Sermon: Letting Go of Resentment

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Letting Go of Resentment

By Charles Rush

April 6, 2003

is said that one of the root meanings of the season of Lent is a spring-cleaning of the soul. Just before Passover, Jews are encouraged to throw out all yeast and leaven from the previous year, to get rid, so to speak, of that which might become moldy, and to start over fresh.

It is a profound spiritual exercise. And it is this part of the biblical tradition that is the most realistic about human nature. Our story this morning is filled with exactly the realism I speak of.

The story of Jacob and Esau is the story of two brothers, fraternal twins. They are two of the symbolic progenitors between present day contestants to the Promised Land in the Middle East.

When they were born Esau came out first and Jacob had hold of his brothers ankle. Esau was so named, literally ‘red man', because of his color at birth. Likewise, his brother was named Jacob or ‘striver' or ‘grasper' because he had hold of his brother's foot. The name would take on sinister meaning later in life.

When they were young men, their father was on his death bed and was about to bestow his blessing on his oldest son Esau and give him the huge proportion of the estate, as was the custom in the Ancient Near East, the oldest son getting almost everything, the other boys very little and the girls nothing. There was a formal ritual that one went through that conferred the legal title and the religious blessing. The old man, Isaac pronounced that he was ready to do this and told his wife Rebecca.

Rebecca tipped off Jacob as to what was about to happen, presumably because she favored Jacob. At any rate, that is all Jacob needed. He pretended to be his brother which was relatively easy to do because his Father was blind and probably feeble of mind. The old man says to his son, ‘go prepare for me the wonderful venison you make and I will bless you.' Jacob makes a venison stew, pretending to be his brother, feeds his father. The father blesses Jacob, gives him practically the entire estate.

Esau comes home, goes naively to see his father, who is very confused at this point and tells him what has happened. When you think about it, this could come right out of a plot on the Soprano's or The Practice. Two heirs, one of them goes to the nursing home, gets dad to sign a bunch of papers no one finds out about until the will is read. Suddenly the grief of the wake turns to the rage in a law office. All of it can be contested, but possession is still 9/10's of the law. The only difference between then and now is we have this whole class of professional people we can use to injure, maim, put liens on our opponents, and make their lives miserable.

Jacob lives in a simpler time. His brother Esau, the outdoorsmen, the hunter, is so mad that Jacob is sure he is about to become a murder victim and he runs and he runs and he runs…. And for decades he stays gone. He is resigned to never seeing his brother ever again. It is over. It is done with. Man there is nothing like the disappointment that brothers can bring to one another, nothing like the bitterness, the rage. If I could just get my hands…

One day, a few years ago, I e-mailed an acquaintance a congratulations note, reading that his business was about to be sold. Half an hour later, he called me. ‘Where did you read that?' I told him. Turns out, he had retired early from the business, cashed out a goodly portion of his investment. He and his best friend from childhood ran the business together. They were so close; they even married girls who were sisters. He had cashed out most, but not all, of his investment and had gone on to other things. Now his partner was selling the business without even the courtesy of notifying him personally. Sure enough his partner, childhood friend, wasn't planning to pay him out upon sale of business either. What followed were a number of legal injunctions, testy e-mails from family members, the cancellation of regular family events, and a sustained period of no-speech. Of all people, how could they? These things that are close to home, delivered by those we are closest to, these produce the most anger, the deepest resolve for retribution.

Scripture is realistic about real scars like on of my brother's friends who decided to leave his wife for a number of reasons that he couldn't really articulate, in large part because he was neither self-reflective nor articulate nor willing to go to a counselor. To compensate, he just wounded his wife, telling her repeatedly as he was leaving that she was ugly and sensually repulsive. It was not true but she just crushed, just hurt. For months, years, some of those hurt filled speeches swirled in her head like a bad mantra that you can't shut off. She lost her confidence. Long after the separation, she had trouble getting on with her life. He couldn't just leave and own the responsibility for his actions; he had to find the way to emotionally cripple her so she begged him to leave. That is just mean… the mother of his children… mean. Grab by the tie, needing a slap up side the head mean.

Jacob and Esau parted company, one running, the other fuming and they were content to stay apart for the rest of their lives. Some hurts, some betrayals are of that magnitude. There is a season for that. Nothing is sillier than people who come into these situations, not knowing the full depth of what has actually taken place, with a facile smile on their face saying, “Why can't we just all get along here?” You can't impose a timetable from the outside on these matters. They have an internal spiritual time table all their own and you have to honor that. “For everything” says Ecclesiastes, “there is a season. A time to love and a time to hate. A time to be together and a time to be apart.”

There is nothing like trying to force people together who aren't ready to be together, like at a family wedding or a legal proceeding. They have to get themselves in a mind just to face the other person. Sometimes they shake, sometimes they can't think clearly, they feel sick.

Alone, lying in the bathtub, the mind idle, it just turns with subconscious steering towards revenge scenarios. The id describes for ego in vivid detail ways that ego could hurt this person, venomous lethal words that eviscerate this person, publicly humiliate and embarrass this person so that they would have a taste of just what ego is going through. These revenge scenarios go way beyond distributive justice even, they can take on a life of their own and ego just wants to hurt for the sheer vainglory of destruction, just to exercise power and squash. They can play out, slowly, thoroughly. They come back into the mind when ego is unable to sleep.

