SUNDAY, AUGUST 11 2024 - VENGEANCE IS MINE
August 11, 2024
Deborah Laforet
Vengeance is Mine
Let us pray. May the words from my lips and the meditations of my heart be guided by
your Spirit and be words of wisdom for this day. Amen.
Friday morning, I was on my bike listening to a podcast. Wouldn’t you know it; the
topic of this podcast was directly relevant to my sermon this morning. I love it when I am given
such a gift. In every episode of this podcast, someone is interviewed about a movie that changed
their life or made a big impact on their life. In this episode, the movie, “The Oxbow Incident,”
was being discussed. This movie, released in 1943, is not one of which I have ever heard. Any
of you folks seen it?
In this film, a group of men form a posse and decide to take justice into their own hands.
They believe they know who has killed their friend and they decide to find justice. They chase
down these people to hang them. Here is a clip from the movie.
Show clip from “The Oxbow Incident.”
After three men have been hung, the sheriff comes along and asks them what they’re
doing, and this posse tells the sheriff that they have found justice by killing the people who killed
their friend. Spoiler alert: if you don’t want to know how it ends, plug your ears now. The
sheriff then tells them that their friend is not dead. They’ve just killed three innocent people, and
may God have mercy on their souls.
Kent Palmer sent me a verse from the bible on which he wanted me to preach. Bert read
it for us earlier, but let’s hear it again. From Deuteronomy 32:41:
When I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand grasps it in judgment,
I will take vengeance on my adversaries and repay those who hate me.
Kent had heard this verse in another more modern show called Outer Range, kind of a
sci-fi western. Kent couldn’t find the clip he wanted but he shared another more modern clip, for
which I don’t think you need much context.
Show clip of Trump.
“I am your justice. I am your retribution.”
There are lots of examples out there of vengeance - in books, movies, songs, poems.
They express anger, humiliation, and deep pain, and the longing to fight back, to hurt those who
have hurt us or our loved ones. When we are hurt, when people we love are hurt, we thirst for
justice, in whatever way we think that might look. We long for vengeance. We want payback.
We want them to hurt as we are hurting, so sometimes, that means taking the law into our own
hands. Some might call this Old Testament justice.
Over the years, I have heard several people say that they aren’t a fan of the Old
Testament. They say the god of the Old Testament is judgemental and violent. The New
Testament God, they might say, the god that Jesus represents, is all about love, mercy, and even
loving your enemy. Many Christians avoid the Old Testament, and only read from the New
Testament. Therefore, there are a lot of Christians who have very little understanding of the Old
Testament and some that don’t feel the need. The Old Testament is seen as outdated and some
think the New Testament is a replacement of the Old Testament.
The Old Testament, or what I will refer to from here on in as the Hebrew Scriptures, takes
up three quarters of our bible. It holds two beautiful stories of creation, it shares stories of our
spiritual ancestors, dating back to Abraham and Sarah, Joseph and his brothers, and Moses and
the Exodus from Egypt. In it, we read of Israel’s very beginnings, the popular King David, and
the many prophets that cried out for justice and mercy. Not to mention, Jesus himself, and most
of his followers, and the Apostle Paul were Jewish. Much of what we read in the Christian
Scriptures cannot be understood without some knowledge of the Hebrew Scriptures.
Unfortunately what gets lifted up and used in our culture from the Hebrew Scriptures are
stories of violence, are the commandments and rules and consequences of breaking those
commandments and rules, of a flood that destroys most of creation, of wars that are more like
genocide, of acts of violence against the vulnerable people. These are the stories that are lifted
up, and this could very well be the product of anti-semitism in our culture and the lack of
understanding of Jews and their faith.
This verse from Deuteronomy has been used often used to justify vengeance, and, for
some, confirms the belief that the Hebrew Scriptures promote violence, but this verse is taken
out of context. This verse from Deuteronomy is from a part of scripture called the Song of
Moses. Moses, after having led his people, for many years, through the wilderness, has finally
arrived in Canaan, and his people are ready to claim the land that God had promised them.
Unfortunately, Moses is unable to go with them. So he uses his best efforts to leave his people
with the wisdom he has gained and with words from the Divine. This verse, which speaks of
vengeance, are what Moses relays as God’s words. It is God, says Moses, who will seek
vengeance.
Vengeance is not to bed sought by people. We are too fallible. We make too many
mistakes. Some violence, meant as vengeance or retribution, only escalates into all out war. The
human justice system, or even the code of law contained in the Hebrew Scriptures, is to be used
when people break the law. Even though we know that human justice systems are far from
perfect, this is what we use to exact justice. Vengeance is mine, says the Lord, a quote from the
King James Bible. It’s not ours, and it especially doesn’t belong to former US president Trump.
