Unpleasantville – Siblings
Sycamore Creek Church
Genesis 50:14-21
Tom Arthur
January 31, 2010
Download this sermon at www.sycamorecreekchurch.org/messages
Note to reader: This is a manuscript and not a transcript. While I prepare a manuscript, I don’t preach from it. All the major points are here, but there are bound to be some small differences from the sermon as it was preached live. Also, expect some “bonus” material that wasn’t in the live sermon.
Peace, Friends!
What is it about our brothers and sisters that turns us into, well, such nasty people? If you’re like me and you’ve only really ever been in one fist fight in your life, then it was probably with one of your siblings. And yet, these are family members that we dearly love and would be there for in a moment’s notice.
We continue in our series called Unpleasantville: the Genesis of Messy Relationships. Today we’re looking at siblings, but this is really a sermon about forgiveness that happens to be based on a biblical story about brothers. So, while I’m talking about siblings, this sermon could easily be about forgiveness in any context. So consider the definition of “brother” or “sister” to be very broad: your biological brothers and sisters or your spiritual brothers and sisters or your neighborly brothers and sisters.
Let’s begin with a story from Genesis about brothers; twelve brothers to be exact. This is probably one of the stories that if you don’t know anything else about the Bible, you’ll know this story about Joseph and his brothers because it’s been told in so many different ways in our pop-culture. The basic plot-line of the story is this: Joseph is a little brat that his father loves more than his other brothers. This upsets his older brothers and so they sell Joseph into slavery in Egypt. Joseph trusts in God in this bad situation and ends up working his way up from slavery to the second position in all of Egypt. There’s a famine in his brothers’ homeland and they come to Egypt looking for food. What they find there, along with food, is their bratty little brother who is now in a position of supreme power. Joseph shows them mercy, but when their father dies, Joseph’s brothers wonder if he will continue to show them mercy. That’s where we pick up the story now.
Genesis 50:14-21 (NLT)
14 Then Joseph returned to Egypt with his brothers and all who had accompanied him to his father’s funeral. 15 But now that their father was dead, Joseph’s brothers became afraid. “Now Joseph will pay us back for all the evil we did to him,” they said. 16 So they sent this message to Joseph: “Before your father died, he instructed us 17 to say to you: ‘Forgive your brothers for the great evil they did to you.’ So we, the servants of the God of your father, beg you to forgive us.” When Joseph received the message, he broke down and wept. 18 Then his brothers came and bowed low before him. “We are your slaves,” they said.
19 But Joseph told them, “Don’t be afraid of me. Am I God, to judge and punish you? 20 As far as I am concerned, God turned into good what you meant for evil. He brought me to the high position I have today so I could save the lives of many people. 21 No, don’t be afraid. Indeed, I myself will take care of you and your families.” And he spoke very kindly to them, reassuring them.
This is God’s story for us today. Thank you, God.
A new situation arises among the brothers. Their father dies and they realize that the equilibrium of the family is shifting. Joseph’s brothers wonder if Joseph will decide to act in revenge. He does hold all the cards and all the power.
New situations in our families often bring up this kind of experience, a kind of shuffling of the deck of family relationships. A mother or father becomes ill or dies and the roles among the children aren’t so clear anymore. Words get said. Things get done. Stuff comes up from the past. In the end, nobody is feeling all that great about what happens.
I had one of those moments recently. My sister came up with the idea to have the siblings get together for a picture to give to my parents for Christmas. This was a new idea and something we had never thought to do before. We wanted it to be a surprise, so my sister organized for all my siblings (Well, almost all. One of my siblings isn’t in communication with the rest of the family so we did our best to contact him, but he didn’t join us that day.) to come to Lansing one weekend and stay at Sarah and my house. Sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it? And it was, but it also brought up some interesting dynamics.
This was the first time that all my siblings had gotten together as adults without any parents around. Who was in charge? Who told us what to do? Who got us from one place to another? Who decided what we would have for dinner or where we would eat out? We had never faced any of these kinds of questions before because there had always been a parent to make these kinds of decisions for us. It seemed somewhat natural that because everyone was staying at our house, that Sarah and I would make a lot of those decisions. Because these were my siblings, it made sense that I would take the lead between Sarah and me.
