Not so tit for tat
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
February 23, 2025—Epiphany 7C
Genesis 45:3-11, 15; Luke 4:14-21
Once again, the vividness of the biblical story invites us to imagine ourselves there. This time, the setting is the court of an Egyptian pharaoh in a time of great famine. A family has entered, ragged and dirty from the long journey, not to mention years of trying to survive in such terrible times. To be honest, they look like vagabonds.
It cannot have been easy to come, not easy to travel so far to ask a foreign leader for assistance. And then, on top of that, this official has asked about their family, and they’ve been reminded of the second youngest son in the family, his father’s favorite, whom they sold into slavery. And they know, that if this is about deserving, they deserve nothing.
All that is hard enough. But then in the passage we heard this morning, they finally realize that this Egyptian official they’ve been dealing with is actually the self-same brother they first threw in a pit to die, then decided to just sell into slavery.
Let’s re-cap: they’ve been unable to feed their own family during this famine and need to go and plead to Egypt to sell them grain. They’re already afraid that if this doesn’t work, it’s punishment for what they did to their brother all those years ago. And now, they discover that the official they’ve been negotiating with (the official who has already given them grain once and secretly returned the price of that grain along with the sacks of life-saving food) is actually the person they so deeply wronged.
And I ask you: what would you be feeling right now, in their place?
You need the food. You already felt you were in a vulnerable position: asking, begging them to sell you this precious commodity. But then, on top of all that, you discover that you’re in the presence of someone you have wronged, PROFOUNDLY. You realize that you have asked a favor of someone who has every reason to resent you, deny you, condemn you.
Do you stay? In this biblical story, there’s literally food and life on the line. But there’s always so much on the line already, in situations of confession and forgiveness. Admitting the things you have done can stir up embarrassment, shame even … not to mention the need to adjust the image you’d like to have of yourself, like OTHERS to have of you! And it’s so tempting to see if you can ignore, cover up, or lie your way out of it. But … on the other side, there is the possibility of an end to the pretense and the lies (the guilt these brothers have carried for all these years!), the chance for renewed relationship, for your own atonement (the chance to mend something, to make things right, to change), for a new and better path forward.
But still … do you stay? Are you able to face into it, or do you give in to the urge to run? The brothers of Joseph are somehow able to stay. Maybe it’s the desperation of starvation. But it could be something deeper. Could be the workings of God that Joseph describes. Workings that have brought them here to this moment, not only to witness God’s power to provide sustenance for them, but even more powerfully, to demonstrate the astonishing power of God’s love and forgiveness, shining through Joseph.
Because his brothers threw him in a pit to be devoured, and then sold him into slavery. We shouldn’t sugar coat any of that. The fact that he was able to rise out of slavery and gain power in Pharaoh’s court does not undo any of the evil of that. And yet here he is, overjoyed to see them again. Overflowing with generosity. Seeing, surely, the horror and guilt in their eyes as they recognize him, but undemanding even of an apology before he embraces them and celebrates the chance to be reunited.
And if that isn’t a witness to the power of God, I can’t tell you what is!
It is holy ground. When you know that you have done wrong. Or know that you have been wronged. To be in that space with another person is to stand on holy ground with them, feeling the possibility of grace dancing in the air. But like much of holy ground, it can be unsteady underfoot. Which might be why we’re often tempted to seek more solid ground, to take hold of something more understandable than grace. Something we can make a case for, like fairness. Or perhaps reciprocity.
Jesus recognizes this urge in us, and today we hear him try to shake us free from those instincts. He starts with “Love your enemies,” and then just keeps going, adding on more and more things that assault our sense of fairness and reasonableness: do good to those who hurt you, bless those who curse you, give even more to those who have already robbed you.
Which on one level urges us to reconsider our instincts toward revenge and punishment for those who hurt us in some way. But at its heart, what this (possibly playful) hyperbole from Jesus does is up-end our tendency to see life and love as purely transactional. That’s why he immediately follows the “love your enemies” cascade with one mocking those who think they get big credit for loving those who are good to them, and being generous to those who can return the favor somehow.
That’s not really generosity, Jesus insists, and it’s a very shallow love. Real generosity and love have a wildness, an inexplicable quality that cannot be quantified, measured or compared.[1] And the best way to cultivate them within our own lives is to focus on those who have little to give back, or even those who oppose us in some way. Give to them, learn to be generous to them, practice loving them, and you will begin to move beyond a love that is merely self-interest to something that starts to look like grace.
God doesn’t love me because I love God so perfectly, after all, or even because I am so extremely loveable. I mean, some of the time, sure. But a lot of the time I push the idea of “endearing” to its extreme. And God doesn’t forgive me because God trusts that I really won’t do the same stupid awful thing again (and again). God loves and forgives me because that is God’s nature. And also, Jesus seems to be arguing, because God knows that such wild and inexplicable love-generosity-grace is the only thing that can possibly unleash the same kind of thing in me. In us.
Grace is there, any time we walk onto the holy ground I spoke about earlier. There when Joseph recognizes his brothers who had sold him into slavery, and there in that terrible, beautiful moment when they find themselves embraced by the one they had sold. All of them, overcome by the grace of God and offered the chance of something miraculous.
It’s not fair. It’s not the kind of thing that’s a good return on investment. But it is the way that God loves, and it is the image of God that can come to life within us if we allow it. May it be so, Amen.
[1] https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2019/2/19/grace-in-action-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-epiphany-week-7