Today’s theme is forgiveness.

I want to take some time to set forgiveness in the context of where we’ve been over the past few weeks. I think we need to do this, because forgiveness is such a difficult thing to do.

In the last few weeks, in the wake of the gruesome killings of Amish schoolgirls, we’ve had forgiveness thrust front and center. Many editorials have been written about the amazement and even disbelief people have that some in the Amish community were so quickly and powerfully speaking and acting in forgiveness.

It says something, doesn’t it, that forgiveness in the face of horrific murder seems as out of place as the clothes the Amish wear, as slow and odd as the buggies the Amish drive.

Forgiveness in the face of such tragedy seems impossible. Out of place. Maybe some super-spiritual people can do it, but not me.

The kind of forgiveness that many of the Amish have demonstrated did not come out of the blue.

Robert Roberts, professor at Baylor University, said it this way:

"What you see in the Amish community is daily, concerted practice. It's built into how they live and their psychological formation. ... We've gotten away from these attitudes that support being a forgiving person."

In other words, just as we’ve been saying all through this series on being “Jesus People”, it takes practice. We make a decision to try and live as Jesus does, and then we look for ways to practice in our everyday life.

We’ve also said all the way through this series that living like Jesus People is partially our commitment and effort, and partially God’s work within us.

Forgiveness is how God works.

God creates us and loves us, but we’ve made the world a sinful place. We hurt others each day…not as drastically as Charles Roberts IV, but we ruin God’s good intentions for the world by our choices.

So what does God do, in the face of our evil?

God forgives. And as the prayer Jesus taught his disciples to pray says it, we are to forgive as God forgives us.

But even if we could practice forgiveness…does it work?

Forgiveness is often seen as a weak response to the need for justice. Forgiveness is seen as sentimental, perhaps, a nice thing to say but not seriously considered as a way of life.

I see it differently. I see forgiveness as capable of profoundly changing our lives.

Early in our marriage, when we were broke and I was in graduate school, we visited my aunt and uncle. They took us to San Francisco to see a touring Broadway company put on a production of Les Miserables. [CLICK]

I had never read or even heard about Victor Hugo’s novel, the one this musical was based upon. I remember my aunt quietly trying to tell me the heart of the story, keeping me connected to what was going on.

But the music, and the story, and the power of forgiveness and redemption felt like they reached deep inside me and touched me in such a beautiful way, that it was almost like a wound.

Les Miserable is set in France hundreds of years ago, in the time of the French Revolution.

Jean Valjean is the center of the story, and the story begins after he’s just been released from years and years and years in prison. The punishment, the experience of prison, had almost made Valjean sub-human. But something happens early in the story to change him. An encounter with a bishop…an encounter with undeserved grace, undeserved forgiveness from another human being, changed the course of his life.

Watch that encounter from the 1998 film. [SHOW CLIP]

Our view of God is often warped because people struggle to offer forgiveness to each other.

Another way to say it is this: people who are unable to forgive create more people like Valjean, who struggle to see God as just and good. And people who ARE able to forgive, like the bishop, make a profound impact on the world and on people’s view of who God is.

What has happened to the Christian church?

Why is our country so surprised by Amish forgiveness? Evidently, Jesus people who practice forgiveness, who live out the Lord’s Prayer, are few and far between.

Let’s commit to changing that reality. With God’s power at work within us, experiencing the full reality of God’s forgiveness of US through Jesus Christ, let’s make a commitment to want to practice forgiveness.

And let’s start with the everyday. Let’s make it a way of life, so that when the big tests come, we’ll already have made the decision to live out the power of forgiveness, we’ll already have practice doing it, and we’ll already have the network and community in place to encourage each other to live beyond the norm and in the power of forgiveness.

If you are ready to make that commitment to practice forgiveness, I’d invite you to take your worship folders.

We’ll read out loud together the Lord’s Prayer, and we’ll face the reality of what it says: Jesus really means this. We are to ask God’s help to forgive others when they do wrong to us, just as God forgave us. [READ]

LEAD READING of Colossians passage.

One of the most powerful things I’ve read in the last year is in a book called “Free of Charge” by one of my seminary professors.

