Breaking the Cycle

A good story always has a good ending. I remember when I was in my early teenage years stumbling across the book The Count of Monte Cristo. It follows a young sailor named Edmond Dantès, a man on the cusp of having everything he had ever hoped for. He was about to become captain of his ship, marry the woman he loved, and begin a life full of promise. But the jealousy and ambition of a handful of men changed everything. They conspired against him, forged evidence, falsely accused him of treason, and had him imprisoned without trial. Overnight, he lost his freedom, his career, his fiancée, his reputation, and years of his life.

But fourteen years into his unjust imprisonment, spoiler alert, Dantès escapes, discovers a hidden fortune, and reinvents himself as the mysterious Count of Monte Cristo. He patiently and meticulously sets out to confront those who betrayed him in, debatably, one of the most articulate pieces of literature that captures poetic justice. One by one, their lies are uncovered, their carefully constructed and wealthy lives begin to collapse, and each person is forced to face the consequences of what they had done all those years before. It’s one of those stories that’s almost impossible to put down because there is something profoundly cathartic about the release that comes when justice is finally served.

Which is not our story today. Even though Joseph’s life follows a similar rhythm to The Count of Monte Cristo, poetic justice never quite arrives. Indeed, the bad guys seem to get exactly what they don’t deserve. But before we get there, we need to fill in some of the blanks. Last week we left Joseph at the bottom of a pit, stripped of his robe and sold by his brothers to passing merchants. From there, he is dragged to Egypt, sold into slavery, falsely accused and thrown into prison. Every time it seems his life has reached rock bottom, the ground gives way beneath him once more. And yet, somehow, life keeps breaking through. Joseph’s gift for interpreting dreams eventually reaches Pharaoh, and the boy once abandoned in a pit rises to become second only to Pharaoh himself, entrusted with preparing Egypt for a devastating famine. Then the famine comes. It reaches all the way to Canaan, forcing Joseph’s brothers to journey to Egypt in search of food. They have no idea that the powerful official standing before them is the little brother they threw away. It’s the moment we’ve all been waiting for. Joseph now holds every card. The brothers who once held his life in their hands must now place theirs into his. He could imprison them. Expose them. Make them feel, if only for a moment, the fear and helplessness they once passed on to him. And Joseph lets the moment build. He keeps them guessing. He speaks sharply. He conceals his identity. He puts them through a series of bewildering encounters that only deepen our anticipation for the moment of catharsis when it finally arrives. And then, as Joseph finally reveals who he is, his brothers are left speechless. Terrified. Surely this is the moment the score gets settled. But just when poetic justice is meant to land, Joseph flips the script. He steps towards them. Embraces them. Weeps over them. Feeds them. Welcomes them home. In other words, something in Joseph refuses to pass on the pain that was passed on to him.

A few years ago, I met a minister serving in a rural community here in Australia. He had grown up in a country that was and still is occupied by military rule. He spoke of homes burned to the ground. Families forced to flee with only what they could carry. Friends who disappeared without explanation. Soldiers who ruled by fear. He had seen what the worst kind of violence can do to people—not only to their homes and their bodies, but to the human heart. When he sought asylum in rural Australia, he hoped life would be different. In many ways it was. In many ways it wasn’t. With dark skin and a thick accent, he found himself on the receiving end of suspicion, slurs, and the kind of everyday racism many of us can barely begin to comprehend. People shouting abuse at him in the street. Others questioning whether someone who looked and sounded like him could possibly be a minister. Week after week, he was reminded that, in the eyes of some, he did not belong. Here was a man who had fled unspeakable violence only to be met with another kind of violence born of ignorance and prejudice. And then I noticed something unsettling. Despite the calmness with which he spoke, I was becoming enraged. I wanted someone to answer for the harm he continued to face day in and day out. I wanted someone to be held accountable. By golly, just point me in the direction of one of these fools and let me have at em. But before I completely lost my cool, I asked him in less eloquent words than I’m using today, “How on earth do you put up with any of that?” He paused for a moment and, with the same quiet gentleness that had marked every part of his storytelling, said, “The world already has enough fire. I want to be someone who carries water.” I’ve never forgotten those words. He wasn’t pretending the racism didn’t exist. He wasn’t excusing it. He wasn’t denying the hurt. He simply refused to let a country’s violence or another person’s prejudice determine the kind of person he would become. And then he told me something remarkable. Although it didn’t happen all the time, when someone came towards him with fire, they left with something else. The temperature in the room changed. Defensiveness gave way to conversation. Suspicion softened into curiosity. Sometimes, even kindness. And, on the rare occasion, even friendship. It struck me that here was a man who had every reason to become hard. Every reason to believe that pain should be answered with pain. And yet, he refused to pass on the pain that had been passed on to him. Listening to him, I couldn’t escape the feeling that I was witnessing a miracle. We tend to imagine miracles resembling something like walking on water. But perhaps the greatest miracle of all is when the human heart refuses to become what violence has tried to make it.

Because what happens to us often has a way of living on in us. The Canadian physician and writer Gabor Maté has spent much of his life exploring precisely this—the way trauma can reach beyond the person who first experiences it and shape generations that follow. Maté knows something of this personally. He was an infant when the Nazis occupied Hungary, and his own work reflects on how wounds can echo through families long after the original violence has ended. Because, as is often the case, hurt people hurt people. But it is not inevitable. Hurt people can choose another way. Which is what I witnessed in my colleague. Not retribution. Not denial. A third way. The way of transformation. Not of sheer willpower or gritting our teeth and trying harder to be good people, but the kind of transformation God is always inviting us into. Which is what forgiveness actually is: allowing the mysterious grace of God to meet us in our deepest wounds and, slowly, sometimes painfully, transform them into something more life-giving than we could ever have imagined. Because pain that is never transformed has a terrible habit of being transferred. From person to person. Parent to child. Generation to generation. From one people to another. Perhaps this is part of what lies beneath our terrible human propensity for vengeance, for war, even for genocide. We keep passing on the pain that was passed on to us. That is until somebody interrupts the cycle. That is, until somebody decides there must be a third way. That is, until somebody decides to carry water instead of fire.

Which is exactly what Joseph does. At the very moment when poetic justice is finally supposed to land, Joseph flips the script. He refuses to pass on what was passed onto him. And in Joseph’s refusal, we catch a glimpse of the way of Jesus. A world gives him exclusion, and he widens the table. A world gives him hatred, and he gives back love. A world gives him violence, and he refuses to become violent. A world hands him a cross. And God answers with resurrection. Because grace doesn’t change what happened. Grace changes what happens next. The pit still happened. The prison still happened. The cross still happened. But they don’t get to write the ending.

Which means maybe I’ve had it wrong all these years. Maybe a good story doesn’t end when everybody finally gets what they deserve. Maybe the best stories end when the cycle finally breaks. When vengeance gives way to grace. When an enemy is seen again as human. When the pain stops travelling. When somebody looks at all the fire they have been handed and chooses to carry water instead. Because that is the story Joseph chooses to write. It is the story Jesus embodies in his life, death and resurrection. And by the mysterious, transforming grace of God, it can become our story too. Because what has been passed onto us does not have to be what we pass on. The story can change. And perhaps, with us, grace can finally write what comes next.