“Holy Anger”    (Return to Sermon Page)

    October 26, 2008

Matthew 23: 23-28; 37                                                            

Psalm 51: 10-12

          There seems to be a lot of anger being demonstrated lately.  People spewing hatred toward presidential candidates; ripping down campaign posters from opposing points of view; publicly challenging one another’s intelligence, ethics, or patriotism because of choices made.  It’s ugly; it’s the worst side of us.

          At the least it is surely a sign of pent up emotion.  People seem to be pushed by strong feelings to go beyond the normal codes of neighborly behavior. 

          I wouldn’t want to speculate about what sets folks off. 

Different things will do it for different people,

but we all have our  ‘now you’ve gone too far’ point.

How do you respond when you’re angry? 

What do you do when your buttons get pushed?

          In the church we don’t really know what to do with anger.  It isn’t polite.

It seems we really wish it would go away or that we could pretend it didn’t happen.

We tend to forget or gloss over the fact that Jesus got angry.  Really angry.  

Angry enough to upset tables and cast his whip around, so the story goes.

Angry enough to call out the Pharisees give them a talking to! 

We don’t see this side of Jesus very often; we don’t know quite what to do with it. 

It certainly doesn’t fit in with the image of Jesus, meek and mild. 

When the Person you turn to for comfort and understanding can also be

the Person who throws a fit, it’s little scary, whether we’re talking Jesus or dad. 

Even if you’ve been good, at least you think so, if someone around you is angry,

what’s to say that they won’t turn on you next? 

Or treat you the same way when you do mess up?

Anger frightens us—especially when we are vulnerable.

We’d rather think of Jesus as ever loving than as one who can get angry.

The most famous story of Jesus’ anger is the one of the money lenders in the temple forecourt.  Pilgrims came to the temple every year to make their sacrifice and to be forgiven for their sins.  When they got there, they sometimes had to buy the animal to be sacrificed.  Thus the money changers or money lenders could charge to change your pesos into dollars, or lend you the money for the purchase, at a nice rate of interest. 

Some of them took advantage of their location to have a ready pool of clients to do other money lending business.  Whether it was for taking advantage of poor pilgrims or violating the law around earning interest on money loaned, Jesus was incensed that they would engage in evil practices in the forecourt of the temple.

The story today is not one we know well, but it makes the same point:

those who hold authority have a special responsibility to be persons of integrity.

It is not enough for the Pharisees to hold everyone else to a high standard;

persons in authority must hold themselves to that same standard, even higher.

Jesus called it as he saw it:  you Pharisees are showy on the outside, unctuous and proud, but inside you are rotten and dying. 

You insist on all the rituals of cleanliness but engage in dirty deeds.

It is time for you to get on your knees. 

It is time for you to recover your integrity, to stop quibbling about small affairs,

and spend your time meting out justice and mercy.

We can get very angry about some of the things happening around us.

We can take out our frustration and disappointment on others—

sometimes we take it out on those who are weaker than we are.

Sometimes we feel like someone else is taking out their anger on us

and we in turn become vicious as a way to feel stronger.

But here’s the problem.  If we respond in the same manner, if in the name of goodness, we bully, oppress or persecute, then we have become them. 

We will have become the one we don’t want to be; the ones we swore are wrong.

Ours is the path of law, of justice, of speaking out respectfully, of finding new ways to channel our anger into healing, restoring action. 

Jesus became very angry, but his anger was not for himself.  It was for others.

It was not a frustration born of not getting his own way. 

It was a holy rage against how the people were being treated.

Jesus was not consumed by anger; he took it and put it to work for change.

After this long harangue against the Pharisees, Jesus’ heart melts in sadness. 

He looks out over the city that he loved and he said:

I have wanted to gather you unto myself, as a mother hen gathers its chicks,

but you were not willing.

This is the clue for us—willingness. 

Jesus was never unkind to a person no matter how bad they had been,

if they were willing to listen to him, willing to think about what they were doing,

willing to change.

I look around our world and I see an awful lot today that I think would get Jesus hopping mad. 

If I look closely at my own life, I can imagine Jesus being pretty critical.

I do believe that Christ is gentle and kind;

but I think that ‘willingness’ is a pretty big factor in how Christ receives us. 

Christ knows that we can’t change over night. 

Christ knows that it takes us several times of trying to do the right thing and still not getting it correct before we finally learn how to do right. 

It isn’t that we can’t be forgiven; we can all be forgiven. 

But we have to want to.  That’s all.  We have to be willing to be taken under Christ’s wing, to be led and taught and guided by him. 

If we try to change all by ourselves, we may make a measure of change,

but it won’t be through and through. 

I know alcoholics who have managed (rarely) to dry out by themselves;

but there is such a thing as a dry alcoholic,

meaning one who no longer drinks but who hasn’t changed on the inside. 

The rage or the despair that led to drinking in the first place is still there.

It still impacts every one around them.

The important thing about anger is not that we have these feelings,

but rather what motivates them and what we do with them.

Brothers and sisters in Christ, the goal is not to never be angry. 

The goal is to grow closer to Christ, and through the power of that love to channel

one’s anger into constructive ways of being. 

The goal is to know what sets us off and

to ask Christ’s help to control and direct our feeling. 

When we sing or pray for a clean heart, it is not so that we can wash anger out.

          It is asking for forgiveness when we misdirect our anger, or hurt someone,

for healing from the wounds that have been inflicted on us by someone else’s anger

and for a willing spirit;

a spirit that desires to do right for God and to be right with one another.