Herodias: The Woman Who Nursed a Grudge
Psalm 14:1-7; Ephesians 3:14-21; Mark 6:14-19 (NIV)
Tragically, the names Aurora, Colorado, James Holmes, and Batman will always be connected.
Slightly over a week ago, James Holmes age 24 went on a shooting rampage in a movie theater leaving 12 dead and 58 wounded.
One news source reported, “How Holmes went from a student enrolled in a neuroscience graduate program at the University of Colorado to a man amassing more than 6000 rounds of ammunition on the Internet prior to the alleged shooting is what investigators are now trying to figure out.”
Pastor Mitch Hamilton, pastor of the Mississippi Avenue Baptist Church, located about a mile from the shooting site had this horror driven home when a young woman walked into the church and asked a simple question: “Why did my cousin die?”
Why? The question – or some form of it – is resonating across the country.
Why did a gunman do this?
Why in a movie theater, which has been a cultural sanctuary where movie-goers seek to escape reality.
The answer may never come, and if it does, it will not be sufficient.
I would imagine the same question was in the minds of John the Baptist’s disciples as they came and took away his body.
“Why? Why would Herodias carry out such a horrendous act of murder?”
No one would have guessed that Leonard Holt was a ticking time bomb.
He had worked as a lab technician at the same Pennsylvania paper mill for nineteen years.
He was respected as a Boy Scout leader, devoted father, member of the fire brigade, and a regular church goer.
But on a cold October morning, Leonard stuffed a 45 automatic and a Smith and Wesson .38 in his coat pockets.
After driving his station wagon to the mill, he stalked into the shop, and in a calculated frenzy he began to execute people he had known for more than fifteen years.
His community was left bewildered that a mild-mannered man could become a mass murderer.
The investigation that followed pieced together a profile of seething resentment.
It seems that several of his victims had been promoted over him while remained mired in the same position.
Some of his car pool had quit riding with him because of his reckless driving.
Resentment had been building up for years until it exploded in rage.
Three words appeared beneath his picture in Time magazine:
RESPONSIBLE, RESPECTFUL – AND RESENTFUL.
Allowed to fester, resentment, bearing a grudge, often explodes, doing irreparable damage: domestic violence, ugly demeaning words, loss of job, divorce, and on the list could go.
This seems to be what happened to Herodias.
The New International Version reads, “So Herodias nursed a grudge against John and wanted to kill him.”
Did you pick up on the word “NURSED”?
It suggests that this anger deep inside of her was something she fed.
She kept it growing, like a tumor, until it came out in the form of HATE; then manipulation and ultimately: violence.
It was like an ember of fire that she kept blowing on until it erupted into a blazing flame that was out of control.
Do you know anyone like this?
Are we the guilty party?
Could it be that we are nursing a grudge?
I hope this story can help prevent us from harboring a grudge, and that we can discover some ways we can control our anger before it gets out of control.
There are three thoughts I want us to look at.
First, in order to prevent ourselves from harboring a grudge, we must constantly work at developing a positive self-image.
Amazingly, in a country of such abundance, most Americans suffer from some sort of poor self-concept. In a desperate attempt to overcome this, there are more than 60,000 self help seminars offered a year generating by some estimates to a billion dollar a year industry.
Out of curiosity, I did a search on Amazon for self-help books and had over 166,000 responses.
Our poor self image tells us that if we want to be successful and feel good about ourselves we must accumulate things and have access to more money. Perhaps, this is why in 2012 Americans had almost 60 million credit cards ( source: The Survey of Consumer Payment Choice, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Jan. 2010) .
When the newest gadget doesn’t make us feel better about ourselves, we often become agitated.
We lash out at others and begin nursing a grudge of our own.
We become driven to prove we have worth and that we deserve the right to be a part of the human race.
A poor self esteem makes us vulnerable to hurt feelings: causes us to become angry, and if we are not careful – we begin to harbor grudges against others, or perhaps, the world in general.
There are those of us who must constantly remind ourselves that we are more than the tasks we do or the titles we carry.
We are more than our profession. We are not just an educator, a salesman, an executive, a mechanic or whatever.
WE are more than a spouse; a parent; or a child.
We are children of God!
We have value, not because of what we do, but because of whose we are!
When is it that you become the most upset?
There is a strong possibility that it is related to those things we use to draw our identity.
If we see ourselves only in light of what we do, we are easily offended and open ourselves up to harbor a grudge.
We say to ourselves:
“How dare him to say that to me, doesn’t he know that I’m a college graduate?
