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y’s mother raced into the bedroom when she heard him scream and found his toddler sister yanking hard on his hair. She carefully unraveled the little girl’s grasp and said to Johnny, “It’s okay, sweetheart. She didn’t really mean it. She doesn’t understand that it hurts.” Almost as soon as she was out of the room, she heard the little girl scream. Rushing back in, she asked, “What’s wrong?” “She understands now!” exclaimed Johnny.
Vengeance, sweet revenge against those we perceive to have wronged us. We begin learning the art of repayment as small children. Next we begin to sharpen and perfect it through our teen years until it becomes a practiced lifestyle by adulthood. We see it used while driving in our cars, we hear it spoken in our newscasts, and we witness its tragic results in our fractured families. How natural it becomes to repay those who have wronged us.
Scripture is filled with accounts of vengeance. Esau sought to kill his brother for taking his birthright. Jezebel vowed vengeance against Elijah. Herodius displayed the head of John the Baptist as her vengeful trophy, and Peter lashed out with his sword at the soldier in Gethsemane.
If there was ever a man who was wronged throughout his life, it was Joseph. If there was ever a man who could have claimed revenge, it was Joseph. Yet instead, his life was one incredible lesson in the art of forgiveness.
After years of clawing his way back from the pit of despair, Joseph reached the rank of second in all of Egypt. During those years, a severe famine arose that would reunite him with the very brothers who despised him and planned for his death. When Joseph’s brothers journeyed to Egypt seeking emergency food supplies, their path led them right into the presence of Joseph. Joseph immediately recognized them but concealed his own identity. Perhaps they did not recognize him because of his royal robes, his shaven face, or his foreign tongue.
Can you imagine the thoughts that raced through Joseph’s mind as he stared at his brothers? Now the opportunity for revenge was there at his feet. He could not have written the script any better. Joseph had been thrown into a black cistern from which there was no escape, he was sold to strangers in a traveling caravan, he was traded on the slave block in Egypt, he was torn from the father and home he loved, he was falsely accused of adultery by his master’s wife, he was sentenced to a prison cell, and worst of all, he was separated from any mention of the God he learned to know and love as a child. And now these perpetrators stood before him.
So what did Joseph tell his brothers? He looked them in the eyes and said, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you” (45:4,5). That statement smacked human nature in the face. It went against everything this world teaches us about the right of revenge. Those were the words of a true believer, a man of Christian integrity. Joseph looked at life from a different vantage point than the world does, and it gave Joseph a whole new focus. What peace of mind Joseph had, for he had risen above the filthy vengeance seekers of this world. His was true contentment, the same contentment we can have if we would just follow Joseph’s example of forgiving those who have wronged us. St. Paul says it well: “Forgive as the Lord forgave you” (Colossians 3:13).
Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. Amen.
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