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“When the days drew near for him to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, ‘Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?’ But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village.” –– Luke 9:51-55
Seething. You’ve been seething mad; angry with a slice of vengeance on the side; angry to the point of hanging up the phone and walking around the block to cool off before you return to the dinner table. Somebody has pounded your button, assaulted you with insult, questioned your intelligence, attacked someone you love, demeaned your character. “When are you going to learn how to preach? Is there somewhere they can send you?” “Well, you are entitled to your opinion,” you hear yourself say while your mind is offering a much more colorful reflection of her pietistic, turn-or-burn background, a reflection you must swallow and never utter without a moving van and a resume.
Seething. Can you still feel the burn from the acid reflux of your swallowed pride? Thankfully, civility and dignity won the day, but can you count on it tomorrow, particularly when your nightly prayer is interrupted by the fantasy of repeating the phone conversation, only this time, you’ve acquired the low raspy Celtic cadence of Liam Neeson from Taken –– “I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you.”
Daydreams of revenge may appear delicious, but like the week-old brownie under glass at the bakery, once eaten, all you are left with is the taste of cardboard and the emergency trip to the dentist. The catharsis of revenge is at best, fleeting, disappointing, and soon displaced by the fear of what the opponent will do next. Lewis Smedes suggested that “The problem with revenge is that it never evens the score. It ties both the injured and the injurer to an escalator of pain. Both are stuck on the escalator as long as parity is demanded, and the escalator never stops.”
Too often we confuse revenge with justice, assuming that wounding the wounder will restore order to the universe, when all it really does is ratchet up the risk of further pain. I cannot comprehend how witnessing the execution of a loved one’s murderer would provide some sense of closure much less healing for a family. I can only imagine it would layer the kind of disturbing images that fuel nightmares upon the thick pain of continued grief. Yet, revenge so often remains the first impulse for the aggrieved, whereas mercy may seem inconceivable if not offensive. However, healing remains impossible until mercy is allowed into the conversation.
In Luke’s Gospel, when Jesus’ focus turns to Jerusalem, Jesus takes the route through Samaria, home of the estranged cousins the disciples’ parents would have warned their sons to stay away from. When the disciples, who had just gone through Mercy Boot Camp, are rebuffed by the people they had historically viewed with condescension, mercy is immediately displaced by the desire for revenge –– “Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?” Oh, how quickly vengeance smothers mercy. And yet, whether in Samaria, Galilee, or Jerusalem, Jesus chooses mercy as the way of the redeemed. You’ve heard the oft quoted wisdom of Gandhi –– “An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.” Too easily, we forget that the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting. Why? Perhaps it is because the Lord knows that revenge cannot close the open wound.
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