A Sermon, Genesis 50:15-21; Hosea 1-14)

What is an art? Something learned, requiring both skill and inspiration perhaps? If this is true of art, then forgiveness is one of the most difficult arts.

Some of the primary problems of human being and the solutions to them can be found in the first book of the Bible – Genesis. Genesis is a magnificent piece of ancient literature, packed with some of the grand narratives of the human condition. There are the stories of Adam and Eve and the Fall, Noah’s evil generation, the Tower of Babel, the Promise to Abram, Sodom and Gomorrah, and the stories of Isaac, Jacob and Joseph. And the book of Genesis ends with the theme of forgiveness and reconciliation in the story of Joseph and his brothers.

THE FORGIVENESS OF JOSEPH.

Joe was a spoilt boy; at least it seems he was his father’s favourite. He appears to have been somewhat arrogant toward his brothers and they came to hate him. Eventually the brothers got rid of him, or so they thought. Like most of us, Joseph was a complex character. There was also about him an essential goodness that God was able to use. The narrator records that “the Lord was with him.” Joseph is portrayed not only as a person of moral integrity but someone who has developed a care for others in distress. While wrongly imprisoned, Joseph acts in a Christ-like manner and cares for the other inmates and wins the respect of his gaoler, somewhat reminiscent of Nelson Mandela. Joseph also hah a charismatic gift of interpreting dreams and because of his good advice to the Pharoah, he became influential in the land of Egypt. So when his poverty-stricken brothers went to that land they encountered a generous and forgiving brother to help them in their hour of need. A family was reunited.

Family feuds can be sometimes the worst kinds of discord. The famed Dr Samuel Johnson wrote of a man he knew, a man of artistic merit, who led a most tragic life. His tragic fate stemmed, it would seem, from his almost complete rejection by his mother in infancy. Savage, as the man was called, strove all his life to find happiness and security. He was a driven man and achieved a number of artistic triumphs through a driven-ness born of rejection. Yet in spite of the help of his friends he never found the love and forgiveness he so craved. How many human beings throughout history, famous and unsung, have tried to carve out love from stone?

Our deepest hurts are often hurts inflicted upon us by those we love most, and us upon them. Freud was likely right when he proposed that so many of our problems stem from childhood experiences, especially in relation to one’s parents. James Fowler, a Christian psychologist, passionately argues that a person’s pivotal theological lesson is learned prior to the age of his or her first birthday. Namely, whether the world is a good place or a bad place. Furthermore, some of the most vindictive and long-standing atrocities of war and crime throughout history appear to be between those of the same or similar blood ties and tribal heritage. Some obvious cases in point are Northern Island, the American Civil War and the Middle East. Love, sex and war appear to share the same deep matter within the human psyche. Yet there is another force as powerful if not more, than these: the will to forgive. Joseph’s will to forgive is a testimony to the reality of God’s forgiveness as an answer to deep human hurt and division at all levels of human being.

THE FORGIVENESS OF HOSEA.

In the Old Testament there is another magnificent example of forgiveness in the beginning of the book of the prophet Hosea. Gomer, Hosea’s wife and the mother of their three children deserted him for other lovers. Yet with Christ-like rightousness and love, Hosea sought to win her back, even to the extent of buying her back at the price of a slave. His sense of personal suffering and sacrifice was only magnified in his prophetic role has he spoke and performed God’s word of judgement upon Israel’s whoring with foreign gods and God’s yet patient and forgiving love, typical of his own.

I well remember paying a somewhat guilty visit to a relative of mine; my guilt being the product of my failure to visit her for many years after she had been a support to me in earlier days. I often thought to visit but never quite made the real effort. When I finally heard of her marriage separation, my conscience got the better of me and I knocked on the door. Almost as soon as the door opened she engulfed me with the story of her husband’s infidelity. I made up for my lack of previous visits; it was a long visit! It became apparent that her husband’s unfaithfulness had become her sole pre-occupation and over the course of a few hours she thrust upon me a cacophony of detailed and colourful stories about the failures of her husband. She spoke with such venom and vitriol. Here, it would seem there was little hope of forgiveness. For the will to forgive cannot keep accounts. Such is the forgiveness of God we find demonstrated in Jesus Christ.

