Sermon Archives : 2005/2006

An Eye for an Eye

The Rev. Gail Seavey  ·  June 4, 2006

Every so often it hits me with a visceral shudder that I am living in a new universe. Sometimes it’s a shudder of joyful amazement, such as I felt when leaving the board’s budget meeting Wednesday night. My experience in other churches had prepared me to expect the most painful evening of the year. Instead I left in awe of the wisdom, kindness and fairness of the lay leaders of this church. Sometimes it’s a shudder of despair, which I experienced during the recent attempt by the Tennessee Coalition to Abolish State Killing to stay an execution. My body froze in the realization that we actually kill people here. I have previously lived in states that had abolished the death penalty.

Seven years ago, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts debated whether or not to reinstate the death penalty. Every day the newspaper reported pros and cons, focusing on the opinions of those people who have had a loved one murdered. One mother was enraged that the two men who brutally killed her daughter, imprisoned for life, were eating meals, talking to people, receiving medical care. She said, “That’s not severe punishment. I want these two people to die.” The father of a woman killed in the Oklahoma City bombing said that when it first happened he wanted to see the terrorist Timothy McVeigh “fried.” But months later, he returned to his previous opposition to the death penalty, something his daughter also opposed. “It’s nothing more than an act of violence,” said the bereaved father. “It’s revenge and hate. And revenge and hate is exactly why Julie and 167 others are dead today in Oklahoma City.”

Just before the debate, I attended a Bible class with a Unitarian, a Universalist, a Jew, a few liberal and a few conservative Christians. The text for the day was Matthew 5: verses 38 - 40. "You have learned how it was said: 'Eye for eye and tooth for tooth.' But I say this to you: offer the wicked man not resistance. On the contrary, if anyone hits you on the right cheek, offer him the other as well."

The minister asked if “eye for eye”, from a law in the Hebrew Biblical book of Exodus, made ethical sense. There followed a lively discussion about retribution and justice. The opinions of the class probably reflect many of yours. A few people said that justice requires that ‘the punishment fits the crime'. The law, “eye for eye” was a better fit than the practice of destroying a whole village of “those people” in revenge for the death of one of “our” people. Others took a more functional view; society would not be safe and orderly unless crime and punishment were congruent. Some were uncomfortable with the implication that appropriate punishments might be as cruel as the crimes themselves, while others defended “an eye for an eye”, including capital punishment - a life for a life.

One woman demonstrated how opinions can be deeply tied to feelings from personal experience. She was angry that murderers were not always executed, bitterly describing the murder of a friend. In her fury for revenge we could see a plea for justice intertwined with the quality of hatred that drove Gandhi to say, “If we demanded an eye for an eye, the whole world would soon be blind.”

The class returned to the reading where Jesus invited his listeners to not resist evil, but to offer to turn the other cheek. The discussion turned to loving one’s enemy, forgiveness and overcoming the desire for revenge within one’s heart. Some admitted that this was easier said than done. One woman, for example, was still struggling to forgive her father for hitting her mother more than 50 years ago.

How do we respond to those who have hurt us and those we love? Religious and ethical thinkers have long struggled with this question. There are important problems of public order to consider. But religious teachers like Buddha, Jesus and Ghandi have invited people to consider another aspect as well, the problem of the human soul. An “eye for eye” may look like justice. There is poor evidence that it helps maintain a peaceful public order. But does it help maintain a peaceful heart? Is turning the other cheek any more effective at justice, maintaining public safety or a peaceful heart? As the lively discussion at the Bible study group reminded me, these questions are not self-evident. We must look honestly at the effects of experience upon the human heart as individuals and as a society. Since then I have been reflecting upon the times when people have hurt me or those I love, how my responses have affected my inner peace and my ability to act with justice and mercy.

I once faced the possibility of death reflected in the eyes of a stranger who attacked me with a knife. I know what it is to have a heart devoid of peace. I had to learn to open my heart again before I could think clearly about right and wrong. I didn't understand how closed my heart had become until another incident that happened more than fourteen years later.

I was arriving home from a week at our UU General Assembly when I saw a friend ride by on his bike. He looked as though his fast pumping and intense forward-looking gaze were keeping him just ahead of the hounds of Hell. At home I soon discovered that the biker's wife, Ann, had been found brutally murdered a few days before.

Our town surrounded relatively wild woodland called Dog Town. Ann was murdered in the wood which was, for all practical purposes, her own back yard. Ann was well loved in our neighborhood. A young woman who had grown up with learning disabilities, she had become a compassionate and imaginative special needs teacher. If she could be murdered, it could happen to anyone. My neighbors had been gripped with fear. They did not dare go into their yards. But now the police suspected a local man, Peter, and were combing the woods for him. The next day an elderly man walking around the Dog Town reservoir ran into Peter, who was as scared as a hunted animal. The man kindly walked Peter around the pond and on to the police station, where he confessed.

Peter was now the most talked about man in town. At work, on the bus, at the grocery store, we heard his story in fragments and through those bits and pieces of gossip - his life became known. Peter was a little slow. His parents apparently treated him well but someone thought Peter killed their cat when he was a little boy. He was teased a lot at school: the taller he got the more the other kids harassed him for being “not too bright”. They would walk up behind Peter in the hallway and bop the back of his head - saying “Hey – Der”. He was rejected from the army and worked on and off. When he didn't work, he lived in Dog Town. There he had been arrested twice for harassing women, once for rape. Nothing ever came of it, charges where dropped, there was no proof.

