February 23, 2025

Genesis 45:3-11, 15; Luke 6:27-38

Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you.

This formula is common within Jesus’ teachings. By inverting expectations, the disciples were being asked to move away from traditional ideas. Religious figures in that time and place were all about judging others. They would condemn those who had sinned in their estimation. And they received, they took, and they were paid handsomely for their roles. But Jesus was flipping the script on everyone.

A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap, for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.

A measure is this sense is an amount of grain. Like going to the store to buy something, what you are given by the shopkeeper is overflowing. And in the same manner, your overflowing kindness or generosity to others will be reflected back upon you.

The same can be said for forgiveness. Forgiveness is a reflection, mirroring our responses to the world. Which might be good. Or it might not be so good.

We see this same idea in the most basic of prayers: And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.

When I was growing up, the Lord’s Prayer was more of a mantra than it was something I gave any deep thought. You learned to say the prayer quickly as a Catholic schoolboy because you were often tasked with saying prayers as a form of penance. Say ten Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys and your sins will be forgiven.

That concept might be unfamiliar to someone who grew up in another religious tradition. But for a Catholic, the refrain of prayers in your head was a way of demonstrating to God that you were sorry for the sins you had committed. Honestly, I still find it comforting to pray in that fashion, again as a mantra more so than as a conscious prayer about what I am planning to do.

Think about that phrase for a moment – And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. We are praying to God and asking for forgiveness to the same extent that we forgive. It is a mechanism, a push and pull, a back and forth.

Which begs the question: how good are we at forgiving?

In our first reading this morning, we have an example of forgiveness. Well, sort of. This is the story of Joseph and his brothers. If you recall, Joseph was one of the twelve sons of Jacob, who would become the patriarchs of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, Israel being both the name of a place and another name for Jacob.

Well, Joseph was a little brother and like more than a few little brothers, he is portrayed as being quite annoying. Now, speaking as a little brother, I typically find this stereotype to be slanderous propaganda perpetuated by older siblings.

Nonetheless, in Joseph’s case there was something to it. For example, Joseph one day decided to tell his brothers that he had a dream about twelve sheaves of wheat. Eleven sheaves of wheat would bow down before his own. It does not take a fortune teller to discern that this meant that his brothers would all eventually bow down before Joseph.

He then has another dream in which the Sun, moon, and stars would bow down before him. This dream he told Jacob. The meaning of that dream was that his father, mother, and brothers—the Sun, moon, and stars—would again bow down to Joseph the young whippersnapper who never learned to keep his mouth shut.

His brothers did not take kindly to these dream stories, or to their implications, and they began to plot against Joseph. Bear in mind that Jacob shamelessly favored Joseph and his younger brother Benjamin over the other brothers because they were the children of his favorite wife, Rachel.

Yes, favorite wife meaning he had more than one. He had children by four women, two of them being slaves, which is not the most edifying life story. Remember that the Bible is generally more of a cautionary tale than a moral guidebook, filled with awful people you were never meant to pattern your life after.

Anyway, the older brothers were going to kill Joseph, but one of them, Judah, convinced the others to merely sell him into slavery. Quite the hero. Anyway, Joseph was sold into slavery and carried away to Egypt. There, his ability to interpret dreams eventually makes him a powerful figure, going from being a slave to someone second only to Pharoah in terms of power.

His older brothers were later sent to Egypt to buy grain because there was a famine across the region and Egypt was the only place that had grain. Why? Because of Joseph and his handy dream interpretations. He convinced the Pharoah to stock up against seven years of famine. So, the brothers went to Egypt and stood before Joseph, who was unrecognizable dressed up in Egyptian garb.

Note that his first dream had finally come true. And Joseph took that opportunity to mess with his brothers. He accused them of being spies. He demanded that they bring his younger brother to Egypt. He held one of the other brother’s hostage until they did so. And then he falsely accused his youngest brother Benjamin, his own full brother, of stealing from him and threatened to turn them all into slaves. Joseph staged a series of cruel pranks until finally in our passage this morning he fessed up. He revealed himself to be their long-lost brother. Ha ha, sorry for scaring the life out of you.

Again, this is not a checklist for upstanding behavior. There are few nice people in the Bible. Jacob was a con artist. Joseph was a narcissist. And the other brothers were even worse. So, when we have this series of plots and counterplots among these morally ambiguous brothers, it is more entertainment than it is a road map for how to live a good life.

