By What Authority?

 

September 27, 2026, Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.

Church cancelled; Nor'easter

It’s a week before Passover and Jesus is in the Temple.

Not just in the Temple. He’s holding the Temple captive to his righteous presence. He entered Jerusalem in a grand procession celebrated with flowers and palms and went directly to the Temple with a lash to toss animal cages and money boxes into the air.

Now he stands his ground in what one commentator calls a one-man occupation of the Temple. He’s attracting too many people who believe in his powers of healing and comfort and the Chief priests and scribes are eager to move him out. They mount a series of offensives to undermine Jesus’ authority or paint him as a  posturing fraud.

First the Temple leaders concoct a “gotcha” question to trap Jesus into saying things that would be regarded as blasphemous or, even worse, force him to be conspicuously silent.

Aware that much of Jesus’ popularity is based on the astonishing miracles he performs, they ask two questions. “By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you that authority?”

The disciples near Jesus must have cringed when they heard this. Jesus is in danger! After three years of itinerate ministry, the disciples had no doubt Jesus was God’s son, the Messiah, the Christ. But if the chief priests could force him to say that aloud in public, they would have all the evidence they needed to arrest him. That kind of blasphemy carried a death sentence with it.

But Jesus, who had spent three years sparring with the Pharisees, was not about to get entangled in an ill-conceived verbal snare. 

“I will also ask you one question; if you tell me the answer, then I will also tell you by what authority I do these things. Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?” 

The chief priests glanced at each other and turned aside. John the Baptizer was an off-limits topic because the people had loved him and regarded John as God’s  prophet. The Temple leaders did not have the political clout to declare John’s baptism had no divine origin. The crowd would turn against them.

Abashed, the turned back to Jesus and murmured, “We don’t know.” 

“Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things,” Jesus said. And I like to think he said this with a slight smile on his face.

Jesus is, after all, still occupying the Temple where he can’t be touched and he plans to be there for a while. In fact he won’t leave until the first verses of Matthew’s chapter 24.

But Jesus is not through with the chief priests and elders yet. Before they can wander away, he calls to them.

“What do you think?”

Perhaps Jesus is soliciting their opinion on what he is about to say, or perhaps he is inviting them to reason together with him. The question certainly has the effect of compelling the senior leaders to listen.

Jesus tells the story of a man who had two sons who he wanted to work in his vineyard for a day. He asked one son who told him no but later changed his mind and went to the Vineyard. He asked the other son who told him yes, but went away and forgot about it.

Professor Stanley Saunders, a retired seminary professor, sets this parable in the “two sons” motif of biblical story telling.

He writes: “The two sons tradition itself begins with Cain and Abel and Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, Aaron and Moses, and David and his brothers, the prodigal and his older brother —a tradition laden with motifs of envy and betrayal, struggles for power, and sometimes reconciliation.”

And perhaps the two sons in Matthew’s parable strike a common chord. As I was reading the story it occurred to me: I am these guys.

I hate to think how many times in my adolescent rebellion I adamantly refused my father’s request to do a job but, feeling guilty moments later, did it anyway. And how many times I said, “Sure, Dad,” but went to my room to type and draw cartoons and forgot all about it. There are times when I accepted my father’s authority, albeit reluctantly, and times when I paid lip service to my father’s authority but rejected it.

The leaders of the Temple agree with Jesus that it was the first son, the one who said no but went to the vineyard anyway.

“Actions speak louder than words,” Professor Saunders notes.. “Jesus uses this exchange to expose what the leaders really thought about John. The chief priests’ and elders’ failure to believe and respond to John reveals the truth about where they stood, and thus which brother they actually represent. 

“Jesus’ authority, in contrast, is affirmed by the integrity of his words and actions, as well as by its outcomes: gathering and restoration, healing and cleansing, release from demonic powers, restored sight, table fellowship with sinners, and preservation of the least ones—all examples of the “fruit” of repentance.”

Early Christian leaders came to Matthew’s gospel years after 70 C.E. when the Romans destroyed the temple and abolished the priesthood. But the parable of the two sons reminded people of how much more the priests could have done in their day.

