Sermon: Summer Psalms - Dealing With Anger and Vengeance -Psalm 109, August 30, 2026
Scripture: Psalm 109
Preacher: Ryan Slifka
Sermon: Dealing With Anger and Vengeance
It’s the last week of our August sermon series, Psummer Psalms. Where we’ve been asking questions about how to deal with difficult questions, and we’ve been turning to the Psalms, the prayer book of the Bible, for wisdom.
So far we’ve gone from “how do we deal with injustice?” to “how do we deal with guilt and shame?” And then “how do we deal with hopelessness?” from last week.
This week we’re asking how to deal with anger and vengeance. And we’re turning to Psalm 109.
Traditionally attributed to King David, one commentator calls this “a song of hate.”[i] Another says it’s “the only pure Psalm of imprecation in the Psalter.”[ii] “Imprecation” meaning “a spoken curse.” You want anger and vengeance–look no further than number 1-0-9.
“Do not be silent, O God of my praise,” it begins:
“For wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me, speaking against me with lying tongues. They beset me with words of hate, and wreck me without cause. In return for my love, they accuse me, even while I make prayer for them. So they reward me evil for good, and hatred for my love.”
Now what happens next is interesting. To say the least. Because it’s 15 back-to-back verses of curses.
The curses range from a terrible legal team leading to a guilty sentence to treating his prayers like blasphemy. From having him die soon, orphaning his children and widowing his wife and making sure nobody helps them when they end up homeless. From having his bank account emptied and having his legacy erased, to ruining the reputation of both his mother and his father.
He cursed people, says the Psalmist, so he might as well be cursed. He didn’t give blessings so keep blessings from him. He wore curses like a coat, so you might as well wrap him in calamities from his head to his toes. Let ‘em have it he says. Let all this be the just desserts for those filthy, outrageous liars. And their false-speaking friends.
The Psalmist has been wronged. Stabbed in the back, slandered and betrayed by someone she trusted. Someone she loved, cared for, somebody she prayed for even. She’s been betrayed, a victim of vindictive lies. So the Psalmist wants the perpetrators to pay. Not only by loss and suffering, but with their lives, and the lives of their parents, and their children. You want anger and vengeance? This is angry and vengeful as.it.gets.
Now, you might remember that I said last week that one of the helpful things about the Psalms is that in them we can find any experience we’ve ever had. Of course, maybe some of us have never been lied to, lied about or stabbed in the back. Or maybe you have a uniquely serene disposition that’s allowed you to transcend such feelings. If so, please tell me what it’s like. But also, maybe this Psalm isn’t for you.
But some of us here have been lied to lied about, or stabbed in the back. Some of us have been filled with exactly the kind of venom the Psalmist is talking about. Some of us here have been so mad at someone what we’ve wanted to cause them pain, we’ve wanted them to not only suffer, but die. If you know what I’m talking about, then this Psalm is for you.
And to that end, this Psalm shows you, shows me, shows us, how to deal with these feelings. With our anger and our desire for vengeance.
There’s something of a three-fold pattern here to follow.
The first is a continuous theme through this sermon series. It’s being able to tell the truth. Here it’s being able to tell the truth about what’s been done to us, and how much we want—how much we deserve restitution.
This, of course, is a challenge, not only because Christians want to be nice, good people. We’re just not supposed to talk this way. We’re not supposed to think these things.
But what do we do when we do think and feel this way?
The Psalm tells us that we don’t have to bottle it up inside. The Lord already knows our feelings, already knows our secret hurts and shames. But we can let it out. Not in the middle of a worship service! But in prayer, alone, and with each other. We can pray Psalms like this one. We can get it out before God, and we can get it out with each other. It can be therapeutic. We can speak the truth. Without fear or shame.
Of course, telling the truth will only get us so far. It’s one thing to unload our anger and venom for therapeutic purposes, but you and I know that speaking our hatreds over and over usually doesn’t fix our feelings. It’s just as likely to intensify them–to increase our anger. Rather than relieve it.
Which brings us to the second step.
Our practice is what the late Walter Brueggemman calls “hate honoured and relinquished.” Hate honoured and relinquished.
Meaning we bring these feelings that are tearing us up inside to God, knowing that God sees, that God knows the truth. That God honours our legitimate feelings, our legitimate desires to see things set right. And so we can give them over to God. “You, O Lord,” prays the Psalmist, “you O Lord act on my behalf for your name’s sake.”
“The Psalmist,” says James McCann, “the Psalmist, while vehemently expressing the desire for vengeance, apparently leaves the actual activity to God[iii]… this angry, honest prayer removed the necessity for the Psalmist to take actual revenge upon the enemy.”[iv]
Deuteronomy 32:35: “Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.” In speaking the truth to God, we are entrusting God with our feelings, and trusting that God will set things right. And if we trust God will set things right? It means we don’t have to. We are freed from the need for vengeance. We are unburdened. Because justice will be done. Just not by us.
That’s number two. We deal with anger and vengeance by telling the truth, not for its own sake, but in order to give it over to God. Vengeance honoured, and relinquished.
Now, the third step is the most crucial one. It’s the most essential… but it’s also the most difficult. And that third step? Moving towards forgiveness. Forgiveness.
