Almighty God, may you guide us to seek the truth- come whence it will,
lead where it might, cost what it will. Amen.
Are you serious? You’ve
got to be kidding me! Another Sunday where the Gospel passage is from chapter 6
of John. In fact, we have five Sundays in a row of this whole “bread of life”
saga. What do these lectionary composers expect preachers to do with five Sundays
in a row of the same passage? How many times do they want us to explain the
same thing? Are they testing our patience to see how long before we get bored?
It’s ridiculous.
You might wonder why I’m
so angry about this. Well, this is a sermon about the place of anger in our
lives and in our faith. And while preaching for five weeks in a row from the
same passage in John can be a challenge, I’m not really that upset about it. We
all know anger, but we’re not really sure what to do with it. My thesis for
this morning is that anger is a forgotten Christian virtue. But it is one of
the more misunderstood and dangerous virtues.
Let’s start by looking at the dark side of anger. Often, anger is seen as
a sin. In fact, anger is one of the 7 deadly sins. Sometimes it’s referred to
as “wrath,” but that is also an acceptable translation of the words for anger
we find in today’s readings. Wrath is a rejection of God’s grace, it is to
abandon hope of restoration, it is full of pride and impatience. Anger in the
Bible is related to the word for “puff up” or “swell,” so it has to do with an
inflated sense of ego.
And what we do with this
sort of anger is even worse. We either hold it in and let it grow into a
monster until it finally bursts forth and wreaks havoc, or we let it out too
easily and are constantly bickering and snapping at others. Neither is helpful,
and neither is virtuous. Anger also causes us to judge others too quickly and
we start playing the blame game. This is what we see happening in our reading
from John today. Jesus says that he is the bread of life and as our text notes,
“they began to complain about him.” They got angry, and they got combative. They
say “is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?”
Essentially, they’re insulting him and saying “where does he get off saying
that?” They do evil in their anger- they discredit him, they launch personal
attacks, they dishonor the God in him. Sound like any political commercials you’ve
seen lately?
When we get angry, too
often we attack. And when this anger spews out in this way, we distort the subject
of our anger, dehumanizing them. This is what allows people to justify their acts
of violence towards others. When anger allows us to dehumanize and invalidate
the grace and love of God in each person, and in all of Creation for that matter,
then that anger is indeed a sin. This sort of anger distracts us from seeing people
as the beloved children of God.
The other way that anger affects us is by distorting us. Mary Gordon once
wrote an essay about anger. She tells the story of hosting a family gathering. She
was the only one in the kitchen, doing all the preparing and all the washing of
dishes. And you all know how that is, you get angry when you hear everyone laughing
and see them sipping their wine without them offering any help. Earlier that
day, she promised her mother and children that she would take them the pool to
relax after the meal. So once the guests leave, the children and mother get in
the car with their bathing suits on. They wait a few seconds and they started
leaning on the horn, “beep beep beep”. She flew out the kitchen, and jumped on
the hood of the car and started banging on windshield. She screamed “I’m not
taking you the pool, I’m never taking you to the pool, and I won’t let you in
my house again until the day you die.”
Have you ever feel like that? I’ve never jumped on a
car, but I’ve wanted to punch through a windshield before. When she calmed
down, one of her children came to her and said “mom, you really scared me.” She
asked “what was scary about me?” And the child responded “I was scared because I
couldn’t recognize you.” Anger makes us something that we are not. It can
destroy us and make us unrecognizable even to our closest loved ones. Anger can
define us when left unchecked. But instead, anger should drive us to love the
good. So with that in mind, we turn to looking at the virtue of anger.
When anger appears virtuous
it grows out of love. When we love someone or something, we are invested in. CS
Lewis once wrote that “there is no safe investment. To love at all is to be
vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly
be broken.” Anger is the proper and healthy response to having your heart wrung
and broken. Being angry is natural when you are disappointed in the loss or
failure of the object of your love. We hold those whom we love to high
standards, we trust them, we believe in them- and so when expectations are not
met, we get angry. We get angry that goals are not achieved and purposes are
not lived into. Anger is our sign that things didn’t go the way we expected. If
we can’t be angry about things that are important to us, we should take a hard
look at our devotions and commitments.
