Genesis 50:15-21
In the movie “The Godfather, Part 2,” the mafia boss Michael Corleone and his brother Fredo had a serious falling out, due to Fredo having taken sides with a competitor crime family, against his brother. After a tense meeting between the two, when Michael might have been expected to order his brother to be killed for this betrayal, he instead let him leave the house, alive – after telling him that he never wanted to see him again.
But then, in a hushed tone, Michael said to one of his enforcers: “I don’t want anything to happen to him – while my mother’s alive.”
Michael wanted to save his mother the grief of losing a son. Of course he wouldn’t have told her that he had ordered a hit on his own brother in any case.
But, Michael’s seeming decision to spare his brother was not what it looked like. Michael had not forgiven Fredo. Michael was still going to punish Fredo. And after their mother did pass away, Fredo ended up dying in – shall we say – a boating accident.
Regarding Fredo, while Michael had disowned him, he seemed to have decided to forgive him, at least in a certain sense, because he had not killed him. But in reality, he was planning to kill him all along, as soon as their surviving parent was dead.
It was not a real forgiveness. It was not forgiveness at all.
Can you think of times when you said that you had forgiven your spouse or your sibling, for something offensive that they said or did? But then, when they say or do a similarly offensive thing later on, not only do you complain about the new offense, but you also dredge up the earlier example that you supposedly already forgave, and throw that up to them as well?
As Christians and as human beings, we do have a concept of forgiveness as a good thing. At a rational level, we understand the benefits of forgiveness.
Holding grudges and plotting revenge against those who have offended us, betrayed us, or humiliated us actually hurts us. Objectively speaking, we know that it is better to be free from such toxic thoughts and emotions. But the selfish pride that resides squarely within our fallen sinful nature so often overrides our reason in such matters.
My common sense tells me that I should just forget about the offense and move on. But my pride tells me that I should not forget, but that I should wait for an opportunity to get even, and settle the score.
We see in today’s lesson from the Book of Genesis, that Joseph’s brothers feared, and maybe expected, that Joseph would do a Fredo on them, now that their father was dead.
Joseph’s brothers had previously sinned against him grievously. As you remember, because of their jealousy, they had initially intended to kill him, but then finally settled on selling him into slavery.
This in turn had set in motion a sequence of injustices in Egypt – where Joseph served as a slave – including imprisonment for something he had not actually done. But Joseph endured all these injustices in faith, until finally he was released from prison and by divine providence became the viceroy of the Kingdom of Egypt.
To be sure, the brothers were sincerely penitent over what they had done to Joseph. Many years later, as their consciences continued to accuse them, we are told elsewhere in Genesis that
“They said to one another, ‘We are truly guilty concerning our brother, for we saw the anguish of his soul when he pleaded with us, and we would not hear… And Reuben answered them, saying, ‘Did I not speak to you, saying, “Do not sin against the boy”; and you would not listen? Therefore behold, his blood is now required of us.’”
But Joseph had forgiven his brothers. And Joseph’s forgiveness was sincere and genuine.
Joseph was a man of faith who walked with God, and he was able to see – in hindsight – that there were reasons why God allowed him to endure all the hardships he had endured, even though he certainly would have wondered what God was doing at the time. Again, we read in an earlier section of Genesis:
“Joseph made himself known to his brothers. And he wept aloud… And Joseph said to his brothers, ‘Please come near to me.’ So they came near. Then he said: ‘I am Joseph your brother, whom you sold into Egypt. But now, do not therefore be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. For these two years the famine has been in the land, and there are still five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvesting. And God sent me before you to preserve a posterity for you in the earth, and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So now it was not you who sent me here, but God; and He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house, and a ruler throughout all the land of Egypt.”
But that was then. This is now. Jacob is now dead. And the brothers wonder if Joseph’s earlier kindness to them was just a ruse, to avoid hurting their father, and if now they would get what was coming to them.
They knew that they did not deserve the mercy that Joseph had shown to them. Their consciences were still accusing them. And so – as was typical for these men – they told Joseph a lie, in order to protect themselves from his rekindled wrath.
Jacob, who knew the character of Joseph and who trusted him, did not expect him to turn on his other sons after his death. So he had not asked that a special request for mercy be given to Joseph.
It wasn’t necessary. Joseph’s forgiveness had been real, and it had not been revoked. But for their self-preservation, the brothers claimed that Jacob had done this.
“When Joseph’s brothers saw that their father was dead, they said, ‘Perhaps Joseph will hate us, and may actually repay us for all the evil which we did to him.’ So they sent messengers to Joseph, saying, ‘Before your father died he commanded, saying, “Thus you shall say to Joseph: ‘I beg you, please forgive the trespass of your brothers and their sin; for they did evil to you.’” Now, please, forgive the trespass of the servants of the God of your father.’”
