Sunday, February 20, 2022

Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany

Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany (C)

February 20, 2022

Text: Gen. 45:3-15; Luke 6:27-38

            Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36; ESV). 

            Our Lord preaches to us this morning, that God’s mercy toward us poor sinners should flow out from us toward those who sin against us, and toward anyone who may be in need.  God’s mercy in Christ fills us to the brim, forgiving our sins for Christ’s sake, and generously providing for our every need of soul and body, as Dr. Luther says in the Small Catechism, “without any merit or worthiness in me.”[1]  That mercy then overflows in us toward others, as God designed His mercy to do.  So our Lord Jesus preaches.  Now, if we were to look for a concrete Old Testament example of this in action, we could do no better than our Old Testament reading.  Joseph has mercy on his brothers, forgiving their sins against him, and providing for them, and for their families.

            Now, this is not to say Joseph was without sin.  At the very least, we can say, he was kind of a snot when he tattled on his brothers, and in the way he revealed his prophetic dreams to his family, in which he was the superstar, the center of all authority and attention.  Daddy’s favorite son, he never seemed to miss an opportunity to flaunt it.  So, he was a sinner, like you and me.  Maybe his sins are not the same as your sins, but this is an important point that perhaps your mother taught you.  Certainly Jesus teaches you.  When you point the finger at the sins of others, well… you’d better be careful about all those other fingers pointing back at you.  Or as Jesus teaches you just a few verses after our Holy Gospel, “first take the log out of your own eye” (Luke 6:42).  Then you can help your neighbor remove his speck.

            The point is not that Joseph was sinless, but that he was (and is still today!) a forgiven sinner.  He received mercy from God.  And so he was merciful.  Yes, even to these wicked brothers.  And they were wicked.  Remember, they threw Joseph into a pit.  Some wanted to kill him then and there.  But then the profit motive prevailed, so instead, they sold him to Midianite traders, and lied to Dad about it, posing a bloodied coat of many colors as confirmation of their claims. 

            First a slave, then a prisoner, Joseph’s hardship and suffering were great.  Yet even through that hardship and suffering, there was the Father’s mercy.  God was teaching Joseph to rely on Him alone.  For every need of soul and body.  Though a slave, God gave Joseph favor in his master’s eyes, so that he became the head of Potiphar’s house.  His master trusted him in everything.  (There is, by the way, a lesson here in how Christians should conduct themselves in their lives and work.  Why was Joseph so trusted?  Because he acted according to his faith.  He worked for Potiphar as though working for God.  Even unbelieving Potiphar recognized that [cf. Eph. 6:5; 1 Tim. 6:1; Titus 2:9-10]). 

            And then, falsely accused, having fled the temptation of infidelity, even there in prison, literally in the pit house (once again, Joseph finds Himself in the pit!), God gave Joseph favor in the eyes of his jailer, so he put him in charge of all the prisoners.  And we know that through a series of divinely directed events, by God’s mercy, Joseph became royalty in Egypt, second only to Pharaoh himself.  The fountain of God’s mercy overflowed in Joseph.  And not just for Joseph’s sake, but for many.  God-given wisdom saved more than one nation from famine.  It saved Egypt.  And in saving Israel, it saved us all, for from Israel came our Lord Jesus Christ, our only Savior from sin and death. 

            And now, here come the brothers to purchase grain.  And you know the story (and if you don’t, it’s worth a read, beginning in Genesis 37).  I won’t rehearse it all for you here.  But in our Old Testament reading we have Joseph revealing himself to his brothers, and they are rightly scared to death.  Joseph would have been justified… well, that’s a tricky word isn’t it… he would have been justified in our eyes if he’d exacted revenge!  Put those miserable wretches to the wretched death they deserve.  But then, our eyes are full of logs, aren’t they?  And Joseph would not have been justified for doing this in the eyes of God (and by the way, if he had, he would have preemptively killed Jesus, and then there would be no justification for us).  Do you see the problem with taking vengeance yourself?  There is a reason God reserves vengeance for Himself (Rom. 12:19).  What are you to do?  Have mercy.  Having received the unending and overflowing mercy of God through all his suffering and hardships, Joseph was now bound to show mercy, even to his wicked brothers.  Jesus says to Joseph, and to us, “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” (Luke 6:27-28).  We can argue about the rightness and wrongness of all the tests and trials Joseph inflicted on his brothers in the intervening time.  But even in this, he is a picture of our Father, who put Joseph himself through the trials of slavery and prison for the sake of his faith, and puts you through various trials, that you may learn how helpless you are, how desperately you must rely on the mercy of God alone for every need of soul and body.  In the end, though, what does Joseph do?  He has mercy.  He forgives his brothers, who didn’t just sin against him a little… they wanted to murder him, and for all practical purposes, they did.  He forgives them.  And then he blesses them.  Not just with words.  With food.  With money.  With a place to live, where they will be preserved.  Where their descendants will also suffer trials, to be sure.  Slavery in Egypt.  But all under God’s unending mercy as He molds them into His people.  God, who will bring them out, and settle them in the Promised Land, and bring from them our dear Savior and Lord.

