Stepping on God's Toes and Why We Are in Need of Forgiveness

Text: Genesis 50:15-21

            We all have our plans. Our lives can be broken down into little strategic endeavor after little strategic endeavor. We set goals—sometimes realistic, sometimes unrealistic. We try to see what the future holds. Uncertainty makes us nervous. The unknown is our greatest fear.

            When Israel dies Joseph’s brothers are afraid because the rules of the game have changed. Joseph now holds all the power and without their father in the picture he could easily turn on his brothers. They don’t know what the future holds, and just as Joseph’s plans concerning his sons—Ephraim and Manasseh—are turned upside down by Israel’s blessing, so the brothers’ plans are rocked by Israel’s death.

            The future is murky.

            This is the beginning of the first school year since I came to Hallock to serve as pastor and I’m sure when I came there were some hopes about what the church would look like by this time of the year. Probably some of those were realistic hopes—maybe I’ve even lived up to some expectations—but all too often we have huge hopes for a future that doesn’t end up resembling anything like what we would have thought. If you expected this pastor to bring in hundreds on non-church goers and fix every little issue this congregation has ever had you are probably feeling a bit disappointed. This is in no small part because it’s not my job to grow the church. If the church grows it is because God is doing it; not me, not you. And we simply don’t know what God is doing with us. All we know is that the present looks different from the past.

We could spend our time wishing that were not the case; we could wish that we would return to some glory days in the past when everybody attended church on every Sunday and all the women were strong, the men handsome and the children good-looking, but that’s a past that probably never existed; or we can come to the conclusion that our plans are mostly going to come to nothing. I’ve said this before: the only way to grow is to die. The only way to be a growing church is to be a church willing to accept that its plans are pretty much wrong, and the only one who can map our future out is God. I’m not saying if we do that hundreds of people will start pouring in. I’m not sure what God will do with us, but I am sure that we stand like Joseph’s brothers before an Almighty God, tricking, pleading and finally falling on our faces for our misdoings.

            Forgiveness. That is where it starts. You are forgiven for everything that has happened to you—both as a church and as individuals. There’s a reason we start our service every Sunday with confession and forgiveness; it’s not because we are little Lutheran Eeyores who have to dwell on our mistakes. It’s not because we are such awful people that I’ve decided we REALLY need forgiveness. Rather, it’s because when we measure ourselves against God we end up looking pretty pathetic. But there’s also another reason we begin with forgiveness and this is much closer to the place Joseph finds himself with his brothers. We forgive because it is the only way to stay in right relationship with one another.

            Now, I don’t feel like I need forgiveness from many of you for anything significant, but in small ways and often unintentionally I have not loved you as I love myself, I have ignored you when you wanted attention or pestered you when you didn’t want to be bothered. I have done all these things and I’m sure I’ll do it all again. So when we meet in worship, what better way to begin than with forgiveness for all of those things—known and unknown—that separate me from you and you from the other person in your pew. What better way to start a school year—with the busy season of the church ramping up again—than with forgiveness.

(Service of corporate confession and forgiveness here)

            Now, here’s where confession and forgiveness gets tricky. It’s easy—maybe too easy—to read confession from the hymnal; it’s easy also to say “I’m sorry” and only half mean it. What’s hard is standing where Joseph stood in a place of power over those coming to beg your forgiveness and to honestly say, “Am I in the place of God? Of course I forgive you.”

We should have big expectations for ourselves and greater expectations for this church, but the only thing that’s certain about the future is that we are going to try to follow our vision rather than the one God has laid out for us. We are going to try to get our way, effect our strategies, and make our changes. Since I have been called as pastor nobody has done a better job of messing up God’s plan than me. That’s the entitled, sorry position I have been called to. I’m constantly stepping on God’s toes. That’s how we work. That’s why we are in need of forgiveness.

But God’s working in exciting ways in spite of us. We have energy, we have a new school year and renewed pride in who we are, we have new staff, new Sunday Schoolers, new Confirmation students, perhaps soon a new staff member; new, new, new. And it’s all a testament to what God is doing. On our own we are just like Joseph’s brothers. And just as they cast Joseph into the pit, we have cast our own Josephs out. But never mind, “even though we intended to do harm, God intended it for good.” If that isn’t the moral of our lives I don’t know what is.

Amen.