“Although the chief priests were appointed by God and the elders were elected by God’s people, they professed allegiance to God in empty words alone while failing to fulfill their divine calling to serve others (20:25–27),” writes Professor Eunyung Lim of Middlebury College in Connecticut. “Like the second son—whose reply, ‘Yes, Master’, sounds emphatically obedient—their words never translated into action.

One of Matthew’s goals throughout his Gospel is to affirm the authority and power of Jesus.

But “Matthew is not content,” writers Professor Saunders, “with the simple claim that Jesus possesses divine power, nor even that his power surpasses that of worldly leaders. Matthew focuses instead on the nature, source, and consequences of Jesus’ power. He aims to demonstrate not only that Jesus is more powerful than the world’s powers, but that his power is of a different kind, a power that produces healing and reconciliation rather than alienation and violence.”

Our human spirit is not equipped to fully understand the enormity of Jesus power. John’s Gospel is only a poetic approximation of that power and its source.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life,  and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.”

We will never fully comprehend the astounding power of creation that is gracefully and unpretentiously expressed in the words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth …” (Genesis 1:1).

What was it like? A blinding Big Bang as God flung matter into the void, resulting in billions of spheres of hot plasma made of hydrogen and helium that became stars and sons, and the manifestation of orbs of iron and gas and water that hardened into planets. Over billions of years the earth cooled, land masses split apart, drifted into continents, rock was ground into soil, soil mixed with water and created the intangible conditions that gave forth to single celled life. Cells joined together, Life clung tenaciously to the earth and over long eons became birds, reptiles, mammals, primates, and, finally, humankind.

We will never comprehend it. But in faith we trust it all happened by God’s plan and by God’s hands.

And an integral part of it at the very beginning was the Word, the Son who in the fullness of time became flesh and walked the earth as a human being.

Therein lies the authority of Jesus. That authority is from God, and that authority manifests God’s love for creation. And not withstanding breathtaking and creative power that authority is, we know it in the form of Jesus who brings us eternal life, unconditional love, healing, comfort, and holy instructions to love one another and manifest justice for all.

UNFAIR!

September 20, 2026, First Lutheran Church, Throggs Neck, Bronx, N.Y.

I was born in the Catskills and grew up in Central New York farm country. My father was a poorly paid school teacher with five kids and he spent his summers working on road crews to make ends meet. When my siblings and I approached him for money we did not have high expectations.

As a result we looked for sources of income elsewhere. We painted, we weeded neighbor’s gardens, we became orderlies in the local nursing home, we trimmed the grass around gravestones at the cemetery.

I was the oldest so the better opportunities came my way. One of our neighbors was Dick Bury, a dairy and hay farmer, who was dependent on hired hands to get the chores done.

I had some wonderful, challenging, back-breaking experiences working for Dick. In the spring I helped pull overflowing sap buckets off the maple trees and pour the sap into large vats where it would be boiled and boiled until it became maple syrup. I was surprised that the sap from the tree was tasteless and definitely not sweet but it was a useful lesson about being patient until the golden syrup was ready for your waffles.

In the summer Dick would mow his hay and mold it into tightly packed 85-pound rectangles that plopped out of the baler every few feet. Several of my friends and I would be hired to lift and toss the bales onto a flat-bed truck driven by Dick.

It was hard work but Dick was generous with breaks and always had a vat of sweet ice tea ready to soothe our throats. My friends and I began work at sunrise and worked through suppertime. When the day was over he paid us for the hours we worked in cash.

Not all of us were able to begin the day at sunrise. Sometimes we had family obligations or other duties and we would join the hay bale crew at noon. We knew we’d take a pay cut for fewer hours of work. But of course that was only fair. Dick Bury was a good and fair man.

In fact, I would go so far as to say Dick would have been constitutionally incapable of paying the same wage to workers who had worked half as many hours as the others. His conscience would not allow it. It would be unfair.

