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Ashes: Judges 14 + Matthew 18
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
But welcome this morning. It's great to have you here. My name is Jeremy. If we haven't met before, I'm part of the team here at Commons, and we are in the middle of a series on the idea of forgiveness. And I wanna say thank you to everyone for the response to these conversations so far.
Speaker 1:Everything from sharing pieces on social media to some very open and vulnerable conversations that some of you have had with myself or with the prayer team who is available after every service on a Sunday. That type of openness to hard conversations and willingness to engage in them personally is a really beautiful thing to see in community, but it's encouraging to see that here in commons especially. Now so far, we have talked about what it isn't. And then last week, we talked a bit about what it is. Today, we need to speak about revenge.
Speaker 1:And then next week, we will close off this series with a conversation about boundaries and why they are important. But looking back here quickly at last Sunday, we hit on three important things. First, that forgiveness is not actually this huge abstract high minded process in the scriptures. It's actually talked about in very concrete image based metaphors. And by far the most common word in the bible associated with forgiveness is the Greek, aphiemi.
Speaker 1:And it's from this word that we get the image of sending offense away. The idea of putting it down and leaving that hurt behind. And this is essentially what forgiveness is. It's not assigning blame. It's not ensuring that someone gets what's coming to them.
Speaker 1:It's not condoning or endorsing or even absolving someone from consequence. You can forgive and still create new boundaries. But it is choosing to take our hurt, the side of the story that we are in control of and to send that hurt away. Forgiveness is giving up all hope for a better past so that you can choose to live in a more healthy present. This is why we said it's actually okay for us to talk about forgiving God.
Speaker 1:Because we all know that at times our imagination of God or our expectations of the divine, our perceptions of God can let us down. But if forgiveness isn't about assigning blame, it is okay for you to say, God, I have been hurt. And this pain that I've been carrying around for far too long, I am choosing to leave it behind. I will let go of that hurt so that I can experience you in a new way in this moment right now. As for some of us, that is a good and a healthy, it's a life giving moment of honesty.
Speaker 1:Finally, this is why we said it's also absolutely critical that we learn to forgive ourselves as well. Now, that doesn't mean we're not self reflective. Doesn't mean we don't learn from our mistakes. Of course, we do. But if we get stuck in the past and we start to define ourselves by one bad decision or we shape our identity around our errors, then we miss out on what God is doing in and through us right now.
Speaker 1:He said it this way last week, that for God, the least interesting part about you is your worst moment. And yet, I meet people all the time who you would have to assume from the way they talk about themselves that they think the only thing anyone is ever interested in them for is their brokenness. It's not true. Once you have identified mistakes, once you've learned those lessons, once you've made changes and moved forward in your life, that's who you were, it's not who you are. And as a general rule, what you're not is not very interesting.
Speaker 1:So be self reflective and be willing to learn. But just like you would with anyone else, once you've processed the past, then learn to leave it behind in a healthy way. K. Let's pray. And then today, we wanna invite God to be in our conversation as we speak about revenge.
Speaker 1:Almighty God, to whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hidden. We come again into your presence this day knowing that as we do we are open books to you. Nothing hidden, nothing obscured, nothing held back when you look upon us. And yet, we know that we are welcome in this space. We know that we are forgiven in your presence.
Speaker 1:We know that we are deeply loved down to the very core of our being. And so God, as we attempt again to put into words this mystery of your grace and to translate that into action that we can pursue in our own lives and our own relationships. We do so with a sense of the magnitude of the task, but also a sense of the enormity of your grace that has been extended to us. As your forgiveness flows down to us and then out through us. Might it begin to reshape this world in some small way toward the image of your kingdom.
Speaker 1:And as we see that take shape in our conversations and our relationships, might we come to understand that revenge and bitterness and trying to pass hurt forward was never the path that you imagined for us. For it was always grace and peace that changed the world. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen. Okay.
Speaker 1:Revenge and why it never works. I wanna start today by telling you a story. And this story comes from the bible. It's in the old testament. It's actually in the book of Judges.
Speaker 1:But it's the story of Samson or at least the start of the story of Samson. Because probably most of us have heard of Samson. Even if you have never read his story in the bible, you should have all at least heard the amazing song Sampson by the incredible Regina Spector. If you've not, look it up on Apple Music right now. Pull out your phone.
