The Hunger

Family. It is integral to our lives…to society…to the world. Populations, traditions, and values are passed down through families.

Yet family is not easy. It’s needed. It’s required. But it can hurt. It seems when conflict arises in our family, we are likely to take a harsher path in handling conflict than we would in other societal situations. We are more likely to take advantage of one another. We are more likely to manipulate one another. We raise our voices more. We push the limits more. We hurt one another more.

You wonder why that is. Maybe it’s because of the intense familiarity and commonality found in family bonds. Maybe it has something to do with not being able to choose our family of birth. Maybe there’s a comfort level in believing that what happens in the family stays in the family. Whatever it is we know family life often brings a great deal of hurt. And where there’s a great deal of hurt, there’s a great need for forgiveness.

So we continue our series on forgiveness. Last week we asked the question, well I asked the question, “Is God crazy?” We looked at the Psalms wondering if God is crazy for his forgiveness that continues to be available no matter how long humanity continues to mock the Creator. Of course, we reached the conclusion that it is not God who is crazy, for it is in his nature to forgive, but humanity is crazy for its continued mockery of God. And we anticipated that if it is in God’s nature to forgive, and we are created in God’s image, then it must be in our nature to forgive. So we begin looking at our forgiveness of others today.

And that brings us to Genesis. After all, Genesis gives us not only the beginning of existence but also the beginning of rebellion from God, thus, the beginning of forgiveness.

We discussed this briefly last week but you may still question the idea of God’s forgiveness in Genesis. After all, the first humans were cast out of the garden. Cain was cursed for life. The flood wiped out almost all of humanity. The language of humanity was confused for building a tower to the heavens. So where is the forgiveness in that?

As I mentioned last week, God could have just wiped slate clean, yet the Creator chose a different solution in Genesis. Adam and Eve and Cain all received consequences but were spared. Great suffering was brought on humanity in the flood but its existence was spared in Noah. When humanity continued the cycle of sin after the flood, God did not repeat the previous action, but brought confusion instead. It appears grace and forgiveness remain as God has never given up on us.

Still, there is another way to consider these texts. And that is in the evolving nature of the understanding of God’s revelation by humanity. This approach compares the biblical texts to other ancient religious texts and notes the similarities while finding significance in where our texts differ from those texts.

For example, in our canon creation comes about not through a violent battle between two gods with the carcass of the losing deity serving as the matter from which the universe is created, but as an act of love from a hands-on God. The flood occurs because of rampant sin, not simply because humanity annoyed the gods with their noise.

So this comparison shines the light on a different kind of God. One who is not unpredictable and irritable and bringing down random violence at any moment, but one that interacts with humanity and is trying to save humanity from itself. In other ancient faiths, it was the lesser gods who showed mercy to humanity by telling them a flood was coming or giving them fire to keep them warm. In the faith of Genesis, however, it is the ultimate God showing mercy and offering forgiveness.

This helps us to see the early books of the Bible as a progression in the understanding of God from those ancient writings that came before. It also opens us up to see the progression in our canon regarding the understanding of the Creator and God’s relationship to suffering. And with a better understanding of God’s relationship to suffering, we can better understand God’s forgiveness.

Early on, God appears almost as an angry king judging those who fail and being the source of both good and ill. As the scriptural canon progresses, however, we are introduced to the idea of Satan, who begins in the Jewish tradition as a tempter but who is slowly understood to be the source of suffering and evil.

Still other texts in our canon suggest later that the source of our suffering is our own failure to live the way we were designed to live. It’s kind of like throwing your car in park at 60 miles an hour. It breaks down because that is not how it was designed to operate. Perhaps,this will help us start to understand why God brings rain on the righteous and the wicked. He is seeking to love all and we become our own undoing by trying to be our own god. This God of love was willing to come to earth and suffer at our hands offering forgiveness and salvation rather than coldly wiping the slate clean from above. This God is a far cry from the God who brought the flood.

So perhaps this makes it easier for us to grasp the idea of grace and forgiveness in the early part of Genesis and prepares us to understand the story of the family of promise beginning with Abraham.

The call of Abraham is the start of God’s work to call humanity back to its created nature through a people called to be a light to the nations. Abraham left his homeland and immediately became vulnerable. He could only rely on God. Yet he too stumbles. He and Sarah try to fulfill the promises of God in their own ways by having Abraham conceive with Sarah’s servant girl. When they succeed, God chides them for not trusting the Creator’s promise and Sarah becomes jealous of her servant Hagar. The sort of family conflict seen between Cain and Abel rears its ugly head again.

The cycle continues with Jacob who is said to be grasping his twin brother’s heel trying to be the first born. He then steals Esau’s birthright sending Jacob on the run. He winds up in his extended family’s land where a web of deceit and trickery on both Jacob’s and Laban’s part leaves Jacob with two wives who are rivals for Jacob’s affection. They compete to give him the most children using both themselves and their servants so that Jacob, now known as Israel, has thirteen sons.