Even if they decrease in modulation and tempo, these revenge scenarios can go on for years, sometimes forever.

The spiritual profundity of scripture, acknowledges the full force and fury of alienation that comes from hurting one another. It acknowledges the full loneliness of being separated and broken.

But it also reminds us, that in the fullness of time, we can come to our senses. I love that line that comes from the parable of the Prodigal Son in the gospel of Luke. The prodigal son has been living in the far country, estranged, he has almost forgotten his former self and sometimes our alienation and bitterness can do that to us, we can almost become completely other people. And the scripture says, one day he awoke, “he came to his senses and said ‘I perish here.'” We wake up one day and we say, “My bitterness is not only affecting other people, it is killing me.”

Now the reality is that probably no one has only said that to themselves once. Actually, they have a profound realization of where they are at, then they wake up the next day, go through the same interior tapes as every day, but the tapes don't completely work, and they say again to themselves, ‘I gotta get out of this place'. This goes on and on, often for quite some time. They are mentally ready for change, they just can't bring psyche around to actually acting on it. And that is okay. I'm sure Derek Jeter is going to think about throwing a baseball quite a while before his healing shoulder is ready to do it. That is part of the process. We are getting ready.

Ego has to feel safe. Ego has to feel strong enough again. God can help with that. God can love us into feeling again that we are worthy, that we are children of God, and that because we are surrounded by that love we can be vulnerable to let some of this bitterness go, we can risk again. Let's be clear, the main way that God demonstrates that love is through people around us supporting us day in and day out, reminding us that we are God's children, that we can grow, change. We can let go of it…

There is that divine change and often it feels divine because it comes to us from outside. It is more like something that has come over us than something we are able to exactly generate. We are just in a different place, a better place.

We don't know what happened to Esau to make him one day decide to go find his brother Jacob. They were old men by now. For decades they had been apart. As far as we know they had no contact and knew nothing of each other. Esau finally decides to go find his brother.

Jacob we know a little more about. Just before his brother comes to find him, Jacob, we are told, wrestled with an angel. He wrestled all night long, begged the angel to bless him and the angel does. And gives him a new name, no longer cheater but Israel, which means one who wrestles with God. Remember Jacob was the one who ripped his brother off. He had some wrestling to do, with God, with his conscience. Somehow, some way, he had worked that through and gotten to a place of dealing with himself head up. The blessing doesn't come without a ‘fierce moral inventory' in the words of the 4th step in AA. It requires some wrestling.

But we know he is in a different place because he hears that his brother is coming and he doesn't bolt. He hears his brother is bringing 400 men with him, his brother is packing heat… and he still doesn't run. He doesn't want to run. He doesn't want to die but he doesn't want to run. So he sends out waves of gifts to soften up the approach.

No doubt all those old fear tapes came back for him. No doubt he remembered what a mole he was and over remembered what a giant his brother was. Probably this is the case. Even though he doesn't run, he lines up all of the women and children in front of him- kind of like a cringing hound dog exposing his belly.

Then came the moment. I don't know what that was like but I'm pretty sure that when they finally saw each other, they both thought, ‘man, we are old'. Lotta water under the bridge. They embrace. All that fear, all that nervousness dissipates. Esau, the guy who could have set terms, could have made demands, could have exacted what he needed to exact, simply says, “Tell me about your family.” I imagine him graciously interested in his nieces and nephews, none of whom he bears any grudge against, all of whom he missed growing up.

Part of Lent is Spring-cleaning for our souls. It is a reminder that we need to let go of some stuff. It is a reminder that this can be done in the fullness of time and that reconciliation is possible.

Regardless of where you are in that process from still smarting to still in the far country to thinking about letting it go to doing the things to make that happen, I invite you this day to the table of reconciliation. It is the direction to pray for. It is the spiritual nourishment we need for the difficult but profound work of reconciliation. And the table stands as a symbol of reconciling hope for the future.

In Middle Eastern culture, the table is the symbol of unity and eating together is a concrete expression of reconciling peace. This week I read a story of an Israeli that had killed a Palestinian boy in a car accident. He sought out the family in order to express his remorse and apology. The process is ancient and formal, according to the customs of the culture. The father of the dead boy spoke poignantly of his son, the Israeli man shared his sorrow over the impasse. They sat around a table together with bread in the middle of the table. Sometimes on these occasions they will discuss terms of restitution, monetary terms or things that can be done, sometimes they just share. In this case they just shared.

There came a moment when all that needed to be said was said and they were all silent around the table, before the bread. The Palestinian father finally took the bread, as is the custom of the people, broke it in pieces around the table with the man that had accidentally caused the death of his son, a symbol that forgiveness had been extended and reconciliation had begun. As they would say in the Middle East, we can only really eat together when there is reconciliation and peace.

To that end, I would invite you to come this day, pray forward for the reconciliation and the peace that you need. Let us break bread together today in hope for the future.

Amen.