It’s a fact that if you live long enough you will eventually hurt someone and someone will eventually hurt you. And that hurt does seem sticky, hanging on long after the initial pain subsides. The one who is hurt hangs onto the pain and the one who caused the hurt hangs on to the shame and there we stay stuck in that sticky habit of hurt.
Some people, maybe many people, try to get rid of the hurt by retaliating, thinking that if they hurt the one who hurt them then the hurt will go away. But that’s not really how hurt works. Hurt doesn’t go away by hurting others. Instead, hurt people hurt people and those hurt people hurt people and the cycle is relentless.
You can see this cycle manifesting itself on the news every day. This past Monday there was a terrorist attack on a Moscow subway train that killed 39 people. The terrorists were two female suicide bombers who are believed to member of a group called the "black widows" of the North Caucasus. This group of women have carried out a string of suicide bombings in Russia in recent years, acts of revenge for the deaths of male relatives at the hands of Russian security forces.
Hurt people hurt people and those hurt people hurt people and the cycle is relentless.
You see the same cycle between Israelis and Palestinians, “you hurt me and I now I’m going to hurt you.” You see the same cycle between rival gangs in Juarez; “You hurt us now we will hurt you.” You see the same cycle on CNN between the Republicans and the Democrats, “You hurt us and so we hurt you back.” Hurt people hurt people and those hurt people hurt people and the cycle is relentless. There’s no way out when everyone wants and “eye for an eye” and as Gandhi once said, pretty soon eventually the whole world will go blind.
But this week, Holy Week, we celebrate the truth that just because that’s the way it is that it doesn’t have mean that’s the way it stays. In one statement, Jesus changes the cycle of hurt people hurting people. As he is hanging on the cross after a sham of a trial in which he was convicted and sentenced to death, after he has been beaten by those he came to help and left by those he loved, while accusations and insults are being thrown at him Jesus says, “Father, forgive them.” He does not defend himself nor does he incite his followers to retaliate rather he says, “Father, forgive them.”
The only hope we have for stopping the cycle of hurt people hurting is to follow the One who let it go, who intentionally overlooked the hurt that was caused, who let things go unpunished and offered forgiveness. Although it seems so difficult, maybe nearly impossible, it is the only hope for a true shift toward Shalom, a peace that is possible when we let go of the pain for the sake of restoring the relationship. And perhaps we who are followers of the One who said, “Father forgive them,” should be the ones who lead the way. As we walk through this Holy Week may we be people who follow our Lord and Savior Jesus in breaking the cycle of hurt so that this world might experience the peace that makes no sense.
