LENT 3B – Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:18-25; John 2:13-22 – 15 March 2009 – A sermon given by The Rev. Peter A. Munson for St. Ambrose Episcopal Church, Boulder, Colorado
Angry, But About What?
INTRODUCTION – Learning About Anger
This may sound strange to some of you, but the last few years I have been learning about anger. Mine, mostly. You see, I grew up in a family where expressing anger wasn’t exactly the most welcome thing for a child to do. It occurred to me a few years ago that I would never be a complete human being if I didn’t learn something about when I was angry, and how to use my anger in an appropriate and creative way. Not only that, I realized that if I tried to stuff my anger and act as if I was never angry about anything, in the name of being “a nice guy”, it would probably show up as depression. Either that or I would explode at my children now and then. It turned out this wasn’t just theoretical, for it happened now and then. And I would be left wondering to myself why something relatively minor that my children had done had triggered such a disproportionate reaction.
So… what I have been angry about recently, you might ask. Well, I can actually tell you, because I am more aware of when I am angry now.
I was angry a few days ago at the gas station when one of the station’s employees was outside on a break, smoking a cigarette not fifteen feet away from my car – as I put gas into it.
I have been angry once again at these wimpy people, who seem to think in some way that they are powerful or strong because they can shoot other people, and then, just when the police are closing in, and they have to face the prospect of life behind bars for the rest of their lives, they take the gutless, wimpy way out and kill themselves.
I am angry because the Rockies have started spring training in Arizona – not because the Rockies are in spring training, but because Matt Holliday is not with them. And why is Matt Holliday not with them? Because he turned down a contract extension that the Rockies offered him last fall that averaged almost $17 million per year for five years. And then some Denver Post sports columnists had the nerve to call the Rockies cheap! Mr. Holliday and the sportswriters of Denver don’t think $17 million is enough? (I still have the letter I wrote to The Denver Post last November when I was angry, which they didn’t print.) I don’t care how good you are. Good riddance! I would be the happiest Rockies fan around if they made it to the playoffs again without their superstar, and he was on a last-place team in Oakland.
I was angry on Friday, because Millie Williams and Janet Koelling and I went down to Colorado Springs for another Church Development Institute weekend, and our facilitator spent half the talking about scenarios where two churches are merging, and what kind of intervention we might do if we were the consultants.
That is not our situation, that is not how I want to spend my time in CDI, and it made me angry that, with all the things calling to me in my life, my time – and the time of many other folks – was being wasted. (Fortunately for us it was much more relevant yesterday.)
And just for good measure, I have been mad at myself for a number of weeks now, that I didn’t have the foresight to move the money that we had saved for Zach’s college out of the stock market before last November, and now when he is five months away from starting college, a year and a half worth of college savings has gone “poof”.
JESUS AND ANGER
When you ask folks what word they most associate with Jesus, you will often hear answers like “compassionate”, “healer”, or “great teacher”. All of those are true. But how many say “angry”?
Jesus was compassionate and even downright tender with people at times. And yet other times he was using “fightin’ words” with the spiritual leaders of his day, calling them hypocrites to their faces. And today we hear about him going off on the money changers, who set up shop in the outer area of the temple, where the non-Jews were allowed to come. What were they doing? Selling animals that people could sacrifice in the temple, and changing people’s money from probably the Roman coins to the Jewish money that was used in the temple, so that folks could make an offering to God. And what was so bad about that? Weren’t they just providing a service, like banks provide when we go to a foreign country and need to change our money? Well, not exactly. They were taking advantage. They were skimming off the top, lining their pockets with more than they should have been, just like the tax collectors did.
And Jesus saw it for what it was: taking advantage of people, some of whom had come on very long pilgrimages just to get to Jerusalem, some of whom were quite poor, and could barely afford a pigeon, which was nothing like being able to afford a sheep. People were coming from far away, and what they wanted was to worship and gave thanks to their God, and others were taking advantage of them. And Jesus got really hacked off about it!
Jesus was a complete human being who was in touch with his God-given emotions – his joy, his sadness, his fear, his sexual feelings, and yes, his anger. You don’t have to read the Old Testament very long to discover that wonderful word that is associated with God – wrath. And what stirs up God’s wrath? Well, more than anything, injustice. Rich people taking advantage of the poor. The local people oppressing the foreigner in their midst. What else brings out God’s wrath? Worshipping or getting obsessed with something this is not God – an idol, for example, or money, or your neighbor’s house, or your neighbor’s car, or your neighbor’s wife – anything that can displace your connection with God.
