I am angry. I am angry that the open-minded, open-hearted denomination I have always loved has become more and more legalistic and polarized. I am angry that my country, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world, has one of the highest rates of child mortality and child poverty of any industrialized nation in the world. I am angry that a huge percentage of US foreign aid goes to Israel — one of the richest nations in the world. I am angry that some of those tax dollars are being used to build settlements on confiscated Palestinian land. I am angry that self-righteous terrorists are killing with abandon across the Middle East and around the world. I am angry that most American sports teams and other school activities have become so important and so time intensive that any comprehensive youth program in our congregations seems doomed. I am angry that sometimes in our imperfect world a few of us end up doing more than our share in trying to make this world a more just and healthy place. Yes, I am angry!
But let me reassure you. I’m not angry all of the time. I’m not even angry most of the time, but I am angry some of the time. And unlike a few years ago, I’ve decided that in some situations, my anger is okay. As the Bible so vividly shows, anger is a normal and necessary human emotion and very often, anger can be a catalyst for transformation, for creativity, and for new life.
The early desert fathers and mothers borrowed a metaphor from Plato and used it to describe the Christian life. They suggested that the human personality is like a chariot pulled by two horses, and driven by a charioteer. The two horses are anger and desire, and the charioteer is reason. Now, in this metaphor, the horses — anger and desire — are understood as the two fundamental drives, or sources of energy, that enable us to live. “Desire” motivates us to draw toward ourselves what we need to live — food, love, shelter. Desire is also a kind of moral instinct that makes us want to be the people God created us to be.
“Anger,” on the other hand, is that most primitive drive that empowers us to push ourselves away from danger, discomfort, or pain. Anger is also a kind of moral instinct that identifies obstacles to the good, and provides energy to strive against those obstacles in our desire for a good and whole life of love.
The “chariot” of the Christian life is moving toward a goal, and that goal is the love of God, love of neighbor, and proper love of self. In this metaphor, the charioteer is reason. In ideal circumstances, reason is directing, controlling, driving the good energies of anger and desire.
This balanced understanding of anger as part of the creative tension of the moral life helps us to embrace the many stories of Jesus that seem to include his authentic and powerful anger. Harriet Lerner, in her book titled The Dance of Anger, defines anger in a positive way as a sign that our needs and wants are not being met, or that our rights or the rights of others are being violated.
Certainly this is how Jesus experienced anger and how he used it. In the gospel of Matthew, we read about Jesus railing at the legalists of his day who were hiding behind the law as an excuse to condone injustice. He rants: “You liars, you hypocrites, you brood of vipers! Repent!” In the gospel of Mark, Jesus is described as “angry” when the Pharisees call him to task for healing on the sabbath. With righteous anger and zeal, Jesus lashes out at their hard-heartedness. On two other occasions, Jesus barks at those closest to him — to his mother and brothers when they interrupt him while he is preaching and to his disciples when they try to keep the little children away from him.
The most famous story of Jesus’ anger is the day he marches into the temple and turns over the tax collector’s tables, scattering the crowd with his razor sharp whip and excoriating them for their greedy behavior. The fact that these tax collectors are charging exorbitant rates for the doves and lambs required for faithful temple sacrifice simply enrages Jesus. This grab of resources by the privileged 1% at the expense of the poorer 99% causes his rage.
Yes, Jesus sees it as it is and tells it like it is and he uses neither euphemisms nor apologies to blanket his displeasure. Jesus discovers what many psychotherapists have suggested — that healthy anger, honestly expressed, provides needed energy to confront evil and pain and injustice. It seems clear to me that when we talk about the passion of Jesus we need to include more than his suffering, more than his pain, and more than his death. We need to include, recognize, and affirm his anger. We need to welcome our own anger when it seeks, passionately, to affirm life.
That which is a blessing can also be a curse. That which is creative and energizing, can also be dangerous. This certainly is the case with anger. My mother once told me during my adolescent years that my mouth would be the death of me — and others have agreed with her over the years. Quite simply, anger that is uninhibited and undisciplined becomes abusive. Go back to that early Christian metaphor, when the two horses of anger and desire race ahead unbridled by the discipline of reason — the discipline of the charioteer — it is certain that the chariot of life will soon crash in ruins.
