Have you ever cursed someone?  Paul writes, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.”  I imagine if we took an anonymous poll, a decent number of us would admit to having cursed AT someone.  Perhaps while driving, or at a sporting event, a synonym of a word like “donkey” or “manure” might have slipped from our lips.  But cursing AT someone is not what Paul is talking about here.  To curse someone means to call upon divine power to send harm or evil upon someone else.  It is the opposite of blessing someone, which means to bestow on them a divine gift.  Have you ever been so mad, so mistreated, or so offended that you cursed someone?

I will leave that up to you to answer for yourself, but if what people post on Facebook is any indication of what’s in our hearts, there is a good deal of cursing people going on in the world today. Even among Christians.  But Paul writes, “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse.”  In other words, we are to love our neighbors so much—even the neighbors who are mean to us—that we desire only God’s good for them, never God’s harm.  Nor are we to seek earthly harm.  Instead of seeking revenge, we are leave room for God’s wrath, and focus on loving our neighbors as ourselves.

You will be pleased to know that I don’t often have revenge fantasies.  Oh, I love to see those cheating New England Patriots lose, don’t get me wrong.  But I can’t think of a time I consciously planned out how I could seek revenge on an enemy.  This is not because I am a person of stellar character; it’s more that I don’t think about revenge because I know I am not coordinated enough to get away with it.  I can’t even brush my teeth some days without getting toothpaste on my shirt!  But not actively seeking revenge is still a far cry from wanting God to bless the people who have hurt me.  Or as my spiritual director put it, “Unconditional love is a nearly impossible standard—but it is still the standard.”

Last week I showed you my “Feelings Cruet.”  The concept for this comes from Pete and Gerry Scazerro, who founded a ministry called Emotionally Healthy Discipleship.  The basic idea is, difficult feelings like anger, sadness, fear, and shame block our ability to experience life’s more pleasant emotions like joy, peace, love and energy.  We can get a visual of this by picturing oil and vinegar poured into a salad dressing cruet.  Unless we shake things up, the vinegar will settle to the bottom, and the oil will rise to the top.  And it will stay there.  What a great image for feelings like anger, sadness, and hurt.  They don’t go away on their own.

That’s why last week we talked about the importance of lament—of sharing with God our difficult emotions and asking God, “How are you coming to me in this sadness?  How are you coming to me in this anxiety?”  By lamenting, by being honest with God about our difficult feelings, we can often get them out of the way, opening ourselves up to feeling that joy and peace underneath.

Many years ago I was part of a church were a different lay person each week opened the service with a greeting and announcements.  Most people stood up at the lecturn and simply said, “Good morning!”  Once in a while someone would quote an upbeat verse from the Psalms, like “This is the day the Lord has made.  Let us rejoice and be glad in it!”

But one time, this lady got up and said, “Vengeance is Mine, and recompense; Their foot shall slip in due time; For the day of their calamity is at hand, And the things to come hasten upon them.”  That’s Deuteronomy 32:35, the verse Paul alludes to in Romans.  Let me tell you, if people weren’t paying attention before, their focus snapped right in place when they heard “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord” at the start of the church service!  I wasn’t sure if she quoted that verse as a source of encouragement—or if she meant it as a threat!  Either way, it sure did come as a surprise.

Anger has a surprising way about it.  I have heard anger described as the “canary in the coal mine”—it is the first sign that there is something wrong deeper below.  Often it’s a more tender emotion, like fear or hurt, that gets expressed as anger.  For instance, have you ever been worried sick that your loved one is an hour late coming home from work, but when they finally arrive, instead of expressing relief, you were angry?  I know that’s happened to me.

This summer, there’s been a car parked in the shade in the front corner of the church parking lot on quite a few occasions.  It’s not uncommon to see cars here on weekdays, people wanting a quiet and cool place to take their lunch break, and in the summer when we don’t have kids here, I am glad we can offer a little respite to our community.  But this one car was different, and we started seeing it at night, too.  After a while, it became clear that the car is probably this person’s main source of shelter.  I wish I could tell you that I walked over, introduced myself, and asked if there was a way our church could help.  But my feelings cruet had a lot going on.  Before I could access the love and compassion down in the bottom, I had to get through the difficult emotions on the top layer.  I realized, hey, I’m angry!  They have no right to be here!  But then I thought about it and realized, the anger was just a sign that something else was going on.  What I was really feeling was fear.  Fear that I was not safe on our church property.

