Let’s drop in on a conversation taking place between four fifteen year old boys.  We’re in the car.  I’m taking them to a Saturday matinee.  Of course, if there are four fifteen year old boys in your car and one of them is yours, you don’t really exist, even if you’re driving.  Even when it’s just you and your fifteen year old in the car, there’s something like a don’t ask don’t tell policy in force.  If you don’t ask a question, they won’t tell you anything.  When your fifteen year old has three of his friends in the car with him, you better not ask anything at all.  But, you can listen in.  Which I did.  And, I learned some very interesting things.

First, I learned that when I loaned my American Express card to Cameron so he could buy his movie ticket on line so that, heaven forbid, he wouldn’t have to stand in line, it was also used to purchase all four tickets to see The Day After Tomorrow, which is when I’ll probably never get reimbursed.  It’s a kind of easier-to-ask-forgiveness-than-permission policy.  Then, I learned that one of the boys who owed Cameron $7.50 for his ticket so Cameron could pay me what he owed me didn’t actually bring it with him.  Out came one of at least three cell phones in the car and this boy called his mom, not only to ask her to bring him $7.50 so he could pay Cameron so Cameron could pay me, but to tell her that she should bring the money with her when she drove to Mesquite to pick them up after the movie is over in three hours.  Then, right there in front of all the other boys, he said, “I love you mom.”  When he hung up, he asked the other guys, “Ya’ll tell your mom you love her, don’t you?”  To which one of them replied, “Yeah, but you’re supposed to tell her you love her before you ask for money.”  Nothing like family love, right?

Just ask Joseph.  Let’s drop in on this conversation between him and his brothers.  We may find that this is one of those awkward you’d- rather-be-somewhere-else moments.  There were some old scores about to be settled.  Joseph’s brothers had good reason to fear that they wouldn’t be settled in their favor. 

Joseph’s brothers had always resented him for getting the lion’s share of their father Jacob’s love.  He’d even given Joseph the famous coat of many colors.  So, the brothers decided to even things up in the family by getting rid of Joseph.  After kidnapping him, they sold him into slavery and then told their dad that Joseph was dead.  Over time, Joseph found himself in Egypt where, even from slavery, he worked his way up the ladder to be second in command only to Pharaoh.  By now, the tables had turned.  Jacob had died, the land was under the curse of famine, the brothers needed groceries and the brother they once abandoned was now in charge of all the Albertsons and Tom Thumbs.  They’d have no choice but to beg for mercy from the very brother they’d sold into slavery years before.

So, hat in hand, they made their way to Egypt, found Joseph and, hiding behind their dead father, made a half-hearted attempt at apologizing.  As weak as their attempt was, it is worth noting that the real test of character in situations like this is when you have the power, especially in family matters, and how you choose to use that power.  Joseph could have used his power to destroy his brothers in retribution.  Instead, when they begged forgiveness from him, he asked a question, “‘Am I in the place of God?’”  Joseph’s brothers didn’t know how fortunate they were to have a brother who knew his place in matters of forgiveness and retribution, that God and God alone is the only one who has the right not to extend forgiveness. 

It all started with that simple but profound question Joseph asked, “‘Am I in the place of God?’”  It’s the one question life will ultimately force all of us to ask and that only faith can answer with hope.  It is also the question central in the task of working toward forgiveness in relationships that have been fractured by any kind of betrayal. 

A few weeks ago I began a three sermon series entitled, “Breaking the Cycle of Shame.”  It has been intended to help us ask and answer some very practical questions related to the work of forgiveness.  First, we looked at finding a new starting point for forgiveness.  Last week, we discussed what it means to work toward forgiveness by reframing the pain of loss and betrayal.  Today, we find ourselves inside the greatest laboratory for forgiveness we’ll ever find, the family which God has given us to live with.

It is inside that laboratory that we find Joseph reminding himself of his place and also reminding his brothers of theirs by asking, “‘Am I in the place of God?’”  It is a question that teaches a fundamental lesson in forgiveness.  It is only in remembering whose right it is to forgive or not to forgive that we are finally able to charge off the debt others owe us, to let them off the hook.ow

We’ve all heard of the death of Ronald Reagan by now.  One of my favorite memories of President Reagan is of him standing in front of the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin.  Across that wall that had separated the communist east from the free west for almost thirty years, Reagan seemed to be shouting at the one man who had any real power to do anything about it when he addressed the Russian president in absentia.  “Mr. Gorbachev,” Reagan shouted, “tear down this wall.”  Just one year later, down it came.  And, the world has and will be forever better for it.

I’m pretty sure the communists didn’t tear down the Berlin Wall because they suddenly had warm feelings for capitalists, for those they’d considered their enemies since World War II.  Much like Joseph’s brothers, they were pragmatists.  They were about to starve to death.  They needed groceries and they knew who had them.  Their motives may not have been pure, but the wall came down just the same.

