Pentecost 11: Honour, Shame and Vengeance

Jeremiah 15:15-21
Psalm 26:1-8
Romans 12.9-21
Matthew 16.21-28

For anyone who has been betrayed or disappointed, whether by another or by the circumstances of life, the words from the prophet Jeremiah will resonate: “O LORD, you know; remember me and visit me, and bring retribution for me on my persecutors.” (Jeremiah 15:15a) Equally, we can all of us relate to the urgent cry of the psalmist: “O LORD God of vengeance…show yourself [and] give the arrogant their just deserts.” (Psalm 94:1-3) The desire for vengeance, for retribution, is powerful, so powerful that we must concede it comes from more than simply our wanting a “fair shake”. Rather, vengeance goes well beyond a desire for justice. Unlike justice, vengeance lacks a sense of reasonable proportionality and what we desire in vengeance is not redress, but retribution. And humiliation is at the core of the dynamic of vengeance. It calls for the demeaning and the humiliation of our enemies in turn, because the trespass done to us makes us to feel not merely injured or misunderstood, but humiliated ourselves. Our desire for vengeance comes from feeling that our self worth and dignity have somehow been diminished in our own eyes and in the eyes of others. Our desire for vengeance is rooted in our sense of shame.

The world of the ancient near-east, the world the Bible was what sociologists term an “honour/shame culture”. Within such a culture the dynamics of humiliation and vengeance have a significance unknown to most of us today. In an honour/shame culture one’s social standing and even identity is bound up in the way one is is perceived, respected (or feared) and treated by others, the honour one is accorded. As such, honour is everything and shame or humiliation are to be avoided at all costs. If you shame me, you haven’t just slighted me, you have diminished me in the eyes of the group and that means you have diminished my personhood. If I do not seek vengeance, then I accept the diminishment; I accept that I am shameless. Alternatively, if I cannot avenge myself, then someone in my family, a member of my tribe, must do so for me in order not only that my honour be restored but their honour as well, the honour of my immediate group. The religious corollary of all this is that if I cannot avenge my dishonour, then God must and God must do it speedily and for all to see. God must work in the same way that we would if we could, or would our nearest kin if we had them.

For the thoughtful, the honour/shame system begs some serious questions and challenges: “From whence comes my sense of identity?” “How do I handle humiliation?” “How do I define vengeance?” “How do I define justice?” “How do I differentiate between the two?” For the religiously-minded, the question of God and God’s relationship to the dynamics of humiliation, vengeance and justice often are central, after all isn’t God supposed to be on the side of the brutalised and diminished, on the side of the humiliated and abused? Isn’t my god supposed to by on my side and take up my cause? For Christians, all this is informed by the disturbing – but not often highlighted – fact that we honour, indeed that we recognise as God, one who is humiliated, abused and ultimately shamefully executed as a common criminal, a religious agitator and social misfit. This recognition has signified a fundamental shift in social and personal relations, a shift which can be traced almost exclusively to Christianity and its insights into the nature of God.

Look for a moment at the Gospel. Jesus tells his friends about the humiliation which is to come – his suffering at the hands of the authorities and his execution. Peter immediately rebukes him. “God forbid it” (Matthew 6:22), he says. How can God allow Jesus, and by extension his friends, to lose face in this way? Jesus responds by telling Peter that he is setting his “mind not on divine things but on human things”. (Matthew 6:23) Jesus suggests that perhaps the dynamics of the honour/shame system have little to do with God and the divine economy, that perhaps there are worse things than being humiliated in the eyes of society; that perhaps we have a core identity which is not so fluid or fragile, as to be diminished simply by the whims and actions of others no matter how wounding or shaming those actions may be to our ego, and that perhaps that is rather any act of vengeance on our part which truly diminishes who we are. And so, he calls his followers to deny themselves, deny that constructed social self caught up in the honour/shame system, in a system which necessitates and demands retribution, humiliation and violence simply to keep that self intact. Accept your cross, accept that life is difficult and that living well or being good will not exempt you from suffering, pain or even humiliation at the hands of others and of circumstances. Yet know this, no one can diminish your personhood because your identity is not at the whim either of others or of circumstances. Our identity is found in God, in being created in God’s image and being redeemed by God’s love.

If there is a possibility of diminishment it lies not in what others can do to us, but in what we can do to others. It lies in our seeking and executing vengeance. Ironically, it is our own desire to humiliate another which ultimately disfigures the very core of who we are. For this reason Paul advises his fellow Christians in Rome: “Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them….Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all….Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.” (Romans 12:14, 17, 21) Do not let the actions of another rob you of your own self-determination. Do not allow the actions of another to determine or condition your reaction, because when you do then you lose the moral high ground, you lose your self in the worst way possible. We each of us must choose a stance for dealing with and encountering the world, both its joys and its difficulties, and in a disciplined way discern that we are not simply at the whims of others, of their perceptions and actions. We do not need to get caught up in the cycle of hatred, vengeance and humiliation. Like Jesus on the cross, we can choose to bring it to an end with ourselves. Moreover, we can cease to project onto God our need for vengeance. While we can accept that God may vindicate our trials and difficulties, we do not need to have God avenge them; and while we may recognise that God and his Church honour those who are faithful, we do not need to have those we consider faithless to be humiliated or shamed. As Christians we can desire and work for justice, but we can never legitimately desire or execute vengeance. We should not seek it even from God.