“Revenge:  A Confession of Pain”

A despondent woman was walking along the beach when she saw a bottle on the sand. She picked it up and pulled out the cork. Whoosh! A big puff of smoke appeared. "You have released me from my prison," the genie told her. "To show my thanks, I grant you three wishes. But take care, for with each wish, your mate will receive double of whatever you request." 

"Why?" the woman asked, annoyed. "He left me for another woman." 

"That is how it is written," replied the genie. 

The woman shrugged and then asked for a million dollars. There was a flash of light, and a million dollars appeared at her feet. At the same instant, in a far-off place, her wayward husband looked down to see twice that amount at his feet.

 "And your second wish?" 

"Genie, I want the world's most beautiful diamond necklace." Another flash of light, and the woman was holding the precious treasure. And, in that distant place, her husband’s eyes were bedazzled  by not one, but two sparkling necklaces . 

"Genie, is it really true that my husband has two million dollars and more jewels than I do, and that he gets double of whatever I wish for? asked the woman with a bit of a frown." The genie said it was indeed true.

"Okay, genie, I'm ready for my last wish," she said thoughtfully. "I’d like you to scare me half to death." 

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This morning I will be talking about revenge.  Many separate and quite varied influences have brought this topic to the fore:  The way we rushed headlong into war with Iraq after 9/11…. The fact that many ordinary citizens were with President Bush when he made his swaggering vow to capture Osama bin Laden dead or alive….  The television advertisements like that of Attorney James Sokolov that appeal to a barely disguised thirst for revenge, promising to get you what you deserve if you’ve been in an auto accident.  And we are an industrialized nation that not only allows the death penalty – our number of executions is on the rise – and did you know that many states have fairly recently passed legislation that allows for victims and their families to witness the executions?

Revenge, payback, getting even, settling the score, vengeance--whatever we choose to call it, it's an emotion we're rarely proud to feel, yet it's present with us more often than we might want to admit. I began this morning with some humor that we all can identify with – truthfully all of us know what it feels like to wish another ill or to want to get even. There are small incidents. A car cuts in front of you on the highway when you’re having a bad day. You curse and cut off the other driver in return. Your lover falls out of love with you, and parts ways with an emotional ease that leaves you in a rage – your gut wants your partner to hurt the way you do, and your pain and anger will not go away. It is possible to carry unspeakable injuries -   perhaps someone is responsible for the death or serious injury of someone you love.  Their fine or their punishment isn’t enough and you can’t get them out of your mind. 

A desire for revenge is among the oldest of human passions. We don’t talk about revenge too much anymore, so that might lead you to believe that this is at least one negative human instinct that we have gone some way toward conquering. Would it were so. While researching this sermon I stumbled on a web site that offered carefully thought through revenge ideas for virtually every walk of life.  For example, if you held a grudge against your local Cumberland Farms, there were hundreds of suggested ways to wreak havoc on convenience stores that might have raised your ire, from subtly slashing milk cartons so they gush when you pick them up to more serious and probably insidious effective efforts. There was more than I care to think about on revenge on the web.

But Laura Blumenfeld, a journalist and the author of the book "Revenge: A Story of Hope," says the word itself is taboo in America at large.  It’s a dark and unattractive emotion and we simply won’t talk about it. This is a problem, because, if we don’t name the emotion of revenge, we’re not going to be particularly good at identifying it in ourselves or others. And if we can’t identify it, we may be at its mercy..

On a very practical level, Dr Frederick Luskin of the Stanford University Center for Research in Disease Prevention says that nursing a grudge exposes our bodies to stress chemicals and disruptions that in some ways may influence our ability to think.  The poet Ben Jonson wrote, “O revenge, how sweet thou art!”  But more often than not, the sweetness of revenge isn’t lasting . Psychologists tell us that whatever momentary pleasure we might feel when we are avenged is usually fleeting, and, what’s worse, it’s bad for us.  Charlotte Bronte experienced revenge and said this: “Something of vengeance I had tasted for the first time; as aromatic wine it seemed, on swallowing, warm and racy: its after-flavour, metallic and corroding, gave me a sensation as if I had been poisoned.” In modern parlance, when a desire for revenge festers within us, it can become toxic.

Even though the urge to get even is a pretty normal human response, there can be a serious problem with it if we become obsessed with it or act on it, because it can destroy us in the process.  It can get us in trouble and it can turn us into bitter, hate-filled people.  “He who seeks revenge should remember to dig two graves," warns an ancient Chinese proverb.

Some of you in this sanctuary may be fortunate enough not to have had a time in your life when you secretly, deeply wanted vengeance on another, but many of you in your heart of hearts do know what it’s like, and others may yet.  The desire for revenge is a confession of pain.  It behooves us to talk about revenge, to acknowledge the emotion as human and to address how it can be dealt with.