This sort of anger is similar to the burn you get on your hand when
touching a hot stove. It says to us “danger ahead.” Or you might compare anger
to a flashing yellow traffic light, alerting us to be cautious because things
aren’t going as planned. William Sloane Coffin famously remarked that “anger is
what keeps us from tolerating the intolerable.”
This is a sort of righteous anger, the kind of anger
that we find in God, Jesus, and the prophets. We see it in the interactions
between God and Moses, Abraham, David, and Job. Anger can very much be a Christian
virtue if it is a part of true love. Jesus, in anger, overturns the
moneychanger’s tables in the Temple and had many a heated and angry debate with
Pharisees. Prophets such as Micah, Jeremiah, and Obadiah are filled with
righteous anger at people who pervert justice and abuse the widow and the
orphan. Their anger keeps them from tolerating the intolerable, and thereby
their anger allows them to call people back to the Kingdom of God.
If we take a closer look at the story from 2 Samuel
this morning we can see a great illustration of both anger as a sin and anger
as a virtue. I don’t often like to say things such as “if you think your life
is bad, just look at this story from the Bible” because sometimes people truly
are living in the valley of the shadow of death and things are that bad. You know
the saying “it was a flood of Biblical proportions;” well, David’s family is a dysfunctional
family of Biblical proportions. So we’ve been reading about David’s affair with
Bathsheba and murder of her husband. That’s pretty bad. But then one of David’s
daughters is raped by her half-brother, Amnon, who then is killed by his
half-brother, Absalom, who was Tamar’s full brother. There’s a nephew, Joab, in
the family as well who had bad blood with Absalom, David’s son. Absalom is
killed in today’s reading by Joab and then Joab is later killed under Solomon
because David ordered it. Like I said, dysfunction on the Biblical scale.
But what I want to point out is how David treats
Absalom. Absalom had rebelled against his father, David. He had taken David’s concubines
for himself and was wanting to overthrow his father as king. David was full of
anger, but that anger did not overcome the love he had for his son. His anger
remained virtuous- it signaled to him that there were problems in the family,
but he did not resort to revenge. So he says “deal gently with Absalom.” He
would not let his anger destroy the relationship or define him. Joab, on the
other hand, was full of sinful anger. He disobeys orders, abuses his power, and
murders his defenseless cousin. His was an anger of retribution, of taking
justice into his own hands, of hatred.
We all experience both kinds of anger from time to
time. However, it is our decision to control our anger like David, or to let our
anger control us, like Joab. I’m angry. I’m really angry at times. I’m angry
about followers of Jesus who in the gun-control debate put the Second Amendment
above the peace of Jesus. I try to avoid fast food, but when I eat it, my
favorite meal was a spicy chicken sandwich with waffle fries. But now I can’t
make that order without getting a side of prejudice- that makes me angry. I’m
angry that Christianity has become a cultural assumption in America instead of
a decision for sacramental and sacrificial living. I’m angry at politicians who
seem to lie constantly and only care about their own agenda instead of the good
of people who they represent. But you and I both know that this sort of anger
is only going to fester until it destroys me, or those around me when the anger
bursts out. So what are we to do with this anger? How do we let anger be a
virtue instead of a sin?
Anger tells us that something isn’t right, and imitating
Jesus is the way to address that. We heard St. Paul discuss the place of sinful
anger and imitation of Christ in his letter to Ephesus this morning. Theologian
Richard Niebuhr talks about the “ethic of response.” This is different from people
who wear bracelets that say “WWJD?” and ask themselves “what would Jesus do?”
That’s a dangerous question because you’re allowed to answer for yourself. I
don’t know about you, but I’m not comfortable speaking as if I were Jesus.
Instead, the ethic of response is about responding to God’s nature and
activity.
