Listen to this cry of David: "Let evil recoil on those who slander me; in your faithfulness destroy them!" (Ps 54:5).
Then hear this call of Paul: "Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse...Do not repay anyone evil for evil!" (Rom 12:14, 17a).
Did you catch that?
David: Let evil recoil on those who slander me!
Paul: Do not repay anyone evil for evil!
The one is a cry for vengeance.
The other, a call for peace.
Let's be honest here. When we're the victim of personal injustice, even though we know we should follow Paul's words, we'd often rather pray David's prayer.At least, that's the way I am.
But how do we move from the one text to the other? How do we move past the desire for revenge to a yearning for peace?
Here's the answer I keep coming back to: Jesus stands between David and Paul; Jesus is the bridge from vengeance to peace.
How so?
Jesus fulfills the way of peace. He is the best of David's inclinations, both as kingdom-maker and temple-builder. He is the Davidic king who comes to bring about God's kingdom on earth, but he does this through his self-giving suffering, in love even for God's enemies (Mark 8:29-31). He is also the son of David who builds God's temple among his people, but he does this through his own broken and resurrected body, through building a new body, a new humanity reconciled in unity in which God's Spirit dwells and among whom God is worshiped (John 2:19-21; Eph 2:14-22).
Jesus shows us the way of peace. As he goes to the cross, like David he cries out to God in his suffering, entrusting his vindication to God. Just as he has taught his followers, he doesn't resist the evil persons he encounters along the way. But he does resist the evil done to him: he resists this evil by speaking truth, even to power, by refusing to engage in violence himself, by giving himself in love even for his enemies. "My kingdom is not of this world," Jesus says to Pilate, unlike the kingdom the Roman governor represents. "If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place" (John 18:36-37).
Jesus is the way of peace. Through Jesus' self-giving suffering and death, barriers are broken down: barriers between us and God, and between us and the other—the different, the stranger, even the enemy (Eph 2:14-18). We who have lived in fear and ignorance and anger and hatred have been forgiven. How can we do any less to those around us who deal in fear and ignorance, whose currency is anger and hatred—even toward us? Our heart should beat with the heart of the crucified Jesus: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34).When we experience injustice, then, we are to follow in the footsteps of Jesus.
We cry out to God in our suffering, even in the raw depths of our agony, trusting God to walk with us through the suffering, entrusting our vindication to God in his timing and his way.
We speak truth to ourselves and to others, even to those who have committed the injustice, even to those in power, naming sin and evil for what it is.
We resist evil by refusing to engage in evil acts ourselves; we resist violence done to us by refusing to engage in violence ourselves, whether violent actions or violent words. Instead, we engage in acts of self-giving, life-giving love for the other.
And through it all we remind ourselves of our own sin, now forgiven, as we see the sin of others against us, waiting to be forgiven.
This is not an easy road; it is, in fact, a very difficult, very narrow path, and few find it. I struggle with this every single day.
But this is the way from vengeance to peace. This is the way of Jesus.
Wow! I lived/live this. I was deeply betrayed and hurting immensely. I couldn't forgive. I cried it out to God and asked for His help. I asked for more of Him. Your italicized summary is my story. But one more...I became ultra aware of my sin and unworthiness. I am nothing apart from Jesus in me. And that narrow road...I had missed it all along. I can miss it still. But I thank God now for allowing me to suffer so as to truly want Him.
ReplyDeleteGreat post. Thanks!
Kris
Where is that translation of Psalm 54:5 from? (54:7 Hebrew numbering) RSV, NETS, LXX, and Hebrew do not translate as jussive, but rather a simple future.
ReplyDeleteI render it something like this:
He will return the evil to my watchers : In your truth annihilate them.
I don't disagree with your conclusion about the difficulty with peace and the cost of peace, but I do not find the TNK lacking in that same message.
The 'enemies' of 54:5, (those who slander in your translation) are from a unique word, not enemies except by extension, but more like 'watchers'. The word occurs only 5 times in TNK all in the psalms.
We must pray David's prayer to avoid taking the vengeance into our own hands.
Our own vengeance must be destroyed - annihilated - in the truth of the cross. Only in this way will we be enabled - not by our own strength - to find a new way through the impasses that we have imposed on ourselves within Christendom.
Bob, thanks for your points - all well taken.
DeleteThe translation is the new NIV - the NET bible takes a similar tack, but you're right about other translations, including the LXX. The Hebrew seems more ambiguous on this to me, and if to others also then this might explain the variations in translation - but Hebrew is not my forte.
I agree that we can certainly pray David's prayer - perhaps even that we must at times do so. As I point out, David's prayer is not inherently contradictory to Paul's command, and in the David-Saul stories he does in fact act out Paul's statement. But underlying David's prayer is an attitude toward the other that we must be sure to leave with God and not act out ourselves - as the David stories in fact show David (mostly, or at least often) did.
Finally, please don't misunderstand me. I'm not here making a contrast between the Old Testament and the New Testament on this. I agree that the OT/TNK has the same message within it regarding peace. I would even say the NT has some difficult texts (like the OT/TNK) that could at least seem to contradict this peace message. My point, however, is simply that Jesus stands at the center of all these biblical messages, drawing in the best inclinations of David and taming a previously violent Paul.
Wait - I didn't in fact point out that David's prayer is not contradictory to Paul's statement! That was in an earlier draft. I had a paragraph on reconciling these texts in which I made those observations, but I took that out to make the post flow more smoothly. Here's that earlier-draft paragraph:
DeleteOne might point out that David is doing exactly what Paul recommends in Romans 12: he is not seeking revenge himself but crying out to God, leaving vengeance in God's hands (Rom 12:19). Another might suggest that the stories of David and Saul show David not just praying this way but also acting it out: he refuses to kill Saul even when he has the opportunity (1 Sam 24:8-13). These are helpful points. Still, they ignore the elephant in the room of David's stories: he is a man who generally kills his enemies, whose last recorded words are of violent vengeance (1 Kgs 2:8-9), whose hands are so filled with blood God could not allow him to build his temple (1 Chron 22:7-9).
Thanks, Michael. You seem to me to have grasped the razor's edge here (a dangerous practice). Your extra paragraph is exactly where I think we must go. That David (and Solomon) 'fail' as rulers underlines the need for us to allow ourselves to be bound by the same mercy that David demonstrates. (I have much less sympathy for Solomon - too many wives, too many horses, too much wealth.)
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