Fairness is one of the fundamental credos of human conduct. Even young children know when they are not being treated equitably. I sometimes think the accusation of “UNFAIR” is among the first words used by kids who think a brother or sister is getting more than she deserves.

We measure our integrity and goodness by whether we are being fair or being treated fairly. We have the Fairness Doctrine. Fair Wage. Fair Play. Fair chance. Fair opportunity.

So how do we understand Jesus’ declaration, in Matthew 20, that all these exemplars of fairness may hold little weight in the Kingdom of God?

Professor Nicholas J. Schaser, of Macalister College, to whom I have turned many times for instruction, helps us parse the Parable of the Vineyard Laborers.

In Jesus’s parable, a landowner hires laborers to work in his vineyard throughout the day (Matthew 20:1–7). He agrees to pay the first group a denarius for the day, then hires additional workers at the third, sixth, ninth, and eleventh hours—about 9:00 a.m., noon, 3:00 p.m., and 5:00 p.m. At day’s end, he pays the latecomers the same denarius promised to the first workers (20:9–10).

Seeing that the later workers receive the same pay, the first group complains: “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat” (20:12). The landowner replies, “‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for a denarius? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you” (20:13–14).

Professor Schaser introduces us to different ways this parable has been interpreted.

“Unfortunately,” he writes, “much traditional interpretation identifies the grumbling group as works-focused Jews or Pharisees, and the subsequent workers as gentiles or Christians.”

That makes little sense, he says. There are no Pharisees in the audience so Jesus has no reason to chastise them for grumbling against the landowner. Jesus is addressing his disciples, so it makes sense that the first laborers represent the first disciples Jesus called to follow him and the latecomers are the followers who came after them.

Rather than centering the laborers, Professor Schaser invites us to consider the householder. Jesus’s parable portrays God’s love and grace toward those who follow him. Before any work begins, the householder enters a binding agreement with the first laborers and promises their pay. This reflects God’s covenantal faithfulness: human effort does not earn the reward but flows from the grace of a covenant already established.

The householder also continues seeking workers throughout the day. “About five o’clock he went out and found others standing around, and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’

Although the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition’s wording—“standing around” and “standing here idle”—may suggest indifference or laziness, the Greek simply describes them as “without work” (argōs).

In the parable of the vineyard, Professor Schaser notes, we are reminded of the command God gave Israel through Moses: “Give liberally and be ungrudging when you do so, for on this account the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all that you undertake. Since there will never cease to be some in need on the earth, I therefore command you, ‘Open your hand to the poor and needy neighbor in your land’” (Deuteronomy 15:10–11).

The generous householder—God—offers work and purpose to everyone he encounters.

What could be fairer than that? This is good news for each of us. God doesn’t care if we are cradle Lutherans or lapsed Lutherans, whether we are unchurched, whether we are good or bad, whether we are just or unjust, whether we are worthy or unworthy, or whether we are late to faith.

No matter who we are, whenever we come to the vineyard of faith, God is not measuring your worth by when you clocked in. When God says, “You also go into the vineyard,” the full rewards of the Kingdom are yours by grace.

Like the “generous” householder (Matthew 20:15), God seeks those who need meaningful work and extends to all the grace of a living wage in the Lord’s vineyard.

And that is no reason to grumble.

Forgive or Fuggetaboudit

 

September 6, 2026, Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.

“If your brother or sister sins against you, go and point out the fault when the two of you are alone. If you are listened to, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If that person refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church, and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a gentile and a tax collector.  Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.  Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven.  For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” - Matthew 18:15-20

I am fortunate enough to come from a family that often brings bible stories to life like medieval morality plays.

My grandfather and his brother, my Uncle Fred, lived in two stately farm houses separated by a narrow ribbon of grass. They hated each other and regarded the other’s property to be an evil pit that should never be traversed. As a boy I visited Uncle Fred at his barn every time we were in town, partly because he and Aunt Mae always welcomed me warmly, sometimes with cookies, and partly because I loved their old mangy German Shepherd, Shep. I presume members of my family never told Grandpa about my incursions into enemy territory and I was barely aware that my visits might have angered him.