Truth be told forgiveness is not something you will find on the lips of the Psalmist in this Psalm. And yet, we do find such words on lips elsewhere.
And the lips we find them on are the lips of Jesus.
Where the Psalmist curses those enemies who curse him–which he has the right to, as he is indeed wronged. Our Lord in his Sermon on the Mount instructs us to do the very opposite. “You have heard it said: love your neighbour and hate your enemy.” But I tell you,” he says “I tell you love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” We are instructed not to hate our enemies or bring vengeance on them. That in order to take our true place as children of God, we are to love them instead, and pray for them. Not to curse, but to bless.
Some would say this is unrealistic at best, foolishly naive at worst. Not only that, but have you ever tried? It’s pretty much impossible. At least for us.
Impossible for us, but that’s exactly what Jesus did on the cross. He was betrayed, arrested, innocent though maligned. He was stripped and whipped and nailed to a tree–cursed is the one who hangs on a tree. The crowd jeered and cursed him as he hung between two criminals–one who mocked him. If he was entitled to say anything it’s this Psalm.
But what was our Lord’s response? “Forgive them,” he said. “Forgive them–they know not what they do.”
On the cross, the totally innocent One received all wrath so wrath itself would end. On the cross he took all our curses to end all cursing. All for our sake. To set God’s vengeful and anger-stricken children free.[v] For our sake. Yours and mine. But also our enemies. There’s an echo it right there in the Psalm: verse 28: “Let them curse, but you,” Lord. “You will bless.” It’s totally true. That God turns even our curses into blessings. If we let him.
Forgiveness, that’s the third, and final step in dealing with our anger and vengeance. Knowing that we are forgiven, despite the fact that we are so completely undeserving of it, this is what makes our own forgiveness possible. Impossible for us, yes. But all things are possible with God.
Christian de Cherge was a French monk living in Algeria in the early 90’s. At that time Islamic radicals were on their way to power. People like de Cherge and his fellow monks were clear targets, representing both French colonialism and Christianity.
In spite of this, they refused to leave Algeria as a witness to the God of grace. de Cherge was beheaded by those radicals in 1996. But before he died, he left a testament with his family to be opened on his death.
In it he expressed fear that some would use his death as an opportunity to incite violence against the Algerians he’d come to love. That his death would bring about curses against those who killed him. “Obviously,” he writes.
“Obviously, my death will justify the opinion of all those who dismissed me as naive or idealistic… But such people should know that my death will satisfy my most burning curiosity. As last, I will be able–if God pleases–to see the children of Islam as He sees them, illuminated in the glory of Christ, sharing in the gift of God’s Passion and of the Spirit, whose secret joy will always be to bring forth our common humanity amidst our differences.
I give thanks to God for this life, completely mine yet completely theirs, too, to God, who wanted it for joy against in spite of, all odds…”
Then, at the end of the letter, he turns to address the one who eventually murdered him:
“And to you, too, my friend of the last moment, who will not know what you are doing. Yes, for you, too, I wish this thank-you, this “A-dieu,” this God whose image is in you also, that we may meet in heaven, like happy thieves, if it pleases God, our common Father. Amen! Insha Allah!”3[vi]
No doubt de Cherge was afraid. Remember how he says he hopes, in death, too, that he will come to see his enemies with the eyes of Christ—implying that he was not there yet. No doubt this monk had feelings of righteous anger and resentment–all absolutely justified, and deserving. And yet, his last moment was given up as a moment of forgiveness. Loving enemies, blessing his persecutors, in the same way our Lord did on the cross. “Let them curse,” in the words of the Psalmist, “you, Lord, will bless.” This monk was saved not only from the one who condemned him to death. But saved from the power of death itself, through the boundless, love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ.
This is how we deal with anger and vengeance. With forgiveness. Because this, dear friends, is the freedom we have been given–you have been given–in Jesus Christ. Not only that you and I may be honest before God about our hatreds, not only that we can turn them over, trusting them to God. But that, by grace, our curses are transformed into blessings. Meaning you and I can be freed from them altogether. Freed to forgive. Even love. Remade in the image of his beloved Son.
We deal with anger and vengeance, ultimately through forgiveness. The gift of the risen Christ.
So may you, dear friends, turn to the Lord with all your anger and vengeance, trusting that you can turn over to God all that’s been eating away at your soul. And not only that, but that God turns our curses into blessings.
“For he stands at the right hand of the needy,
to save them from those who would condemn them to death!” Even themselves!
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. AMEN.
[i] Walter Brueggemann, quoted in James McCann, “Psalms,” in The New Interpreter’s Bible Commentary, vol. 4 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1996), 1124.
[ii] Herman Gunkel, quoted in Ibid., 1124.
[iii] McCan, “Psalms,” 1125.
[iv] Ibid., 1127.
[v] “[Jesus] took all the vengeance of God upon himself, who met God’s vengeance in our stead, who thus–stricken by the wrath of God–and in no other way, could forgive his enemies, who himself suffered the wrath that his enemies might go free.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Christian Community (New York: HarperCollins, 1954), 47.
[vi] Quoted in Stanley Hauerwas, Cross-Shattered Christ: Meditations on the Seven Last Words (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2004), 32-33.