Joseph does forgive his brothers, but only after giving them a dose of what they had given to him: blind terror and no small amount of suffering. As you might recall from earlier, that is decidedly not the same lesson as what Jesus was teaching. Do not judge, do not condemn. Give so that you might receive. Forgive so that you might be forgiven.

And while I do not think the story of Joseph and his brothers was intended as a case study of how to forgive, we might use that story to create a rough spectrum of expectations around the practice. On one end we have Joseph who only forgave after receiving his pound of flesh. On the other, Jesus tells us that the measure of our own forgiveness will be how well we were able to forgive. Night and day in terms of difference.

And yet, we could expand that spectrum a bit further in either direction. Joseph might have chosen never to forgive his wicked brothers, which honestly would have made the Bible a whole lot shorter. And on the other end, we might imagine forgiving people readily, easily, without so much as an “I’m sorry” for our troubles. Forgive no matter what.

Sometimes, forgiveness is portrayed like that. Because someone, as a so-called good Christian, needs to forgive regardless of the circumstances, regardless of what has happened. Maybe you were taught that at some point in your life. Maybe that was a dynamic in your family or some relationship. And I will say to you that, at least in my opinion, this is not true. You do not need to forgive. You need to be ready to forgive. Those are not the same things.

Let’s think about forgiveness. What forgiveness means and what it does not include. Imagine you are behind the wheel of your car driving down a highway somewhere in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The setting matters because we fine citizens of the Commonwealth are some of the worst drivers in the nation. You are driving along and someone cuts you off. Your heart is racing a little. Maybe a few choice words of Anglo-Saxon origin cross your lips. The car horn might make an appearance.

Are you supposed to forgive that person for their trespass? Was swearing or honking inappropriate behavior?  Should you send them a note of apology and flowers for doing so? No, you need not. That does not mean it is a good idea to lean on the horn or to engage in other road rage antics. But the model of forgiveness does not apply here.

Because forgiveness exists between people who have some sort of relationship. Forgiveness is about maintaining that relationship, that connection between people. You do not forgive the person who cut you off because there is no relationship. But conversely, it does not take too much to create a relationship, and forgiveness would then occur within the boundaries of that connection.

Maybe you recall an argument you have had with someone: a spouse or a friend, a coworker or a sibling. The relationship is the context for your interactions and the shape of that relationship is also the stage upon which forgiveness plays out.

Paul describes in one of his letters that members of a congregation should not associate with others from the congregation who persist in sin. This means that someone is sinning and has no intention of stopping so that the others should step back from their relationship with them. This can look a lot like shunning in a congregation because, honestly, that is what it was. These were not minor sins, mind you, this was not using the wrong fork at dinner.

I do not agree with everything Paul lumped under this category of shun-worthy sins, some of which I would place in the personal preference and etiquette realm, but the importance of his idea remains. It is based upon the formula for seeking forgiveness. Forgiveness in a community and forgiveness on an interpersonal level. The basic set up is repent and seek forgiveness.

Repentance may come across as an old-fashioned idea, but it is in essence saying out loud that you did something wrong. And depending upon what happened, it is saying it out loud in public or saying it out loud to the person who you wronged.

If siblings get into a fight and one hits the other, the one who did the hitting should say out loud that what they did was wrong and that they are sorry for doing so. In turn, the person who was hit should then accept the apology and then forgive. There are of course many variations of that scenario that need to be considered.

If the person who was hit also happened to get in a few jabs of their own. If the person who was hit happened to have read the other’s diary or ate their sandwich or kicked their dog.

Obviously hitting was an escalation and was more wrong in the scheme of things, but that does not mean that another apology is not warranted in the other direction. Using our highway example, the person who was cut off rudely might also have been driving 20 miles an hour in the passing lane. No cause for road rage but certainly irritating.

In a relationship, in a community, there are expectations. Some of those are obvious, like don’t hit your brothers and sisters, but some of them are implicit and not quite so obvious. There are rules of the relationship or the community that you will not discover right away. No one hands you a pamphlet. Maybe they should.

Therefore, in a relationship there should be communication. A flow of information about what is going on and if something is wrong. One classic marital trope is when one spouse asks the other if anything is wrong and the other says everything is fine. Which is usually the signal that everything is not fine and the first person needs to figure it out quickly.

