Luke 23:33-43

When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”

And they cast lots to divide his clothing. And the people stood by watching, but the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.”

One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!” But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.”

Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come in your kingdom.” He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

In fifth grade, my house was toilet papered. Waking up that morning, it looked like there had been a blizzard—but only at my house. And the worst part is it took a solid two hours to clean up.

We got word the perpetrators were coming back, so my brother made a plan. We hid in the bushes with the hose, firecrackers, and an air horn at the ready. As soon as the first roll hit the tree, we unleashed it all. It was some of the sweetest revenge I’d ever tasted.

But here’s the thing—I wanted more. Now I am not proud to admit this, but for the next two years, I was a serial toilet-paperer. I went TP-ing with my friends every chance I got. I don’t think to this day my parents know this. Finally, one fateful night a police officer stopped our fun and we dropped our rolls of toilet paper for good. He could have called our parents, ordered community service. But he just made us clean up the mess, giving us mercy we didn’t deserve.

If I asked you what the most deadly addiction is, you might say smoking, alcohol, fentanyl, or maybe Facebook. But no, it’s none of that. This addiction is far more common and not a substance or drug at all. The deadliest addiction is revenge. That’s the argument put forth by James Kimmel Jr., a professor at Yale. He says nearly every form of violence childhood bullying, domestic violence, police brutality, war—begins with someone convinced they’re a victim seeking justice.

And for the first time in human history, we have some scientific insight into how we can stop this deadly addiction. Revenge is that feeling, sometimes subtle, sometimes intense, to return the pain someone first gave you. Through scans and research, Kimmel and his team have found that a brain on revenge looks a lot like a brain addicted to drugs.Grievances of any kind—real or imagined, disrespect, betrayal, shame— they all light up the brain’s pain center.

Our brains don’t like that and so it quickly starts reaching for pleasure.

We could reach for anything after we’ve been wronged—a tub of ice cream, an intense workout, a few drinks—and those might help for a moment. But the uncomfortable truth is that we humans get the most satisfying pleasure from hurting the very person who hurt us. It’s not our best trait.

Neuroscientists have shown that when someone wrongs us and we even imagine retaliation, the brain’s reward centers wake up. The parts tied to craving and habit-building fire just like they do when addicts feel stressed or see something associated with getting a fix. Revenge isn’t just an idea; it’s an addictive action. Yet, unlike other addictions, revenge is addiction turned outward. Instead of harming ourselves to get a fix, we harm someone else. And like any addiction, the thrill is short-lived, the pain returns leaving one feeling even worse, and the craving only grows.

Perhaps you know how this feels. As a kid, it’s the punch you throw when the roughhousing gets too rough. In marriage, it’s the sentence you say that you know will cut deeper than any knife. As an adult, it’s the desire to slash the tires of the buffoon who cut off everyone in the school pickup line. We all know that impulse. It’s part of being human.

And it certainly isn’t limited to individuals. Right now, it feels like our whole nation is running on it. Childish name-calling, dangerous threats, the endless churn of angry rhetoric: vengeance seems to be the most animating force in public life. It shows up across the political spectrum, where the goal is clearly not about solving problems but more about scoring points or making “the other side” hurt.

I see it too in the Christian Nationalist movement, which grows out of a perceived assault on Christianity, by which they mean a very narrow version of Christianity defined as white, straight, and evangelical. The response is to attack back through laws and power in public life. We’ve built a society—a kind of kingdom—where hurt is expected to be met with greater hurt, and the loudest voices insist the only way to win is to strike back harder.

Christ the King Sunday, which began 100 years ago today, was created to celebrate a king and kingdom that operates in the opposite way. If there was ever someone innocent who endured great harm—someone who could have, maybe even should have, returned the pain—was it not Jesus Christ, the King of the Jews? The one crucified between criminals while the very people who once followed him stood by and watched?

Surely he had every right to act with vengeance, to call down the wrath of God, to save himself from that cross and rule like every other king tries to do. That’s exactly what the crowd urged him to do. Three times people said to Jesus, “Save yourself.” It’s what we humans know best.

