February 12, 2017 - Epiphany 6A

Lectionary Readings

In the name of God – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

            So you’re walking down the street and you see a $20 bill on the ground. No one else is around, so you pick it up and give it to a charity. Then you go into a store, and see the cash register unattended, so you take a $20 bill and also give it to charity. Most of us would say that the first action is completely fine, whereas the second one is morally suspect, if not criminal. The action, taking a $20 bill that isn’t yours and giving it to charity, is identical. What changed was the context, and that context makes all the difference. This is a sermon on ethics and morality, and as evidenced by that simple example, it can be a complicated matter.

If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say...

Most of us attribute the old adage to our mothers- "if you don't have anything nice to say, then don't say anything at all." Sometimes our Sunday lectionary presents readings that fit current events perfectly, and this is one of those Sundays. I am not preaching this week, so this post will be a bit longer than normal to satiate that "preacherly" desire to respond to the events of this week. In our the Epistle from James we will read/hear on Sunday-

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits.            -James 3:1-5

In the wake tragic news coming of out the Middle East (and most especially, Libya), this reading calls us to explore our speech. James writes that we should bridle our speech, as it is an extremely powerful instrument. In fact, I think it can easily be argued that our speech is the most important tool that we have at our disposal. This is likely why the founders of this nation added the First Amendment to the Constitution, realizing that in order "to form a more perfect union" free speech would be a necessity. But with any great power, comes great responsibility.

And this responsibility has been abused too often in the decade since 9/11. Whether it is Qur'an burning, cartoons of Muhammad, or just plain bigotry towards Muslims, free speech has led to evil- both on the part of the speaker, and in the inciting of retaliatory violence.

This is a classic case of virtue ethics. There are goods in conflict: free speech, on the one hand, and safety on the other. People talk about the importance of free speech and our inalienable rights to do whatever we wish and say whatever we like. But this is a rather childish and selfish (not to mention idiotic) position to hold. Free speech should not trump common sense; nor should it trump morality. In the same way that is is not legal to say "bomb" on a plane, threaten the President by saying "I'm going to kill you," or shout "fire" in a movie theater, hate speech should not be allowed when it creates a clear and present danger in the form of an anticipated and reasonable backlash. We are responsible for the words, and their repercussions. James makes this clear. As does Jesus when he says "But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles." Or consider St. Paul's words in Ephesians-

But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knitted together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.

We are responsible for loving at all times, and our words should be used for love and building up, not inciting violence. A particular wag of the finger must be directed at those who call themselves Christians and are guilty of this sort of speech and incitement to violence.

And for those who wish to instead argue this on a Constitutional basis, we do well to first consider the background to the First Amendment, which is a later addition to the document. First, in the Declaration of Independence, which will lay the groundwork for the Constitution we find the language that "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all...are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." This is a good in conflict with free speech. When the maker of this incendiary movie chose to exercise their right to free speech, they robbed the people in the Libyan Embassy of their right to life. To claim that the movie did not lead to the death of those in the Embassy is akin to arguing that the person who threw the grenade didn't cause the explosion, but rather that was simply an uncontrollable reaction on the part of the grenade. It doesn't make much sense.

Or consider the purpose of the Constitution, and all that follows (including the amendments). In the preamble it declares that the purpose of the document is "to promote general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity." Again, free speech can negate the very purpose of the Constitution when it robs people of liberty and posterity.

Perhaps you say -"Well, of course, the people behind this movie and other such hate speech are wrong." Perhaps you think they should be held accountable as well, and I'd agree wholeheartedly. But we shouldn't be too quick to pass the guilty verdict without considering ourselves first. I don't think any of you, dear readers, have done anything to spark a mass riot in the Middle East (at least, I hope not), but we have all said things that we shouldn't have.

People often like to say "you are the only person that can make yourself angry; it wasn't their fault for making you angry by insulting you," but the problem is that isn't true, nor should it be. As I preached a few weeks ago, anger is a good and proper response to things that are not just. And not everyone is able to control their anger, which sometimes turns to violence. Now I want to be clear, those who do violence are fully responsible for that violence and there is no excuse, justification, or condoning of such violence. But nor is there any condoning of, right to, or reason for speech that is meant to hurt and lead to violence. Intentionally causing someone to get angry is just as reprehensible of a sin as the manifestation of that anger in violence.

So whether we snap at a grocery clerk who is slow, a waiter who brings us the wrong food, a debate partner who says something to irk us, a supporter of the candidate whom you don't intend to vote for, or simply the person who delivers the straw that breaks the camel's back, our speech is a powerful tool. Our words do indeed guide our whole body, our speech does govern our relationships, we are what we say (and of course what we do too, but this is a post about speech).

With every sentence, every word, we have the opportunity to build the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. The question is: will you use the brick to lay the foundation, or will you throw it through the windows? Maybe if we don't have anything nice (or loving, or true, or Jesus-like) to say, then we shouldn't say anything at all.

August 12 - Proper 14B

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.