Do you like happy endings?
Not every story has one, but when they do, I sure enjoy them in a story I read or a film I watch. I’m a sucker for a happy ending, and the best happy endings are those that happen in real life.
We learned of a happy ending in today’s first scripture reading. It’s the finale in the long drama of Joseph and his brothers. The story is as contemporary as it is ancient. Siblings get angry with one another, do mean things to one another, and they lie and cheat to get their way. All of that you’ll find in the story of Joseph and his brothers. The happy ending is that Joseph finally revealed himself to his brothers and revealed what happened between them. They wept and embraced and finally, his brothers talked to him.
I really like happy endings to stories, especially one like this – Joseph and his brothers make up, they are reconciled, and all is forgiven.
To better appreciate this happy ending, let’s review what led up to this moment of reconciliation.
The drama begins when Joseph’s brothers tried to throw Joseph into a pit. They wanted to kill him. It really annoyed them that Joseph was their father’s favorite son. Jacob made no mistakes in making that clear through his words and actions. They felt inferior to “Daddy’s pet,” or at least they were jealous of him.
Joseph was also a great interpreter of dreams and when he shared a couple of dream interpretations with his brothers, they discovered that the dreams were all about Joseph and how powerful and important he was. In one dream, the brothers bowed down to him and in the other dream, the sun, moon, and stars were bowing down to him.
The brothers conspired to throw threw Joseph into a pit and kill him. They threw him in a pit alright but the oldest brother restrained them from going any further and kept them from killing Joseph. Another brother came up with an idea to sell Joseph for profit. If he was sold as a slave, then Joseph would become a profitable commodity and that would be a “win” for the brothers. In the meantime, Joseph was rescued from the pit by a traveling merchant and he took Joseph to be sold into slavery in Egypt.
They stripped Joseph of his colorful and amazing robe before he went into the pit and since they had his robe, they dipped a patch of the robe into goat’s blood, bringing it to their father and pretending that it was evidence that Joseph was killed in the wilds.
Yes, Joseph’s brothers threw him under the bus!
When Joseph came to Egypt he lived under the thumb of Potiphar and, after an unfortunate misunderstanding with Potiphar’s wife, Joseph was thrown into prison. He was there a long time before Pharaoh learned of Joseph’s ability to interpret dreams. He released Joseph who then interpreted some of Pharaoh’s dreams. Pharaoh then hired him and eventually Joseph became Pharaoh’s right hand person and for Egypt a very important person.
Years later, Joseph’s brothers went to Egypt looking for food because there was a famine back home. When they arrived, Joseph recognized them, but they did not recognize him. Joseph didn’t reveal himself and pretended his brothers were spies. Along with the food they would bring back home, Joseph slipped a silver cup and accused them of stealing the cup. He then held one of his brothers’ hostage. Though he tricked them and used his power to manipulate them, Joseph still felt a need to be close to them again and when he came to his senses and his heart caused him to break out in tears, Joseph decided to speak the truth to his brothers.
Finally, to make a very long story short, Joseph told his brothers who he was. He revealed himself to them and spoke of what happened. There were mutual tears and embrace, and after a long period of family drama, Joseph and his brothers were reconciled.
Not unlike many families you may know, Jacob’s family was complex. The relationships were complicated. Read or re-read the story in Genesis and you will discover it is a drama filled with resentment, jealousy, estrangement, lying, cover ups, and manipulation. When we learn the whole story we get perspective and we realize that no one in this family had clean hands.
What his brothers did to Joseph was shameful or downright unforgivable. Still, Joseph was no epitome of the good guy. He abused his power and used it against his brothers, but in the end, Joseph, instead of taking revenge upon his brothers, tells them not to consider or dwell on the past. What they intended for evil, God used for good.
There’s the shocker. He tells them that what they did to him, God ended up using for goo.
They intended to sell Joseph to be a slave in Egypt but Joseph said that God actually sent him there to be an instrument for good. Ultimately, the whole world went to Egypt for food. Joseph saved them and all the world from famine.
While it might seem that Joseph is some kind of hero, there really is no hero in this story, given everyone’s vengeful behavior, including Joseph.
Joseph, though, tells his brothers that what was intended for evil, God used for good.
God brought something good out of an evil scheme.
The main actor in this story is God!
That’s a hard pill to swallow sometimes, especially when we ponder the world’s ills and human behavior. We might wonder why God didn’t make it easier for Jacob’s family and why God doesn’t make life easier for us.
When we feel and experience the complexities of life and the complexities of relationships, we may wonder about the ways of God. When we get hurt, trust breaks down, and jealousy or resentment takes over. This is a common scenario in families and friendships and on a larger scale among people in communities and even nations.