In our relationships with each other, the walls of anger, resentment and bitterness will come down not when our neighbor is asking forgiveness out of the purest of motives but when, as an act of worship, we ask ourselves if it is our right not to extend forgiveness.  When we ask if we are in the place of God and thereby remember that it is not our right to put walls up in the first place.

Three weeks ago we began discussing the practical steps for tearing down the walls of anger and hatred that separate us from those who have in any way wounded us, harmed us or taken from us.  If we are going to be the forgiving people God has called us to be, we will have to find a new starting point for forgiveness.  Forgiveness never begins with how we feel about those who have harmed us.  Those who wait on others to change before they are willing to extend forgiveness to them will likely wait forever.  Finding a new starting point for forgiveness means starting with God’s forgiveness of us, in his willingness to extend forgiveness to us even while we were totally unworthy of it. 

One morning, as a new bride was just waking up, she turned to her new husband and asked him for a kiss.  Somewhat reluctantly, he rolled her way and planted a polite kiss – on her cheek.  “No!” she said.  “Kiss me on my mouth!”  “I would,” he said, “but it is so close – to your breath!”  If we wait until the kiss of forgiveness is a pleasant experience first for us, we’ll never get there.  People who are good at forgiving learn to offer the kiss first, no matter how unpleasant the experience may be. 

People who are good at forgiving also learn to reframe the pain of betrayal and loss.  They choose to look at the person who hurt them as someone more than just the person who hurt them.  They even learn to look at the whole situation in which they were hurt in a whole new way.

Pat Conroy has written some very popular novels over the years, The Great Santini and The Prince of Tides, among them.  His latest work is autobiographical.  It is about his years playing basketball at The Citadel in the mid-60’s and is interwoven with anecdotes about his relationship with his father, a Marine officer who was an emotionally and physically brutal man.  Like many children who never knew a father’s love, Conroy kept trying to find ways of getting his father to love him anyway.  One particularly poignant story Conroy tells is about the time during his college years when he gave his father a pen set for Christmas, so hoping his father would be proud and grateful.  After all the packages were opened, his mother asked Pat to take all the discarded wrappings out to the curb but to look through them first to make sure none of the gifts got thrown away.  Searching through the piles of paper and ribbons, he felt something hard.  When he pulled it out, he discovered the pen set that he’d given his father and that his father had apparently just thrown away. 

It was a knife in Conroy’s heart.  Yet again, his attempt to express some kind of love for his father had been rebuffed with cold indifference.  But, instead of just leaving the pen set in the trash, in an act of defiance, Conroy retrieved it and kept it.  Years later he used that same pen set to write some of his first short stories.  They were stories that not only set him on the road to literary success, but also helped him write out and work through the pain of having a cold hearted, unloving and even brutal father.  Conroy took the pain of betrayal and reframed it into an instrument of healing.  He writes, “I took my father’s castaway gift and turned it into language and stories . . .” (Pat Conroy, My Losing Season, Bantam, 2002, p. 210).

Some of the most creative work that has ever done has been done by those who have been wounded or betrayed trying to reshape their pain into a work of forgiveness and healing.  Of taking what was meant for meanness and torture and turning it into an instrument of healing and hope.  Jesus’ death on the cross is nothing less than God’s creative response to man’s betrayal and rejection.  People who learn to forgive learn to reframe the pain of betrayal and loss. 

Joseph told his brothers, about their betrayal of him and their father, “‘Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.’”  Joseph was confident that God could creatively rework their betrayal into his purposes.  He knew the spirit of Romans 8 centuries before Paul penned it.  That is because God working in all things, good and bad, to bring about his good purposes is really the story of the entire Bible, the story of God’s way with all of his creation. 

This is one thing that helps me to understand the mystery of human suffering.  Of helping me reconcile inexplicable misery with faith in an all knowing, all powerful, all loving God.  What if all human suffering is nothing less than God’s unfinished business?  One reason suffering is so difficult to reconcile with faith is because our understanding of suffering is so limited by our understanding of time.  Instead of despairing to the point of hopelessness, we ought to say, “Let’s wait and see what he makes of it.”  As for the work of forgiveness, finding our way to forgiveness of others means finding our way to trust the unfinished business of God.

In light of all this work on forgiveness this few weeks, I’ve done some thinking about the people it’s hardest for me to forgive.  As you listen to my list, maybe you’ll find some that we have in common.  However, before I tell you who I find hardest to forgive, I thought it might be helpful to tell you who is it not hardest for me to forgive. 

It is not hardest for me to forgive people who are racially prejudiced and bigoted.  As inexcusable as racial prejudice is, I am able to write it off, at least to some extent, as nothing short of sheer ignorance.  There is nothing more ignorant than to judge others as less worthy because of the color of skin.  And, racial prejudice, like all prejudice, involves putting ourselves in God’s place.  If racial prejudice is our sin, like Joseph, shouldn’t we ask, “Am I in the place of God?”