“You shall not bow down to them or worship them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God…” (Exodus 20:5)
What else makes God angry, according to the Bible? Lying, stealing, cheating, being unfaithful to your spouse – things like that. Why? Because if you love God, you are supposed to see the good in all that God creates, and not take advantage of another, but do whatever you can to love them as God loves them.
GETTING ANGRY AT THE WRONG THINGS
One other thing: sometimes you and I get angry about the wrong things. We get our feelings hurt when the action has absolutely nothing to do with us. I’ll give you two examples from my last church.
The people at the early service used to tell me how angry they were that there were guitars and microphones used at the second service. I would say, “You don’t go to that service. You come to this service because you like the music of this service. That’s one of the reasons that we have two services, because different types of worship and different types of music appeal to different types of people.” I could have just said, “That’s not your service. Why are you getting so angry?”
The second thing I used to hear was “I’m frustrated that more people don’t come to our meetings.” They talked about it as if it was personal, like the folks who didn’t come didn’t like them. It wasn’t about that. The other folks had busy lives and couldn’t make it. They were working or taking care of their children. It wasn’t personal.
Sometimes we take offense because our egos are too big, and we think that everything is personal – that someone is out to get us, when they’re not. But then we don’t take offense at the things that really should upset us. Listen to some wise words that I read again this Lent. They are written by Martin L. Smith, SSJE, an Episcopal monk and priest living in community in the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
“We must love our capacity to be forceful, love our aggression, as God loved and loves it in Jesus. First, it means honestly expressing in prayer what actually does arouse our anger, including the way God seems to treat us. Only when we vent and name our anger can we be open to the purification, healing, and redirection of our anger. This is a humiliating and messy business, because it compels us to recognize two things. First, how much energy we expend smothering the rage caused by past injuries, pretending that “it was nothing, really…” and that we have no need of the healing and consolation of God. Second, the extent to which we pervert and trivialize the God-given energy of aggression. We fret and fume over minute frustrations, but as for the outrageous injustices in the world, in the church, and in our own local communities that cry out before God for correction, we feel almost nothing beyond a vague sense that “there’s nothing I can do about it.” A passionate God tries to stimulate and recruit our passion, and we resist by numbing and dissipating it. The absurdity is that we think we are being penitent as we confess to God in our prayers that we have been angry, when our real sin is our dogged refusal to let the Spirit arouse our anger in the cause of love and justice.” (A Season for the Spirit: Readings for the Days of Lent, pp. 72-73)
Do we get angry when someone we know, who has worked for IBM or Sun Microsystems or Ball Aerospace for 15 or 20 or 30 years, is suddenly told that their job still exists, but that it is now being done by someone in India, and oh – by they way – would you please train your replacement in India before you leave in 30 days?
Do we get angry when children are abused?
Do we get angry when members of the NRA act as if an assault weapon is some sacred thing that they actually need to be a whole person in this world?
Do any of us get angry when one of us hears an idea put forward here at church and the very first thing out of our mouth is: “We don’t have the money to do that!”, before there has been any consideration of whether or not God is calling us to do it?
Do we get angry about all the people who starve to death each day, or the large number who die simply because of the lack of a $10 mosquito net?
CONCLUSION
You can certainly decide, if you want to, whether or not the things that I’ve listed that I’ve been angry about lately are worth me being angry about. But that’s not really the point. The point is that we all get angry. The point is we all have the capacity to look at what we are angry about, and figure out for ourselves why we’re angry, or if we’re overreacting, if we’re just taking offense out of a place of overblown ego, or if it is something that God would be angry about, too. And if it is, then we still need to work on how to share our anger in an appropriate way, so that someone else can actually hear it, and take it in, and say, “Yeah, you know what? You’re right on about that.” We need to do what we’re encouraged to do in Ephesians, which is to “be angry but don’t sin” and “not let the sun go down on [our] anger”. (Ephesians 4:26) That’s not easy. But if we are going to be complete, authentic human beings, and followers of Jesus, then we need to learn what to do with our anger, how to “come clean” about it, and how to use it for constructive purposes.
I’m trusting that you’re going to help me continue to learn, as I work on this anger stuff. And maybe I’ll help you learn something that you need to learn, too.