I have no reason to believe Grandpa and Uncle Fred ever visited each other alone to point out the other’s grievous fault. And my family’s way of becoming witnesses to their brotherly spats was to form whispering conclaves to complain behind their backs.

“You know, Uncle Fred and Grandpa used to live in each other’s houses and one day they decided to trade,” I heard my father whisper to my mother. “No one knows why.”

“You know, Uncle Fred borrowed money from Grandpa to open a restaurant in Erie, Pennsylvania,” I heard Uncle Bob whisper to Cousin George. “The restaurant failed and Uncle Fred returned home without the money.”

“You know, Grandpa was the oldest of four siblings and some people think Grandpa did better than the others when their father’s will was probate,” Aunt Betty whispered in Uncle Bud’s ear.

None of these unfounded rumors sounded severe enough to generate lifelong enmity between the two old men, but I was a kid and there was s0 much about life I hadn’t figured out.

By the time I was a teenager the lingering competition between Grandpa and Uncle was their race to eternity.

Grandpa won the race and was laid out in a suit he never wore in a casket he would have thought too expensive. My teenage cousin Barbie and I were focused on a fly that alit on Grandpa’s nose and we didn’t hear the whispers that were swirling around us: 

“Where’s Fred?” “Is Fred here?” “Did Fred say he was coming?”

Barbie and I noticed that the fly had taken up permanent residence on Grandpa’s nose. “Remember how he’d whisk flies off his nose without waking up?” We both envisioned Grandpa reaching out of the casket to shoo the fly and we started laughing. We tried to hide it by lowering our heads but Aunt Lena noticed our shoulders shaking and thought we were crying. She came over and put her arms around us, which made it even harder t0 suppress our laughter and real tears dripped down our cheeks.

Then Uncle Fred walked in. 

All eyes turned to him and then, because my family believes it is impolite to stare, all eyes turned away. Uncle Fred nodded at a few people and walked over to the coffin.

He studied Grandpa’s remains for a few moments. (The fly was gone.) He turned away briefly to see if he was being noticed and turned again to Grandpa. He nodded. He harumphed. He turned sharply and walked out the door.

The whispers resumed immediately.

“Was that Fred?” “Was he crying?” “He wasn’t smiling was he?” Where did he go?”

Thus Grandpa and Uncle Fred brought life to this Gospel passage: “and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a gentile and a tax collector.” Of course, neither of them would have entered a church, and I suspect both of them wouldn’t mind being thought of as a gentile or tax collector. 

After mentioning tax collectors and gentiles, Jesus adds, “whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven” (18:18). This statement can be understood in several ways, three of which are especially compelling.

Professor Nicholas J. Shaser of Macalaster College in Saint Paul, Minn., offers some suggestions as to what Jesus mean when he says we will bind and loose on earth and in heaven.

First, because the language of binding and loosing appears in a discussion of sin and possible forgiveness (18:5), Matthew 18:18 may refer to sins being forgiven or retained. John’s Gospel offers a similar saying: “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:23). This suggests that the fourth evangelist understood Matthew’s “binding” and “loosing” in terms of forgiving and retaining sins.

Second, Matthew’s saying may refer to the disciples’ authority to exclude and restore members of the church, a reading that fits the surrounding discussion in Matthew 18:15–20. Josephus, the first-century CE Jewish historian, describes the Pharisees of the first century BCE as “becoming administrators of everything—to banish and recall whom they want, to loose and bind” (Jewish War 1.111).3

Third, binding and loosing may refer to exorcism and authority over demons. Several Second Temple texts use the terms this way, including the account in which Raphael “bound” the demon Asmodeus and freed Sarah from demonic affliction (Tobit 8:3). The New Testament reflects similar usage when Satan is “bound” and “loosed” in Revelation 20:2–3, and when Luke describes a woman whom “Satan had bound” for 18 years before Jesus “loosed” her on the Sabbath (Luke 13:16).4 

Still, because Matthew 18:15–20 does not mention the devil or demons, the first two interpretations may be stronger.

