Obadiah 1:1-16
Matthew 5:21-24; 38-48

What is happening to us?  We are killing people at alarming, epidemic proportions.  Drive-by-shootings are common occurrences.  Just when I think this type of violence is subsiding, a man goes on a shooting spree in Alabama killing ten people; a man walks into a worship service in Illinois and shoots the pastor. 

Increased security has not prevented troubled students from taking guns to school and killing fellow classmates.  And war, what about the wars?  Iraq and Afghanistan are in the news daily and Darfur to some extent.  There are other wars about which we hear little. 

In accepting the 1970 Nobel Peace prize, Alexander Solzhenitsyn noted, "Violence, less and less embarrassed by the limits imposed by centuries of lawfulness, is brazenly and victoriously striding across the whole world."  That was nearly fifty years ago and the violence seems only to have gotten worse.  Human life seems to have little value anywhere.  Ample evidence supports the disturbing assessment that the United States is the most violent nation in the world.  There is increased enjoyment of violence in movies and on television.  Increasingly, people settle their differences by violent methods. Violence erupts in our homes, at school, on the job, in the community, and across national borders.  It seems we have a killing attitude. Is there an antidote for the poison of violence that has seeped into our lives? 

The killing attitude that leads to violence has roots reaching to the biblical first family.  From the time of Cain and Abel, people have been interested in exterminating their rivals.  Violence is more a sign of weakness than strength.  When people turn to violence, they feel they have run out of options.  Violence is fueled by the energy of despair.  The stronger a person is internally, the less that person needs to show strength.  Violence is a contagious plague.  Cats kill mice.  It is instinctual.  But cats do not kill other cats.  People kill people.  It is a result of fear, insecurity, oppression, and abuse.  During a fifty year period during the twentieth century, an average of one murder was committed every twenty seconds.   Unfortunately, there does not seem to have been any improvement in twenty first century.

Because of violent circumstances and situations, people feel insecure.  A person says, "I carry a gun, because I don't feel safe in my neighborhood."  The gun doesn't make the person more secure.  Actually, it makes the person less secure.  The gun becomes a magnet for other guns.  Somebody must break the cycle of killing.

A situation is violent when the potential for human fulfillment, growth, or maturation is damaged.  The violence may be as direct as assault, rape, or murder.  Violence may be indirect as in denying access to adequate health services, food, or other resources.  Violence is the attempt to achieve and maintain privilege.  The attitude is to keep the powerless out of trouble by excluding from their minds the possibility of really changing things. 
The killing attitude and violence spiral are evident in the Hebrew Scriptures.  Obadiah is one example.  From the twenty-one verses attributed to him, we can conclude that Obadiah was an angry, resentful man filled with hatred for the Edomites.  He was convinced nothing too terrible and deserving could happen to the Edomites.  Obadiah's anger and hatred were intensified by the gloating Edomites who enjoyed seeing Israel in shambles, Jerusalem looted, and people carted off into exile. 
Obadiah's words reflect an old approach in dealing with an enemy.  The violent, killing attitude stirs anger that eventually erupts in more violence.  Iraq and Darfur are current examples.  Violence is a form of oppression that results in a backlash of violence ignited by the anger of the oppressed.  A society in which one class can only maintain its advantage at the expense of another is a maimed society.   Indeed, ours is a maimed society.

A spiral of violence is increasingly evident.  It is evident when one person oppresses another as in child or spousal abuse.  It is evident on a grander scale when one group or one nation oppresses another as apartheid in South Africa, racism in the United States, anti-semitism in Nazi Germany, or the denial of a place for the Palestinians by Israel. 

