The Opposite of Revenge--July 6, 2023

The Opposite of Revenge--July 6, 2023

[Jesus said:] "Give to everyone who begs from you, and do not refuse anyone who wants to borrow from you." [Matthew 5:42]

Jesus has come to dismantle the need for payback. 

Seriously, the more time I spend in the Gospels, the more it becomes clear to me that Jesus' message and ministry are rooted in the work of pulling apart our impulse to 'get even' and in showing us that God doesn't operate out of the need to 'get even,' either.  Over and over again, Jesus shows us a God who runs the universe on an economy of grace, and he dares us to turn over our lives and livelihoods to that way of relationship, too.

It starts with God--it always does, for Jesus.  Jesus introduces us to the God we thought we already knew, but reveals that if we take God's presence seriously in the world, we'll see signs of God's generosity rather than stinginess everywhere.  God, Jesus shows us, gives good things abundantly to all life, without any sense that we will, or even could, "pay God back."  How do you return the favor for the One who called you into existence out of nothing, after having built a universe that provides all you need... also out of nothing? (Reminds me of the old line of Carl Sagan's: "If you wish you make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.")  Jesus says you can't do anything to "settle up" with God, but you can receive the good gift of your existence and accept that it is yours by grace.  

Then, as he so often does, Jesus doubles-down on his understanding of God's policy of no-payback by pointing out that God's good gifts of sun and rain are given prodigally to everybody, including stinkers, sinners, crooks, and ungrateful jerks.  In other words, God's good gifts for life are not doled out as rewards for good behavior (payback), nor as incentive to prompt us to pay God back with offerings or harvests or sacrifices and thus to earn more good things (yet another form of payback).  Rather, God gives good things because it is God's nature to be generous, and God's love doesn't take into account our "worthiness" or "deserving."  God's love bears with our inability to pay God back, and it doesn't take any of that into consideration.   Jesus tells us to stop and realize every time it rains, that there's no way to pay God back for God's generosity to us--you can only receive it and realize it's been grace all along.

Jesus' emphasis on God's forgiveness of us goes even further.  Jesus weaves God's forgiveness into his model for praying, "Forgive us our sins, as we forgive..." and he keeps telling stories where the stand-in for God cancels debts, forgives offenses, and doesn't seek to get even with enemies (I'm thinking of the wheat and the weeds there).  So not only does not give good things to us without our ability to pay God back, but God forgives our sins rather than "getting even" with us when we do mess up. And of course, ultimately at the cross, Jesus shows us a God who bears the pain of our sinfulness into God's own being, rather than zapping a world full of bloodthirsty sinners who crucified him. To hear Jesus tell it and to see Jesus embody it, God has totally rejected the logic of needing to "get even" with some form of "payback."  

And instead, the resurrection breaks the cycle of needing to wreak revenge for some past infraction or offense, but rather creates a new future that isn't dictated by past wrongs.  That's the real wonder of resurrection: it's not that Jesus has come back to life to "get even" with all the people who wronged him (this isn't The Count of Monte Cristo or Sweeney Todd), but rather to start things over without being forced into the old ruts of the past.  The notion of "payback" is always bound up in the past--getting even for what someone did to you, or making up for some imbalance in the accounts between us.  But Jesus' understanding is that God is always seeking new beginnings that aren't determined by what we've done, what we deserve, or what we owe.  Those are always bound by the past, and God is looking to create a new future between us.  God has committed to practicing the opposite of revenge.

And then here in this section of the Sermon on the Mount that we've been reading through this week, Jesus has been simply calling his followers to live by this same logic of non-transactional thinking everywhere in our lives.  Since God doesn't charge us for the good gifts we receive, and since God doesn't overwhelm us with debts for our sins and transgressions, Jesus simply calls us to act toward others the way God has already committed to acting toward us.  We will be generous toward other people, because God is generous to us.  We will graciously forgive others (remembering that in Jesus' word, "forgiveness" is first about debt and only later becomes applied metaphorically to sins and personal offenses), because God has been merciful to us.  We can bear and set aside the question of "deserving" toward others, because has set it aside with regard to us, and has born even the nails of a cross without holding a grudge.  And we can let go of the ways we've been tethered to the past, so that we can pursue new relationships with people in the future.

Today we are sent out into the world to dismantle the need for payback everywhere we go, because Jesus says God has no need for payback with us.  We will be generous toward people around us, because we believe that God continues to be generous to us beyond our deserving.  We will be forgiving toward others, because God has forgiven (and keeps forgiving) us.  It is a whole way of life that pulls apart the old impulse to "get even" and instead lets grace be our currency, because that is how God's economy works.

Today, let's turn away from repeating the old patterns of the past that keep us trying to "get even" but never do, and turn a new direction into the gracious Reign of God.

Lord Jesus, dismantle the impulse for getting even in our hearts, as you have already shown us that you are not out for payback from us.