“The Path to the Kingdom, Part 2: Heartfelt Forgiveness” by the Rev. Dr. Don Wahlig, September 13^th, 2026, Year A / Proper 19  –  Matthew 18:21-35  ¨  Genesis 50:15-21

THEME:  Forgive others and reconcile with them as God has forgiven and reconciled with us.

Do any of you follow the British royal family? I confess, I am a closet fan. Four years ago, during Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee, I was in a pub not far from Buckingham Palace. What a joyous celebration! Like any family, the royals are not perfect. They have had their share of conflict. We all remember the divorce and death of Princess Diana. And, more recently, the tragic split between her two sons, Will and Harry. You don’t have to be a royal watcher to feel the extended families’ pain when Harry and Megan moved to California six years ago.

But time moved on. And with the passage of time came the passage of loved ones. Harry and Will’s grandparents, Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth, both died. Then their father, King Charles, was diagnosed with cancer. It was another reminder of our inevitable mortality. It seems to have prompted the beginning of a family reconciliation. Just last month, Harry and Megan returned to England to live. Harry told the BBC, “I would love reconciliation with my family.  There is no point in continuing to fight anymore.  I don’t know how much longer my father has.” The open question is whether the two brothers will reconcile their differences. Sibling conflict is nothing new. No doubt, some of us here today have experienced this in our own families.

Sibling rivalry is as old as Cane and Abel. Joseph’s father, Jacob, was in conflict with his brother Esau. In today’s reading, Joseph is addressing the decades-long conflict with his brothers. Joseph is Jacob’s youngest son, and his favorite. That alone is reason enough for his brothers to resent him. When Joseph dreams that his brothers will bow down to him, their resentment turns into violence. They throw him into a pit. Only the intervention of his oldest brother saves him from certain death. His brothers then sell him into slavery. Joseph ends up in Egypt. 

But God has big plans for Joseph. His ability to interpret dreams and manage a crisis land him a sweet gig working as Pharaoh’s number two. When a prolonged drought wipes out crops in Canaan, the starving people pour into Egypt to buy grain.  Joseph is the one who disburses it. Lo and behold, one fateful day, his brothers show up. They do not recognize Joseph. But Joseph recognizes them. After a bit of mischief and trickery, Joseph reveals himself to them. They are amazed. Equally amazing, Joseph uses his influence to relocate his entire family to Egypt, including their aging father.

When their father eventually dies, the brothers fear that Joseph may now feel free to do to them what they did to him.  They worry that Joseph is going to take his revenge. Let’s consider why he might want to do that. When his brothers sold him into slavery, Joseph was just 17 years old. By the time Pharaoh put him in charge over all Egypt at age 40, Joseph had spent years in prison. It would be understandable if he held a grudge. It would be understandable if he wanted revenge. But he does not. 

When his brothers confess their wrong and offer to be his slaves, Joseph is anything but vengeful. “Even though you intended to do me harm,” he tells them, “God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.”

Remarkable, isn’t it?

With the gift of time and perspective, Joseph has come to see his life in a brand new light. The evil his brothers did to him was not the end of the story – not by a long shot. He looks back on the events of his life, and he sees God’s hand at work. God transformed his brothers’ intentions into God’s own purposes.  Because Joseph recognizes that, he is able to forgive them from his heart.  The question this story asks us is whether we can do the same. It may not be easy.

When something tragic and painful happens to us, our first thought is often anger at God. “Why did God permit this?” we ask. And when our suffering is the result of another person, our first impulse is not forgiveness. Our first impulse is usually retribution. I imagine there was a time Joseph felt like that. But whatever bitterness and anger he felt at the beginning of his ordeal, Joseph made a decision to get past it. In jail, he made himself useful. He helped his jailers and his fellow prisoners. That tells us something. It tells us that Joseph chose to be open to what God might be doing through him, despite his present suffering.

Sure enough, God was at work. God delivered him from jail.  God put him in a position to help those who lacked food, including his brothers who were the cause of his suffering in the first place. Joseph trusted that God could redirect and reshape the evil done by others to God’s purpose. That faith is how true forgiveness happens – forgiveness from the heart. The question is can you and I do that?  In the face of suffering, it is up to us to choose how we will respond.  We have two choices.

On the one hand, we can allow ourselves to be consumed by anger, bitterness, and hatred. We all know people who have done this. It calcifies their hearts. Eventually, the quest for retribution will consume our life. We will reject those who genuinely seek our forgiveness. In the end, we are left trapped in a prison of our own suffering, festering in our desire for vengeance.  There is an old saying, “When you seek revenge, dig two graves – one for yourself.” 

But there is another way to respond – a much better way. We can trust that, despite our current suffering, God is still at work. We can choose to be open to the good he intends for us, and the good he intends us to do for others.  We will inevitably be surprised at how God reshapes the evil intentions of others to his intentions. Then, when others seek our forgiveness, we are able to forgive them. This is how we can be truly reconciled to those who harm us.  

I can think of no better example than two women whose lives became inextricably linked in the wake of the 9/11 attacks 25 years ago this week. One is Phyllis Rodriguez.  Her son Greg was at work on the 103^rd floor of the World Trade Center when planes flown by terrorists crashed into the Twin towers.  Greg was killed. The other is Aicha El-Wafi, a French-Moroccan woman, and the mother of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called “20th hijacker.” Aicha’s son was a Muslim extremist detained after 9/11.  He was charged a month later with conspiracy to commit terrorism. He was sentenced to life in prison.

A year later in 2002, Aicha came to the US to see her son. During her visit, she did a very brave thing. She agreed to meet with several relatives of the victims of the 9/11 attacks. That was when she met Phyllis Rodriguez. As the nation was being swamped by the desire for revenge, Phyllis and her husband saw danger. They recognized the powerful urge for vengeance, not only in others but in themselves. We all felt that in the wake of 9/11. Phyllis and Orlando were wise enough to realize that the anger they felt needed to be channeled away from violence and toward something that would help others. Meeting with Aicha was how Phyllis did that.

In Aicha, Phyllis came to see not only a grieving mother, but a survivor of forced teenage marriage, domestic abuse, spousal abandonment, prejudice, and poverty.  Later Phyllis said, “I don’t forgive the act, but trying to understand why someone has acted in the way they have is part of the process of forgiving.  Forgiveness is being able to accept another person for being human and fallible.”

Friends, isn’t that how God chooses to forgive us, and reconcile us to him, though Jesus Christ? Since the events that brought them together, Phyllis, her husband Orlando, and Aicha have become spokespeople for non-violence. Orlando teaches at Fordham University and in various prisons around New York. Aicha and Phyllis also speak in public settings to share their remarkable story. There is no question that Aicha’s son Zacarias had evil intentions. He will spend the rest of his life in prison repenting of those intentions. 

It is also clear that, in the midst of such great suffering, God was at work. In hindsight, we can see him reshaping one man’s evil intentions into God’s plan to reconcile his children to one another and to himself.  Aicha, Phyllis and Orlando made the decision to be open to God’s plan and the good he would do through them.

Joseph did the same.  One day, hopefully, Harry and Will will also make that decision. The question today is will we?

May it be so.