The old approach of Obadiah and Cain traps people by one of the five r's in the vicious spiral of violence:  resentment, revenge, rebellion, retaliation, and repression.  As people feel more insecure, frightened, and unsafe, they may not personally become violent, but they project their violence onto those convicted of crimes.  There is increasing support for capital punishment in our society today.  Are we too lazy to find other solutions?  We refuse to invest the time, energy, and money to work tirelessly for rehabilitation.  Someone has said that the trouble with all punishments is that people like to give them.  We stand firm for the death penalty since it is not our daughter or son, not our husband or wife, not our sister or brother.  Yet, it is our sister or brother if we believe the instructions of biblical faith that we are family, God is our Creator, and we are brothers and sisters to each other. 

Evidence is increasing that the killing attitude, at least in the United States, is fed by movies, sports, television, and games.  In the movie Thelma and Louise, a graphic rape scene concludes with Thelma shooting the man raping Louise.  As I watched that scene, in my head, I heard myself cheering Thelma.  I was disappointed in myself.  I was outraged at what happened to Louise, and I should be, but I was disappointed at the violence I wanted to support.  The movie elicited this response and supported my killing attitude. 

In the area of sports, there is increasing evidence that the killing attitude is tapped and used.  How many times while watching a sports event on television have you heard an announcer comment on the presence or lack of the killer instinct?  Larry Holmes noted that when he entered the ring for a boxing match, "I had to change.  I had to leave the goodness out and bring all the bad in, like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde."    Many years ago Ron Rivera was a linebacker for the University of California at Berkley.  Off the field he said he was a soft-spoken, considerate, friendly guy.  On the field he was totally opposite, a madman.  "I'm mean and nasty then. . . .  I'm so rotten.  I have a total disrespect for the guy I'm going to hit."   Feelings like these expressed by Holmes and Rivera are too easily transferred into other arenas of life by these athletes as well as by fans who watch them.
           
In order to dismantle the violence spiral, we must identify the energy that keeps the spiral turning.  Jesus said that nursing one's anger was at the heart of the killing attitude and was like committing murder.  There is an inwardness to this interpretation.  Killing is not done with knives and guns alone, but by contemptuous sneers and by the casual indifference that regards people as less than human.  Jesus was concerned with the motive and thought, the beginning of the process as well as the end. 

Jesus gave guidance about anger in the Sermon on the Mount.   Jesus' statement about anger is instructive but first it is alarming and disturbing.  On reading the words, "But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother shall be liable to  judgment; whoever insults his brother shall be liable to the  council, and whoever says, 'You fool!' shall be liable to the  hell of fire" (Matt. 5:22), the impression is that anger is just  as bad as murder.  But I certainly would rather have someone be angry with me than to murder me. 

What is Jesus saying in the Sermon on the Mount?  He got angry.  Was he guilty of murder?  The word translated "is angry" (Matt. 5:22) is a present participle conveying continuous action.  The New English Bible translation reads, "Anyone who nurses anger...must be brought to judgment."  That captures the intent of the Greek language.  Jesus was forever addressing himself to the motives for people's actions.  He was concerned about how the process began.  He knew there was an intricate correlation between roots and fruits in people's lives.  Jesus' words regarding anger expressed a radical protest toward the person who allows anger to fester and eventually poison the relationship with another human being.  What Jesus said was that nursing anger feeds it and causes it to engulf the person and consume relationships.

Nursing anger sends a message to the body that it is in great danger and needs stronger, quicker reactions and responses in order to survive.  To continue to feed anger will result in being devoured by it.  To nurse anger is to be sucked dry.   Frederick Buechner describes nursing anger when he writes,
         
Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun.  To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back‑‑in many ways it is a feast fit for a king.  The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself.  The skeleton at the feast is you.
           
The spiral of violence must be broken.  Jesus saw that the roots of violence were powerlessness, greed, and competitiveness.  These roots were fed by the killing attitude and Jesus sought to nip the violence in the bud by going straight to the heart of the killing attitude.