Speaker 1:It's okay. Save it for later. It's a great song. But Samson's story arc begins way back before Delilah and the hair and all that, all the way back actually in Judges chapter 14. And basically, happens is that he falls for this Philistine woman and he decides he wants to marry her.
Speaker 1:And his parents object. They're like, why can't you find a nice Jewish girl? And he says, no. This is the one I love. I've made up my mind.
Speaker 1:And eventually, everyone gets on board and they agree. And so they have this big festival, big party to celebrate the pending nuptials. Samson's parents and his new family are there, but during the party Samson decides to make a bet with some of his new in laws. He gives them a riddle. He says, if you can solve it before the wedding, is coming up in seven days, then I will give you 30 fancy linen outfits.
Speaker 1:If you can't, then you give me 30 fancy linen outfits. Fancy linen outfits, all the rage in the ancient Near East. Anyway, they agree to this and so he gives them a riddle. Now, the thing is it's this bizarre inside joke that no one could ever possibly get. Basically, he's tricked them into this bad bet and he's playing a joke on them.
Speaker 1:Well, a few days go by, these guys can't figure it out and so they go to their sister and they say, listen, you've got to get the answer for us. We don't have 30 fancy linen outfits. We just figured we'd be able to get the riddle. You need to do whatever you need to do to get him to tell you the answer because if not, then we're gonna take it out on you and your family. So, she goes back to Samson.
Speaker 1:She asks him but he won't tell. She says, oh, you don't love me and she starts to cry and he says, fine, here's the answer. She tells her compatriots, they call Samson in, they say, okay, we figured it out. Samson is so angry about this that he leaves the party, he goes down the road to another town, he kills 30 Philistines, he steals their fancy linen outfits, he brings them back and he gives them to his potential outlaws. Then, he leaves the party before the wedding even happens and never comes back.
Speaker 1:This is not a stable individual we are reading about here. Now, sometime later, the text actually says, at the time of the wheat harvest. So the implication is that at least an entire season has gone by. Sampson decides that he wants to go and see his quote unquote wife. Well, he goes down to see her but the family is like, what are you talking about?
Speaker 1:Dude, you left. She got married to someone else. Now, Sampson being a complete jerk says, that's it. This time I have a right to get even. Now, the text uses this Hebrew word naka, and it means blameless.
Speaker 1:That's how Samson sees himself in this situation. But what he does is he goes out and he catches 300 foxes. I don't know where he gets them. But he gathers them together, he ties their tails together into 350 pairs of foxes. He ties torches to their tails.
Speaker 1:He lights them on fire and he releases them into the Philistine town. It's pretty awful. Everything gets burned up. The grain, the shocks, the vineyards, the olive groys, he destroys everything. Now, the men of the town blame this all on this woman and her family for bringing Samson into their lives.
Speaker 1:And so they go up and they burn down the house with her and her new husband and her father in it killing them. Samson responds. The text says he viciously attacks and kills many of them in retaliation. The Philistines raise an army and prepare to attack Judah over this, that's Samson's country. The leaders of Judah agree to hand Samson over because they don't want to have a war and so they tie him up, they hand him to the Philistines, but when they do, Samson breaks free, he finds the jawbone of a donkey and he kills a thousand men.
Speaker 1:And then just to rub it in, he writes a little poem to memorialize this day. He says, with a donkey's jawbone, I have made donkeys of them. With a donkey's jawbone, I have killed a thousand men. Nice little rhyme. Now, it's a long, sordid, embarrassing tale that leads into the more familiar story of Samson that follows.
Speaker 1:You know, the one with Delilah and the hair and the heroics. And part of the larger Samson story arc is about seeing how God can redeem and use even this frankly horrible person to start. But, I think Samson sums up this part of the story perfectly when he says, I merely did to them what they did to me. Now, I'm going to make the wild assumption that no one here has ever tied any foxtails together, let alone 300 with torches. And I'm going to assume that no one here has ever killed anyone with a donkey bone, let alone a thousand.