It’s a book by a man who was forced to wrestle with forgiveness. Miroslav Volf was born in Croatia. He watched the ethnic cleansing between Serbs and Croats destroy families, friendships, and lives that had been intertwined for generations.

Most of his writing and teaching since then has been to think through the depths of forgiveness. God’s way of forgiveness is clear in the bible. God’s call upon our lives to forgive others is far clearer than most of us are able to live.

In a world of huge evil and small evil, where wars can be waged or hostages shot, where kids make fun of other kids and adults spread gossip…does forgiveness make any sense at all? Can we just let evil happen and ignore it?

Here’s the part of the book that was so powerful to me.

Volf wrote, “In the very act of forgiving, there is an act of condemnation.”

Forgiveness does not ignore or white wash or overlook wrong actions. It is not weak or wimpy or blind or fake.

Forgiveness takes the bold, courageous first step of naming wrong as wrong, of condemning an evil action as being evil…and in the very act of naming it as wrong, forgiveness chooses not to demand payment of the debt the wrong act incurs.

Forgiveness says, “What you did to me was wrong. That action means you owe me something. But I will not choose to make you pay that debt.

“There may still be consequences to your wrong actions, but I will not hold it over your head or demand vengeance. I recognize what you did was wrong, and with God’s help, I will choose to forgive.”

Joseph, who we have been looking at for the last few weeks, demonstrates this very thing.

Joseph was wronged by his brothers. They hated him so much, they sold him into slavery. Their actions meant he lost his home, his family, and his freedom. He ended up falsely accused and in prison.

He had every reason to hold a grudge against his brothers and against God to the end of his days. Instead, he faithfully served God and was rewarded with freedom and power and authority second only to Pharaoh in all of Egypt. God’s wisdom helped Joseph save Egypt from famine.

God helped Joseph interpret Pharaoh’s dreams, to recognize that seven years of great harvest would be followed by seven years of famine. He came up with a plan to save food in the good years, and Pharaoh gave him the power to do it.

That plan not only saved Egypt…it saved the lives of his brothers, too. Joseph gave them the grain they needed (eventually), and his brothers and father and all their families moved to join him in Egypt.

By the time we get to the end of the story, after Joseph’s father’s death, Joseph is able to give a crystal clear picture of what forgiveness looks like.

Turn with me to Genesis 50: 18. His brothers aren’t sure Joseph’s forgiveness will stick, now that their father is dead. [READ 18-20]

“You intended to harm me.” Joseph does not forget or pretend that his brother’s actions were ok. That’s not forgiveness. He names it for what it is, and then continues to choose forgiveness.

BECAUSE Joseph rejected a life of bitterness and holding grudges, he came to the place where he could see how God was at work in all of this to bring about great good. BECAUSE Joseph chose forgiveness, his trust in God grew.

This is our goal. And what I love about Joseph’s life is that he shows that the goal is not easy to achieve. He has to battle his way through all kinds of difficult and vindictive emotions.

Forgiving is NOT forgetting, or sweeping under the carpet.

Joseph tries to forget, tries to move on. When things finally turn for the better…when Pharaoh gives him wealth and power, when he has a wife, when prison and the pit his brothers threw him in are safely in the past, Joseph tries to leave the past behind. In Genesis 41: 51, he names his son “Manasseh”, which sounds like the Hebrew word for “forget”. He does that because “God has made me forget all my troubles…and my father’s household.”

Oh really? When his brothers actually show up, we see Joseph hasn’t forgotten a thing. The pain is still there.

Forgiveness is a hard road that few of us try to walk.

We usually respond to people who do us wrong in one of two ways: either we try to hurt them back, or we try to forget it. The first is not an option, if we take Jesus’ words about enemies and forgiveness seriously. So usually, we try the forgetting route. And we fail as miserably as Joseph.

As the famine starts in Egypt, Joseph’s wisdom begins to pay off as he distributes food. The famine hits his family in Canaan, so Joseph’s father sends his brothers to buy grain in Egypt.

And after 20 some years, Joseph sees the ones who sold him into slavery bowing before him.

It all comes flooding back to him.

The anger toward his brothers, their callousness to his cries. The pain of being alone, without family for so long. The agony of not seeing his father or knowing if he is still alive.

