Lent 24 post 22

 Genesis 50.15-21

 

This is a beautiful ending, don’t you think? This moment of brotherly reconciliation. Especially when you remember the jagged turbulence of the early chapters of Genesis following the beautiful beginning in chapters 1-2.

Broken relationships at every level saturate Genesis 3-11. Shame and domination poison marriage. Jealousy and anger lead to a brother’s murder. Corruption and violence blight the whole human race. And nations are scattered in confusion. It’s not just that every individual is a sinner. By the time we reach Genesis 11, sin has brought God’s curse on the earth, pervaded culture, escalated through generations and divided the nations. How can such brokenness be healed, such enmities be reconciled?

So along comes God’s answer in Genesis 12, Abraham and his family, through whom God is going to enable all nations to find blessing like his. But as we read the long chapters that follow, episodes of blessing seem like sporadic relief from the long catalogue of hatred and violence. Can you imagine any more dysfunctional family than Abraham’s, through four generations? Squabbling wives, abused women, lying men, sibling rivalry, trickery and deception, sexual violence, slaughter, murderous hatred, on and on it goes.

The miracle of Genesis is that God keeps going too, repeating his promise to each generation, ‘All nations will be blessed through you, trust me.’ And so the book comes to this gentle conclusion that is movingly beautiful and theologically rich. This is what God truly longs for, it seems to say, reconciliation, healing and peace.

Mind you, it all begins very dubiously, more lies! Out of fear of vengeance (in spite of 45.4-11), Joseph’s brothers invent their dead father’s for Joseph to forgive the wrongs they had done. Twice they admit their sin, twice they ask for forgiveness. That’s a start, I suppose.

Joseph’s response is the message of the whole book in a nutshell. Here are the radical truths on which reconciliation could be based, then, now or at any time.

1, the sovereignty of God (.19). ‘If you want forgiveness, ‘ Joseph is saying, ‘you need to take it up with a higher court.  I may be top guy in Egypt, but I’m not God. Forgiveness is for God to dispense. So don’t be afraid. I’m not the one to be afraid of here.’

2, the providence of God (.20). No excuses. No ‘You didn’t really mean it, did you?’ Just plain truth. ‘You planned evil against me.’ Absolutely. But then comes the redemptive power of God to make evil accomplish his good plans. ‘But God planned it for good.’ And God’s plan, overriding evil to accomplish good, resulted in the saving of lives.

3, the refusal of vengeance (.21). So, if that was God’s plan,  how could Joseph reverse it back into the evil of an endless unforgiving feud between brothers? No, let God’s plan stand.  ‘So, to repeat, don’t be afraid, not only will I not take revenge, I will positively care for you and your children.’

Those last three words, ‘and your children’, were what convinced some Arabic-speaking tribesmen in Chad, when they first listened to the book of Genesis translated into their own language, that Joseph and his brothers were truly reconciled. The translators asked them how they could be sure. It was not so much Joseph’s grand theology, but his promise to care for their children. ‘That’s what brothers do,’ they exclaimed. ‘Of course they are reconciled!’

Joseph’s words and example point us to the cross. Can you see the same fundamental dynamic in the way Peter describes the cross in Acts 2.23-24? That too was planned as deliberate evil, the worst that human wickedness could hurl at the Son of God. But God in his sovereign providence and foreknowledge turned that evil to its own destruction, and brought about the infinite good of the saving of lives, eternally. Radical reconciliation is God’s good triumphing over humankind’s evil.