Overall, this strategy worked pretty well, but I must say that I found myself being a little more bossy toward my brothers and sister and her children than I have been in the past. I was falling into the role of the oldest and first-born child. Joe, stop hitting Isaac. Alisa, get up and moving. Rick, get over here and stand right there. Hannah, get your gloves on. Jocelyn, get your kids around the table so we can eat. When our parents weren’t around, the dynamics between us all changed, and I wasn’t always prettier for it. In the end, we got beautiful pictures of all of us together that don’t show any hint of conflict (Well, some of them have a hint of conflict!). Isn’t that how we like to present ourselves? Our families are all nice and pretty to the outside, but inside we’re hurting one another.
The reality is that with all our brothers and sisters, there have been and continue to be things between us that hurt. We have done wrong to one another. Joseph’s brothers know that they have wronged him in the past and their first step toward forgiveness is to confess this wrong. Right off the bat they say to themselves, “Now Joseph will pay us back for all the evil we did to him” (50:15).
Forgiveness begins with an admission of responsibility, and Joseph’s brothers admit this not only to themselves but also to Joseph. We read that “they sent this message to Joseph: ‘Before your father died, he instructed us to say to you: ‘Forgive your brothers for the great evil they did to you.’ So we, the servants of the God of your father, beg you to forgive us” (50:16-17). It’s interesting to me that they sent this as a message, but it doesn’t say who brought the message. Maybe it was just a couple of the brothers rather than all eleven. Whatever the case may be, they are clearly admitting to Joseph that they did him wrong.
The NLT flattens out this admission a bit and it comes off softer than it really is. Here’s my own translation of this passage: “Please, please, forgive the offense of your brothers and their sin, because they did you wrong, so now please forgive the offense of the servants of the God of your father” (50:17). This isn’t just an admission, it’s groveling. It’s begging. It’s a little pathetic. Just in case Joseph didn’t get the idea, his brothers take the groveling and begging up a notch when they bow down to him and say, “We are your slaves” (50:18). You can’t get much more groveling than that.
Ironically this is the moment of fulfillment of Joseph’s dream back when he was a youngster that got him into so much trouble in the first place. Back when he was a bratty little brother, he had a dream that his brothers would one day bow down to him (see Genesis 37). Here they are doing just that.
If admission of guilt is the first step of forgiveness, having a true sorrow motivated by love is the second step. I think it is pretty clear that Joseph’s brothers are admitting this wrong not just because of a sense of guilt but also out of a true sorrow for what they did to Joseph. This sorrow they feel is motivated by love for him. If we jump back in the story several chapters, when they first show up in Egypt, they run into trouble and say to themselves, “This has all happened because of what we did to Joseph long ago. We saw his terror and anguish and heard his pleadings, but we wouldn’t listen. That’s why this trouble has come upon us” (42:21). These are the words of brothers who realize that they have not loved their brother.
Lilly Allen, the British pop star, has a song along these lines where she apologizes to her sister, Sarah, for the way she had treated her in the past. It’s called Go Back to the Start. Here’s some of the first verse and the chorus:
When we were growing up you always looked like you were having such fun
You always were and you always will be the taller and the prettier one
People seem to love you
They gravitate towards you
That’s why I started to hate you so much
And I just completely ignored you…
Believe me when I say that I cannot apologize enough
When all you ever wanted from me was a token of my love
And if it’s not too late
Could you please find it deep within your heart
To try and go back go back to the start
Go back to the start.
Forgiveness is a two-way street. It requires not just confession and sorrow motivated by love, but it continues into the actual forgiveness of the wrong done. This is the hard step for the one who has been hurt. When Joseph’s brothers admit their wrong, we read that Joseph “broke down and wept” (50:17). Joseph may have broken down and wept because confession softens hearts, but it may have been because the pain of forgiving is hard, especially if these are wounds we have nursed over many years.