It should not come as a surprise that this hurt Joseph. By every human standard, Joseph certainly would have had the right to get his revenge. And as the second-most powerful man in Egypt, he certainly also had the ability to get his revenge – by either killing or enslaving his brothers – if that’s what he had wanted to do.
But Joseph had not taken a human course in this matter, and he would not be doing so now, either. He had taken the divine path: imitating the mercy and forgiveness of the God in whom he trusted, and from whom he received the forgiveness of his sins – even if his trespasses had not been as egregious as his brother’s trespasses.
And so Joseph assured his brothers – unworthy though they were of his goodwill and of his love:
“Do not be afraid, for am I in the place of God? But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive. Now therefore, do not be afraid; I will provide for you and your little ones.”
Joseph had put his pain and anger behind him. Nothing he had ever said or done would have given his brothers a just reason to doubt this.
But they did doubt this, not because of anything in Joseph, but because of their own sinfulness. They probably knew that in a similar circumstance, they would not be so forgiving. So they were projecting that onto Joseph.
But what was also going on, is that the ancient messianic promise of God for his people Israel, and for all peoples, was being projected by God onto Joseph and through Joseph. As Joseph’s personal decency and merciful heart were being shaped by the influence of the Holy Spirit within him, so too was Joseph serving in this instance as an image and foreshadowing of Christ.
When Joseph asked rhetorically, “Am I in the place of God?,” he meant God insofar as God is the righteous judge of all the wicked and of their wickedness. But in another sense – insofar as God is a God of mercy and forgiveness – Joseph was indeed in the place of God in this moment.
The ancient story of Joseph is one of the key ways in which the Lord taught his people what the future Messiah would be like, and what he would do. Indeed, the Lord, through this story, was teaching the people of Israel what he is really like, and what he would be like when he – in the person of the messianic Seed of the woman – would someday walk the earth as a man among men.
Jesus, a just and innocent man, would someday be betrayed by his brethren – that is, by the Jewish people. Jesus would someday be put into the hands of foreigners and be carried away – that is, by the Romans. And Jesus would be as a dead man, gone and out of sight.
But then – to the surprise of everyone – Jesus would be found alive again, with words of forgiveness and hope on his lips, even for those who had harmed him; with sacramental gifts in his hands; and with great power and kingly authority that would be used for the benefit of those who are the objects of his unmerited love.
In all of these ways, Joseph prefigured Jesus and was a type of Jesus. Through the Book of Genesis, where Joseph’s story was preserved for all generations, his words and deeds impressed upon the family and nation of Israel, what kind of Messiah they should be expecting.
And today, the story of Joseph reminds us of what kind of Messiah we do in fact have. We have a Savior – a divine-human Savior – who forgives as Joseph forgave.
With respect to sins of your past of which you have sincerely repented, your conscience, and the deceptive trickery of Satan, may still be causing you to feel that you don’t deserve forgiveness, and therefore that you probably don’t really have it. God will punish you for those things after all, and you are just deluding yourself if you think that all is now forgotten.
But the risen Christ, with nail marks still in his immortal hands, holds those hands out to you over and over again, and absolves you over and over again: assuring you in your penitence that as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed your transgressions from you.
By his death he atoned for your sins. As God sees you in Christ, clothed in the righteousness of Christ by faith, he therefore doesn’t see those sins. He sees only the perfection and obedience of his Son, which have now been credited to you.
What God says in Holy Scripture, he still says – about you and to you: “I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”
And what God’s mercy toward Joseph did to him – making him like the God of mercy – God’s mercy in Christ toward you, also does to you: as his Spirit now indwells you. God’s mercy makes you evermore like the God of mercy, in being willing and able to forgive those who have hurt you. And I mean really to forgive, and to forget: for their sake and for yours.
Oh, you’re not all the way there yet. But you are becoming more and more like Joseph: as your faith allows you to see that God did not abandoned you in your humiliations and trials, even if you sometimes felt that he did. Rather, you know – as the Epistle to the Romans tells you – that
“All things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”
You are able to know this even when you can’t see it. The inspired account of Joseph and his brothers helps you to know this, even when you can’t see it. And that inspired account helps you to pity those who are weighed down by guilt, or who are poisoned by vindictiveness, rather than to become like them.
Remember not, O God, the sins of long ago;
In tender mercy visit us, distressed and humbled low.
O Lord, our Savior, help, and glorify Thy name;
Deliver us from all our sins, and take away our shame. Amen.