Genesis 45:3–15 ESV

And Joseph said to his brothers, “I am Joseph! Is my father still alive?” But his brothers could not answer him, for they were dismayed at his presence. So Joseph said to his brothers, “Come near to me, please.” And they came near. And he said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here, for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years, and there are yet five years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. And God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. So it was not you who sent me here, but God. He has made me a father to Pharaoh, and lord of all his house and ruler over all the land of Egypt. Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph, God has made me lord of all Egypt. Come down to me; do not tarry. You shall dwell in the land of Goshen, and you shall be near me, you and your children and your children’s children, and your flocks, your herds, and all that you have. There I will provide for you, for there are yet five years of famine to come, so that you and your household, and all that you have, do not come to poverty.’ And now your eyes see, and the eyes of my brother Benjamin see, that it is my mouth that speaks to you. You must tell my father of all my honor in Egypt, and of all that you have seen. Hurry and bring my father down here.” Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin’s neck and wept, and Benjamin wept upon his neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them. After that his brothers talked with him.

Genesis 43:3–15 ESV

But Judah said to him, “The man solemnly warned us, saying, ‘You shall not see my face unless your brother is with you.’ If you will send our brother with us, we will go down and buy you food. But if you will not send him, we will not go down, for the man said to us, ‘You shall not see my face, unless your brother is with you.’ ” Israel said, “Why did you treat me so badly as to tell the man that you had another brother?” They replied, “The man questioned us carefully about ourselves and our kindred, saying, ‘Is your father still alive? Do you have another brother?’ What we told him was in answer to these questions. Could we in any way know that he would say, ‘Bring your brother down’?” And Judah said to Israel his father, “Send the boy with me, and we will arise and go, that we may live and not die, both we and you and also our little ones. I will be a pledge of his safety. From my hand you shall require him. If I do not bring him back to you and set him before you, then let me bear the blame forever. If we had not delayed, we would now have returned twice.” Then their father Israel said to them, “If it must be so, then do this: take some of the choice fruits of the land in your bags, and carry a present down to the man, a little balm and a little honey, gum, myrrh, pistachio nuts, and almonds. Take double the money with you. Carry back with you the money that was returned in the mouth of your sacks. Perhaps it was an oversight. Take also your brother, and arise, go again to the man. May God Almighty grant you mercy before the man, and may he send back your other brother and Benjamin. And as for me, if I am bereaved of my children, I am bereaved.” So the men took this present, and they took double the money with them, and Benjamin. They arose and went down to Egypt and stood before Joseph.

luke 6:27-38

luke 6:27-38

Luke 6:27–38 ESV

“But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them. “If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”

Love All. . . Yes. . . Even THAT One.

On the surface, these can be taken as nice, warm, fuzzy passages about love and getting along. “Forgive your brothers when they hurt you.” “Be kind to everyone.” They are the sorts of passages we refer to when we have done something nice for another person and want pat ourselves on the back for having been such good Bible followers.

We think to ourselves “I held the door for that person in the wheelchair because if I were in a wheelchair I would want someone to hold the door for me.” and then we add a merit badge to our imaginary Christian Scout uniform. As Christians, we don’t say we buy into the idea of Karma - the idea that what goes around comes around - but in practice, we are totally sold on the idea of Karma.

And it buffs up our egos nicely to think about how nice we are to the people around us and even if we miss the mark sometimes, we justify that by saying, “well that person is just so much harder to be nice to because they are so nasty all the time.” But nobody gets any sort of bonus points for being nice to the obvious people. And Joseph’s brothers were not the sort of brothers who were easy to love.

It’s not about what you’ll get in return for being nice.

