• Genesis 45:3-11,

The brothers of Joseph,  who they sold  into slavery when he was young, go to Egypt for food during a famine.  They encounter Joseph who reveals to them his identity, “I am Joseph.”  He immediately asks, “Is my father still alive?”  His brothers are so shocked/humiliated they cannot even answer.  Joseph takes the initiative by inviting them to come closer to him.  He tells them they should not be ashamed of their past behavior because, “God has sent me before you” to establish in Egypt a “remnant” that will “preserve life, for you to become a great people.”  God sent me ahead, Joseph says,  to become a “father” to Pharaoh who put me in charge of “all the land of Egypt.”  Now return to “my father,” tell him what has happened to me and tell him to come here, too.  Then all of you will be settled in “Goshen, close to me.”  I will make certain you survive the remaining five years of  this seven year famine.  After his astounding news to his brothers, the scene concludes with Joseph weeping with his brother Benjamin and then with all his brothers.

• Psalm 37:1-12,41-42

This “Wisdom” psalm advises against getting upset or misled by “evildoers” who proposer.  Let go of envy.  Instead, trust/take pleasure/focus on the Lord; “those who trust in the Lord will inherit the earth.”

• I Corinthians 15:35-38,42-50

Paul presents an original and unique understanding: “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.”  Death/resurrection is the necessary passage from a “physical body” to a “spiritual body.”

• Luke 6:27-38

The precis of the message of Jesus in Luke’s narrative continues.  Jesus re-casts standard moral obligations into a new, radical dimension.  Traditional Jewish Law taught helping one’s neighbors; Jesus teaches to “love” one’s enemies.  If offended by someone, do not seek retribution, instead be ready to endure greater offense.  Give to the needy, even if you are left with nothing.  Do not just “love” those who already have shown their “love” of you.  Make a loan with no expectation of repayment.  “Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked.  Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”  Do not judge or condemn.  “Forgive and you will be forgiven, give and it will be given back to you.  A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap….”

The story of Joseph is an archetype of human forgiveness– its possibility and its capacity to renew and extend life.  Placed within the all-too-human- familiarity of sibling rivalry, duplicity and betrayal, Joseph’s unmerited and unexpected forgiveness sets the standard for the power of forgiveness in human relationships and human history.  Indeed, so exemplary and inspiring is this story that it was regarded as an archetype for Christ by St. Justin Martyr, Tertullian, St. Irenaeus, St. John Chrysostom and St. Augustine, whose book De Joseph patriarchin provides a direct comparison between the story of Joseph and the story of the Christ.

In Luke’s narrative, Jesus’ re-interpretation and extension of traditional Jewish Law, (for a detailed and informed commentary of just how much of a reinterpretation is this text, see The Jewish Annotated New Testament, Levine and Brettler, eds, p.113), follows Matthew’s version (5:38-48) closely, but then adds an original conclusion and a revealing change of just one word.  Luke’s narrative adds (34-36) an emphasis on doing good for its own inherent benefit with no expectation whatsoever of reciprocation of any kind.  And then he changes one word.  Matthew’s version admonishes his readers to be “perfect” as God is perfect; Luke writes to his readers, be “merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”

It is these qualities, exhibited in the Joseph story and taught and exhibited by Christ in the gospels, that make biblical forgiveness distinctive.  It is totally non-calculating, done for its own good, comes out of nowhere, interrupts the ‘normal’ chain of pay-back, frees the one who is forgiven as well as the one who forgives and, always makes it possible for something new to happen; for life, which had reached some sort of a dead end, to start over.  Joseph’s forgiveness of his brothers not only reunited his family and saved their lives from starvation, it “preserved life” for a whole nation and enabled God’s love story to continue for future generations.

Contemplating the biblical understanding of forgiveness, especially today’s gospel from Luke, John Caputo concludes in The Weakness of God: A Theology of Event:

“When God holds sway, the past is dismissed.  Where God rules, the past does not rule.  If we are slaves to the past, we can expect the future to look like the past.  But the work of forgiveness always comes as a surprise and hence makes possible an open future.  When God rules, our responses are startling and unpredictable, amazingly free from the past and, one might be tempted to say, a little mad.”  (p.169)

By participating in God’s ‘kingdom economy’, as opposed to the iron-clad rules of quid pro quo, the possibility of newness, freedom emerge.  Caputo continues:

“By trusting God’s rule, one breaks the chain of time and frees up the day, letting the day come to presence, tearing up the chain of time, freeing it from the circulation of debts and anxieties, letting the day be a ‘gift.’  Forget what is owed to you in the past; forget about insuring yourself against the future; tear up the chain of time and take today as a gift, a free gift, a free as opposed to bound time, an open or released time.  In it, something new and freeing has begun now and is now with us and frees us from the debt of the past and weight of the future.” (p.175)