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MAD ABOUT THE SUPER BOWL

Here’s one of the dumber Monday questions a radio preacher could ask. Do you have anything to be mad about today? Besides the traffic out there on the freeway as you’re on your way to work?

Let’s just go down a little list, shall we? The Super Bowl, half of all Americans are crying into their Cheerios about that stupid play, that stupid fumble, that stupid interception, those stupid referees. We recorded this ahead of time, so I can’t even comment about what teams were involved, but it’s a given that at least 49% of the country is in mourning right now.

How about this one? Ten years ago on January 29, 1993, a brand new president named Bill Clinton lifted the ban on gays in the military. “Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue” was launched and that has been a source of anger to many people ever since.

Seventeen years ago the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up. Do you remember? And if you’re a relative of Francis Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Judith Resnik, Ellison Onizuka, Ronald McNair, or Gregory Jarvis, we would certainly understand if you still harbored some anger over faulty O-rings or negligence on the part of NASA. If you were a student back in 1986, sitting in a classroom listening to a wonderful teacher named Christa McAuliffe — and then watched on TV as those plumes of white smoke signaled her tragic death — you have a right to be mad, 17 years later.

Well, friend, we’re studying together, all last week and now all this week too, the issue of grudges. Resentment. Nurtured anger. I’VE GOT TO NURSE THIS GRUDGE BECAUSE IT’S SICK! is our series title. And all of us know that 17 years is actually a fairly short stay in ICU for some of the grudges we’ve built up. Am I right?

We need to flesh out the concept that forgiveness is actually just one thing: giving our anger to God. We don’t deny our anger, we don’t paper over our anger, we don’t try to talk ourselves out of our anger. We don’t. We can’t. Many times, the things we’re angry about, we should be angry about. What we think a person did wrong to us, they really did. They are in the wrong. But forgiveness — rather than being a state of “overlooking” or sweeping it under the rug — is simply giving that entire situation over to an all-wise, all-powerful God. A God who can and will take His own revenge when His timing is perfect and right.

For today, as we’ve been doing, we want to just address one reality about grudges and forgiveness. And here’s the one for this July 21st 2003: “When we forgive, we free ourselves from the bitter ties that bind us to the one who hurt us.” That’s actually a direct quote from a book entitled A Man Named Dave, authored by Dave Pelzer. We picked it up from a Reader’s Digest submission by Claire Frazier-Yzaguirre in the April 2000 issue. But listen again:

“When we forgive, we free ourselves from the bitter ties that bind us to the one who hurt us.”

Have you ever pondered the irony of that? Here’s a person who has hurt you, wounded you. And they really have. Let’s acknowledge that. In terms of the scales and balancing and all the rest, they owe you big-time. Which, of course, is why you spend so many hours thinking about revenge and curses and flat tires for them. You’d like to get even.

But now pile on the irony. When they’ve already hurt you once, and now they’re permitted to occupy your brain and steal from you maybe hours a day — and perhaps they get to do that for 15 years — they’re ripping you off twice! For the original sin, and now again because they essentially own you. If a person owns your brain, they own you.

I recall a line from the film critic, Roger Ebert. He was commenting about a scene in the movie, Jerry Maguire, where Renee Zellweger and Bonnie Hunt and a whole group of women were in a kind of 12-step program. They would sit around and complain and dialogue and role-play about how terrible their ex-husbands had been to them. And I’m sure there might be therapeutic value in some such dialogues, but Ebert mentioned in his review:

“Someone should tell them that resentment is simply letting someone else occupy your mind . . . rent-free.”

That’s true, isn’t it? Rent-free. When you lose hours plotting and scheming and fantasizing about what that person did to you — and especially if your fantasizing and plotting is of the type which never fixes anything, which is generally the case — all you’re doing is permitting that person to spin your engine. They’ve essentially got their hands on the steering wheel of your life.

I remember an old anecdote — we couldn’t track down where it came from, though it reminds me of the late Dale Carnegie. But a certain person was maneuvering through heavy traffic . . . and everyone around him was driving like an idiot. People cut him off. People stalled their cars at red lights. Moron pedestrians dropped their grocery bags right in front of his car. Etc. Etc. And a passenger in the front seat was about to have a coronary over it all. He was ready to pop a blood vessel. But the driver just calmly continued on his journey. When the apoplectic passenger finally exploded: “How can you stand it? I’m going nuts!”, the man driving said very quietly: “Why should I allow all these people to dictate how I live?” In other words, why should their behaviors and actions rule me?

It’s interesting that the Bible takes a similar vein on all this. In the book of Proverbs, King Solomon observes that our resentments often swallow us up instead of the other person. Here’s verse 17 from chapter 26:

“A man who digs a pit for others will end up falling in himself. A man who tries to roll a stone on someone else ends up with the stone rolled over him.”

And I find the same principle enunciated in the New Testament, where Jesus taught so powerfully about forgiveness and loving your enemy. In the book of First Corinthians, chapter 7, Paul actually writes about slavery . . . and this was real slavery! Men and women were indentured, sold for life because of their own poverty sometimes. And Paul basically says, “Don’t worry about it. If you’re a slave be content — although if you can buy your freedom, certainly, go for it.”

But then he tells his readers this:

“If you accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior while you were a slave, the moment you did this, your spirit was set free! . . . Christ paid the price for each of you to be free. Don’t think of yourself as a slave.”

The Message paraphase puts it this way:
“Under your new Master [Jesus] you’re going to experience a marvelous freedom you would never have dreamed of.”

Now friend, if the apostle Paul — and of course, Jesus was inspiring these wonderful words — wanted real slaves, slaves in chains, to feel free inside because the grace of Calvary was in their hearts, how much more should we feel free, be set free from our grudges about someone nicking our fender in the parking lot? The Bible tells us: You have Jesus! So you’re free! Don’t think of yourself as a slave . . . and certainly not as a mental slave to that certain someone. Back in the Gospel of John — and this is the same Message paraphrase, an incredible gift to the Body of Christ — Jesus says it in these words:

“So if the Son sets you free, you are free through and through.” “Ye shall be free indeed,” is how you might remember the King James.

We mentioned last week that you and I might have to tell our minds many, many times: “Move away from there! Move away from that swamp of sinful resentment! Jesus has rescued us from there!” And today, friend, you and I can add this extra motivation: We just plain and simple don’t want that particular person out there to own us any longer. Jesus owns us, not them! Our minds belong to Him, not them! In fact, in that First Corinthians chapter where Paul talks about us being free, even if we have chains, he then adds:
“You’ll experience a delightful ‘enslavement to God’ you would never have dreamed of.”

You know, I think with real regret about hours and even days and weeks and months that I’ve lost to the enslavement of a grudge. I let someone else run my mind, occupy it, fill it up . . . and without giving me a dime’s worth of rent. And all for what? The New York Times had a quote by Malachy McCourt, which we got out of the Reader’s Digest, November 1998, courtesy of an Alex Witchel. This really hurts — listen:

“Resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

Friend, that is such a stinger . . . and the sobering, wonderful reality is that Jesus Christ wants to release us from that death sentence. “I want you to have freedom,” He tells us. “I want to give you rest, give you respite from that huge, poisonous burden of the grudge you bear. I don’t want you to be mad about the Super Bowl any more.”