Friday, March 2

REDEMPTION

Genesis 50:20 Joseph says to his brothers who sold him into slavery: "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to bring about this present result, to preserve many people alive."

After Joseph was betrayed by his brothers, who lied to his father, who sold him into slavery where he was thrown into slavery on trumped up charges, he saw them again. This was a perfect time for revenge. All those nights in slavery or in the dungeon, he may have had fantasies about getting back at them. They were standing in front of him begging for food; what delicious revenge! The story goes on and there is some temptation to put those fantasies into action. But then later he goes off by himself and he cries. I think the tears are remembrances of his father and mother and how they loved each other. He remembers that although he and his brothers had different mothers, they were one family bound by competition to be sure, but more importantly by love. For the sake of love, he will work for a redemption of the consequences of the evil the brothers had placed on themselves. Joseph reveals himself as the brother they betrayed and gives them a new place to start life over.

The Book of Genesis begins the story of human life with a betrayal of Adam and Eve against God and then with each other as they try to blame each other. It continues with their son Cain betraying and killing his brother Abel. It will further continue with a chain of family rivalries and betrayals: between Abraham and Lot, between Abraham's sons Ishmael and Isaac, between Isaac's sons Jacob and Esau, between Jacob and Laban, between Jacob's children. It ends with redemption as God redeems all the evil actions as Joseph opens his heart up to be changed by God’s love and became an agent of God's redemption of the past and the beginning of a new future and as a way that God redeemed by saving many innocent people from famine.

Have you been betrayed by someone close to you? Indeed, we cannot really be betrayed unless it is by someone who is close to us and who we thought we trusted? Is there a way you can be like Joseph and ask your heart to be changed to see God's redemption of all things? L.P. Hartley, in his novel The Go-Between writes a proverbial opening line; “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” Redemption is when the past needs to be a foreign country in which we no longer need to dwell.


Father Tom Wilson+