Speaker 1:But, I might also wager a guess that some of us, most of us, maybe even all of us have said to ourselves at some point in the course of our lives something to the effect of, I merely did to them what they did to me. And as absurd as the story of Samson is, and listen, this is by design. I mean ancient cultures were not any less in tune with the power of story and hyperbole than we are. And they absolutely understood the damage that unchecked aggression could cause. But as absurd as this story is, you are meant to hear Samson's words in your mouth.
Speaker 1:So a good story does, it helps us to see ourselves in a new light. But think about what this story walks us through. Samson tricks his neighbors into a riddle they can't solve. So they trick him by extorting the answer from his wife. Angry, he leaves before the marriage.
Speaker 1:Hurt, she marries someone else. He burns down their fields. They murder his estranged wife, he murders them back. They raise an army, he finds a donkey bone and he proceeds to outdo anything that Sylvester Stallone has ever put on film. But at the end of this, a thousand people are dead and it started with a bad joke.
Speaker 1:What this story is about is the way that revenge escalates. See, one of the most powerful feelings we can have as human beings is when someone gets what's coming to them. Think of the last movie that you watched. And I don't even honestly care what movie it was because I can almost guarantee that there was some moment of comeuppance that made you smile. Hello.
Speaker 1:My name is Anigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die. Right? One of only many great moments in The Princess Bride.
Speaker 1:And why do we love this? Well, yes. Because it's a funny moment in a classic movie, but also because it just It feels like there's a sense of justice to it. We want the hero to get even. We want the villain to pay for his crimes.
Speaker 1:But the problem that the story of Samson shows us so clearly is that revenge is always justice justice plus one. So you hurt me and I hurt you back plus one. And now, not only are you hurt but now there's a new perceived imbalance and so you hurt me back plus two. On and on and on until a bad joke ends up in a thousand murders. That's the story of revenge.
Speaker 1:Now, course, when we're talking about revenge in real life, we are probably not talking about burning down someone's fields and murdering their families. That's generally not the world that we live in. But we are talking about something as simple as returning a cold shoulder with the silent treatment, responding to an embarrassing disclosure with more gossip. There are all kinds of small but deeply injuring ways that we play out this hostile escalation strategy IRL. And so, I wanna talk today about two ways we can diffuse the natural instinct toward revenge.
Speaker 1:And then, I wanna look at how Jesus invites us to actually begin to heal that part of our soul that leans into revenge as a strategy. So, two ways to diffuse revenge. At first, we have to humanize each other. See, human beings act in unhealthy, hurtful ways out of two primary motivations, fear and insecurity. Back before Christmas, I talked about how as I get older I become more and more convinced that all of the sin and the brokenness in my life roots itself in my misapprehension of God.
Speaker 1:So when I'm stingy or greedy, it's because I forget that God is generous. That he will continue to look after me. When I am selfish and inward focused, it's because I forget that God is self giving and that my satisfaction ultimately flows when I follow his lead. When I'm aggressive or I'm defensive, it's because I forget that God is welcoming and God is healing and that I don't need to protect my image in order to be worthy of love. And for the record, sometimes the people who seem to be the least vulnerable, the people who you might assume are the most confident, those are often the most insecure and fearful people you know.
Speaker 1:But when you can help someone, understand that even despite all of that they are actually deeply loved. That the universe is not a cold and dark empty callous vacuum, but a generative space created by a God who is love. Then rather than give someone a license to continue being awful, what it does, if you can really sink that somewhere deep into your bones, what it does is it starts to free us from the need to be awful. That's what grace does. It doesn't just let us off the hook.
Speaker 1:It changes us and it transforms us and it completely alters the calculus we use to evaluate our world and our choices. So that somehow, vulnerability starts to become a source of strength. And generosity becomes a source of security. Kindness becomes the natural outflow of a love that chased you down and brought you back home. And God loves you way too much to just let you off the hook.
Speaker 1:He wants to make you whole, that's what grace is about. But once you get that, once you start to recognize that all of the hurtful choices that you've made in the past, all of the decisions that you could take back if you could were driven by motivations that dissolve in the presence of grace. It allows us to think differently about the hurt that someone else has caused for us. That doesn't mean it's not real. Hurt hurts regardless of the motivation.
