“Anger”

Matthew 5:21-26

Ephesians 4:26, 27 (The Message): Go ahead and be angry. You do well to be angry – but don’t use your anger as fuel for revenge. And don’t stay angry. Don’t go to bed angry. Don’t give the Devil that kind of foothold in your life.

Frederick Buechner: Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back – in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that you are wolfing down yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.

Dorothy Sayers (speaking of an acquaintance): He would rather the evil were not cured at all than it were cured quietly and without violence. His evil lust of wrath cannot be sated unless somebody is hounded down, beaten, and trampled on and a savage war-dance executed upon the body.

[prayer]

One of the key questions contained in the Gospels is, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus answered that one with the Parable of the Good Samaritan, in the process giving “neighbor” a far wider definition than it previously had. When we take seriously the Gospel message of reconciliation we have no choice but to add our enemies to the list of those whom we are to treat as our neighbor.

That brings us to another question, “Who is my enemy?” Who is this person with whom I am to seek reconciliation? Reconciliation being a God-given mandate for all who would follow Jesus, just who is it that God wants me to be reconciled to? Karl Barth provided probably the best answer. He defines an "enemy" as anyone who tempts us to return evil for evil. So, just as everyone is in essence our neighbor, anyone can become our enemy, even our nearest and dearest brother or sister in the Lord.

In today’s Gospel text Jesus makes it clear that reconciliation between Christians is not something that we might do if and when we want to do so. Reconciliation between brothers and sisters in Christ is an absolute necessity. There is no maybe or might. There is only a must. Such reconciliation is so necessary that it is impossible for us to truly worship God when we are not reconciled with those who have wronged us and those whom we’ve wronged. We cannot honestly give God our best gifts as long as our brother or sister remains our enemy.

Jesus is clear about our need to deal with our unresolved angers. The anger he is talking about is of the unresolved, deep-seated, gnawing-in-the-dark variety. It’s an anger that won’t allow us to let go of accumulated hurts, slights, and offenses. It is an anger that will not forgive. It is an anger that will not accept forgiveness.

In the words of Dorothy Sayers it’s an anger that cannot be appeased until we have done a war-dance over the inert body of our enemy. Or if you prefer Frederick Buechner’s terminology, it’s an anger that we savor to the very last morsel or drop like rich food or a fine wine. Or if you prefer the Apostle Paul’s biblical imagery, it’s an anger that lingers long past sunset, often many sunsets - an anger with which we literally go to sleep and then wake up. It’s the last thing on our mind each night and the first thing of which we are consciously aware every morning.

It is an anger that Jesus equated with murder. Sometimes such anger leads to actual murderous deeds, or at least attempts. Mostly it’s an anger that leads us to commit emotional murder. It can explode into physical violence or verbal abuse. It can take the form of catty remarks, cruel put downs, or vicious gossip. It can be expressed as a form of sneering contempt. Often it reveals itself in fantasies of revenge.

And then there is that anger the psychologists refer to as passive-aggressive behavior. It is an anger that causes us to withhold ourselves – our love, our affection, our day in and day out interactions - from one another. It is an anger that leads us to withdraw from those we name as our enemies. While the hotter forms of anger inflict burns upon the psyche and the soul, this cold kind of anger is an anger that leads to spiritual and emotional frostbite.

The cruel irony of such anger, be it hot or cold, is that it hurts us as much as it does the one toward whom we direct it. Maybe even more. Our souls are seared by it. Our hearts are turned to ice by it. As much as we love to feast on such anger, Buechner is right. In the end we become the skeleton at the feast, our anger having eaten us alive.

Sometimes our anger is righteous. Sometimes it’s not. But even righteous anger can turn into the self-righteous variety or harden into varying forms of bigotry and social exclusion. It’s so easy to turn our enemies into objects of fear and loathing. It is, after all, much easier to hate somebody we look down on, resent, or view as a lower form of humanity.

Be it self-righteous, unrighteous, or even righteous – be it hot or cold, active or passive - anger easily becomes the Devil’s playground. The Devil can use our anger to do some pretty nasty things. In his hand, and in our hearts, anger becomes a wedge that divides us one from another. In his hand, and in our hearts, it becomes the raw material from which walls of isolation and rejection are built.

The Devil uses anger to destroy families, rip apart marriages, and divide congregations of God’s people. The Devil uses anger to poison friendships, break up business partnerships, and sabotage efforts to bring God’s peace into the world – and into the church.

In my humble opinion, the Devil is using our anger toward one another, especially the self-righteous variety of both the left and the right wings of the Presbyterian Church, to dismantle our denomination. We can argue theology. We can argue polity. We can argue ecclesiology. But at the end of the day it boils down to very human people with very human sins refusing to be reconciled with one another.

The Devil loves to use our own anger against us. He enjoys taking our anger and turning it back on us. It gives him great pleasure to use it as a weapon with which we assist him in our own self-destruction. He will use our unresolved anger to destroy us: heart, mind, body, and soul.

This same anger that destroys people and relationships also causes great damage to our relationship with God. Anger can lead to idolatry. Unforgiving, unresolved, vindictive forms of anger often lead to a form of self-deification as we assume God’s role as the sovereign judge of humanity. When our anger drives us to try to occupy the throne of judgment we have made ourselves our own god. Stephen Shoemaker comes at it from another direction. According to him, “[Vengeful anger] is a denial of the justice of God.” We cannot set ourselves up as judges over other human beings and remain in a right relationship with the Lord our God. That’s the same sort of role reversal that got Adam and Eve kicked out of Eden. Anger can be prideful.

When we don’t prayerfully manage our anger it manages us. It becomes the Devil’s playground. On our own we don’t do a very good job of managing it. If we manage it at all, we do so only by the grace of God through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Honest, God-centered, Sprit-driven prayer helps. The psalmists knew how to let it all hang out in their conversations with God. They got it out of their systems. They turned it over to the Lord. They let it go.

There is much advice in Scripture about dealing with anger. Don’t let the sun go down on it. Forgive your enemy. Reconcile with your brother or sister. Ask for or offer forgiveness. Love and forgive one another as God has loved and forgiven you. Return not evil for evil. Bless, don’t curse, those who persecute you. Turn the other cheek. Go the extra mile. If your enemies are hungry, feed them. If they’re thirsty, give them something to drink. Offer them shelter. Make sanctuary available to them. Do what Jesus has told us to do. Do what Jesus did.

And what did Jesus do? He absorbed abuse without retaliating. He endured humiliation without cursing. Falsely accused, unjustly tried, illegally executed he made no vows of vengeance. Instead he prayed, “Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.” On a cross, as God incarnate, he took upon himself the sins of the world – he absorbed in our place the wrath of God we so very much deserved – and made possible God’s reconciliation with humanity. That’s what Jesus did.

Go, thou, and do likewise. Amen.