American Church in Paris - Sermons

ACP HOME - Sermon Archives - Past ACP Sermons

Beyond Revenge to Reconciliation by Rev. John Kleinheksel Sr.

April 22, 2007

Readings: II Cor. 5:17-21; Matt 5:21-26; 6:14, 15

© 2007 John Kleinheksel Sr.

Last month, Eric Johnson made one last call to his ex-wife Beth.  “I’ve got her”, he said (referring to their 8-year old daughter, Emily), and you’re not going to get her”, he said.
    Mommy, come get me, come get me, Emily could be heard screaming in the background.

Eric Johnson packed his daughter in his Cessna airplane, got airborne and slammed it into his ex-mother-in-law’s home in Bedford, IN, killing his daughter and himself.  He was sure he was “right”, that “justice” was on his side.  He was convinced that his ex-wife was receiving the punishment she rightly deserved.

This is to say virtually nothing about the Virginia Tech student who resorted to extreme violence to others and himself in trying to cope with his troubles.

I know these are extreme cases.  We don’t all act on our vengeful feelings in this destructive way, but ours is a “Dirty Harry” era, when we routinely pay back evil, with evil.

Eugene Cheeks started out his book, The Color of Love, as an act of vengeance against those who brought pain to him and his family.  His dad was an alcoholic and after his mother divorced him, she developed a close relationship with a wonderful black man.  Gene’s dad was so incensed that he got the court to sent Gene to a foster home, away from his mother and her black friend.

Gene’s heart was so wounded that hardness overcame his softer, kinder self.

Like him, it is possible for us to become forged into hardened steel, ground and polished to a razor’s edge that can cut and destroy others.  Hardened hearts can also develop from an inability to discover alternatives to destructive spirals of vengeance and bitterness.  We seal our hearts off from being penetrated and then keep finding in a jaded, cynical world, a loveless indifference that carries within it seeds of explosive violence that erupts to rupture fragile relationships.

I think Rowan Williams is right: In the Middle East, in Northern Ireland and the Balkans and Sri Lanka, in the tribal conflicts of Africa, in the suspicions between Muslims who associate all Christians with the Crusaders and Christians who associate all Muslims with terrorism, in our most tangled and unhappy personal relations, and yes, in the bitter conflicts in the Church too – can we take in what Good Friday and Easter Day have to say to us? That we are all trapped, and we shall only come out of the traps we have made for ourselves when we grasp that God is greater than we are and is determined to go on living his life among us whatever happens?(Easter Sermon).

Do you know the story of Christian de Cherge, born in 1937, into a French Catholic military family in Algeria?  As a soldier himself, he took an interest in Islam.  While stationed in Tiaret, he befriended Mohammed, a Muslim policeman.  On weekly walks, they often discussed the tense relationship between Algeria’s Christian French colonizers and the native Muslim population.

On one of these walks, Algerian rebels ambushed the two men.  De Cherge was sure he was a dead man.  Then Muhammed stepped in between his friend and the attackers.  He told them to leave De Cherge alone.  Amazingly, they let both men go.  But this act of bravery cost Muhammed his life: he was found murdered in the street the next day.

De Cherge’s life was changed forever by Muhammed’s sacrifice.  He studied to become a priest as a Trappist monk and got transferred back to Algeria.  He kept learning more about Muslims, helping the locals find work and medical help, and promoting Muslim-Christian dialogue, aiming to show the world that Muslims and Christians could live together under Allah/God.

The parable of “Beauty and the Beast” runs true and deep in the human psyche.  The human condition gives evidence of both our darker and lighter sides.  The musical, The Phantom of the Opera is in that genre.  What finally moves us to the beauty of maturity and tames the beast in us? 

The movie version portrays “Christine”, the musically gifted lead singer in the Paris opera (of the 1870s) and the “Phantom”, her “angel of the Night”, deputized by her beloved father to put music into her soul and voice.

She is held in thrall to his vengeful, hateful love, and also gripped by the truer love of the leading man in the Opera, Raoul.

According to the movie version, the Phantom had a hideous face and was abused as a circus freak until he killed his tormentor, in an act of righteous vengeance.  He hid deep in the bowels of the Opera, wearing a mask to hide the self-loathing and hatred of others resident deep in his being.

Christine finally senses the brutal hatred that motivated his actions, despite his genius and love for her.  In the last scenes, the Phantom traps and threatens to destroy Raoul, forcing her to choose between them.  To choose the Phantom would “save” her true love. Yet, to choose the Phantom would be a lie. What would she do?

In a scene of powerful, tender grace, she approaches the hideous genius with genuine love and an intentional kiss of heartfelt compassion.  It melts his heart, and breaks his proud spirit.

Now he is truly unmasked in genuine contrition, fleeing the scene, releasing her to her true love.  He never puts the mask back on again.  When she dies before he dies (after being a wife and mother), he comes, alone, to the grave, with a gift and tears of undying love.  The Phantom became a changed man, the beast tamed for good.