He hasn’t been able to forget, and this unresolved hurt begins to do weird things to him. He really plays games with his brothers: accusing them of being spies, throwing them in prison, setting them free, testing them by making them promise to bring back his younger brother Benjamin, giving them their money back…and all the while, he’s so overcome with emotion, he has to keep running away and crying his eyes out.

Forgetting is not the goal of forgiveness.

In fact, the very act of forgiving forces us to remember and acknowledge the wrong that has been done to us.

Forgetting is not as effective as forgiveness. We can have new good things come into our lives, and they are good things, but they do not erase the bad things that have been done…no matter what name we give to the good gifts!

It isn’t until his brothers run out of food again and have to return, it isn’t until he frames his younger brother for stealing to see how his brothers will respond, that Joseph is able to be honest, to forgive, and to reconcile.

He is able to set aside the need to make his brothers pay for what they did to him, embrace them, and gather all his family with him in Egypt. His forgiveness allows him to see God’s way to save his whole family.

Our struggle to forgive may be just as long and have just as many mixed motives and difficult emotions.

Perhaps one big problem with those of us who follow Jesus is that we choose to forgive too quickly, and don’t admit and face the difficult emotions that come from being wronged by another.

Forgiveness names someone’s actions as wrong, but makes the choice not to forget, not to bring vengeance, but instead to release the other from the debt they owe.

Today is sort of like the beginning of a conversation.

We never have enough time to tackle all of the issues. Releasing someone from the debt they owe us doesn’t always mean they are free of the consequences of their actions.

We may have to draw boundaries around our future contact with that person, even as we forgive. The other person may face legal or other consequences for their wrong choice. But forgiveness is my act to release what is rightly owed to me by their wrong, in a similar manner to the way God releases us from what we deserve for our actions because of Jesus.

We are called to offer forgiveness. In every case. Without exception. You can look in the bible for an exception, but you will not find it. Jesus asks that every wrong done to us, no matter how evil, be met with forgiveness.

I think forgiveness can occur whether the person who did wrong to us accepts it or not.

They may never confess or acknowledge their wrong. That makes it impossible for us to be reconciled, but it is still possible to forgive. It’s like giving a gift that remains unopened or unreceived.

That world of unrepentance is a difficult world. Joseph’s brothers show the pain of living without confession and forgiveness.

They see the bad things that happen to them as God’s punishment for what they did. They can’t imagine God or anyone else forgiving and letting them off the hook. They can’t be honest with their father, because they can’t imagine that the truth about what they did to Joseph would result in anything but a breaking of their relationship with their father.

Judah is the best example of repentance and confession.

He promises his father his own life in exchange for Benjamin’s if the boy doesn’t return from the trip to Egypt. And then, when Joseph frames Benjamin, Judah makes good on his promise, offering to stay in prison in Egypt in Benjamin’s place, because he couldn’t bear to see his father’s pain if his father lost another of his beloved sons.

This is what finally sends Joseph over the edge. Judah, the brother who was so quick to make some money off of Joseph long ago by selling him, who callously let his father think that Joseph had been killed by a wild animal, has turned completely around.

It’s Judah’s repentance that makes reconciliation with Joseph possible. It makes it easier for Joseph to see God’s hand at work, easier for Joseph to forgive.

But forgiveness is still a different thing from reconciliation. Reconciliation depends on repentance…forgiveness can be done even to those who do great evil and don’t regret it one bit.

I regret that I haven’t left more time to talk about the “how” of forgiveness.

But I feel strongly that we have to be clear on the “what.” We are called to practice forgiveness. To every hurt and offense. Whether the person repents or not.

This is how God chooses to deal with evil in the world, by choosing to forgive us. And God asks us to do the same.

If we don’t make the decision to try to practice forgiveness…well, it is too difficult a thing. It won’t “just happen.” It must be a way of life that we choose to try and follow, that we allow God to work within us.

As we lead into a time of open worship, I’d like to read some other passages of scripture. I hope they will mix together with the story of Joseph, of Les Miserables, and of the Amish, mix together within us to form a foundation for practicing forgiveness.

I’ll leave some questions up on the screen. If they’re helpful, use them to ask God to bring to mind the “who” and the “how” of practicing forgiveness for you today.