How many of you grew up watching either the originals or the re-runs of Wile-E-Coyote and the Roadrunner?

Throughout the series of cartoons, we laughed, as Wile E Coyote was continually foiled in his attempts to catch the super-fast and super sly roadrunner. Time and again, the coyote’s efforts and plots come back to bite him, so to speak, as he blows himself up, plunges off of cliffs, and gets pounded by boulders. Every trick up his sleeve backfires, and he never does catch the Roadrunner!  (Beep, beep). 

We may have laughed, but we also recognized in both of these characters something of ourselves. As in any kind of comedy, whether cartoon or otherwise,we caught a glimpse of some of our crueler and baser motivations as human beings. In fact, looking at “ourselves” and laughing is one of the ways that we allow ourselves to recognize and own some of our less attractive human qualities. In our beloved cartoon, both the roadrunner and the coyote appear gleeful when the other runs into harm’s way. How often do we feel the same but hide these baser instincts under a facade of goodwill? We do learn though (hopefully), while laughing at them sheepishly, that our attempts to take joy in the destruction or maladies of others will always backfire upon us in one way or another.

The Germans have a word for our penchant for feeling satisfaction at the misfortune of others. They call it “Schadenfreude.” Let’s say that together, “Schadenfreude.” The German language has a unique gift for creating words, sometimes very long ones, with meanings that make perfect, if sometimes surprising, sense, as Mark Twain himself noted humorously.[1] The word “Schadenfreude” is no exception. The word “Schaden” means damage or harm, and “Freude” means joy. Put together, the word means taking joy in the damage or harm of another.[2] The word may be cute, but the concept is actually a common but serious and sad characteristic of human nature.

Psychologists describe schadenfreude as having variants based on context and motivation. For example, some psychologists describe three categories of context for schadenfreude: justice, rivalry, and aggression. These contexts correlate with three distinct motivations: social justice, self-evaluation, and social identity. In the context of justice, people feel pleasure when they observe punishment in which someone gets what they deserve. In the context of rivalry, people feel pleasure when they compare themselves to one who suffers a negative event. In the context of aggression, a person feels pleasure when a member of an out-group, such as a rival sports team or political party, suffers a negative event, which solidifies the in-group member’s social identity.[3]

To sum up, Schadenfreude is the opposite of empathy. Schadenfreude presents itself when empathy is absent, when our motivation to self-identify waxes greater than our motivation to identify with someone else! That doesn’t mean we should shun self-identity. It does mean that our egos can go on some pretty serious individualistic trips when we focus more on our tribal “win” (on seeing others as “other”) than seeing ourselves and others as a connective and relational part of a universal interaction or goal.

That sounds like a lot of “jargon.” But the basic idea lies in whether we see ourselves exclusively or inclusively, as alike with others, or as different and separate. The more relational you are, the more likely you are to see others in harmony with yourself. The more individualistic you are, the more you are likely to see difference…and often dissonance.

Schadenfreude means that you not only aren’t empathizing with someone else’s pain, but you derive a satisfactory kind of pleasure (we call it self-righteousness) from believing that it is somehow deserved and that someone has received his or her just desserts.

As you can imagine, here is where our word “justice” can work both for or against us, depending upon our actual motivations. And this is where, throughout scripture, we see so many people angry at the love and mercy of God for others. Often, this goes along with the belief that a perpetrator should receive retribution instead of mercy. We feel satisfaction when our sense of “fairness” is rewarded. It’s as though “we” are rewarded. A little competitive do you think?

Schadenfreude is a very human challenge, a very human dilemma.

Now that feels about as “un-Christian,” or “un-religious” in any tradition, as we can get, right? Yet it’s extremely prevalent and a typically noticeable trait within our human interactions. We see elements of Schadenfreude all the time in our world today, particularly in the realm of social media and most pronouncedly in sports arenas (these the benign of more serious infractions which I won’t go into here, such as in politics and bias), but we see it too in our scriptures this week in the behavior of several Pharisees, who have begun to “track” Jesus and his “infractions” on Jewish purity laws.