And, full confession here, I have an issue with that. I think if you say everything is fine you do not have the right to complain. I know, spoken like a divorced man, but I think we need to lean into our formula for forgiveness from both directions.

If repentance requires someone to say out loud that they did something wrong then the other person must, must, must say out loud what they think was wrong. Because more than a few of us are slow on the uptake and none of us can read minds.

But, you might say, shouldn’t it be obvious? Shouldn’t it be clear after all these years? Shouldn’t, shouldn’t, shouldn’t it be? And I will say it again. If forgiveness requires repentance, and I think it does, then repentance must follow complaint. Not passive aggression. Not vagueness and wounded glances. Not you did the same thing in 1979–how could you forget?

My go-to description of how this model of forgiveness should work comes from my years as a counselor in church camp. My middle schoolers would get together and write on a big piece of paper their behavioral covenant for the week and they would all sign it on the bottom.

One of the main mechanisms of this church camp covenant was called “ouch and oops.” “Ouch” meaning you say out loud to someone right away that something was wrong or hurtful or problematic. And then the other person says “oops” right away meaning they acknowledge that they did something wrong and they are sorry for it. Then everyone goes to play capture the flag.

Now you may be saying to yourself, well that is middle school. Adults don’t do that. Yes and I think that adults are completely wrong for not doing so.

Obviously, in relationships that are abusive or destructive, that kind of communication may be impossible. Which makes those situations particularly difficult when it comes to receiving or offering forgiveness. In those cases, it might be better for there to be no relationship rather than a destructive one.

Because there needs to be a basis for forgiveness if there is going to be one. Clear communication back and forth, an acknowledgement that something was wrong, some words or some act of contrition, and then and only then forgiveness. If that is not possible, then I question whether a relationship truly exists.

Does the apology need to be sincere? Yes. Does it need to be only once and if the bad behavior is repeated, no more forgiveness? Actually, no.

Jesus was asked how many times you had to forgive one’s brother or sister—was it up to seven times? And Jesus said it was seventy times seven. And no, not literally 490 times, but as many times as the formula for forgiveness is followed. Sincerity is what matters.

What happens if they never seem to change? You might obviously question if they are sincere. You might then also question if there is a good reason to continue the relationship. In our forgiveness model, clear communication is the foundation. If someone is simply saying they are sorry with every intention of repeating the same unwelcomed behavior, that is dishonest communication, that is insincere communication.

Again, that middle school model is helpful. If the same kid again and again did something that was disruptive, we as counselors would pull them out of activities. In serious cases, we would send them home. And sometimes home was hundreds of miles away and we expected the parents to drive back and pick them up midweek. And yes, those were quite the moments of drama.

We need to be ready to forgive in response to sincere repentance and sorrow for what has been done. While there is no limit to that readiness to forgive, there is also no requirement to cut corners. No forgiveness after a half-hearted apologies. No forgiveness without saying what I did was wrong and that I will not do it again.

That might mean I will try not to do it again, meaning I might fail, but we are not quite yet at the point of no return. Forgiveness is a process that takes the shape of our relationships. Both sides need to be ready to forgive, to repent their wrongdoings, and to say out loud what they did wrong and what they think was wrong.

Does that mean a lot of talking? Probably. Does it mean more talking than a typical long-term couple might usually engage in? Perhaps. Does that mean we might be saying “ouch” and “oops” a lot more than before? Most likely.

Forgiveness exists within our relationships because it is only possible if there is a relationship. If one never existed, forgiveness is not possible. And if it has stopped being a relationship, for whatever reason, forgiveness may no longer be possible.

At the church camp, the goal was to be nice to one another and maybe to have a little fun. And to be perfectly honest with you, that is how I think about every relationship. Every marriage. Every family. Every workplace. The goal is to be nice to one another and maybe to have a little fun.

If someone hurts us, we say ouch. The other person says oops. And if someone cannot stop hurting us, then we stop playing with them. We stop being with them. Honestly, the middle school model just keeps on giving.

Forgiveness requires that the people involved in a relationship commit themselves to being together. It requires them to communicate, to be ready to say they are sorry, and to be ready to forgive. All of that is needed for there to be a relationship. All of that is required for there to be any hope of forgiveness.  Amen