THE FORGIVENESS OF JESUS.

Now unlike us, Jesus was innocent of the deeply rooted tendencies for vengeance and division. Now Joseph was not without fault and we can assume that neither was Hosea. Was it a fault in Jesus to speak the truth? Seemingly so, for some despised him for it. Was it a fault to love “sinners?” It certainly caused some jealousy and resentment. Was it a fault to disappoint his friends and followers, for many deserted and denied him in his hour of greatest need for comradeship? Eventually it was to be Jesus’ own kin who handed him over to be tried and executed for treason and his prayer was not for redress, but for their forgiveness.

There are many crosses necessary if there is to be an answer to human conflict and hurt. The fashion more than ever in our era is to seek one’s “rights.” Sometimes this maybe necessary, but the distinctively Christian (read: counter-cultural) answer is a Cross – for us to carry the malice, misunderstandings and misdeeds of others. Yet as human beings we cannot do this alone – Jesus, the Son of God, bore the Cross alone, that he may share ours and that we can share one another’s.

In his famous novel, The Mayor of Casterbridge, Thomas Hardy wrote of a man who bore his cross alone because he could not forgive himself. His tragic hero, Michael Henchard, who is at once violent and greedy and magnanimous and humble, lives with the guilt of a terrifying deed. While in an intoxicated rage he wages an unconscionable hurt upon those closest to him. He sells his wife and infant daughter to a passing sailor. Upon the full realisation of what he has done he vows never to drink again. Subsequently through great diligence he graduates from hay trusser to hay merchant and finally achieves the status of the Mayor of Casterbridge. He becomes a driven man; a driven-ness born of rejection.

But as with many whom remain unaware of the flawed foundation of their drive, Henchard is doomed to fall from his lofty height. Fatefully, he finds his wife and daughter, now an adult. While desperate to make amends to his wife, he is never able to disclose to his daughter, whom he now loves dearly, what he had done to them all those years earlier. For in spite of everything, Henchard is a man of great pride and in Hardy’s literary world, thus he must fall.

Henchard’s daughter, Elizabeth-Jane, learns the truth about her father but in a way that makes things look far worse than they were. So on the occasion of her wedding, when her father approaches with a wedding gift, she rejects him and he dies of a broken heart.

Later it is a sadder but wiser Elizabeth-Jane who learns the whole truth about her father when she reads his will:

“That Elizabeth-Jane Farfrae be not told of my death, or made to grieve on account of me.

& that I be not bury’d in consecrated ground.

& that no sexton be asked to toll the bell.

& that nobody is wished to see my dead body

& that no murners walk behind me at my funeral.

& that no flours be planted on my grave.

& that no man remember me.

To this I put my name.

– Michael Henchard”

” … she [Elizabeth-Jane] said through her tears: ‘what bitterness lies there!'”

The inability to forgive others that so often characterises society is often a result of the profound inability to forgive ourselves. We have a responsibility to bear our crosses, but we do not bear them alone. For Jesus Christ died for our sakes, so that we are no longer under condemnation for the sins of the past. In Christ we are set free and forgiven. We are saved, through faith in Jesus Christ who takes upon himself the punishment for our destructive tendencies. We are forgiven, through confession to Jesus Christ who absolves us from all sin and self-interest. We have been forgiven and set free to forgive others and to offer God’s love and reconciliation to our neighbours and communities. Acts of radical forgiveness in times of great hurt and pain are a rare art. True restorative forgiveness is an art that requires careful attention, practise and wise counsel. All genuine, healing, forgiveness comes from God, through Jesus Christ, and it is only this forgiveness that can bring about eternal healing and wholeness to the project of human being.

Blessings in Jesus name,

KIM THODAY

http://www.hewett.org.au