While the approach of retaliation is an old one and many today continue to practice it, Jesus taught a different way and he calls for us to use his approach in both our personal and our political lives.  Jesus did not bring a new law.  He simply gave a correct interpretation to the old law.  But the correct interpretation was so startling that it was perceived as being a completely new law.  He said do not take revenge on someone who wrongs you.   
           
Jesus said the person who had been wronged was to initiate reconciliation.  But why are we who have been wronged expected to take the initiative for reconciliation?  When we have been wronged, even through absolutely no fault of our own, the wrong done to us is a threat to our personhood and our natural response is anger because a breach has occurred in the relationship.  If we are to have close encounters of the right kind, as soon as we recognize that someone has something against us we need to initiate reconciliation.  Our model for this is God our Redeemer who feels the break in relationship with us and who seeks us.  We have sinned against God, but who is it that initiates restoring the relationship?  The God who is portrayed in the Bible is the God who is forever seeking to restore relationships with people who have committed wrongs.
           
Thomas Jefferson approached the Bible with scissors in one hand and paste in the other, cutting out what he did not like and piecing together what was left.  Although few of us would go to the Jeffersonian extreme, we do have our own condensed versions of the Bible.  We cut out sections by avoiding them.
           
One section that is left out of the Bible of too many people is the instruction Jesus gave about revenge.  Jesus took the law of retaliation to a degree of implication that it had never been taken previously.  The rule of an eye for an eye had been introduced to restrain greater evil.  Early in the human enterprise unlimited retaliation was the way people dealt with wrong done to them.  Actually, the eye for an eye rule was movement toward limited retaliation.  In the movie about his life, Gandhi said that if we lived by this rule all of us would be walking around blind and toothless.  As civilization expanded people discovered the positive value of loving their neighbors as a means of improving community life.  Along came Jesus urging people not to resist evil with evil and to love their enemies.  This rule of unlimited love met great resistance then and we resist its application in our lives today.
           
Our resistance is not because of ignorance.  We understand very well the instruction from Jesus that we love our enemies, but we resist.  We cloak our resistance in an "it won't work, you have to be practical" attitude.  The calling of Christ invites us to rise above our culture, which is very difficult to do.  "You have to defend yourself."   "You can't let people walk over you."  "Fight fire with fire."   "The best defense is a strong offense."  "We need to be strong in order to deter attack from others."  Ad infinitum go the statements and suggestions of what is practical with regard to opposition and aggression.  We dismiss Jesus' invitation not to resist evil with evil and to love our enemies as too idealistic.  A statement attributed to G. K. Chesterton says that Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, but has been found difficult and not tried.

It is a long way from Obadiah to Jesus, but it is a journey everyone is invited to take.  It is a journey we all must take if we are going to rid ourselves of the killing attitude.  It really is easier to be like Obadiah than to be like Jesus.  But God wants us to be like Jesus.  God wants so much for us to be like Jesus that God has gone to great effort and expense to demonstrate that this is the way we are to live.  But we resist.  We resist evil with evil by maintaining a killing attitude toward others.  And we resist goodness with evil by rejecting God's invitation to love our enemies and to do good to those who hurt us.  We continue the vicious spiral of violence that is energized by a killing attitude.  Jesus' instruction to love our enemies is established on the premise that every person is worth redeeming.  God's love is totally complete in that it includes everyone.  We are to be as complete in our love of all creation as God is.  We need to start by naming and admitting our anger and finding ways to process it rather than either suppressing it or venting it.  In this way we will help break the spiral of violence and heal the killing attitude.  Our failure to do this will result in our crucifying the Son of God afresh.  Indeed, the killing attitude is a sin that crucifies.  It declares null and void the loving action of God. It declares non existent those toward whom we remain revengeful and continually seek retaliation rather than reconciliation. And we destroy ourselves in the process by feeding our anger until it becomes revenge that devours us and leaves only a skeleton of who God created us to be. It is indeed a long way from Obadiah to Jesus, but it is a journey we need to take, it is a journey we must take if we are going to stop the spiral of violence.