|
Ephesians 4:25-5:2, John 6:35; 41-51
I don’t know about you, but I find myself increasingly disgusted and discouraged
about the quality of civil discourse and political debate in our country today.
It’s no secret that I’m a Democrat and a liberal,
as are many members of our congregation.
But I don’t mind good healthy disagreement and debate between liberals and conservatives
– fiscal conservatives and economic conservatives.
I think such dialogues and debates can be both healthy and productive in a Democratic society.
But what I find so disturbing is the blatant distortions and downright lies
that both politicians and pundits are spreading
to discredit their opponents and their proposals.
Right now, that’s happening in the health care debate.
Sarah Palin’s latest blog claims that the Obama health care proposal is “evil”
Because it will include a “death panel” of bureaucrats who will have the power
to decide who are productive members of society, and who should be euthanized instead.
In Tampa, Florida, a town hall meeting called to discuss
the various health care reform proposals erupted into violence,
and police were called to break up fist fights and shoving matches.
One North Carolina representative announced he wouldn't be holding
any town-hall meetings after his office began receiving death threats.
And in Maryland, protesters hung a Democratic congressman in effigy
to show their opposition to health-care reform.
Some right wing talk show pundits are encouraging their listeners to protest
and disrupt such meetings so that health care reform can’t even be discussed
during this August congressional recess.
It makes me sad, and quite frankly it makes me angry, not only that
politicians and their pundits are so eager to feed on peoples blind passions,
blatant self-interest and base ignorance to block mature and intelligent dialogue
on important issues,
but also it makes me sad and angry because the topic at hand
is such an important issue: equitable and affordable health care for all
– something that most other countries in the Western civilized world
have already been able to offer their citizens for decades.
But I really don’t want to talk about politics or health care policy
as my sermon topic today. Really.
I want to talk about anger.
That reading from Ephesians that Elliott just read
sounds like a primer for healthy, positive relationships:
“speak the truth, don’t tell lies, don’t steal, work honestly,
don’t speak evil, say only what is useful for building up,
‘so that your words give grace to those who hear;’
put aside bitterness & wrath & wrangling & slander & malice,
be kind to one another, tenderhearted,
and forgive one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”
This is the kind of value system that we try to teach our children,
and try to live ourselves, at least on our better days.
But there’s one line in there that may surprise us at first glance.
The author doesn’t include anger in his list of ‘don’ts’.
Instead he says, “Be angry!”
Oh, he qualifies it – he says “Be angry but do not sin;
do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.”
But first he says “Be angry. It’s OK to be angry! -- just take care about how you deal with it.”
Most of us have been trained to suppress our anger, or deny it,
or at least see it as a failing, a bad thing.
And some of us don’t always deal well with our anger,
especially with those closest too us – we explode or we snap,
then regret what we’ve said or how we’ve said it;
or else maybe we brood and fume and stew in our anger,
and give our loved ones the cold shoulder or the icy silent treatment
(“Well if you don’t know why I’m mad, I’m certainly not going to tell you!”)
Probably a lot of us could benefit from anger management classes
in some form or another!
Of course, we know that the Gospels have no hesitation
about depicting Jesus as getting angry.
The best-known example is when Jesus clears the money changers out of the temple.
Variations of that story is told by all four of the Gospel writers.
Jesus is depicted as brandishing a whip, pouring out coins, overturning tables
and driving out the money changers and animal sellers from the temple.
For all our pietistic emphasis on his tenderness, mercy and goodness,
Jesus of Nazareth was no mild-mannered Casper Milquetoast.
He really did feel and express strong emotions.
He was very capable of feeling white-hot righteous indignation, and acting on it.
The lesson here for us, is that anger itself is not a sin.
Human feeling, human passion is not sin.
In fact, it may be more of a violation of ourselves and of our relationships
to deny our feelings,
or suppress them without acknowledging their reality and their legitimacy,
than it is to explode from time to time.
Anger is one of the emotions that gives definition to our lives, to our dignity, to our principles.
In a way, it defines who we are. Anger helps us determine where we draw the line,
what we will not tolerate, where our own boundaries are violated
-- by another person, by some social theory or practice,
by an act that we dare not tolerate without protest.
If we deny our own anger to ourselves, we are deceiving ourselves,
and not listening to the voice of our own soul crying within us.
If we deny our anger to another person, we are withholding our true selves from them,
not letting them know who we are or how we feel, or what we need.
And if we deny our anger from God, we are withholding a part of our true selves from God,
and not letting God into an important aspect of who we are.
The theologian Robert McAfee Brown wrote that he came to
a clearer understanding of the role of anger in Christian living
when he realized that the opposite of love is not hatred but indifference.
To love or to hate someone is to take an active interest in that person
-- for very different reasons, of course.
To be indifferent is simply to ignore them, to act as if they did not exist or did not matter,
or that their actions did not matter or make any difference to you one way or another.
