Don't let this escalate

If you have ever played the game of Consequences you will have an understanding of the words of Jesus in this gospel reading.   Another view of it is to consider a modern expression for holding back our rage: Anger Management.   Jesus begins this part of his discourse saying, “You have heard that our forefathers were told ‘Do not commit murder; anyone who commits murder must be brought to justice.’   But what I tell you is this: anyone who nurses anger against his brother must be brought to justice.”

Not being a Bible scholar I cannot say whether these words are accurate translations.   I am certain, however, that we are meant to learn that Jesus is telling us to hold back our anger or rage.   We must all know people we would describe as being on a short fuse.   They are people who go off the deep end at very slight provocation.   They can cause matters to flare up way beyond the level at which they exist.   We are to learn not to make mountains out of mole hills.   Jesus did not really mean that we should be brought before the magistrates for an outburst that is usually soon forgotten.   He was saying that we ought to be wary of situations getting out of hand so that they escalate to a level we never meant them to be.

As a teenager attending the Easter Youth Conference at St Mary’s College in Bangor in the 60s, I heard a minister speaking about an incident at his church youth club.   Two boys started fighting and he had to separate them.   “What’s all this about?” he asked.   Pointing at his opponent, one boy burst out “He looked at me!”   I wonder what the end product would have been if the fight had not been stopped.  

One place where stress can escalate is the workplace.   The executive whose chairman has shouted at him goes back to his office and shouts at his secretary.   She goes home later and shouts at her children.   The children shout at the cat.   It is so easy for stress to breed anger that spreads like a wildfire.   Back in my home town of Nelson in Lancashire there is a great slope of grass overlooking the railway.   When I was a child my granddad and I used to go and sit there watching the trains steam by.   I’m not sure whether my granddad was a closet pyromaniac but he liked to set fire to the dry grass in summer.   “Let’s light a fire, Keith.” He would say and reach into his pocket for a box of matches.  Once the fire started to spread we would stamp it out.   One beautiful hot Sunday afternoon we did this and had to beat a hasty retreat when our fire got out of control and the fire brigade were called out.

What Jesus was saying about hatred was that it should not be allowed to escalate as, on occasion, it could turn into murder or any other violent act.   He tells his audience that the hatred that leads to killing begins at a low, perhaps every day,  level.   This is where they should deal with it.  

Antoine Leiris, a journalist at the French radio network France Bleu, decided to address the terrorist gunmen after his wife, Helene Muyal, 35, was killed in the atrocity at the concert in the  Bataclan Hall in Paris.

In an emotional note on Facebook titled “You will not have my hatred”, Leiris wrote: “On Friday evening you stole the life of an exceptional person, the love of my life, the mother of my son, but you will not have my hatred.

“I don’t know who you are and I don’t want to know, you are dead souls. If this God, for whom you kill blindly, made us in his image, every bullet in the body of my wife is a wound in his heart.

“So no, I will not give you the satisfaction of hating you. You want it, but to respond to hatred with anger would be to give in to the same ignorance that made you what you are.”

Interviewed almost a year later he was still refusing to hate his wife’s killers.   He remarked that hatred was an easy option and, as such, could do great harm to the victim.    When I pondered on this after hearing him speak I realised that the best way to deal with the temptation to hate someone is to show it the door.   In this gospel discourse Jesus is saying just this.   He tells us that we must go and make peace with the person with whom we have a dispute.   Now this is the hardest part and one which I find incredibly difficult.   It emphasises the difficulty we face at such a time when the easiest way is to give in to hatred.

When I was Branch Secretary of my union some 30 years ago I attended a number of training courses.   I was the one who would have to lead negotiations with our employers.   I was the one who had, from time to time, to represent individual members facing a disciplinary hearing.   One thing we always heard on training courses was that we should always seek to resolve problems and disputes at the lowest level.   A small fire can be put out quickly but if the entire hillside is alight then even the fire brigade find it hard to put it out.