We do bad things to one another, but God doesn’t create these situations. We do. God is no bully. What God does promise is to be with us in all of life’s toil and tribulations. God is with us in suffering. More than being with us, though, the real miracle is that what we may intend for evil, God will use for good. God steps into our hurt and pain and creates good things.
.Say it another way, God brings life out of death. God does it subversively and quietly and over the long haul.
It was God who brought Joseph and his brothers together in bonds of forgiveness and reconciliation. When this kind of healing happens, it reorders life, and restores relationships. It is God’s work of resurrection and new life. God acts in mercy and the best part about the miracles of forgiveness, mutual reconciliation, old resentments buried, is that they may lead to a new beginnings.
When Jesus said, in his Sermon on the Plain, “love your enemies,” he was describing behavior rooted in the love of God.
Jesus is describing resurrection practices. Knowing God is behind it means we pray for it and admit we cannot do these things on our own, but in practicing them we begin to experience something of what resurrection looks like.
Oh, how easy it is to get stuck in resentment or anger or respond with revenge or retaliation, but listen again to today’s Gospel:
Love your enemies. Do to others as you would have them do to you. Why if you only love those who love you or do good only to those who are good to you, what credit is that? Love your enemies, do good, and lend to others, expecting nothing in return. Be merciful as your Father is merciful.
Left to our own abilities, we cannot do these things. They are signs of the Risen Christ in our midst. Loving enemies is no easy task, and treating others the way you would like to be treated is often very difficult, and to give without expecting payback is a challenge. Yet, these very practices make a difference not only among ourselves and in our relationships but in the world.
In fact, these very behaviors are the ways we resist evil and violence. It boils down to seeing your enemy as a child of God, never condoning what he or she does, but acknowledging and speaking the truth of it with the goal of reconciliation, but to treat the enemy in a way that mirrors violence makes no difference. Showing love while speaking the truth in love, these acts change lives.
We are free to practice what Jesus preached and what Jesus embodied. One of the most important acts the church can do is to make a practice out of loving enemies. It might just be the church’s most profound witness.
This mean that when we experience crummy things that we do not ignore them. We need to name the truth that will lead to reconciliation. That will not always happen. Healing and forgiveness sometimes takes a long time, even years but we are the poorer when it is not practiced. We carry large burdens when we pack around anger or resentment. It is no fun to live in that place. We may not always get that “happy ending” but we can and do learn how God continues steadfastly to be faithful and patient and how God gives us a glimpse of the eternal when he brings life out of death, and makes relationships new.
On Friday, Britt and I went to see a play at the Taproot Theatre in Northwest Seattle to see the play, Lewis & Tolkien. That would be C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien.
These two friends had much in common. They both loved literature, fantasy, and myth. They used them in their writings. Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings. Lewis wrote the fantasy including the Chronicles of Narnia and The Screwtape Letters. Tolkien didn’t like the Chronicles of Narnia. He also didn’t care for Lewis’ Christian apologetics, but truth be known, Tolkien had something to do with Lewis’ conversion to Christianity. Lewis was critical, too, of Tolkien’s work.
The play is a reunion of sorts taking place after years of estrangement. Now, whether this reunion really happened, I don’t know, but the play was great. The two seemed to talk about everything. In listening closely to the dialogue between them it becomes clear that there was jealousy and disappointment and all the complexities of relationship between them.
C. S. Lewis became Oxford’s religious and literary celebrity. Tolkien never enjoyed such celebrity. Tolkien, the devout Roman Catholic didn’t care for Lewis’ turn to Protestantism. It turns, out, too, that Tolkien never really accepted Lewis’ marriage. That was the real roadblock in their friendship.
The play seemed to me like a “Happy Ending.” The truth was out in the open, they talked and argued and parted on good terms, vowing to meet again and somewhere in that dialogue between these two men was acknowledgment, more than once, of the work of the divine in their lives.
Be assured we often do not see happy endings. Sometimes we do. The work of forgiveness is hard work. And in our complicated relationships, God is with us and Christ is working, though often invisible, the miracle of resurrection.
We humans spend a lot of time arguing about who is right, working passionately to prove that we are right but too often at great cost. Often making everyone know that we are right will cost us friendships of family, so I think it is important to remember that Jesus doesn’t really care that much about our being right, especially when such an attitude takes away from life. Jesus is much more concerned about our being right with one another.
Jesus desires that we be in right relationships, by which I mean, take on the hard work of love, and in your relationships, practice the art of forgiveness. It is, perhaps, God’s greatest gift. Use it well and ask God to help and guide you. Amen.