Our emotions get in the way of true justice. We need to leave that to a higher power, as hard as
that may be. It’s our job to express our feelings and then to surrender them, let them go, even to
forgive, which I believe Carolyn preached on earlier this summer.
Nowhere in the bible does it say that God want us to take the law into our own hands and
kill the enemy. In fact, one of our Ten Commandments is “Do Not Murder.” When we are
hurting, we are unable to set our emotions aside and exact the right proportion of justice. It’s too
difficult to look beyond our feelings and be objective. Too often, we dole out an extra portion of
vengeance, and escalate the violence until all are hurting, including the innocent and the
vulnerable.
The second passage Bert read for us holds more of the commandments given to the
Israelite people by God as they wandered in the wilderness. We heard commands such as, “You
shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; you shall not lie to one another. You shall not oppress
your neighbour or rob them. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against your own
people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself.
Some think that Jesus came to overturn the Hebrew laws, but he actually says that he has
come to fulfill the law, not abolish it. In fact, he has come to make it stronger. In Proverbs we
read, if your enemy is hungry, give him bread to eat, and if he is thirsty, give him water to drink,
(25:21). We also read from Proverbs, “Do not gloat when your enemy falls; when they stumble,
do not let your heart rejoice.” (24:17). In the Hebrew Scriptures we are encouraged to do well by
our enemy, not to harm them, not to rejoice in their pain, and Jesus takes it step further and
encourages us to love our enemies, just as we are to love our neighbour as ourself, repeating this
command from his sacred Jewish scriptures.
What we call the Old Testament are sacred scriptures to people of the Jewish faith. These
sacred scriptures are filled with stories of human love, human vulnerabilities, human failures,
human passions, courage, fear, guilt, compassion, and these ancient scriptures lifts up a God who
does shows mercy and love for the people that God created. If we look, we will find stories of
violence and vengeance, but we will also find them in our Christian scriptures.
I find the Hebrew Scriptures fascinating and I love learning about the intricacies of the
the Hebrew language, the words that have been mistranslated over the years, the stories of
relationships and love, and stories of intrigue and hurt, stories that is still relevant to our own
relationships today. I’m not asking that you also feel the same way, but I am inviting you to
open your minds. Jews have been persecuted for thousands of years, which I think has crossed
over into how these scriptures are read viewed. Jews, Christians, and Muslims are all cousins in
faith and we all have our stories rooted in the Hebrew Scriptures and the early stories of
Abraham and Sarah.
My hope is that when people take verses from any of these scriptures, that maybe they
consult a rabbi, or a minister, or an imam, and become more clear of the context of that verse.
My hope is that people don’t take verses from the bible to justify their actions of violence, or
vengeance, or homophobia, or sexism, or anything that justifies causing hurt to humans and all of
creation. We need to be more careful in how we handle these sacred words and how we teach
them to our young people.
Vengeance is mine, say Yahweh. Yahweh also says you shall not take vengeance or bear
a grudge against your own people, but you shall love your neighbour as yourself. May we learn
to leave justice to God, and concentrate on loving ourselves and our neighbours, leaning into the
words of love and compassion held in our sacred scriptures. May it be so. Amen.
Deuteronomy 32:41 & Leviticus 19:9-18
(Introduce yourself.)
Today Deborah will preach on a verse from Deuteronomy that was suggested by
someone in the congregation. I’ll read that verse first. Its the 41st verse from
chapter 32.
When I sharpen my flashing sword
and my hand grasps it in judgment,
I will take vengeance on my adversaries
and repay those who hate me.
Many Christians think that the commandment to love your neighbour originates
with Jesus. Today, I will read a passage from the third book of the bible, from the
nineteenth chapter of Leviticus, verses 9 to 18, where we will hear how we are to
treat our neighbours. Pay special attention to verse 18 where we will again hear
about vengeance.
9 “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to
its edge, neither shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. 10 And you shall
not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your
vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord
your God.
11 “You shall not steal; you shall not deal falsely; you shall not lie to one another.
12 You shall not swear by my name falsely, and so profane the name of your God:
I am the Lord.
13 “You shall not oppress your neighbour or rob him. The wages of a hired worker
shall not remain with you all night until the morning. 14 You shall not curse the
deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God: I am
the Lord.
15 “You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer
to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbour. 16 You shall not
go around as a slanderer among your people, and you shall not stand up against the
life of your neighbour: I am the Lord.
17 “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but you shall reason frankly with
your neighbour, lest you incur sin because of him. 18 You shall not take vengeance
or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your
neighbour as yourself: I am the Lord.
May the Spirit guide our understanding of this sacred scripture. Amen.