I recently read in the Duke Divinity School alumni magazine about Gerard Nsabimana. His father and brother were killed in ethnic violence in Burundi and he ran for his life. He eventually came to the United States and was enrolled in the M.Div. program at Duke Divinity School. In an interview with him he tells this story:
I asked my mother how she felt. She lost her husband and two of her sons, but she was still going to church. She said it is really hard, but we are supposed to forgive them. If we believe in God and that he created the people who did this, then there is no way we can run away from forgiveness (Divinity, Spring 2009) He told his mother that it hurts to both remember and forgive. “Who ever told you that Christ didn’t suffer?” she replied.
Joseph finds it painful to forgive and he has received a very clear admission of guilt. It’s even harder when there is no confession or admission of responsibility. How are we supposed to forgive a sibling (or anyone) who hasn’t apologized for wronging us? Joseph provides us an answer to this very difficult question in his response to his brothers: humility. Joseph says to his brothers, “Don’t be afraid of me. Am I God, to judge and punish you? As far as I am concerned, God turned into good what you meant for evil” (50:19-20). “Am I God?” Joseph realizes his place in this world. He is not God, he is a human who has at times also had to ask for forgiveness from others and from God. Jesus suffered for each one of us whether we admit our guilt or not. This should produce within us a kind of humility that opens us up to forgiving others even when they have not confessed their wrong to us.
In showing humility and not punishing his brothers, Joseph breaks the cycle of brokenness by not exacting vengeance upon them. Forgiveness always seeks at the minimum a cease fire. Don’t continue to hurt one another. Stop the cycle. Deescalate the hurtful words. Back off.
But forgiveness ultimately goes a step further. Forgiveness also seeks and desires reconciliation through friendship. We see Joseph taking this further by not just calling a cease fire to vengeance, but by also blessing his brothers through the offer of friendship. He says, “No, don’t be afraid. Indeed, I myself will take care of you and your families,” and then we read, “He spoke very kindly to them, reassuring them [to their hearts]” (50:21). He speaks literally “to their hearts” and offers to bless them through providing for their needs and the needs of their families. This is no mere cease fire. It is a true reconciliation through forgiveness.
There are many examples of this kind of forgiveness and reconciliation in the lives of Christians who have come before us. In 1983 John Paul II forgave his would be assassin. In the fall of 2006 an Amish community forgave the gunman, Charles Roberts, who killed five girls in a one-room school house. They even extended forgiveness and care to his family.
Perhaps one of the most striking examples of forgiveness comes through Corrie Ten Boom and her book, The Hiding Place. Ten Boom was a Dutch Christian who lived through WWII. Her family hid Jews from the Nazis. One day the Nazis stormed their house and carted most of her family off to jail including Corrie and her sister, Betsie. Corrie and Betsie languished in a concentration camp for many years. Betsie eventually died but Corrie made it out alive. After the war was over she went on a speaking tour as an evangelist urging people to know Jesus and his forgiveness. One day a German guard from the concentration camp where she and Betsie were imprisoned, showed up. Here’s how she tells the story:
It was at a church service in Munich that I saw him, the former S.S. man who had stood guard at the shower room door in the processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was all there—the roomful of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsie’s pain-blanched face.
He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. “How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein.” he said. ‘To think that, as you say, He has washed my sins away!”
His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people in Bloemendaal the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side.
Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man; was I going to ask for more? Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.
I tried to smile, I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth or charity. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me Your forgiveness.
As I took his hand the most incredible thing happened. From my shoulder along my arm and through my hand a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed me.
And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world’s healing hinges, but on His. When he tells us to love our enemies, He gives, along with the command, the love itself (The Hiding Place, pg 231).
Corrie is not talking here about forgiving a brother or sister, but what she experiences is just as true for siblings as for anyone else.
Maybe you’re not there yet. Maybe you’re just back at step one: do them no harm. That’s OK. Try taking it one step further: pray for the well being of the one who hurt you. It’s hard not to forgive someone you are praying for. Then take a third step: do them good. Bless your siblings in some way with a gift. The last step is the final one: extend the gift of reconciliation through friendship.
Here’s the good news: you don’t confess or forgive on your own power. God’s Spirit is there with you giving you the strength and courage of Jesus Christ.
May this be true in all our relationships and especially with our brothers and sisters.
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