Speaker 1:But when you understand that the person who hurt you, they are probably acting out of a deep seated sense of fear and insecurity that they don't even fully understand themselves. It doesn't condone or excuse their actions but to recognize that there's pain that sits behind their choices. It helps to humanize our interactions. Because once you stop thinking of someone as a person and you start thinking of them just as the thing that they did to you. Once you dehumanize someone that way, revenge comes very easily.
Speaker 1:And so the first step to diffuse revenge as hard as it is, is to see that person as a human being driven by the same fear and insecurity that now wants you to respond in kind. Second, the problem with hurt is that it's always subjective. This is why when someone tells you you've hurt them you don't get to say you didn't. Now you may disagree with their assessment, you might want to explain your motivations, you may even choose to stand by your decision but when they are hurt you don't get to say they're not. Hurt is always personal, it's always subjective.
Speaker 1:And if you're gonna be in a healthy relationship for any length of time, just need to come to understand that. In fact, this week, I had a conversation with my wife Rachel. She was really excited about something that she wanted to share with me. She'd been waiting for me to get home to have this conversation, but when she did, when she shared it with me, looked at her These are her words. I looked at her with disgust.
Speaker 1:And she was really hurt by this. Now, I can argue and I can say, well, listen, a look is not worth that kind of a reaction. I mean, I only have so much control over my facial expressions here. It's not fair for you to be upset about how I looked at you. But that's not how it works, is it?
Speaker 1:And so we took some space, Rachel took some space, and we cooled off and we came back and we talked and things were fine. But if I had made a point of refusing to acknowledge her emotions in that moment, Which to be honest when I am in a less healthy space, sometimes I still do that. But if I had tried that here, things would have been much worse for everyone. Am I right? Because hurt is always personal and it's always subjective.
Speaker 1:But here's the problem when it comes to revenge. This means that when we are the one who has been hurt our perception of how deep the offense has gone is never some objective measure that can be meted out in an appropriate recompense. In other words, if your approach to hurt is revenge, you will never be able to go one for one. It's impossible. Because the issue isn't tit for tat, It's actually about taking this this ball of hurt that you've been carrying around and you're trying to recreate that inside someone else's chest.
Speaker 1:And you can't. Your hurt is personal and their subjective experience of it is theirs. So measuring and creating and transferring suffering is a myth. There is no way for you to make them hurt the way that you do. It doesn't work and it ends in escalation.
Speaker 1:And this is exactly why Jesus teaches us over and over about forgiveness. In fact, this is precisely why he tells us to forgive 490 times. Remember that? Peter comes up to Jesus one day and he says, listen, how many times should I forgive someone? Would seven be a good number?
Speaker 1:You almost get the sense that Peter is expecting a big fat pat on the back here. Like Jesus is gonna say, woah, Peter, I see that you have really understood my teachings on grace. Three or four is good, but seven, seven would be excellent, Peter. Well done, my good and faithful servant. Why don't you and I, let's go for a walk.
Speaker 1:We'll leave these other guys here. They don't really get it anyway, not like we do. You've always been my favorite. Of course, that's not the way the story goes. Right?
Speaker 1:Jesus says, seven, try 70 times seven. That's the King James. If you have a more modern translation, it probably just says 77 times. Depends on how you translate it. But the intent is that it's not the number of instances.
Speaker 1:Right? Jesus is saying forgive period. But, I think there's more going on here as well. Because if you dig back all the way back to Genesis, you find the unfortunate story of the first murder. Cain is jealous of his brother Abel and he is insecure about his place before God.
Speaker 1:And so, he murders his brother out in a field. And yet rather than pay him back one for one life for a life, God has mercy on Cain and so he banishes him from the land. Says he sends him out to wander and make his own way in the world. Now, Cain protests this. He says, if you send me out someone's gonna find me, they're gonna kill me.
Speaker 1:But God says, not so. I will protect you. And anyone who kills you will suffer seven times over. So, Cain goes out. Eventually, we find out that he founds a city and he becomes a father and he does quite well for himself.
Speaker 1:In fact, the text of Genesis traces Cain's lineage, his family for seven generations. But there's this very interesting thing that happens in this short genealogy of Cain that's found in Genesis chapter four. We're introduced to a son of Cain. His name is Lamech and Lamech means something like powerful man. But Lamech also writes a poem for us.