Of course, now that I have that figured out, I haven’t seen the car since.  I’m not exactly sure what I will do if I do see it again.  But whatever I do, I want it to be driven by wisdom and love, not fear, and for sure, not anger!  Because

anger can drive us to do some regrettable things.  Like seeking revenge.  Like praying for curses instead of blessings.  When we allow anger to fester, it distorts us.  We are supposed to be, as Paul says, people who are able to mourn with those who are mourning, and rejoice with those who are rejoicing.  But when we are angry—which means more likely we are afraid, sad, or hurt—instead of mourning with those who are suffering, we criticize and judge them.  And instead of rejoicing with those who are rejoicing, we get bitter and self-pitying.  In other words, instead of experiencing communion with our neighbors, we distance ourselves from them.

But the reality is, we are all just one step away from misfortune.  That is why Paul writes, “do not be proud; be willing to associate with people of low position; do not be conceited.”  There but for the grace of God go all of us.  So instead of seeking revenge, or enjoying seeing others fail, or trying to show you’re better than everyone else, how about trying to be a blessing?  Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

This week I read a book called, Struggle Well, about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, often called PTSD, and Post Traumatic Stress Growth, called PTSG.  The authors argue that traumatic events can become fertile soil for growth, but we are likely going to need to develop some new skills in order of for that growth to happen.  One of those skills is “disclosure”, or the willingness to talk about the traumatic event with a few trusted friends.  As I was reading, it stuck me how much this parallels the practice of lament, which we talked about last week.  Turns out, we’re not the only people talking about lament these days.  At the recent Mission U training event hosted by the United Methodist Women, the participants were taught a method for talking to God about difficult feelings.

A Format for Lament

Cry out to God (your address to God);
Complain (your anger, pain, heartache or sadness);
Affirmation of Trust (your remembrance of God’s presence in your past);
Petition/Request (your deepest desire);
Additional Argument (anything more, why God should intervene);
Rage Against Your Enemies (bringing your enemies before God);
Assurance of Being Heard (what you need to feel heard);
Promise to Offer Praise to God (the promise you can offer to God); and
Assurance (the attribute of God you are thankful for in the moment).

Here’s a lament I wrote about the ongoing corona virus pandemic:

Holy and Gracious God,
I am scared, sad, and angry about the way the corona virus continues to sicken so many people in our country and around the world.
I remember feeling scared over a year ago, when the pandemic first started, and how serendipitously I found a book in the church library “You’ll Get Through This” by Max Lucado that talked about Genesis just when we were studying it.  I know you are with me!
But Lord, what I most want is for this virus to be neutralized!
There is so much confusion, suffering and pain.
Vaccines are in such short supply in so many places.  Fragile economies are struggling even more.  The cries of the needy in less developed parts of the world are especially painful for me.
But I know you hear our prayers.  I know you are always at work for good.
Lord, I can’t promise much, but I can promise to keep looking to you, to keep praying, and keep trusting.
Remembering your constant presence love calms my fears and softens my distress.  I thank you for your steadfast love.

 

That’s a pretty thorough lament, don’t you think?  I like how it shakes things up, and names both the difficult emotions on the top layer as well as the trust and peace on the bottom layer of our feeligs. Remember, difficult emotions are like oil that rise to the top and block our access to the more pleasurable emotions underneath.  Fear, sadness, anger, anxiety, stress—these can keep us from experiencing peace, joy, energy, creativity, trust—the very qualities we need to keep our faith during difficult seasons.  The practice of lament is a key component of keeping our hearts loving and our spirits strong.

I picked up the Struggle Well book because the pandemic has been a traumatic event for many people.  My favorite line in the book is about listening well to the pain of others.  “Unsolicited advice, essentially, is criticism.”  That’s a powerful thought, isn’t it?  Unsolicited advice, essentially, is criticism.  As we have been reading the book of Romans, I have often wondered, “What did the people in Rome think when they read this letter from Paul?  Did they appreciate his wisdom?  Were they able to keep in mind that he wrote in order to encourage them?  Or did his words offend them?”  We don’t know how Paul’s letter was received.  It is likely his words came across as unsolicited advice, and did offend some of his readers, at least at first.

But hopefully Paul’s audience members were able to get past that anger, and get to a more tender emotion underneath, to the place that is afraid because loving unconditionally is an almost impossible standard.  We are all afraid that not seeking revenge, not cursing our enemies, and in fact, blessing them is too hard for mere mortals like us.  But God gives us an antidote to our fear, and that antidote is God’s very presence with us.

Mad, sad, glad, hurt, scared.  We have a choice.  We can either struggle with our feelings, or we can learn to struggle well.  Ask God, “How are you coming to me in these feelings?”  The measure of peace you gain may not seem nearly enough to solve all the problems of in your life, let alone in the world.  But it will be a great start toward fulfilling Christ’s command, to love God with our whole beings, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.  Amen.