Our gospel text for today is another look at the inevitability of anger in our human experience. And this story shows the destructive power of anger. Jesus, freshly baptized and strengthened by his wilderness wrestling match with the devil, comes home to Nazareth. It is here at the very beginning of his public ministry that he preaches his first sermon. The hometown folk are thrilled to hear Joe and Mary’s boy proclaim the hope of their Jewish faith. He reads words from Isaiah that conjures up the image of the Messiah who is to come — the one who will preach good news to the poor, who will set free the oppressed, and who will proclaim liberty to the captives.
“Oh, isn’t he a fine speaker?” they murmur. “Aren’t we proud of our own little Jesus?” That is until he shocks them and offends them. Jesus has the audacity to announce that this mirage of a Messiah is no longer just a future fantasy. “Today,” Jesus said, “these words are fulfilled in your hearing. Today this Messiah has come. And that Messiah is me — Jesus — Joe and Mary’s boy.”
But Jesus does not stop there. “The Messiah,” he says, “has not just come to save the Jews but also to save the Gentiles, the foreigner, and the enemy. The Messiah has come to save everyone!”
So offended are these former neighbors and friends, that they run him out of town and they try to throw him off the cliff — three times!
Their anger is simply a cover up for their fear and their self-centeredness. If Jesus is the Messiah — a flesh and blood product of Nazareth — that means they — the ordinary people of an ordinary village — must do the hard work of peace and justice that Jesus describes. And if the promises of salvation are for everyone, then how can that make them — the children of Israel — special?
My friends, when anger is self-centered and fear-focused, it tends to destroy the self and irreparably tear the fabric of community. Frederick Buechner puts it this way:
Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past... is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself.[1]
Yes, selfish anger is sinful anger.
Fortunately, scripture gives us some clues as to how our anger can be disciplined and embraced in holy and life-affirming ways. Step one is basic. We must simply “pay attention to our anger.” All those stories about Jesus taking time to get away into the hills, to be alone, to pray, as pious as all that sounds — it is likely that Jesus takes that time to pay attention to his life. He takes time to pay attention to his feelings, to his anger and his fear, to his hopes and to his dreams. Yes, Jesus shows us a way to “befriend” our anger and to accept it as part of who we are, to come to know it and understand it, and then to decide what parts of it are healthy and what parts of it need to be transformed. But such “paying attention” and “befriending” takes time, sometimes alone and sometimes in community, that insures our anger will not become a weapon.
As many congregations across this country face diminishing resources and aging buildings, conflict and anger often emerge out of survival fears. Yes, many churches are recognizing that the thriving congregations of the 1970s and 80s are now smaller, with aging members, and bigger challenges. People with strong opinions and strong convictions often express understandable anxiety through anger — sometimes toward each other, sometimes toward their pastors, and sometimes toward the church at large. To use the metaphor from today’s gospel text, there are sometimes efforts to push the ideas and opinions of voices raising difficult issues over the cliff.
Usually, when conflict and disagreement happen, all of us in the fray are participants in the turmoil and the hurt feelings and the raised voices that emerge. We are all part of the problem. But, my friends, all of us can also be part of the solution. With intentional and skilled mediation leadership, and with careful listening to brothers and sisters in the faith, any congregation can begin to talk openly about their differences. We can discuss what makes each other angry, about how feelings have been hurt, and how relationships have been damaged. Apologies and fresh promises can emerge. With this kind of strengthened fabric of friendship and community, congregational families can and will move forward into a fresh beginning.
I believe that only this kind of careful “befriending” can turn our anger into a catalyst for change and growth and new life in all areas of our lives. It is only this intentional discipline — this reason — that can transform our destructive anger into righteous anger and into a worthy partner with love for pursuing the way and the word of God.
Friends, today Jesus prompts us to recognize both the promise and the peril of anger. All of us are called, as disciples of Jesus Christ, to acknowledge and befriend our own anger so that embracing a discipline of grace we can use the power of our anger to strengthen the church and to heal God’s broken world.
May it be so for you and for me. Amen.
1. Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), p. 2.