It is not hardest for me to forgive those who are not Baptist.  As humorous as that might seem to you, I cringe when I think about how saying that didn’t come automatically to me.  I actually remember a time when I would question the spiritual sincerity of anyone who was anything other than Baptist.  Yet again, however, all prejudice, even religious bigotry, involves judging others for not thinking about God like we think about God.  It means putting ourselves, Archie Bunker like, at the center of all right thinking.  And, yet again, the question goes begging, “Am I in the place of God?”

It is not hardest for me to forgive people who look down on others for their baldness.  And, again, as humorous as that may sound, is there is greater curse many live with in this American culture than the curse of trying to measure up to someone else’s idea of beauty?  Yet again, all prejudice is putting ourselves at the center of what it means to be beautiful.  And, yet again, the question goes begging, “Am I in God’s place?”

It is not hardest for me to forgive those who look down on others for not being “spiritual” enough, a plague of prejudice that has eaten at the church from the inside out since Pentecost.  Yet, all prejudice, even religious bigotry, is the sin of putting ourselves at the center of what it means to be holy.  And, yet again, the question goes begging, “Am I in God’s place?”

The list is long of those it is not hardest for me to forgive.  The list is shorter of those it is hardest for me to forgive.  Dave Letterman like, I’ll start at the bottom of a list of only three. 

Number three on the list of those it is hardest for me to forgive are those who won’t forgive me.  Especially when I’ve asked their forgiveness.  When I’ve wounded or hurt or offended someone and then been humble enough to ask their forgiveness, how dare they not forgive someone as wonderful as me, right?  Yet, am I in the place of God to judge them for judging me for not treating them fairly and then expecting them to forgive me? 

Number two on my list of those it is hardest to forgive brings me a little closer to home, to myself.  There is no one in this world harder on me than me.  I am amazed at how brutally self-abusive I can be.  Yet, if God can forgive me, who am I not to forgive myself?  Am I in the place of God?

Finally, on my list of those it is sometimes hardest to forgive, God forgive me, is God.  When I am brutally self-honest, I discover that all unforgiveness is rooted in the false belief that someone owed me something that I didn’t get.  Ultimately the search for that someone leads me back to God.  Am I alone in my search?  Maybe we should ask Job.  Who else more beautifully models for us how to ask and answer the “Am I in God’s place?” question in the middle of human suffering?  “‘Though he slay me, I will hope in Him’” (Job 13:15).

The truth is, we may never get to forgiveness until we decide to let God off the hook.  For not making us smarter, or more beautiful, or more like . . . Bill Gates!  In fact, the first murder recorded in scripture took place because Cain was angry at God for the deal he didn’t get from God and Abel just happened to get in the way.  It is not easy to believe or accept, but most of our vengeful acts at others are acts of anger at God misdirected at others.

Too often we hold God accountable for our unfulfilled dreams instead of thanking him for the very good reality that is ours.  When I can honestly, truthfully say about the person God did make me, the one I see staring back at me in the mirror, “Thanks be to God!,” then I am on the way to being able to extend my hopeful gratitude to God in the form of forgiveness to others instead of vengeance and anger.

This past Friday night my oldest son Griffin graduated from high school but I missed it!  I’d waited eighteen years for this and I missed it!  Oh, I was there all right.  For all four hours of it, two hours just reading the names of the 600 graduates.  Since Griffin is a Schmucker, he was on the next to last page of names.  We had to go the distance.  But, when it came time for Griffin to walk the stage and get his diploma, I was trying to get the camera to work.  I squared the viewfinder on the stage and pushed the button and nothing happened.  I looked down to see what was wrong and by the time I looked back up again, Griffin was gone.  It was over!  I had waited eighteen years and four hours only to miss my son’s graduation!  I was so busy trying to hold onto the memory that I missed the only reality I had.  The most costly thing we hold on to is the memory of someone’s offense against us.  For every minute we spend our energy holding onto the past we forfeit the only moment of reality we have. 

In a very real sense, what the “Am I in the place of God?” question forces us to face is the fact that all of our unforgiveness of others is actually unfinished business with God.  Unfinished business that can only be finished when we fall before our creator in an act of worshipful gratitude for the moment and the life and the hope and the creative possibilities of God’s grace that are ours, no matter what anyone else may have taken from us.

Cameron and I will settle the American Express bill because I want him to learn responsibility.  Yet, some of the bills I’m owed by others won’t ever get paid because the most important things some people have taken from me can’t be paid back.  The only way I’ll ever get to forgiveness of those debts is to first finish the work that is mine with God, the work that begins when I ask, “Am I in the place of God?”  To remember that I only have a life because, when it came to my debt with God . . . Jesus paid it all!

If there is even one unforgiven person in your life, then you have yet to answer that question, “Am I in the place of God?”  Who is that unforgiven person?  It’s none of my business, even if that person is me.  It’s your unfinished business with God.  What will it cost you to leave it unfinished?

Why not finish it now?