Thomas J Parlette
“The Best Revenge”
1 Peter 2: 18-25
5/3/20
There’s a good chance this has happened to you. You’re having dinner in a nice quiet restaurant, or enjoying a movie on the big screen (back in the days when we could do things like that), or maybe just sitting quietly in the doctor’s office reading a magazine – when the silence is shattered by some inconsiderate individual nearby carrying on a long cell phone conversation at a volume level that nobody within 50 feet can ignore. And you are irritated.
Now, you’re not the type to make a scene and get into a public altercation – but wouldn’t it be cool if you had in your pocket some sort of electronic jamming device that would allow you to shut down that cell phone with a touch of a button?
Well, if you’d like to be able to do that, and I know I’m not alone in that desire, I’ve got good news for you. You may soon be able to get online and buy such a gadget for a few bucks on Amazon.
According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, titled “Revenge by Gadget”, there’s an emerging subcategory in the electronics world that is churning out little gizmos designed to neutralize annoying behavior. Here’s just a sampling of things now available:
1. A $50 device that quiets other people’s dogs by answering their barks with an electronic squeal that humans can’t hear. And it’s disguised as a birdhouse so the dog’s owners won’t know that you are the culprit.
2. You can also get a luminescent screen that fits in your vehicle’s rear window that, at the touch of a button, will flash any one of 5 messages, along with a computer generated face to match, kind of like an emoji. I will leave it to your imagination to figure out what some of the messages say. Word is that the company has received many requests to add images of certain hand gestures to their options as well.
3. There is also a jacket that, when activated with a controller, delivers an electric shock to anyone who touches the person wearing it. These jackets have drawn some strong interest from women who wish to send a message to certain men with wandering hands.
That all sounds nice, doesn’t it? I bet you heard at least gadget on that list that piqued your interest. Revenge can be sweet – but it can also be costly.
There’s an old fable about two merchants who were fierce competitors and had grown to hate each other.
One day, the Lord sent an angel to one of the merchants with a remarkable offer. “The Lord God has chosen to give you a great gift,” said the angel. “Whatever you desire, you will receive. Ask for riches, a long life, healthy children, whatever you want – and the wish will be granted.”
“But there is one catch. Whatever you receive, your competitor will get twice as much. If you ask for a thousand gold coins – he will receive two thousand. If you ask for fame – he will twice as famous as you. This is God’s way of teaching you a lesson – you ought not hate one another.”
The merchant thought about the angel’s offer for a minute. “You will give me anything I request?” he asked.
“Yes,” said the angel.
“And my competitor will receive twice as much?”
“Yes.”
The merchants face grew hard and he said, “Then I ask that you strike me blind in one eye.”
Revenge often sounds sweet, but it’s cost can be high.
All of which leads us to this passage for today, for revenge would seem to be at the center of these verses from 1st Peter.
This is a difficult piece of scripture we have here. It’s one of those passages that scholars call “a problem text” or “a hard sayings passage – for obvious reasons. In fact, if I were following the lectionary to the letter this morning, we would not have heard verse 18, the part about “Slaves, accept the authority of your masters…”
The problem arises because this passage has been used to justify oppression – oppression of slaves, oppression of women, oppression of anyone in an abusive situation.
But that’s not really the point here. To say this passage encourages or condones submission in situations we CAN and SHOULD do something about, is to misread and misuse the scripture.
These words from Peter are first and foremost practical advice as to how Christians should live in an alien and often hostile culture. What we have this morning is NOT and ideal we should aspire to, but rather a nuts and bolts analysis of how to get along in a situation you can not control – something all of us are struggling with right now.
Keep in mind, in the ancient world, it was not a question of whether slavery was right or wrong – it simply was. It was a fact of life.
In our modern context, it is almost universally accepted that forced servitude is wrong – submission to abusive behavior is wrong. As Christians, we need to speak out against injustice, abuse and oppression whenever we see it. That is true. It is biblical and it is right.
But here in 1st Peter this morning, Peter is writing to Christian slaves – there’s no getting around it. In the late first century AD, when the Christian church spread from Palestine into the larger Roman Empire – a greater and greater percentage of the church were slaves. In the ancient world slaves could be anybody. Slaves were a legal commodity, bought and sold. Some were born into slavery, others were captured in war, and some even sold themselves into slavery to pay off their debts. In the first century AD, when Peter writes, about a quarter of the people in the Roman Empire were slaves. Such slaves could be doctors, building contractors or business managers, having great responsibilities but receiving little money and almost no rights.
One of the big questions the church faced was the problem of how Christian slaves were to live. Were the supposed to go about their daily life of service, or did their faith teach them to revolt? At the same time, the church was beginning to face quite a bit of persecution. So Peter’s instructions walk the line between staying faithful to the Gospel and gaining acceptance and legitimacy for the young faith community. To revolt would mean an end to the church. But the faith also taught that God was the Master. “What do we do? How do we live?” was the question of the day.
And for Peter, the best thing to do was to use Jesus as a model. Follow Jesus’ example, and you’ll be fine.
That has always been the basic message of this passage. In whatever situation you find yourself, be imitators of Christ. Acknowledge the legitimate authority over you, do your duties, follow the stay at home orders and social distancing policies in place – but be imitators of Christ. Participate in things that bring healing, rather than things that cause disease. As Peter says, “For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving an example, so that you should follow in his steps.”
One of the things that brought that view sharply into focus more than a century ago was a novel by Charles Sheldon called “In His Steps.” In fact, the book begins with the pastor of a fictional congregation working on a sermon from these verses here today. Sheldon’s book was written in 1897, and it became a blockbuster, selling over 8 million copies – and it never has really gone out of print since.
The book tells the story of what happened in the lives of members of a church after they committed themselves to approach the decisions in their workplaces and other arenas of life by asking themselves what Jesus would do and then trying to follow his example. The results were life-changing for the members of that congregation and their community.
That was only a story, of course, but the spark for the book came from the author’s own experience. At the time, Sheldon was a minister in Topeka, Kansas – but before that, he had been in social work. As an experiment, he once disguised himself as an unemployed printer. He then walked the streets of Topeka to see what would happen. What he discovered was indifference among many professing Christians toward someone in need. That shocked and saddened him, but it also led him to start imagining what it would be like if Christians did not compartmentalize their lives and allowed their Christianity to be equally applied in all situations. And his book, In His Steps, was born.
You probably remember the WWJD campaign that was all the rage a number of years ago. It swept through the culture so completely that it quickly became the subject of ridicule – and honestly, that’s too bad. It stood for “What Would Jesus Do,” and it was an outgrowth of “In His Steps, and this passage from Peter, “you should follow in his steps.”
The real subject, then, of this passage is not turning the other Cheech or submitting in all situations. The subject isn’t even saying “NO” to vengeful acts, by word or gadget. No, the real subject here is following Jesus – for real. It means looking at his footsteps, recorded in the stories of scripture, and doing our best to put our feet where Jesus’ have been. It means modelling our lives after his, and doing what Jesus would have done.
So the best revenge is actually no revenge at all.
The best revenge is following Jesus for real.
May that be the model for our lives.
May God be praised. Amen.