Before you go out and start all willy nilly being super nice to all the most terrible people in your life because the Golden Rule says to, let me remind you that we need to be careful here to make sure we’re being kind, not just nice and that we are not doing it for the wrong reasons. “Kill them with kindness” just means, annoy them by pretending to be nice. “You catch more flies with honey” just suggests that you should use niceness to entrap others who make you mad or manipulate them into being nicer back. The “Golden Rule” is often used more as a way to gain fans who will return your favors than it is a way to see our shared humanity reflected in the eyes of the people around us. In fact, the “Golden Rule” did not originate in the Christian Gospels with the words of Jesus - it was around already and, as he does with many cultural ideas of his time, Jesus says, “Sure do that, but go a step further. Change the perspective from which you do this.”

If you pull out the “Do unto others” line from this passage and keep it isolated from the rest of the passage, you can avoid the truly hard parts. You can just be nice to people as much as you can muster and call it a day. But when you add it in with everything else, you get a very different vibe and a much harder road to walk.

Remember too that niceness is different than kindness and love. We want to make this passage easier by talking about being nice to our enemies and treating others nicely, but the word “nice” is not used in Luke. Niceness suggests being sugary sweet and polite all the time and always saying “yes”. Niceness is not always healthy. But love speaks truth and sets boundaries with others. Love comes from a place of shared humanity, not a system of purchasing better behaviour or responses from those around us. Love is also not meant to be reserved only to the people we deem “worthy” of love. That’s not our judgement to make.

We are called to show kindness and even love to those who aren’t nice to us!

It’s easier to be nice than to be loving. We have less to lose in trying to be nice than we do in being truly loving to others. It’s easier to be polite at all cost than to seek deep and meaningful relationship with the people around us. It’s easier to assume that someone is just being mean because they are “the enemy” from this passage than to ask them about who they are.

When we take the “love our enemies” path, we are forced to see when we have been someone’s enemy. It’s hard to suck it up and ask someone what we might have done to offend them or wind up on their bad side or rub them the wrong way. It’s difficult to admit that we aren’t always the good guy and the other person isn’t always the bad guy. In showing kindness and love to those we see as enemies, we, like Joseph in , tend to be confronted with our own shortcomings and that just plain sucks. With love comes humility.

Niceness is different than kindness and love. Niceness suggests being sugary sweet and polite all the time and always saying “yes”. But love speaks truth and sets boundaries with others.

If you love those who don’t love you first, you are better able to grow into your full identity as children of God and brothers and sisters to all God’s children.

If you love those who don’t love you first, you will be known by all as God’s children!

The thing that makes Joseph’s story from Genesis so astounding is the magnitude of the betrayal his brothers committed against him. In a nutshell, Joseph was the favored son in a family of many sons. He was a knowitall tattletale who told their father when his brothers messed up. He had dreams that said he would be a ruler one day and the first thing he does is run to his brothers and tell them, “You’re going to bow down to me one day.”

His brothers were all jealous of the way their father favored Joseph, so they sold him off as a slave and told their father he was dead. He spent time working hard to rise through the ranks, and he eventually scored a job working directly for the Pharoah and ruling over all of Egypt.

When Egypt found themselves well prepared for a famine that struck, Joseph’s family back home was caught unprepared. Not knowing who they would have to go begging for food from (assuming that Joseph was still someone’s slave or was actually dead by now), his brothers traveled to Egypt to seek some humanitarian help.

By the world’s “give them what they deserve” standards, Joseph should have sent them away empty handed. The idea of Karma suggests that Joseph’s brothers got exactly what they deserved and he should just sit back and say, “That’s Karma for you. Ha ha!” And yet, when they were starving and came to Joseph for food, not even recognizing him at first, he fed them. Then he told them who he was and forgave them.

This was no show of forgiveness to make himself look good either. Joseph was so grateful to be reunited with his brothers that he wept. Once upon a time, when he was still the arrogant kid his brothers were so jealous of and annoyed by, he might have put on a show of forgiveness, but all these years later. . . Joseph has allowed God to change him. He’s grown.

The climax of this story is when Joseph’s identity is revealed and made known to the people around him and God’s grand plan for everything is revealed. Similarly, it is through the love and forgiveness that we show others that our identities as brothers and sisters of those around us are revealed and God’s plans for the world are seen by others.