This is what our saviour was saying on that hillside at the start of his ministry.   It reminds me of the time when a union member decided to ignore letters claiming maintenance from a young woman who declared he was the father of her child.   When it really hit him he had a single phone call available to him before he was taken to Strangeways Prison in Manchester.   By this time the amount owing had risen to £800.   He phoned his boss who happened also be our union’s Branch Treasurer, asking him to tell his wife that he.had been sent down.   He had let things escalate.

I came home that day to find the phone ringing and our Branch Treasurer calling to tell me that Alan, who was also a union steward, had been sent down.   Together with the Branch Welfare Officer we later worked out a plan whereby we could get him out of prison by paying off the debt and having him repay us by instalments.   So it was that soon afterwards I found myself on the wrong side of the gate of the prison with sufficient cash to bail him out.   It was an experience I shall always remember!

This part of our gospel reading is, as we can plainly see, a code for living daily.   It is also common sense but Jesus emphasises the need for caution before some matter gets out of hand.   But it is not just common sense.   It follows the path God lays before us in order to do his will in our own lives.   I have preached now for over 55 years and at the beginning  I used to lay great emphasis on Christianity being a practical way of life.   This is crystal clear as we read the Sermon on the Mount.

It is a blueprint for the Christian to follow.   It is not impossible but it can be quite difficult.   It is often so hard to make peace with another who has wronged us or perhaps a friend of ours.   Personally, I find it very difficult to deal with a wrong against a friend or a vulnerable person.   Anything I might suffer I can eventually deal with and forget.

So often we are implored to forgive and forget.   The forgiveness bit is the easier of the two if you take it literally.   I have had many challenges concerning the word forget.   How can you forget what has happened, particularly when it is something that has caused a very deep wound?   All of us possess memories so forgetting sounds ridiculous.   But I think the answer is that to forget is to refuse to let the happening continue to eat you up in later life.  We have to work at reducing the hurt to a point where hurt becomes history.    In other words we are called on to live as if the matter is forgotten.

Thinking of what kind of Messiah the Israelites expected, doesn’t this passage explain that Jesus is not the king who rides at the front of an army to defeat the enemy.    I suppose the Romans would be the enemy.   Instead, Jesus is the one who looks at all problems at their source and shows how to prevent an outbreak of fire.   His whole ministry slowly and patiently spells out a revolutionary approach (albeit a velvet one) to taking up arms to neutralise the enemy.

One of the marks of our day is that many people consider it necessary to make complaints to those who represent public bodies.   Having been a local government officer, I can look back on many such instances.   Very often, a complaint used to make members of our staff determined to thwart all such attacks, even to the point of making a person lose out on benefits to which they were actually entitled.   We had a few who considered it their life’s mission to prevent people getting their rights.   I was not one of this tiny minority.

For four years I worked in East Anglia and once I interviewed a ratepayer and he was amazed at what I said to him.   He commented, “I came here to have a row with you but all you’ve done is to agree with me!”   My reply was, “If I agree with you, why should I not say so?”   He left with a smile on his face.   

It is often amazing to others how Christianity, in its best form, appears to be passive, yet achieves justice against the bullies of life.   I sometimes see Christianity and the love which it is all about taking on the form of smoke.   Think about it:   A door might be closed against you but smoke can trail under that door and make a difference on the other side.

Our faith may, to others, appear passive and, perhaps, too meek and mild.   Yet it still possesses a strength like steel.   We might have to wait a very long time before we see success, but we do get there in the end.   So we must not expect instant results.   What is important is that the love of God that we bear to our world is allowed to seep under those closed doors and eventually bring about a good result.

The sacrifice on the Cross was made over 2,000 years ago and still this work of being channels of love is not ended.   Very little is achieved in terms of quick, knee jerk reactions.   But so much is achieved by joining others who have their shoulders to the wheel.   Each one of us will eventually give way to others who follow us and keep that wheel turning.   This collective commitment to love, peace and justice is never ending.

Amen