As we know, many of the Pharisees of Jesus’ day were extremely committed to Jewish laws of “purity.” These had multiplied and magnified from earlier days until at the time of Jesus, they encompassed every minute portion of human social life. The “do’s” and “don’t’s” consisted of every imaginable thing: washing hands, what constituted as work, what to eat and not to eat and how to cook it, what could be touched, what would be defined as defiling, and so forth and so on! To memorize all of those purity laws alone was a monumental task in itself! The Pharisees prided themselves (with pride being an important word here) on knowing and following them all, down to the very letter. And they watched like hawks to make sure everyone else did too. Anyone infringing on a purity law was considered a kind of “heathen” or “heretic.” Extremism often goes hand in hand with constriction, doesn’t it?

Jesus, while a good Jew, was however not interested in laws for legalities’ sake. He was interested in compassion, standing up for what is right, erring on the side of love, living justly rather than imposing justice.

Now, this one’s important. Let’s hear that again. “Living justly rather than imposing justice.” It’s important, because it’s one of the principles in the Bible that we continually confuse and bend to our own advantage. And here’s where Schadenfreude easily creeps in.

The prophet Micah tells us we must do what? Let’s look at that passage for a moment in Micah 6:8:

You mortals, the LORD has told you what is good.
This is what the LORD requires from you:
to do what is right,
to love mercy,
and to live humbly with your God. (GOD’S WORD Translation, GW)

Or here’s the version you are most familiar with:

He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the LORD require of you
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God? (New King James Version, NKJV)

I want you to notice something, because this is the passage that Christians often use to “justify” their Schadenfreude. The prophet tells us that we are to “do justly.” That “we” are to act justly within the world….not to mention to “love mercy” and to “live humbly.” Nowhere does it tell us that we are to serve as “judges” of others, or that we are to “impose our perception of justice” upon others, or that we are to seek retribution from others. No, we are simply to look at ourselves, our behavior, and our inclinations, and behave in a just manner toward others, and while we are doing that, we must do it while loving mercy and practicing humility.

Now that’s a horse of a different color, isn’t it?

For when we puff ourselves up and believe too much in our own righteousness, when we believe that we are more just than others or that our rules (rather than God’s) should define what being “just” means, we have just entered into the danger zone of Schadenfreude. Because every time we look at someone else, we will do so not with eyes of love and mercy but with eyes of “justice” and “a self-satisfying measuring stick.”

But we can all be sure….no one wants that measuring stick turned upon him or herself!  Do we? Hence, Jesus’ challenge to those gathered around an accused woman to “throw the first stone.” Our temptation toward Schadenfreude means that we love being on the side of the “righteous” and “just” because it makes us feel different….and better….than someone else.

And yet Jesus tells us that in Romans 3:23 that “we all fall short of the glory of God!”

In our scripture for today, Jesus recognized immediately what was going on with the Pharisees. While they lay in wait, daring him with their eyes to infringe upon the “law of the Sabbath,” Jesus deliberately demonstrated that compassion always trumps every law, every rule, every human concept of “justice.”

The Pharisees of Jesus’ day would have convinced themselves no doubt that the man with the withered hand had gotten his just punishment for some kind of past infraction.  They looked at the man with the withered man, their chests puffed up with pride, and judged him as inferior to themselves.

That’s not what (or who) Jesus saw. Jesus saw a man suffering and felt compelled to heal him. For that’s what God does. God loves. God heals. God shows compassion. God shows mercy.

God does not care what day it is or what laws we make up to keep ourselves apart from others. God cares about how we love, how we care, and how we cherish the lives of others.

How do you decide what is right? How do you live a life fueled by love for others and joy in their healing, their repentance, their restoration, their lives? 

We start by recognizing our Schadenfreude, and we cultivate instead our empathy, our relationships, our connections to others.

For we do not live a solitary life. We live in relationships with others. And we live in relationship with God.

The more you cultivate your heart, the more you will see the good in others, and you will laugh and celebrate with them in their joy rather than in their sorrow.

Blessed will be those……

[1] See Mark Twain, “The Awful German Language,” in A Tramp Abroad.

[2] The English have a similar concept they call “epicaricacy,” but the German word is much more explicit …not to mention more “fun” to behold and pronounce.

[3] Summarizing quote from the Encyclopedia Britannica online.