When you show kindness to all and aren’t too quick to judge others and condemn others, you’ll find yourself lifted up and out of the drama.

When you show kindness to all and aren’t too quick to judge others and condemn others, you’ll find yourself lifted up and out of the drama.

Drama will still happen around you, but you are relieved of the burden of getting emotionally involved with it. Joseph could have judged his brothers on the spot when they arrived in Egypt - both figuratively and literally. He could have tried them right then and there for the crimes they committed against him. He could have just written them off as being bad people. But he does neither of those things.

Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 1 Pastoral Perspective

Surrender is a painful, personal process in our relationships, our faith communities, and our country. To surrender humbly to a higher good does lead to new life, love, and a deeper joy. Moreover, joy is a sign of reconciliation!

Joseph doesn’t politely tell his brothers their past actions were ok because God used them, rather he says that God can use even their poor behavior and then he shows them love and kindness. He’s not nice to them, in fact in the narrative leading up to this, he kind of messes with them a bit to make them sweat and really drive home the point of how terrible their actions have been. He holds them accountable, but then he embraces them and treats them with kindness and love.

It’s all about building and rebuilding relationships with one another in order to celebrate our shared humanity.

I read a great story recently that sums this up nicely. The guy who wrote it goes through a similar process to Joseph’s of losing his arrogance and learning humility and why loving even those we see as enemies matters.

“In one of my management classes I sit in the same seat in the front every day. Every single day I sit there.

“In one of my management classes I sit in the same seat in the front every day. Every single day I sit there.

Now, I also sit next to some foreign guy that barely speaks English. . .

This guy also has a habit of stacking every item he owns in the exact space I sit. His bag, his food, his books, and his phone are ALWAYS right on my desk space.

Now, every single time I walk into class this guy says, ‘Ah, Tom. You here. Okay.’ And starts frantically clearing my desk of his belongings. He then makes it a habit to say, ‘Ready for class, yeah?’ And gives me a high five. Every day this guy gives me a high five.

I was ALWAYS annoyed with this guy. I’m thinking, ‘Dude, you know I sit in this seat every day. Why are you always stacking your sh*t here? And the last thing I want to do is give a guy who barely speaks my language high fives at 8 in the morning.’

. . .

But today I came to class and was running a few minutes late. I’m standing outside because I had to send a quick text. I could see my usual space through the door out of the corner of my eye. Of course, my desk was filled with his belongings. The usual.

As I’m standing there on my phone, another guy who was also late, walks into the class before me and tried to take my seat since it’s closest to the door.

The foreign guy who always sits next to me stops this dude from sitting down and says, ‘I’m sorry. My good friend Thomas sits here.’

It was then that I realized this guy wasn’t putting stuff on my seat to annoy me. He was saving me the seat every morning.

And this whole time he saw me as a friend, but I was too busy thinking about myself to take him into consideration.

Cheesy as it sounds, I was touched.

The guy moved here from the Middle East to pursue a college education in America. He plans to go back after he gets his degree. He’s got two kids and a wife. He works full time and sends all his left over money back home to his wife.

I asked him how he liked America as well. He said he misses his family but it’s exciting to be here. He also said, ‘Not every American is nice to me like you are, Tom.’

I bought lunch, of course. Dude deserves it. He gave me a high five for buying lunch. Gotta keep up tradition.

Moral of the story? Don’t do what I do and constantly only think about yourself. It took me nearly the entire semester to get my head out of my ass and realize this guy was just trying to be my friend. Better late than never I suppose.”

From: https://www.lovewhatmatters.com/my-good-friend-thomas-sits-here-selfish-man-learns-eye-opening-lesson-from-foreign-student/

None of this is easy. And it takes a lifetime of learning humility to really “get” the idea that Luke is trying to drive home in our gospel passage today. It took the guy in his management class an entire semester to show genuine kindness (not just niceness) to a guy who wasn’t even an enemy - he was just inexplicably annoying. It took Joseph a lifetime to move past his arrogance and learn to show kindness to his brothers after they’d hurt him. But once they did. . . relationships blossomed.