The neighborhood was no longer in fear. We were simply in a deep and shocked grief. Something of my own past trauma was stirred up and I was overwhelmed with confused longings. I wanted revenge, I wanted peace of mind, and I wanted to UNDERSTAND. The newspapers had been respectful and had kept the details of Ann's death from print. Her husband had discovered her body but could not talk about it. In my longing, I went to the trial for one day.

Peter was led into the courtroom in handcuffs because he had tried to cut his wrists in the bathroom. The public defender was summing up the jury's visit, the day before, to the site where Ann's body was found. And there, for the first time, I heard the narrative of what happened. It was raining. Ann was walking to her sister-in-law’s house on a path through the woods. She was dressed from head to toe in a rain suit. Peter walked up behind her and hit her in the back of her head with a large rock. The jurors were shown the substantial hole in the earth where her head lay as he hit the back of her head again and again. At the exact moment the lawyer finished telling this story, my heart opened and was flooded with compassion. It was unbearably sad that Ann died randomly because hundreds of kids bopped a slow classmate in the back of the head, but I understood. This murder had been Peter's revenge - an eye had been taken for an eye.

My taste for revenge was destroyed in that moment. But looking in Peter's eyes, I saw that his heart was hopelessly empty. He was a danger to himself and to others. He was wisely convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. Peter is spending the rest of his life in a locked psychiatric ward, treated, I pray, with mercy. Somewhere between revenge and compassion, I discovered the soul of Justice.

I now believe that the ability to feel compassion is at the core of the human soul, as basic as hunger and thirst. Just as one needs a stomach strong enough to hold and digest food, one needs a heart strong enough to hold and digest compassion. Then food and compassion can become part of you. When Ann was alive, I was learning about witchcraft and Unitarian Universalism. Both taught ways to build strong hearts. Witches taught a craft of entering into the harmony of nature and bending its energies a bit. The craft understood that bending energy towards revenge - an eye for an eye - could damage the practitioner's heart. It is a rare and foolhardy witch who curses her enemies, for it is taught that those curses came back to the one who made the curse: 'What goes round comes round.'

Unitarian Universalists have another traditional way to strengthen our hearts. In the nineteenth century they called it ‘building character’. The tradition of building character teaches the limits of those strong feelings of fight or flight we have immediately when someone hurts us. It teaches that the disciplines of observation, followed by prayer or reflection and leading to understanding, could strengthen our ability to act from passion wedded to thought. This is soul work - because it builds the essential integrity of all that is our inner life, and it is character work - because it builds our ability to act with integrity.

Religious leaders such as Buddha and Jesus showed that strong hearts, peaceful hearts capable of knowing justice when they see it, are non-violent hearts. Jesus faced violence at its worse when he was executed, a victim of capital punishment. But he acted with non-violence to the end. Both religious teachers lived in violent times and saw that more violence was never a solution to violence. Not a solution for the broken heart or a solution for the community as a whole.

This is not an easy concept to teach. I have an image of how Jesus tried to teach it. Contemporary New Testament scholars interpret Jesus’ words “turn the other cheek” as the introduction to a triage of shocking sayings intended to get people to laugh in surprise and then to think. ‘When someone hits you, turn the other cheek. - but that’s outrageous!’ So the listeners thought about it while Jesus looked at them face to face. What they experienced was more than just a good sound bite. What those people saw was a man who spoke from his own sense of dignity and peace. What those people felt was a man who saw the dignity and peace in their hearts. He offered an idea that shocked many into reflecting upon their own impulsive reactions to attack. He offered them a pathway to understanding. I don't think the power of Jesus was in his words per se. His power was in the community of people that formed--people making meaning from lives that knew hate and violence while experiencing compassionate and peaceful relationships that allowed them to find the soul of justice. That is why Unitarians and Universalists have long known that the point of Jesus’ life is to inspire Beloved Community rather than to form a cult of his words.

I once told the story of Ann’s murder as a guest preacher 1000 miles from home. During the story a woman started to cry and ran out of the sanctuary. Several others followed her, so, trusting that she had the support she needed, I finished conducting the worship service. After the service the caring congregants pulled me into the ladies room to sit with the crying woman. She was my friend Ann’s step-mother. I had met her briefly long ago. We had a long talk remembering Ann, remembering how she had responded to the challenges of life with a strong heart. But unfortunately, Ann’s father was overwhelmed with revenge and bitterness at his daughter’s death. He kept a huge knife on the dashboard of his truck, his body always wound up with tension and ready to grab it at any second. His wife grew to fear him and eventually left him. She had just told her church friends, a few weeks before, about this murder that had helped end her marriage. By telling them her deepest sorrows, she helped build a beloved community that could minister to her in her time of need. By doing so, she helped me to remember Ann and her strong heart, a gift indeed.

How should we respond to those who harm us and those we love? Jesus and Buddha answered that question by returning non-violence for violence. They teach ways to grow hearts strong enough to remain open to love and to recognize justice in the face of violence. Growing strong hearts always includes an inner directed practice, a change of heart that has been called meditation, prayer, casting spells or building character. Growing strong hearts always includes an outer directed practice, commitment to a support system that can set appropriate limits to create safety and justice for its members, is it called the sangha, the church, the coven, or the beloved community.

On that pathway between revenge and compassion, I found the soul of justice. I join in common cause with those of you who work to guide this state, home to you my beloved community, on the path away from publicly sanctioned revenge and towards compassion, straight through justice and public peace.

May it be so.