            Now, we must say, Joseph does judge his brothers’ actions, and even their motives: “you meant evil against me,” he says to them at the end of Genesis (50:20).  Judge not, and you will not be judged” (Luke 6:37), does not mean you shouldn’t call evil, evil (this may be the most abused verse in all of Holy Scripture, marshalled as it is to prohibit Christians from ever saying something is bad).  You can, and should, identify what is right and wrong, and what is sin and what is righteousness in light of God’s Word, and you should root out the sin from yourself by repentance, confessing it to God and being absolved, receiving His mercy, fleeing infidelity, crucifying your flesh.  And you can, and you should, having removed the logs blocking your sight, help your neighbor with his speck.  The point is, you shouldn’t set yourself up as judge in the place of God.  You shouldn’t damn your neighbor to hell.  Nor should you think of him as a worse sinner than you are.  In fact, what should you do?  You should have mercy.  As God has mercy on you.  You should be patient.  You should forgive.  And you should show him God’s mercy.  You should tell him about the forgiveness of sins he has in Jesus.  You should pray he knows the mercy of God in Jesus.  You should pray he receives life in Jesus.  And you should bless him.  Not just with words.  With your body and with your possessions.  Feed him.  Clothe him.  Give to him generously.  Forgive him all his trespasses against you… as you say you do in the Lord’s Prayer.  That is what you tell your Father you are hereby doing in the Fifth Petition.  Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”  And not just the little sins.  The big ones.  Like Joseph toward his brothers.  After all, God has not just had mercy on you for your own sake.  He has had mercy on you for the sake of your neighbor.  It is true, Joseph says to his brothers, “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive” (Gen. 50:20), not just those Joseph physically saved from the famine, but all of us, eternally, as he preserved the nation and people from whom the Savior of the world is born. 

            Now, this is all very nice, theoretically, all this talk about mercy and forgiveness.  But you have trouble with this.  I know you do.  And yes, I’m well aware of the fingers pointing back at me, and the redwood tree in my own eye.  It is hard to forgive those who sin against you.  Because it requires you to die a little.  It requires you to die to yourself.  And that always hurts.

            It is important to remember, of course, that forgiveness is not a feeling, and you’ll struggle with bad feelings toward those who sin against you your whole life long.  You should fight against those feelings, and you should confess them to God.  They are sinful.  But you’ll have them.  Because you are still in this fallen flesh.  I imagine there were times Joseph looked at his brothers and remembered the terrible things they said, and the violent things they did, when they threw him into the pit.  And he felt the old burning anger boiling up inside.  He had to put it to death.  He had to crucify his flesh.  But forgiveness happened when he said the words: “do not be distressed or angry with yourselves… God sent me before you to preserve life… God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth,” and that means the Savior, and that means His Christians… that means you!... “Hurry and go up to my father and say to him, ‘Thus says your son Joseph… Come down to me; do not tarry… I will provide for you” (Gen. 45:5, 7, 9, 11).  And so he did.  Forgiveness is a word.  And then it is that word put into action. 

            Of course, Joseph is only an example of this, and an imperfect one at that.  The personification of such mercy is our Lord Himself.  In fact, Joseph is but a type of Jesus.  Here the Son of God comes to His brothers.  He comes to His own, and His own do not receive Him.  They cast Him out.  We cast Him out.  Sold for thirty pieces of silver, the price of a slave.  Falsely accused, arrested, tried.  The King of the Jews,” Pilate declares Him (Luke 23:38).  Yet “Crucify” is all our breath, as we’ll hear and sing in the coming days of Lent (Luke 23:31; LSB 430:3).  But what does Jesus respond?  Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).  In fact, this is all for our forgiveness.  Jesus tells us to be merciful as our Father is merciful.  Well, how is our Father merciful?  The answer is Jesus on the cross.  Jesus is the Mercy of our Father in the flesh.  The Mercy of our Father suffers all evil for our sake, that we be forgiven.  The Mercy of our Father endures God’s wrath for our sake, that we receive God’s grace and favor.  The Mercy of our Father dies for us, in our place, and is buried in the pit of a man named Joseph, that we live eternally as beloved children of our Father.  That is how our Father is merciful… In the giving of His Son, who is Mercy incarnate, God’s Mercy to us. 

            Mercy means sacrifice.  And it necessarily means the death of Jesus.  But now Mercy lives.  For Joseph’s pit is empty, and Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.  And now Mercy lives in you, and you live in Mercy.  For you are baptized into Christ, and Christ enters in to you with His life-bestowing Word and His risen Body and Blood.  You cannot have mercy by your own reason or strength.  Neither could Joseph.  But Christ is the power that gives you to have mercy, and Christ is Himself that Mercy. 

            Now, go Christ everybody!  That is the point.  You bear Christ upon you, and in you, wherever you go.  So go give Him.  You’ve been mercied.  Go have mercy.  God forgives you all your sins for Jesus’ sake.  Go forgive everything anyone has ever done against you.  God provides for all your needs of soul and body.  Go provide for your neighbor’s needs of soul and body.  Love.  Do good.  Bless.  Pray.  Feed.  Clothe.  Give shelter.  Give alms.  Even to those who abuse you.  Even to your sworn enemies.  Heap those burning coals, which we pray will not burn in judgment, but in gratitude and love, embers fanned into faith.  Your Father is not merciful toward you because you deserve it.  He is merciful toward you because Christ deserves it.  You are not merciful toward your neighbor because your neighbor deserves it.  You are merciful toward him because Christ deserves it.  Don’t look for thanks.  Don’t look for repayment.  Your Father is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.  So you.  It runs in the baptismal genes.  And in it, there is great joy.  And also a promise: The more mercy you give, the more room there is to receive even more mercy and blessing from God.  Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over (Luke 6:38).  God will repay.  He will reward.  Maybe now in this life.  Maybe you’ll have to wait for the resurrection.  But it will be more, and greater, than you ever expected.  Not because of your merit or worthiness.  But because of Jesus.

            Now, we could say a word about men named Joseph, mercifully caring and providing for Jesus’ ancestors in Egypt, and for Jesus at His birth, and again at His death and burial.  But as Luther would say, this sermon has gone on long enough, so we’ll save it for another time.  In the Name of the Father, and of the Son X, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.                 



[1] Catechism quotes from Luther’s Small Catechism (St. Louis: Concordia, 1986).


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