Speaker 1:He says, I've killed a man for wounding me, a young man for injuring me. If Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech 77 times. So, within seven generations, we have moved from a single murder to a warning of seven times suffering in order to prevent a second murder to now revenge and murder being sung about in song with a promise of 77 times revenge. You see when Peter comes to Jesus in the New Testament, He says, how many times should I forgive? Is seven enough?
Speaker 1:The story of Lamech is one that Jesus knows all too well. Because sure seven is great but what happens after you forgive the seventh time? And the eighth offense comes and you repay them plus one. Where does that story end? It ends where Lamech begins.
Speaker 1:It ends where Samson starts. It ends in escalation and violence and hurt forever being passed around from one to another to another. No matter how small it starts there is no other end to that story. And so when Jesus says not seven but 77, what he is doing is he is beginning to rewrite the history of the human race. No matter how badly you want revenge, No matter how much you may deserve to get even.
Speaker 1:Jesus says that is not a story that will end well. And it's not because you shouldn't be hurt. It's not because Jesus is discounting your pain it's because he knows where that story goes. And when Jesus says not seven but 77 times he's not just telling us that forgiveness is a good idea. What he's doing is he's giving us the antidote to the story that has dominated human history since the moment we became addicted to revenge.
Speaker 1:So when you refuse to dehumanize the person who has hurt you. Not excusing or condoning but recognizing that their brokenness comes from their fear and insecurity. When you come to realize that your pain is real but it's personal And you can't ever recreate that inside someone else to begin with. When you choose to take that hurt and to feel it so deeply that you can absorb it instead of passing it along, then you are a part of repairing a story that began the moment humanity chose violence and mistrust instead of grace and peace. This is why forgiveness is hard.
Speaker 1:It's why I will never judge you when you struggle to let go. Because revenge is when you take your pain and you pass it to someone else and you say, it's your problem now, deal with it. But forgiveness, forgiveness is when you hold that hurt so closely and you feel it so deeply that you disarm it of its power and you rob it of its potency. And that will change the world. Because this is not just Jesus' brilliant idea or his sage like thoughts.
Speaker 1:This is his story. That he takes the worst we could possibly do to him. We humiliate him and we beat him. We nail him to a cross and he still says, father forgive them because they don't understand what they're doing. They they don't get it because they're still afraid.
Speaker 1:And they can't make sense of grace because they're too insecure. They can't comprehend forgiveness because they have been passing pain and hurt and revenge around in circles for generations. And so even if it takes the divine son of God. Stepping into that story to absorb the hurt and to take on the sin and to experience the brokenness of the world but then refuse to hand it back. And that is the length that grace will travel to save us from ourselves.
Speaker 1:May you know today that Christ has absorbed the sin of the world and refused to give it back. May you remember that you will find your humanity when you refuse to dehumanize someone else. May you feel your pain and know that it is real, but also recognize that you could never truly pass that to someone else anyway. And so instead, may you welcome God to be present with you in this moment. Healing and helping and walking with you away from revenge and toward the wholeness that he imagines for you.
Speaker 1:Let's pray. God, help us to understand the deep dark history of this story of revenge. That roots itself not just in our own soul but roots itself in the story of humanity. Where we have continually taken our hurt and our injury and tried to pass it to someone else instead of absorbing it to move it on. But always plus one, always in escalation, always in violence.
Speaker 1:God would you help us to follow this incredible example that you've given to us. Where you do what we could never do. You step into the world and you absorb our brokenness, our sin, our hurt, our violence. And you say, I will not give it back. Because that's a story that ends in destruction.
Speaker 1:God, would you help us in all the small ways that we are offended every day to absorb that and hold it, feel it deeply but then choose to leave it behind. Because we know that revenge is a path that leads to our death. And so God when we are hurt would you be present by your spirit with us? Helping us, teaching us, guiding us, and then healing us as we move forward. For those moments where we have lashed out at others, would you bring forgiveness and clarity into our lives to recognize that that is not the story we need to continue to follow?
Speaker 1:But instead, wherever we are on our path, there is always this moment where we can turn and move towards something that is better. Would you bring each of us into the wholeness and health that you imagine for us. In the strong name of the risen Christ we pray. Amen.