But that’s not the kind of King Jesus is. His first words from the cross were not a declaration of innocence or a plea for pity, but a favor from his Father: “Forgive them.” It’s fascinating that Jesus speaks to God in this moment. He doesn’t say I forgive you to the ones nailing, flogging, and scoffing at him. That wouldn’t have made any sense.

They didn’t think they were doing anything wrong. In their minds, they were doing exactly what they should be doing: executing a sentence of execution for a man charged with treason.

And here’s the part that always stops me: Jesus isn’t only speaking about the people at the foot of the cross. His words reach beyond that moment.

It’s as if Jesus is saying, Father, please forgive them—because I already have. And the “them,” the object of that forgiveness, is me and you. Jesus came preaching and presenting a different way to be in the world, an alternate kingdom to reign over our lives—one of mercy, kindness, forgiveness—and we killed him for it.

And every time we long for revenge, every time we save ourselves, every time we reject mercy, we put him back on that cross, crucifying the voice that tells us there’s another way.

Yet just like he did then, he says to us again, “Father, forgive them; they don’t know what they are doing.” God, in Jesus, meets our violence with grace; our anger with forgiveness; our revenge with reconciliation. Always and only.

The way of Jesus and his kingdom is what neuroscience now tells us is the best way to stop the dangerous, deadly pull of revenge: forgiveness. Research shows that even picturing yourself forgiving someone triggers something powerful: the brain’s pain center settles, the craving for revenge loosens, and the part of your mind that helps you think clearly and choose wisely lights back up.

Forgiveness is not saying what happened was okay or pretending the wound never happened.

It means letting God begin loosening revenge’s grip on your mind but more importantly on your heart. In other words, forgiveness acts like a kind of wonder drug. It eases the hurt, dead-ends the desire to strike back, and breaks the hold pain has on you.

And best of all, it’s free, always available, and you can take another dose whenever needed.

Try it this week. Call to mind one person who has hurt you and, in prayer, quietly just begin to imagine forgiving them. You don’t have to tell them. You don’t have to have it all figured out. Just imagine it, and let Christ the King meet you there.

You can do this. We can do this. We don’t have to keep hurting each other. You don’t have to live with the pain someone else has inflicted on you. We can drop our rolls of toilet paper or whatever your retaliation is, once and for all, and stop the harm being done, big or small.

There is a way out of this addiction and we didn’t need scientific research to prove it.

Christ the King has been showing us how all along, giving us a mercy we don’t deserve.

Amen.

Matthew 18:21-22

Then Peter came and said to him, “Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy times seven.

I loathe physical therapy. Thanks to having the back of someone 3x my age, I have been quite a few times in the last ten years. Everytime I go, I am paired with a guy about my same age but who is in impeccable physical condition, which already makes me feel worse. Then they put me through a circuit of ridiculous exercises, things with bands, an impossible balancing board, and stretches that make me feel like something could snap at any moment.

Exasperated, after throwing a ball against the wall while balancing on one leg, I asked, ‘What in the world does this have to do with making my back feel better?!’ My therapist said, ‘Your low back is weak. We can strengthen it some, but not much. Instead, if we focus on everything else around your low back, your hips, your core, your flexibility, then the pain will start to go away, but not entirely. You’ll be able to function, just not fully; your discs are too damaged. So focusing solely on your low back will never bring the healing you want. You have to focus on everything else around it.”

Now talking about my woes with physical therapy may seem like a non sequitur to the final question in our series: How do we hold on to our shared humanity in a divided world? But I promise it will come back around. So stay with me.

One thing among many I have loved about this series, Asking for a Friend, is that all of the questions have been timely; relevant not just to our life together, but to much that is happening in the world around us.

Today’s question is one we all want an answer to. The questioner had more context: they said, “as we get more and more divided, it seems like faith communities are pushing further and further to the extremes. In doing so, we lose the ability to see our shared humanity. What do we do? How do we move forward”?

Division and conflict have become a staple of American life. And that’s not just an anecdote, though I am sure you have your own story. According to Pew Research Center, compared to similar nations,we Americans hold much deeper divisions within nearly every facet of society: politics, race, and even agreement on basic facts.