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The journalist Laura Blumenfeld that I referenced earlier, wrote her book, Revenge: A Story of Hope because she personally got caught up in an episode of revenge. Her unique story is worth telling: When she was in college she got a phone call from her father, who had been in Jerusalem visiting as a tourist.   He had been randomly shot  in the head by a gunman while walking through a souvenir market. He had a serious injury, but he wanted her to know that he’d be okay. Others, less fortunate, had been killed. The shooting was political, around local issues that had nothing to do with any of the victims.  Blumenfeld was, of  course, horrified. She says:  “ It was one of those grudges. We all have them. It kind of quietly informs your life. You think wouldn't it be great one day to find that person who hurt that member of your family. I never thought I'd act out on a fantasy. It was a revenge fantasy.

 (Have you ever fantasized about getting even?)

 Blumenfeld couldn’t shake her anger. The normal avenues of letting go didn’t work. She says we give the state the right to carry out revenge for us, but for her, the fact that the shooter was tried and convicted didn’t touch her anger.  She knew that whoever this person was who tried to kill her father, being in jail didn't make him sorry; it made him a hero. And it didn't make him ashamed; it made him proud.

 Blumenfeld went on with her life but the grudge went with her.  She graduated from college, she got a job as a journalist.  She took dramatic assignments around the world that should have  captivated her. But the grudge was still there.

For some, religion can be a comfort at a time like this because it addresses issues where human abilities are stressed to the max.  Yes, human law can exact only a limited justice, we know that. The Bible addresses this.  Vengeance belongs to God -  Deuteronomy 32:35. God will punish wrongdoers according to his plan, now or in the afterlife. For believers this can be a deep comfort. It is permission to “let go and let God”.

 But such a teaching is not helpful for someone who is not a theist, someone who doesn’t believe in a God that intervenes in human affairs, and this would include most of you.  But there is another way of framing the same understanding.

One of the questions we always ask in the New UU class is: “Do you believe that wrongdoing ALWAYS has intrinsically negative consequences, whether or not we are privileged to see or know what they are? (Another way of putting this on the positive side is that virtue is its own reward, and wrongdoing brings its own punishment – whether we are privileged to see it or not.  If you believe the world works in this way you may not say that vengeance belongs to God – but you could say that vengeance belongs to the universe. That things will still unfold morally.  So here, too, is permission to let go of your anger and sense of injustice. 

For Blumenthal, with hatred stuck in her craw, neither of these were useful concepts. Neither was the New Testament teaching of forgiveness. She says bluntly, “I think turning the other cheek is a wonderful idea, but it doesn't quite fit with reality often.

If I may throw in an aside about forgiveness here. One of you sent me a spam email about a little boy who was overheard trying to recite the Lord’s Prayer.  When he got to the part about forgiving our trespasses, he said:  “And forgive us our trash passes as we forgive those who pass trash against us.”  I like that. We do our fair share of “passing trash” against other people.  And much of the time these are things we can forgive. But there are things that may get the better of us.  It may have to do with a divorce or , as with Blumenfeld, a death or injury of one you love that is inexcusable – or someone whose attitude or actions flaunt everything you believe in – and you just get stuck, unable to let go.

This was Blumenfeld’s situation. Compelled by her obsession, Blumenfeld took a bus to the region where her father’s shooter lived half way between Jerusalem and Ramallah and just began knocking on doors.  She eventually found the family.  She introduced herself simply as Laura, saying, `I'm a journalist. I'm interested in revenge. I'm writing a book.'

The family, unaware of her motive or identity, cooperated, describing how their son had shot an American tourist in the head. When she asked who, they just sort of shrugged and laughed and said, `Oh, some Jew. It was part of a public relations effort. We wanted people to look at us and at our cause.” Pleased to be a featured subject for her book, the family allowed Laura to stay in close communication and also put her into communication directly with him, in prison. After being in touch with him for nearly a year he was released from prison.

Her revenge, when it finally came, was startling in its simplicity -  even to her.  Early on, Laura had come to realize that she had the power to destroy her enemy. She decided how it could work, and she thought long and hard about whether she was strong enough to carry it out.  She decided she was.  She waited until she was ready and they knew each other well. Until they had shared many conversations and she had, without revealing who she was, spoken of her family – her mother and her father. And then, she did it. She revealed her identity to him. He was stunned. The Jew that he had shot was David” her father. The shooter, whose name was ___   She says she destroyed her enemy through transformation, by making him her friend. Her obsession came to n end and that is why Blumenfeld’s book is called Revenge: A Story of Hope.
                                                                                                                                               Blumenfeld’s story is unusual, but the emotional movement that can dissipate the desire for revenge is not. Many stories, for example, have come out of the Forgiveness Project  from Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation, a project that brought together women from both sides of Ireland who had lost sons to murder. All had heartbreaking stories. For most grief had blossomed into anger and then to hate.  Ad in the atmosphere of war-torn Ireland they were unable to move on or let go. Many wanted revenge, felt they needed it in order to go on at the beginning of the project. But together, by getting to know each other, by putting faces on both sides of the story, they learned that they were able to let go. Not necessarily of their grief, but at least their fantasies of revenge were lifted from them, and the cycle o hatred was put to rest.

The human heart has a geography that we’ve only begun to explore. It is possible to get stuck emotionally and to assume that there is no way out, no way for our spirits to be lifted. But it’s important for us to know, to believe in our hearts, that transformation is always possible. Transformation is always possible.  Every religious scripture tells us this is so, and every wisdom tradition. And this is a story of hope.