When we as a church think about how to build up meaningful relationships with one another and with the community around us, these are important stories to remember. We’re not just here to be nice to everyone. We’re here to be kind and loving. Organized religion has hurt countless people through the ages, and recent news give us many examples to point to. So it’s up to us to be kind, not just nice. It’s up to us to admit that people have been hurt by churches and other religious organizations and instead of acting defensively, stopping to listen to their stories and offer reconciliation and a safe, loving place to be.

We’re not here to host Motorcycle blessings or Bible Studies or fitness classes because we’ll gain a bunch of new members or large donations or change the way the whole wide world sees us, but because it’s a loving way to connect and build meaningful relationships with the community. We might make a few new friends along the way for sure. But more importantly, we will celebrate our shared humanity and God will surprise us with plans we never saw coming and unexpected new life that we never could have imagined.

English Standard Version Chapter 6

“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; jforgive, and you will be forgiven; 38 kgive, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put linto your lap. For mwith the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”

Luke 6:37–38 ESV

“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”

More to Think About:

Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 1 Pastoral Perspective

In our own spiritual journeys, we remember those times where we too were harsh, vengeful, unforgiving, or indifferent. In our relationships with our children, our spouse or partner, our church community, and our neighbors and colleagues, if we reflect long enough, we can recall such hurtful encounters. Brought to our knees and humbled by acknowledging our own egregious deeds, God comes inviting us to receive divine compassion in our brokenness.

Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 1 Pastoral Perspective

Reconciliation is possible because in facing our own frailties, vulnerabilities, and even hostilities, we come to understand that divine purposes were at work.

More to Think About:

Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 1 Exegetical Perspective

Joseph’s language is parallel to that of the character Len in C. S. Lewis’s story The Great Divorce.2 In this story, the ghost of Len, a past murderer, urges his former boss (now also deceased) to give up the sense of grievance that has built up inside him over time. He must stop allowing his preoccupations to matter, fretting about his lot and going on and on about fairness and just deserts. There is no need to bother about all that, Len implores. The old boss will be pleased about everything presently. He need only come to understand God’s larger picture.

Unfortunately, Len’s boss is simply unable to let go of his hang-ups, and refuses to accompany Len into heaven. He reveals to Len just how stuck he is when he declares, “I’m not making pals with a murderer, let alone taking lessons from him.”3 Paradoxically, the past does turn out to matter for the boss, because he will not let go of it.

Len’s story is the opposite. He experienced a new beginning after his act of murder. The deed forced him to own up to everything he had become and to let it all go, putting his old self behind him. Now safe in God’s embrace, he no longer bothers about past history. “It is all over now,” he rightly affirms. Joseph’s hope for his brothers in Genesis 45 is that they may embrace the selfsame healing perspective as Len. That they do in fact begin to do so is a model for us all.

Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 1 Pastoral Perspective

The admonition of Luke to love even our enemies is not just a good idea where we try our best to make it happen. It is not a call to grit our teeth and make a resolution to be nicer even to those who are not nice to us. Rather, the call of Luke is to live in a way contrary to our human nature, a way that is possible only as we “live out” of a new power born from above.

Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year C, Volume 1 Homiletical Perspective

If we are honest, the history of the church offers examples where our preaching about love and grace is overshadowed by immorality, corruption, and exclusion. The critics of the church are right: far too often there is a vast difference between what we say we believe and what we do. Therefore, as preachers we will do a complete and utter disservice to our congregations and the gospel if we do not tell the truth that this teaching, and much of the gospel itself, is hard. What Jesus offers his followers in this text is not a recipe for self-help, intended to make us feel better (although that is not out of the question); it is a recipe for disaster, because the very idea of forgiveness is radical and powerful. It runs against our thinking, our inclinations, our desires, and our will.