his brothers. Jacob, their father, has now died, and Joseph's brothers begin to doubt his forgiveness of them earlier. 'What if Joseph still bears a grudge against us and pays us back in full for all the wrong that we did to him?' they ask one another. They are certainly afraid: has Joseph really forgiven them? How will he react now their father is dead? Will he now demand they pay for what they did to him? Perhaps they also feel a burden of guilt for all that they did. So, they tell Joseph that their father Jacob urged him to forgive them. We don't know whether Jacob said any such thing, or whether this is simply a story they tell to try to persuade Joseph to forgive them.
So it seems the brothers are still not sure of their relationship with Joseph. They fall down before him and say 'we are here as your slaves', fulfilling in fact the dream Joseph had had as a young man of his family bowing down before him. But Joseph has learned a few things along the way, through his experiences of both suffering and deliverance. He is not the same man now as he was then.
'Am I in the place of God?' he says. Joseph knows now that it is not all about him; that he is not the hero of his own story. Joseph has learned, and wants his brothers to learn, that something bigger has been at work. This is not just a story of broken relationships, sin, guilt and forgiveness within a family. This is not just a human story of Joseph and his brothers. They have all been part of a bigger story, in which God is the chief actor. God's gracious purposes have been at work through everything, and even the evil they intended has been turned to good. Joseph, sold in slavery in Egypt, has risen to a position in which to provide food and save lives, not only in Egypt but also for the surrounding nations, which includes his own family.
So, Joseph's brothers don't need to fear. They don't need to be bowed down by guilt or feel trapped by their own shameful past. God's grace can transform everything for good.
This is a powerful message for us too. We may sometimes be burdened by the failures of our past, unable to let go of our guilt and believe that we are forgiven. Failure, fear, and guilt can weigh us down and even paralyse us. We need always to remind ourselves of the bigger picture. God's grace can use even our failures and mistakes in his purposes. As Paul says in Romans: 'we know that all things work together for good for those who love God, those he has called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28).
I am reminded of some powerful words of Johann Tauler, one of the so-called Rhineland Mystics of 14th century. He uses the image of a horse and its dung or manure which makes the field fruitful, and he says that our forgiven failures can be used in the same fruitful way through God's purposes:
'The horse drops dung in the stable. Although the dung is unclean and evil smelling, the same horse laboriously pulls the same dung to the fields where fine wheat and good sweet wine grow from it which would never grow so well if the dung were not there. Now, your own faults, of which you cannot rid yourself or overcome are your dung. These you should carry with much effort and labour to the field of God's will in true detachment from yourself. Scatter your dung on this noble field, and without any doubt, there shall spring up noble and delightful fruit.'
God's gracious purposes are at work in the story of Joseph. Can we also trust his gracious purposes are at work in our own lives, even through the painful and shameful times? Even when we fail God and fail others, we can be forgiven and God can bring good out of it.
Turning to our gospel reading this morning, we see another challenge to look beyond ourselves and our own perspective. Where Joseph and his brothers are encouraged to see their own guilt, failure and forgiveness, within the bigger picture of God's grace, the parable Jesus tells shows the dreadful consequences of being unable to recognize that bigger picture.
Peter asks Jesus 'how often should I forgive my brother?' and part of Jesus' reply to Peter is to tell a parable. Here he compares forgiveness to the cancelling of a debt, and tells the story of a king who has several servants. One of them is called in to pay an enormous debt of ten thousand talents. This is an unbelievable amount of money; one talent was worth more than fifteen years' wages for a labourer, so this amount of money is beyond imagining - around a billion francs to us.
The servant pleads with the king 'be patient with me and I will repay everything'. Of course, he's clutching at straws as he'd never be able to repay such a debt. But the king does a very remarkable thing; he cancels the debt completely and the servant go.
We can imagine his huge sense of relief and joy as he skips out of the palace. But then he sees a mate of his – a fellow servant of the king. This man owes him 100 denarii – equivalent to us of say 10 francs. He grabs his colleague by the scruff of the neck and demands, 'pay me back what you owe me!' The fellow servant pleads with him, just in the same way he had earlier pleaded with the king. But he has no mercy and has his fellow servant thrown into prison until he repays the debt.
Of course, when the king hears what has happened he's extremely angry. 'You wicked servant' he says 'I cancelled all that debt of yours. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?' And the story ends with the man being thrown into prison until he can repay the whole debt, which of course he never can.
The problem with the first servant was that he hadn't really grasped the enormity of what the king had done for him in wiping out his huge debt. If he'd truly understood how amazing that was, he would never have asked his fellow servant for the tiny amount he owed him.
Knowing the depth of God's forgiveness of us is the Christian motivation to forgive others. When we have realised how incredible God's forgiveness of us is, we will then have the desire and the strength to forgive others.
The challenge is to look at the bigger picture. To keep in mind God's perspective and not just our own. The servant in the parable puts himself in the place of the lord, the king, when he makes demands of his fellow servant. He is concerned with his rights and is determined that he will get what is owed to him. We can easily fall into that attitude ourselves. We can begin to build up an account of what others 'owe' us for what they have said and done. We keep a record of our grievances. Meanwhile, we think of ourselves as the 'innocent party' – not a bad person really. But the gospel offers us a radically different perspective. Whether we have committed any great crime or not, we are all as human beings riddled with a deep and destructive self-centredness and we all fall short of the glory of God, as Paul puts it. In comparison with how far we fall short of God's standards, the way others fall short of our standards is minute. In the terms of the parable - even if what we're owed feels pretty big to us, it's nothing in comparison with the millions we owe to God. Ultimately, it's to God that we are all accountable, as Paul says in today's reading from Romans.
But the good news is that, through Christ, God cancels our debt. The important point then, and the crux of the parable, is whether we will show the same forgiveness and mercy which we have received, to others. As we say in one version of the Lord's prayer – 'forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors'.
We may come here this morning burdened by a sense of failure or guilt over something we have done or not done which has hurt someone else; or we may carry a grudge against someone else and feel they owe us something because of what they have done to us. We are challenged this morning to look beyond ourselves, to look beyond our failures, wounds and resentments, to recognise God's grace at work. The story is not all about us; we are all part of a bigger story. Let us pray that we may know God's forgiveness of us and that this will give us the grace to forgive others, and let us remember that even our mistakes and failures can be used in God's gracious purposes.
Revd Helen Marshall