When we allow ourselves to be in community with other bruised and broken fellow travelers, we are moved past brooding isolation and bitter spite.  Our hearts are thawed, memories are healed and attitudes and actions are re-patterned.

When someone takes the loving initiative with us and patiently invades the stiff defenses we put up, reconciliation has a chance to happen.

Back to Gene Cheeks (whose alcoholic father wounded him so terribly). As he was writing his book of memoirs, what started as an act of vengeance was changed to understanding and finally to forgiveness.  I can’t pinpoint the exact time, he writes, because it moved over me like the changing seasons, slow and deliberate.  Only at the end of the process did I notice it (Christian Century, 2/20/07, Faith Matters, L. Gregory Jones, p. 41).

And despite Christian de Cherge’s efforts, The Armed Islamic Group (GIA) became angry with the Trappists.  During the night of March 26, 27, 1996, a local GIA squad kidnapped de Cherge and six other brothers, held them hostage and then decapitated them.  But the story doesn’t end there either.

Two years earlier, de Cherge wrote this amazing letter to his family in France, to be opened only in the event of his sudden death:  If the day comes that I am a victim of the terrorism that seems to be engulfing the world, [please] know that I gave my life for God and Algeria.  I know. . .it will be easy to dismiss Islam as a hateful religion. . . .But such people should know that at last I will be able to see the children of Islam as God sees them.  God whose secret joy is to bring forth our common humanity amid our differences.

With the re-emergence of criminals, in the name of the Islamic religion, now active again in Algeria, it illustrates another aspect of Jesus’ teaching: If you find the godless world is hating you, remember it got its start hating me (John 15:18).  We must pray that our hateful world will become truly reconciled to God, the way that terrorist Saul was converted to the Christian, Paul, by his vision of the resurrected Master, Jesus.

All this talk of reconciliation beyond revenge only makes sense if we first become reconciled to God.

We need to be convinced that in his heart of hearts, God’s forgiving embrace cancels out our offenses against God and others.  We forgive others because we have been forgiven.

Jesus punctuated this truth in explaining the Lord’s Prayer. [We] can’t get forgiveness from God without forgiving others.  If you refuse to do you part, you cut yourself off from God’s part (Mt 6:14, 15).

God was in Christ, Paul wrote the Corinthians, reconciling the world to himself, giving the world a fresh start by offering forgiveness of sins.  Now God uses us to persuade men and women to drop their differences and enter God’s work of making things right between them. . . .In Christ, God put the wrong on Jesus who never did anything wrong, so we could be put right with God (II Cor. 5:17-21).

Jesus is even more practical and pointed in his Sermon on the Mount.  He commands that if, in the course of our worship or church work, you or I suddenly remember a grudge or offense another church member has against us, we don’t do anything but first go to that person and make things right.  Then and only then, do we come back and work things out with God.

It isn’t just murder that God condemns.  It’s the seething, unrequited anger in us that turns to deep hatred that needs to be exorcised.

When we call a sister an “idiot” or “stupid”, we are allowing alienation to gain a foothold.  We are opening the door to hostility taking up residence in our heart. When hate takes hold, it leads to destruction.  Make things right with an old enemy and sense the smile of God upon you.

In last Sunday’s Easter message, Archbishop Rowan Williams tells the story of his visit to the tiny island of Malaita in the Solomons. The Premier of Malaita had been talking about the bloody civil war that had divided the islands until just a year earlier; and then he said, ‘I want you to bless us; I need to say in public that we were responsible as well as the people on the other islands. So I’m going to ask the crowd to be quiet, and then I’ll kneel down and ask you to pronounce God’s forgiveness for whatever we [as government forces] contributed to the horrors of these last years’  (Rowan Williams, April 8, 2007, sermon).

Agnes is a member of a Church of Ireland parish in North Belfast.  She had long harbored a deep-seated hatred of Sinn Fein.  In November, 2002, Down and Dromore Diocese, to which her parish belonged, held several nights of preaching and teaching on reconciliation.  The Wednesday evening session by the bishop was especially pointed, urging people to let go of hatred, hurt and bitterness by writing a message to God on a sticky note and putting it on the cross.  Agnes asked for help with her hatred of Sinn Fein.

The next evening, while leaving the service, Agnes spotted Alex Maskey, a member of Sinn Fein.  Agnes headed directly toward him and instead of a clenched fist, offered an open hand and a warm welcome.  As she looked into his eyes, to her surprise she saw that they were soft and human.  Agnes recognized that God planned every little detail in bringing about that moment: a moment in which God answered her prayer for help quickly and effectively. 

May God give you and me the grace and courage to live out Jesus’ command to love one another as well, right here and right now, right where we live.  AMEN.