"Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also." What kind of way to live is this? Wouldn’t it just make us all doormats? And who could do this anyway?
Unless you’re Jesus Christ, it might seem impossible to be this giving, this forgiving, this grace-filled, but in our Hebrew Bible we have a story of someone who did just that: did good to those who hated him, blessed those who cursed him, gave to those who abused him. This Sunday we hear the tail end of the story of Joseph, the beloved eleventh son of Jacob; the dreamer so hated by his older brothers they threw him down a well, then sold him to slave traders and told their father he had been killed by a wild animal, showing off his blood-spattered “coat of many colors” as proof. Their actions not only hastened the decline of their father, but started a cycle of misery and abuse for their brother.
Taken to Egypt and sold into service, he suffered further misadventures, but ultimately came to the attention of Pharaoh, and ended up as Pharaoh’s senior advisor, managing the entire country. (Read the whole wonderfully written novella in Genesis 37,39-47.) Foreseeing a regional famine, he is able to stockpile grain for Egypt. When the famine hits Israel, his brothers are sent to Egypt to buy food. They don’t recognize their brother when they come before him, but he knows them. He strings them along, exacting some emotional revenge (maybe not fully turning the other cheek…),but ultimately we see the big “reveal” and forgiveness of a horrible trauma that not only imperiled his life, but left him cut off from his family and beloved father for decades. He blesses those who persecuted him, and forgives his abusers.
Of course, Joseph does this from a place of freedom and power – perhaps that makes it easier. But the power to forgive and bless is ours no matter where we sit. For someone under the thumb of oppression or captivity, it may be the only power, the only form of choice, the only freedom. Every person bound in chattel slavery or human trafficking; every one locked in an abusive relationship; even those held in cycles of addiction comes to recognize this. Making the choice to forgive, to release, also releases us.
For those privileged not to be in such circumstances, the urgency is no less real. Inability to forgive those who’ve hurt, betrayed or abused us leaves us tied to them and gives them “real estate” in our minds and psyches. Releasing people from the very real debts they owe us is turning the other check, for we may be inviting more mistreatment. The only difference is, now it is our choice, because we want to be free, and we want them to be free. That’s what praying for our abusers can yield – a desire that they be free. It doesn’t mean we don’t want them to be punished; it means we don’t need to do the punishing. And it doesn’t mean we stay in the relationship; it only means we’ve chosen freedom.
“For freedom Christ has set us free,” Paul wrote to the Galatians, who were slipping out of grace into a rigid legalism. Freedom is God’s desire for us, and for every child of God. Those who forgive and bless and release in Jesus’ name are not doormats; we are freedom fighters.
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