When we look at the list of things in the Book of Proverbs that we’re told are hateful to God, it’s no surprise that we find there, hands that shed innocent blood. But whilst it isn’t a surprise to find that in that list, what Proverbs says does pose us a question. If God hates hands that shed innocent blood, does that means it’s acceptable to shed the blood of those who aren’t innocent, to shed the blood of the guilty?
For many people and for some societies, the answer to that has been, and still is, ‘Yes’. We know that some people and societies agree with the death penalty for murder, cutting off the hands of thieves and such like, and in fact, those people could point to scriptural authority to do that because among the things we read in the Book of Leviticus is this,
If anyone injures his neighbour, as he has done it shall be done to him, fracture for fracture, eye for eye, tooth for tooth; whatever injury he has given a person shall be given to him. Whoever kills an animal shall make it good, and whoever kills a person shall be put to death.
And we only need to read the Old Testament to see that this idea was very much the way the people of ancient Israel believed things should be. In fact, some people would say that the Old Testament should come with a warning to anyone who reads it because of the often blood-thirsty, vengeful nature of what we read in its pages. But, whilst some people would agree that this is the way to treat those who are guilty of crimes, it poses a real difficulty for us as Christians because it seems to run contrary to the teaching of Jesus.
If we read that part of St Matthew’s Gospel that we know as the Sermon on the Mount, we find quite a lot of teaching that warns us against acting in the way that Leviticus says we should. Jesus tells us,
“You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
Then a little later he says,
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you…”
And yet a little earlier Jesus had said that hadn’t come to abolish the law but to fulfil it. So how can Jesus say this and yet, almost immediately afterwards say things that seem to contradict the law? The answer I think, lies in our understanding of justice and judgement, and guilt and innocence.
When we speak about ‘justice’, what do we really mean? Ideally, justice is about treating all people fairly and equally and doing the right thing by them. And in terms of a case where some wrong has been committed, it’s about offering some kind of compensation to the victim and giving a penalty to the offender. Judgement is about knowing what justice requires, about knowing what the right compensation and penalty should be. But, in reality, there’s always a danger that what we mean by seeking justice, in fact, means looking for revenge. This is perhaps especially true of individuals rather than the law itself, and I think this is the problem Jesus is really speaking about in these passages of Scripture, the problem of individual people looking to exact revenge on those who have, or who they think have, wronged them.
Later in St Matthew’s Gospel Jesus tells us,
“Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgement you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye?”
And seeing the faults of others but not our own, seeing what they’ve done wrong but not what we’ve done wrong is something we’re all very good at isn’t it. But that means that we have to be very careful when it comes to speaking about guilt and innocence. Are any of us truly innocent? Can any of us truly say that the things we’d punish others for, we’ve never done ourselves? We might, for example, agree that thieves should have their hands cut off, but have we never stolen anything ourselves? We might not have robbed a bank or broken into anyone’s house and taken their property, but have we never taken anything we weren’t entitled to? How many of us, for example, have left work early or taken an extended tea or lunch break? But, when we’ve done that and yet still received a full day’s pay for less than a full day’s work, have any of us ever given back to our employer the money they paid us for time we haven’t spent working for them? Should we then have our hands cut off too? So we have to be very careful not to judge the guilt of others and take revenge on them before we’ve considered whether we’ve ever been guilty of the same thing we’re condemning them for.
And we have to be careful too, to make sure we know exactly what we mean when we talk about shedding blood. In one sense that’s easy to understand, we shed blood when we do physical harm to another person. But there are more ways of shedding someone’s blood than just that. But something else we read in the Book of Leviticus is this,
For the life of every creature is its blood: its blood is its life.
So to shed blood is to take, or harm, the life of the one whose blood is shed. That’s obvious when it comes to the actual shedding of blood, but we can harm people’s lives in other ways than just shedding their blood in a physical sense can’t we? So we can shed someone’s blood, we can harm them and their lives, without actually making them bleed.
One way we very often do this is through our words. We can say all sorts of terrible things about people, we can blacken their name and cause a lot of harm to them and to their lives by doing that. A person may well be guilty of an offence against us but one way we very often do take revenge for that is by telling other people what they’ve done (and very often exaggerating what they’ve done into the bargain). In that way, we can cause people who’ve offended us to be treated as guilty by people to whom they’ve done no harm whatsoever. We call blackening people’s name in this way character assassination don’t we? And that’s a very good name for it because, when we do this, what are we doing but shedding someone’s blood, harming their life by killing their reputation? And if we think about the harm we can do through our words as shedding blood we can make sense of the very severe punishment Jesus says will lie in store for those who do speak ill of other people;
“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgement.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgement; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.”
Jesus tells us then, that to be angry with another person, to insult them and speak ill of them is just as bad as murdering them. So shedding blood is hateful to God whether we do that in a physical sense or through the harm we do to them through our words. And in these days when so many of our words are the work of our hands through texts and emails and on social media, this is a warning that’s extremely relevant to us and our society.
Of course we need laws to keep order in society and make sure that we don’t descend into anarchy and Jesus himself said he came to fulfil the law, not abolish it. But the very essence of the law, God’s law, is that we shouldn’t treat other people as they do treat us, but that we should treat them as we would like them to treat us. And that means that we shouldn’t shed their blood, in any sense of that expression.
There will be times when we’re the injured party, and there’s nothing wrong with seeking justice when we are. But we shouldn’t mistake revenge for justice, and we shouldn’t take the law into our own hands to get it. There will be times too when we think we’re the injured party but, in reality, aren’t so innocent as we might want to think or claim. So we need to be willing and able to see our own faults as well as the faults of others and not succumb to the temptation to see every problem and dispute we have with others as a case of their guilt and our innocence. And we need to do these things so that we don’t judge others in a way that we wouldn’t like to be judged ourselves. We don’t want to make ourselves hateful to God, so let’s make sure that by neither our deeds nor our words, are our hands, hands that shed blood.
Amen.
Propers for Lent 3 Sunday 12th March 2023
Entrance Antiphon
My eyes are ever fixed on the Lord, for he releases my feet from the snare.
O look at me and be merciful, for I am wretched and alone.
The Collect
Almighty God,
whose most dear Son went not up to joy but first he suffered pain,
and entered not into glory before he was crucified:
mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross,
may find it none other than the way of life and peace;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Amen.
The Readings
Missal (St Mark’s)
Exodus 17:3-7
Psalm 95:1-2, 6-9
Romans 5:1-2, 5-8
John 4:5-42
RCL (St Gabriel’s)
Exodus 17:1-7
Psalm 95
Romans 5:1-11
John 4:5-42
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 