John 2:13-22
Once, back when our daughter was a teenager, a headline on the front cover of one of her magazines caught my eye: “Chill Out! Take Our Anger Quiz.” I flipped to page 122 and found eight multiple choice questions. I’m going to try a couple of them on you. If you’re not a teenage girl, pretend that you are for just a second and consider how you might answer:
(1) Your dad won’t let you go [to a] concert. When you ask why, the answer is, “Because I said so.” You: a. scowl and request a better explanation. b. hurl the TV remote at his head and stomp upstairs. c. shrug.At the end of this quiz, you were supposed to know whether your anger was too tepid, medium hot, or boiling over. We can quibble with the accuracy of a magazine quiz. But it is based on a reality about us as human beings. It’s this: the capacity for anger is something God has built into us and there are times when it’s right and times when it’s wrong to be angry!
(8) A really bad cold has your brother laid up in bed for two days. You happen to walk by his room, and he demands in a pompous tone that you get him a glass of orange juice. You: a. tell him that saying please doesn’t hurt, and then head to the kitchen. b. immediately walk to the garage and slash both of the tires on his bike. c. rush to see if there’s any fresh-squeezed in the fridge.
Someone has said that, “Anger is an emotional reaction to your interpretation of a life experience in which your expectations are not met or are violated.” A wife comes home from work expecting a quiet evening alone with her husband and kids only to learn that her husband has invited buddies over to watch the NCAA basketball tournament. An employee gets good reviews for three years in a row and is promised a promotion, but the promotion never comes. Our lives are filled with a hundred potential flash points each day. Anger happens. We need to learn to manage it, harness it, and use it creatively.
The Institute for Mental Health Initiatives has developed a method for coping or controlling our anger built on the acronym RETHINK:
- Recognize when you’re angry and what’s causing it;
- Empathize, trying to see the other person’s point of view;
- Think of other ways you might be able to interpret the situation making you angry;
- Hear what the other person is saying;
- Integrate love and respect into the way you deal with your anger;
- Notice your body’s reaction to anger and find ways to calm down;
- Keep your attention focused on the present and don’t bring up past offenses.
I must confess that anger doesn’t come easily to me. I would probably lean toward the tepid end of that quiz’s reckoning. It takes a lot for me to get angry. There may be others here today who tilt toward the boiling over end of the spectrum. Either place is probably unhealthy. But if we can find a way to use our anger, putting it under the discipline of God, it can become a force for good.
Our Gospel lesson for this morning recounts a famous incident in which Jesus, visiting the temple in Jerusalem, gave full vent to holy anger. In those days, people would go to the temple to offer sacrifices to God. Wealthy folks could afford to sacrifice cattle and sheep. Poorer people sacrificed doves or even grain. In the outer court, the place where non-Jews were allowed to be, the temple featured a kind of shopping mall. At the temple, you could only use temple money to buy the animals that were used for sacrificing. But out on the streets of Jerusalem, Roman money was used. If you came to the temple to offer a sacrifice then, the first thing you had to do was exchange your Roman coins for temple coins. You did this with a person called a moneychanger. These moneychangers were notorious gougers. They didn’t care what the exchange rate was. They were the only game in town, so to speak. So they got away with charging the worshipers exorbitant service charges. The same gouging was practiced by those who sold the animals to be sacrificed. Jesus was enraged by all of this!
That was when Jesus had His famous temple tantrum, throwing the moneychangers out of the place, upsetting their tables, freeing the animals from their cages, and generally setting loose what forest firefighters might call a “controlled burn.”
As followers of Jesus, the only legitimate kind of anger is Jesus’ brand of holy anger. But what is holy anger?
Holy anger, first of all, has to do with zeal for God. After Jesus’ anger, they remembered words from the Old Testament’s Psalm 69:9: “Zeal for Your house will consume me.” Jesus was zealous for the things that make God the Father zealous.
We see similar zeal in people who follow God.
- Mother Teresa was zealous for loving and cherishing life.
- Martin Luther was zealous for tearing down the walls the Church of his day had erected between Jesus Christ and the world for which He died and rose.
Holy anger is also about love for others. Jesus didn’t give vent to rage because somebody had cut him off in traffic or because somebody took the last scoop of black walnut crunch ice cream that He’d wanted. Jesus was upset that the merchants at the Temple Mall had put a price tag on God’s love and forgiveness. You and I know that these are gifts that God offers to all through Jesus Christ. When we see others being hurt, our call is clear. Holy love demands that we get angry for our neighbor’s sake.
Holy anger is productive and useful. Martin Luther knew this. “When I am angry,” Luther said. “I can write, pray, and preach well, for my whole temperament is quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and temptations depart.” Luther’s holy anger compelled him to do the right thing as he sought to give all people personal access to the God we know through Jesus Christ.
Anger is an inevitable element of our humanity. But God calls us to harness our anger for His purposes. In 1979, on a Maryland street, the car in which five-and-a-half month old Laura Lamb and her mother, Cindi were riding was hit head-on by a drunk driver traveling at 120 miles per hour. Laura became the world’s youngest quadriplegic. In California less than a year later, thirteen year old Cari Lightner was killed by a drunk driver. Just two days earlier, he had been released on bail for a hit-and-run drunk driving crash and already had two drunk driving convictions behind him. Cari’s mother Candace formed an organization called Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and soon linked her efforts with those of Cindi Lamb, who had already undertaken similar efforts in Maryland. Twenty-three years later, MADD is still a controlled burn, translating the anger and rage of parents who have seen the pain inflicted by drunk drivers into positive actions. MADD has heightened our awareness of the dangers of driving while under the influence of alcohol and of the need for designated drivers. They’ve gotten laws passed that get drunks off of our roads and highways and make all of us safer.
What holy anger do you have today?
Maybe you’re angry over child abuse.
It may be the increasing evidence of drug addiction here in Logan or the crying needs of the unemployed.
It could be the way in which Satan and the evil of the world fogs people’s minds and wills, turning them from the better and eternal life offered by Jesus Christ.
I get angry sometimes with the Church at large and at times, myself in particular, for failing to invite others to know and experience life with God or hiding God behind a lot of churchy language.
Today, commit yourself to harnessing your holy anger—the anger that comes not from selfishness, but from the love and passion of God for people in need around you--and using it in positive, productive, proactive ways.
Burn for God and let the world see the glow of Jesus’ love in you.
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