The passage concludes by affirming God’s authority over church proceedings and Christ’s continuing presence with the gathered community. Jesus declares, “If two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them” (Matthew 18:19–20). 

Finally, we are reminded that although internal conflict is unavoidable, unity and fellowship and communication help sustain divine guidance and promote a forgiving spirit among believers.

And I must offer a shout-out to Grandpa and Uncle Fred by vividly showing us precisely how not to do it.

Dare to Forgive

September 13, 2026, Saint Barnabas Lutheran Church, Howard Beach, Queens, N.Y.

Then his lord summoned him and said to him, “You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?”

And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart. Matthew 18:32-35

Jesus. What gives?

This is the kind of passage that makes me want to hide my bible. God forbid some CIA agent find it and see a scriptural justification for water boarding.

“And in anger his Lord handed him over to be tortured …”

I’m searching the passage for loopholes (as W.C. Fields reportedly did when he studied the bible on his death bed). It seems an abuse of power for a king to send a flunky to the rack. 

At least it seems that way by our enlightened standards, which require turning a blind eye toward Alligator Alcatraz or the inhumane foreign prisons to which America sends its immigrants, as if they were some kind of anachronistic aberration. 

But kings are only human and we accept that absolute power corrupts absolutely.

The unnerving part of Jesus’ intervention is that the reference to torture no sooner leaves his lips than he ups the ante: 

“So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Pause for nervous laughter.

God will hand us over to be tortured if we nurse a grudge?

But we do nurse grudges. Your grudge list may be similar to mine, which includes Stalin, Osama Bin Laden, Roy Cohn. I nurse grudges over past and present presidents who start  unnecessary wars. And although most people don't remember him, I seethe with undiluted anger at Robert Strange McNamara, LBJ's Defense secretary during the Vietnam War.

My beef with McNamara is that he knew by 1967 that the Vietnam War was unnecessary and unwinnable. But he never told LBJ.

There are thousands of monuments to the price of his silence. Years after the war was over, Martha and I visited the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where her father once worked as a dish washer after he fled Cuba. We walked through the academy's peaceful cemeteries and realized tha West Point arranges plots by the wars in which their graduates fell.

As we walked past the graves of Vietnam veterans, I saw that a lot of those graves were of men and women who were killed after 1967. Every one of those heroes - and those who rest in cemeteries across the globe - died after their Secretary of Defense had concluded the war was unnecessary and unwinnable.

Why didn't McNamara speak up? Did he feel honor-bound to be loyal to an intransigent president? What were his thoughts when the casualty figures continued to mount: 16,592 in 1968? 11,616 in 1969? 6,081 in 1970? -- all for a cause he knew to be lost from the beginning?

In his later years, Robert McNamara was eloquent in his contrition. In a 1995 memoir he declared the war had been "wrong -- terribly wrong." He spent the rest of his life trying -- futilely, it turned out -- to prevent similar American disasters.

But the terrible question hanging over McNamara's life can't be avoided: what if he had spoken up sooner? Would the timely confession by the architect of the war that he had been wrong all along have forced LBJ to halt it? Would it have given subsequent warriors, Nixon and Kissinger, sufficient pause to sue for peace? Would it have saved thousands of lives?

Tragically, we'll never know. Personally, I think a public admission by Robert McNamara in May 1967 would have been loud enough to suck the air out of public opinion and silence the bombs over Hanoi.

And that's what I can't forgive. When his voice could have thundered around the world, he chose to be silent.

But I don’t think God cares whether I forgive Bob McNamara who I never met. Unfortunately, I think God is more concerned about my attitude toward my actual neighbor – that is, the guy next door – who curses at my barking dog, or the idiot who snatches all the donuts at the coffee table, or the mad max who cuts me off at rush hour on the parkway. To each I would hurl a Carnac curse from the old Tonight Show: may a bag of pop rocks explode in your shorts. 

Admittedly, that is not the kind of forgiving attitude that would convince God to send the torturer away. 

We all struggle with this, and to further darken our prospects, these annoying folks are easier to forgive than the people we actually live with or cannot escape.