So God loves us, therefore we should love others. God
created the world, so we should give thanks and protect the earth. God redeems
us, so we should accept forgiveness. God is judge, so we should commit
ourselves to good instead of evil. As Ephesians 5:2 notes, “Christ loved us and
gave himself up for us.” So our task is not to try to figure out how Jesus
would act in a different situations, but instead is to respond to what Jesus has
already done. He has already loved us, already showed us that death is not
final, already proclaimed the good of the Kingdom of God over and against the
kingdoms of greed, power, oppression. Not WWJD?, but instead “how do we keep
the ministry that Jesus begun going?”
As a quick aside, I know many of us perhaps have some
issue with the line in John that reads “no one can come to me unless the Father
draws them.” It sounds very exclusive and unloving. Instead though, Jesus is
simply talking about this very point- the ethic of response. We cannot come to
God on our own, but only as a response to God’s drawing us in.
St. Paul encourages us to imitate God and be a
fragrant offering. That’s wonderful imagery. Be a fragrant offering. Think for
a moment about fragrances. Perfume or cologne on the one you love or the smell
of freshly brewed coffee in the morning. To be fragrant is to be a visible and perceptible
vehicle of love, of hope, of grace. If we are fragrant, that smell will
overpower the sin of anger and allow us to stay on the path of virtue.
Fragrances are also pleasing. I’m pretty sure that you
can’t buy any perfume with the name “sewer,” “rotten food,” or “used diaper.” Fragrances
should smell like Jesus. And what did Jesus smell like? Well, he was earthy, in
the sense that he wasn’t afraid to do some dirty work, but he also smelled like
the lilies of the field. His body was anointed with oils and perfumes for
death, reminding us that there will be sacrifice in imitating him. But overall,
the message of the Gospel is one of liberation, of love, of justice, and that
indeed is a sweet smell to our souls.
Good fragrances are also attractive, meaning that they
draw us in. If you’re in a crowded room and someone walks in with a nice
perfume on, your attention turns to them. In imitating God, we strive to do so
in an attractive and constructive way. We don’t need to cram our beliefs down
the throats of others. We don’t need to fight over a truth that is not fully
knowable on this side of life, but instead we should fight for the Kingdom of
God to come on earth as it is in heaven. We don’t need to focus on judgment or
other extensions of sinful anger. That isn’t very attractive, and I think that
it’s pretty clear that the Church is guilty of being unattractive. There is a
reason that so many young adults are staying away from the Church, we’re not
really doing much by our actions to appear attractive or genuine.
In imitating God, we are able to better control our
anger and let virtue reign instead of wrath. This passage from John about the
bread of life offers a final consideration in living with anger. It’s something
that we all know- when you’re hungry, you get irritable and angry. Empty
stomachs have probably led to many bad decisions throughout history. Skip a meal
and you end up cranky. And here I’m shifting to metaphorical meals. Jesus is
the bread of life, whoever comes to Jesus will never be hungry and whoever believes
in him will never be thirsty. Imitating Jesus will satisfy our needs. Not our
needs for a job, not our needs for a new car, not our needs for a cure to our
illnesses, but instead our needs for spiritual hunger. And once our soul is
filled, then we can attend to our bodily needs. If our souls are hungry, anger
will likely lead to sin; but if we are content in our soul, we can use anger as
a virtue. Feed on Jesus, he is the true bread come down from heaven that will
nourish us.
Though it often gets a bad name, anger is indeed a
virtue with a place in the Christian life. Anger can destroy us, or it can save
us. Anger is a warning that tells us that something isn’t right, and imitating Jesus
is the way to address that. Anger indeed is a virtue, but one which we must be responsible
and response-able to. Anger must be kept within the bounds of love and kept on
a leash, and anger should make us able to respond to injustice and apathy when
we encounter it.
May almighty God grant us the virtue of holy anger
that awakens us to evil and keeps us from being consumed by sinful anger. May
God gift us with the strength and fortitude to imitate Jesus Christ our Lord in
being a fragrant offering, responding to the grace, love, and justice of God.
And may we be nourished this and everyday by Jesus, the bread of life. Amen.