I think the same could be said for love and anger.
When our spouse or partner or a family member or close friendacts in a way that feels disrespectful
or hurtful or uncaring toward us, we can hardly be indifferent to that act,
nor will our first response likely be loving and forgiving.
First we have to feel the slight or hurt that needs to be forgiven.
Then we can work toward communication, understanding, and forgiveness.
When our child or someone we love does something that is potentially dangerous
or self-destructive or disrespectful or destructive to others, how awful it would be
if our first response was indifference, or calm acceptance of their behavior.
We may do well to not fly off the handle in a rage,
and to try to more calmly explain our concerns and our feelings,
but anger is often part of the response they need to hear from us,
in order to understand the effect that their behavior is eliciting in us.
So also, to be indifferent to the people whose greed causes poverty and destitution,
be it Bernard Madoff or corrupt politicians
to be indifferent to those with power who violate human rights or
blatantly ignore or exploit the weak or the innocent for their own political ends,
to be indifferent to the racist or the bigot
whose views and practices tear apart our society,
--- this kind of indifference is wrong.
Anger is a much more appropriate and compassionate response.
Anger can serve us in our Christian vocation.
It can encourage us (literally: ‘give us the courage’) to act in a Christ-like manner.
Anger can be a witness to the Kingdom of God. It can be an affirmation of hope.
It is a witness against the way things are, and a witness for things as they should be.
St. Augustine, back in the fourth century, put it this way:
“Hope has two lovely daughters:
Anger, so that what must not be cannot be;
and courage, so that what can be will be.”
Maybe some of our liberal, mainline churches should be a more angry,
and less docile communities in the society.
Or, to put it another way, maybe the church should be
less of a polite, respectable community, and more of a passionate community.
It is not the polite respectable communities that have fed people, healed diseases,
given life to people, or gone the extra mile.
It is the passionate communities that have done those things.
But love isn't always respectable. Love is passionate.
Those who hunger and thirst for justice are not respectable; they are passionate.
Passionate communities love extravagantly, and don't care what it costs them...
Passionate communities imitate God, and keep company with God
by keeping company with those God loves, in particular the poor, the oppressed,
the voiceless, the widow, the orphan, the neighbor, the other.
I think a passionate community was the sort of community that Jesus
was trying to gather around him when he walked the hills and shores of Galilee .
Before I close, I want to return to the rest of that passage in Ephesians:
The author says, “Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,
and do not make room for the devil.”
I think this passage gives us a clue about why we’re sometimes afraid of our anger,
and why anger does sometimes result in destructive or sinful behavior.
This is a warning about what can happen when we fail to recognize our anger,
acknowledge it, and express it as an honest, legitimate human feeling
that demands and deserves appropriate expression.
Because so many of us have been socialized to consider anger to be a “bad” emotion,
we so often displace our anger, or suppress it, or deny that we’re angry.
Then we let the sun set on that anger, and it festers in the dark.
Unfortunately, anger doesn't have a good shelf-life.
When it is stored up over too long a period, it becomes rancid and harmful.
Unacknowledged and unexpressed anger really can ‘make room for the devil.’
Turned inward, anger can transform into depression,
and we direct the negative feelings against ourselves
that really should have been directed at someone or something outside ourselves.
Or suppressed anger can build up, till we explode at the person with a huge rage
over what was only a small or minor offence.
Or perhaps worse, suppressed anger can become displaced,
and we end up targeting some innocent victim
who isn’t even the person that made us angry in the first place
-- the old saw about kicking the dog at home because we can’t kick the boss at work;
but more likely, we’ll over-react today to some action by our child
because we didn’t appropriately respond yesterday to some hurt from our spouse.
Anger that festers in the dark can also lead to long-term feuds and resentments and grudges,
where rage and hurt become actual patterns and habits in relationships,
poisoning them for months or years or even a lifetime.
This can happen between siblings, between parents and children,
between neighbors, even between spouses.
So, what’s the difference between anger that is hurtful and destructive of human relationships and civil society, and anger that is constructive, even loving?
That also is spelled out in those few short verses we read from Ephesians 4:
Be honest– speak truth and not falsehood; don’t make up lies. (This also includes self-honesty – acknowledging our own true feelings and motivations, unpleasant though they may be.
Refuse to speak evil of the other, no matter how justifiably angry you may be.
Remember that even when you’re angry, your goal is to be
a source of truth and a source of grace to the other person.
“Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and wrangling and slander, and malice.
Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, and, finally and most, most important,
forgive one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”
All this can seem like hard work,
and it’s true that we really do have to work hard at our relationships sometimes
– in our homes, in our families, in our communities, in the church and in society at large.
It isn’t always sweet, or easy.
But it is also true that it is in our relationships, even the hart parts of our relationships,
that we meet Christ, and practice love, and find joy.
And it is in our relationships that we discover, day in and day out,
the surprising grace of God.
|