Ironically enough, polarization is now a defining feature of these United States.

Faith communities are no different, especially along partisan lines. These days it’s more likely that the way someone votes determines what church they attend than their theological views. Which means, more churches are becoming homogenous in their political beliefs, more people are leaving churches from political partisanship, and there are fewer and fewer purple congregations. For the most part, churches are not sorting themselves, they are already sorted.

And in just the past two weeks, headlines have piled up calling this moment an inflection point—a crisis. It sure feels like it. Unity? Seeing our shared humanity? It seems nearly impossible—for churches, for the nation, let alone the warring parts of the world. So what do we do? I think we, as a church, go about unity like physical therapy.

It may sound counterintuitive, but if unity is the goal, don’t focus on it. If we insist on “being united”, if we tell ourselves and others, “we are a united congregation,” we won’t be—and everyone will end up disappointed, or worse.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote, “He who is in love with his vision of community will destroy community. But he who loves the people around him will create community wherever he goes.” The same is true of unity. If we love the idea of unity more than the people in front of us, we’ll never achieve it.

This is exactly what allows a group like Zeitouna to exist. Zeitouna is a group of six Jewish and six Palestinian women who, despite deep divisions, have learned to see each other’s shared humanity. For over twenty years, they have gathered in each others’ homes every other week, sharing dinner, and engaging in intentional Dialogue. They listen not to formulate a response, but to understand the other’s point of view. Their goal is not to come to an agreement. How could they?

Instead, they work on creating shared understanding—by listening, speaking from their own experience, slowing down, and pausing more. They focused on so many other things, not just the issues. And only then were they able to see one another for what they truly are, human. Irene, a Jewish member, said, “My heart has been opened to those who scare me.” Wadad, a Palestinian member, said, “Through Zeitouna I’ve learned to hear the voice of the ‘other’—her pain and her joy—realizing it mirrors my own.” They never chased unity itself. They focused on other things, and unity formed along the way.

Instead of chasing unity, let’s focus on our shared humanity, on forgiveness, and on grace.

Now, in the church we love to say that every person is made in the image of God. And that is true. But if we stop there, we can fool ourselves into thinking that image means we are inherently good, virtuous, capable. Scripture, and our experience, say otherwise. Paul reminds us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” The image of God in us is real, but like funhouse mirrors, it is fractured and distorted.

So what do we share, really? We share our limits. We share our failures. We share our tendency to mess things up and let each other down. Our weakness, not our strength, is our common ground. And friends, that might sound like bad news, but it is actually quite the opposite. Because when you stop expecting other people to be more virtuous, more stable, or more capable than you are—you find yourself a little less disappointed. A little more patient. A little more compassionate. It frees us to meet one another not with unrealistic expectations but with grace.

But that also means we will need to forgive, and to do so often. Like Peter, we ask “how often”? More than we want to, more than what seems right, honestly more than we think we can. Because it’s not so much that someone will wrong you 490 times, but that it might take 490 attempts at forgiving one offense before we’ve really done it.

All of that is hard. Which means, if we are going to see our shared humanity, forgive one another, and live as a functioning community, it will only be out of gratitude for the grace of Jesus, who has already done all of that for you and always will. When we dwell on the grace poured into our lives, it spills over—flowing from our hearts out into the world, giving others the mercy and love Jesus has already given us.

Just like physical therapy, if unity is the goal, focusing on it will only lead to more pain, disappointment, and ultimately division. Because we will, and likely already have, let each other down.

But I am asking you to stay. Stay even when there’s disagreement, stay when feelings are hurt, stay when it feels easier to walk away. Because if we leave every time, we miss what Jesus is capable of through forgiveness and grace.

So let’s focus on those things now: on shared humanity, on forgiveness, on the grace already given to us. And then by the mercy of God and the work of the Spirit, unity will begin to take shape. It may not be perfect. The pain may not entirely go away.

But we will be able to function.

We will be able to live together as God’s people.

And we will have hope for the unity that is to come to all people, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Toilet Paper, Payback, and Christ the King

Asking for a Friend - How can we hold onto our Shared Humanity in a Divided World?