“Ah! The audacity of her saying that to me. Why, I have two children and she has never been a mother.”
A good self concept comes from a recognition that we are more than someone who perform a task.
It is the recognition that we have value because we are created in the image of God.
Remembering this will help us to keep things in perspective and will not take everything so personally.
Notice how one’s self concept and unconfessed sin are connected in this story.
Unconfessed sin erects a barrier between us and God.
When we know that sin exists in our life, it becomes difficult to focus on the fact that we are the children of God.
Herodias had unconfessed sin; these made her vulnerable to feelings of anger and ultimately grudge bearing.
Let’s tell it like it is.
No matter how positive our self image, there will be occasions when we become angry.
This brings us to our second point: In order to avoid nursing a grudge, we must learn the proper way to handle anger.
One of the first stories in the Bible has to do with anger.
A man named Cain was so envious of his brother that he exploded in a rage of anger and murdered him.
We do not want things to go this far, so what are we to do?
We must find a more constructive way to vent our anger.
An author and professor at Duke University, pretty much says it all in the title of his bestselling book: Anger Kills.
Long term studies have shown that men with hostile tendencies are more likely to develop heart trouble and take part in other unhealthy activities like smoking.
Yes, it is good to vent our anger as long as we do it positively.
I am reminded of the 85 year old man who was asked the reason for his remarkable health.
He said, “My wife and I agreed sixty years ago that if she got mad at me, she’d tell me and get it off her chest. If I was mad at her, I would take a walk. I attribute my good health to the fact that I have lead, for the most part, and outdoor life.”
Perhaps this is sound advice for us.
We need to vent our anger.
Williams suggests applying a strategy he calls “I am worth it” mode.
I: Is this matter important to me?
A: Are my thoughts and feelings appropriate?
M: Is the situation modifiable?
Worth it: Is taking action worth it?
Perhaps you want to get a small notebook and write it down.
You see, we can always tear up a written page, but we can never take back a spoken word.
The book of Proverbs offers excellent advice concerning anger and the tongue:
Fools show all their anger, but the wise hold it back. Prov. 29:11 (CEB)
Hotheads stir up conflict, but patient people calm down strife. Prov. 15:18 (CEB)
James 1:19-20 “Know this, my dear brothers and sisters: everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to grow angry. This is because an angry person doesn’t produce God’s righteousness.
After we have expressed our anger in a constructive way, we need to spend some time communicating. This is especially true in a family setting.
If we do not talk it out, we repress it until it becomes an area of potential grudge bearing.
I once read the story of a man who was doing a lot of little picky things at home that irritated his wife.
One night he was helping clear the dinner table when he put an unwrapped onion in the refrigerator.
Unknown to him, his act of random kindness caused her to have to clean out the entire refrigerator to get rid of the smell.
However, she chose not to say anything to him about it.
But that wasn’t all, he often left the window open at night to let in a little fresh air, but in the process froze his wife to death.
She would simply get another blanket and not complain.
He would brush his teeth and leave the toothpaste tube uncapped on the sink.
She would come along behind him and put the cap back on the tube and put it away, never mentioning that it bothered her.
She repressed those feelings of anger and aggravation thinking she was keeping the peace.
Seventeen years passed.
One evening after dinner, the “helpful” husband got up from the dinner table and was about to put another unwrapped onion in the refrigerator, when the wife exploded!
She proceeded to chew him up one side and down the other.
The poor man was devastated.
Finally he said, “Gee! One lousy onion and you go to pieces! I don’t get it.”
Of course, it was not the one lousy onion.
It was 17 years of unwrapped onions.
But he didn’t realize it because she never reported her feelings of anger to him.
WE must vent our anger in a positive way and the report those feelings of anger.
If we don’t, we are setting ourselves up for grudge bearing and a potential explosion.
Finally, if we want to avoid the Herodias complex in our lives, we must have our relationship with God in order.
I’m really talking about our prayer life.
If we really take prayer seriously and spend time with God, God is going to point out the anger and the grudges we are harboring against others.
We pray in the Lord’s Prayer: “Forgives us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said (Mt. 5:23-24)
As long as we are holding a grudge against someone or know of someone who is angry with us and we have not attempted to correct, then our relationship with God will never be what it could be.
Are you holding a grudge against someone?
Is this a stumbling block in your relationship with God?
Perhaps the spirit is speaking to you about someone in your family, a coworker, or a member of this church that you need to get things worked out with.
You will not have joy or the peace you long for until you deal with it.