This cycle of rivalry continues as the youngest, Joseph, is Israel’s favorite and is hated by his twelve brothers. Joseph has a dream that his brothers will one day bow down to him. When he shares this with his brothers they first decide to kill him before deciding instead to throw him down a well, sell him to some passersby and tell their father he was killed by a wild animal.

From there a series of events takes place until Joseph finds himself as the Egyptian pharaoh’s second in command and his brothers coming to him for food during a famine, though they do not know it is him. He toys with his brothers for awhile before revealing his identity. And here Joseph does not seek to vengeance he had the power to deliver, but offers forgiveness out of the joy from this reunion. And after his father dies, this forgiveness is reinforced.

Let’s turn to Genesis 50:15-21 and see this play out.

Joseph’s brothers are frightened. Joseph loved his father and they feared Israel’s presence was the only reason he has spared their freedom or, worse, their life. They are so scared they concoct a story that their father’s dying words were for Joseph to spare his brothers. Even then they expect to be slaves.

But Joseph found the strength to forgive his brothers and maintain their wholeness. But what gave him this strength?

The answer to the question is found in Joseph’s words. He has reunited his family and forgiven his brothers because he understands the biggest concept of all: it’s all about something bigger than me. Joseph understood the power he had in Egypt. He also understood the power his brothers exercised over him in getting him out of the way. They made themselves kings over his life and sent him as an orphan into servitude. He could have done the same and gotten even with his brothers. He was, in a political sense, practically a king over their lives now. He could order dismay on them and their families.

But he saw how God had used their evil schemes and made good out of it. Joseph’s ordeals had made it possible to deliver his family in a time of need and preserve a numerous people. It was bigger than Joseph’s desire to be king of his life or his brother’s lives. It was bigger than his hurt. It was about the deliverance of the family of promise: that family called forth to live as a light to the rest of the world and reveal God’s grace and forgiveness in a way that will call the rest of the world to turn back to the Creator and the way we were created to live.

If we are to have the fullest family lives we possibly can, we have to embrace this concept: it’s about something bigger than me. But that is difficult because of centuries of surrounding influence.

We now live in a culture focused on "Me". And the roots of the “Me” culture are often traced to the writings of the philosopher Descartes who said, “I think therefore I am.” His answer to the crisis of existence and answering the question, “Why am I here?” was framed in an individualistic sense. And why not? To answer his existential crisis, he was asking an individualistic question, “Why am I here?”

This so-called revelation played its role in answering a lot of troubling questions at the time. However, as it trickled down the centuries through the works of philosophers like John Locke and Adam Smith it increased in its individualism: to the point that a person’s main goal in life is to be king of his or her own life.

Now this seems like a worthy notion. After all, it was the notion of freedom as an answer to centuries of religious wars and religious compulsion at the hands of the rulers of nation-states. But it quickly reached the point of hyper-individualism in which being king of one’s own life became the sole focus of our existence. To the point that if anything came in conflict with what we wanted, there would be no compromise and no community.

This progressed even in Christianity where Jesus came to be seen not as a savior of kings and priests who passed that down to those below them but as a personal savior to those free to choose to follow him. However, in our current day this has morphed to the point where our personal relationship with Jesus is what matters most. Community is often sacrificed. Where our beliefs are in conflict with another, we often walk away. Where accountability is offered, we view ourselves as the only accountability we need. We are the authority of our faith and have trouble lending an ear to anyone else. We often go to church but focus on me.

So as these attitudes have gripped our society and our faith, it’s easy to see how these influences have affected our families. Each member of the family acts as a king demanding their way. When we don’t get the satisfaction we desire from a family member we may seek it elsewhere with no concern for the hurt or betrayal it may cause. When a family member doesn’t give us what we want, we take it anyway or we con them or guilt them into giving it to us.

The hurt builds. Division grows in what should be society’s most unified institution and we find ourselves lost and alone. We end up gathering together on holidays to dredge up old wounds time and again and trying to love one another as we continue to mutter under our breath and view our family members as valuable for only what they have to offer us.

But as people of faith, we have to realize our families are the continuation of the family of promise. We are to be a light to the nations calling people back to God and the Creator’s design for our lives. As the family of promise, we understand turning back to God does not start with the existential question “Why am I here?” Instead of seeking to be king of our lives we acknowledge Jesus is the Lord of all our lives and ask the existential question, “Why are we here?”

Once we ask that question, we can understand that this life is about something much bigger than me. We can rest in the fact we no longer have to strain to call the shots in every aspect of our family life. We can turn away from the exhaustion of constantly seeking to be the alpha dog at home and making our family serve our desires or be who we want them to be. We can rest in love of one another. We can become vulnerable to one another through the weakness of forgiveness and lean on God to preserve us and renew us and save us.

So let us think today about our families. Who has hurt you? More importantly, who have you hurt? And step out of this place prayerfully seeking and offering forgiveness. After all, forgiveness is in our nature. It is through this apparent act of weakness, made known on the cross of Jesus, that our families, all part of the family of promise, will once again be a light to the world. Why are our families here? So our love will be a beacon to the world that there is hope.

Forgiveness! It’s not about winning. It’s not about getting even. It’s about love and hope for the future. It’s about something so much bigger than me.