In this category fall rancorous ex-spouses, misanthropic bosses, languid adult children still living at home, hypercritical in-laws who think you aren’t good enough for the family, and obsequious relatives who listen to them.

In each of these cases, you might find it possible to forgive these tormenters once or twice. But they keep coming back at you with new infamies and new miseries. Dear God, how much can we take? Wouldn’t Jesus be an empathetic listener?

You: “Jesus, she drives me crazy!” 

Jesus: “I know, right?”

That conversation will never happen. Jesus already had that conversation and it went like this:

Peter: “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” 

Jesus: “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” (Matthew 18:21-22.

Actually, Jesus was condescending to Peter’s literal mind. He wasn’t suggesting we use hash marks to keep track of the number of times we forgive. A redacted version of the conversation would have the same meaning.

Peter: “Shall I ever stop forgiving someone who sins against me?” 

Jesus: “No.”

This is certainly one of those utterances of Jesus that we would prefer to ignore. A lot of families have members who haven’t spoken to each other for years because of some terrible and unforgivable thing that happened. 

In many bible stories, antagonism between siblings was common. 

It’s no coincidence that this Gospel lesson is pared with another simmering sibling rivalry: the one that existed for decades between Joseph and his brothers. Genesis 50:15-21.

As the oldest of five siblings, I have a simple exegesis of the brotherly enmity that existed for so long: Joseph was a twit.

He was the youngest of his brothers and his father, Jacob, adored him. Joseph was somehow conceived long after Jacob had accepted erectile dysfunction as a badge of maturity, along with cataracts and unplanned flatulence. Joseph was obviously a miracle baby, and Jacob, his jaw unhinged and spittle dripping on his apron, stared at the child for hours.

That alone would have annoyed the older brothers, but Joseph made it worse. Either out of insolence or innocence, Joseph boasted of dreams that showed he ranked far above his seniors.

What a schlemiel. As an older brother, I wouldn’t necessarily approve of selling the brat into slavery. But – to quote Chris Rock – I can certainly understand it.

As it turned out, the brothers plotted to kill Joseph but, out of mercy or guilt, they sold the boy to Midianite traders for 20 shekels of silver. In a breathtaking act of sibling cruelty, the brothers killed a goat and smeared the blood of Joseph’s coat so Jacob would think the boy was dead. 

The decades that followed this monumental act of sibling betrayal nursed festering resentments that would defy any possibility of reconciliation. When Jacob’s sons are forced to travel to Egypt to seek relief from a famine, they discover to their horror that little Joseph is now the king’s first minister. Not good news. The revelation was tantamount to a death sentence.

But, thousands of years before Jesus ordered aggrieved people to forgive seventy-seven times, God’s grace was powerfully manifest.

So the brothers approached Joseph, saying, “Your father gave this instruction before he died, ‘Say to Joseph: I beg you, forgive the crime of your brothers and the wrong they did in harming you.’ Now therefore please forgive the crime of the servants of the God of your father.” Joseph wept when they spoke to him. Then his brothers also wept, fell down before him, and said, “We are here as your slaves.” But Joseph said to them, “Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God? 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. So have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones.” In this way he reassured them, speaking kindly to them. Genesis 50:16-21.

Joseph’s forgiving response to his brothers was unexpected. If he had reacted, shall we say, normally, he would have incited a bloody fratricide like the Red Wedding scene in George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones.

In fact, that might have been an easier reaction for Joseph than blithely dismissing all those years of treachery and pain.

But what would have been the point of vengeance? Who would have benefitted? And how would God have been served?

The dark landscape in which we live is satiated with deceit and betrayal, reprisal and recrimination. There may be some small satisfaction in striking back, but in the end retaliation begets more scores to be settled, more pain, more alienation from God’s eternal love.

Your assignment, Jesus said – if you choose to accept it – is to forgive and forgive as often as you are hurt.

The only way out of the obscene cycle of resentment and despair is to forgive the ones who hurt you most. 

Jesus did the math for us: we are called to forgive seventy seven times.

And that is where grace begins.