St. Paul’s United
Church Sunday, August 9, 2009
Getting Angry – Rev. David Mundy
Ephesians 4:25-5:2 John 6:35, 41-51
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It’s one of those stories that almost defies
imagining. I heard it as the report from an inquest into the death of a woman
in Great Britain. Here’s how it goes. Two women are involved in a fender bender
on a busy country road. One driver pulled to the shoulder to discuss what had
happened with the other woman whom witnesses testified was clearly in the
wrong. Being at fault didn’t stop her from becoming furious and ramming the car
of the first person to pull over, who escaped from her vehicle and ran to safety.
The angry woman pushed the gas pedal to the floor and her wheels began
spinning in place to the point that they began to smoke, and rubber flew off.
Bystanders ran up and tried to convince her to leave her vehicle, but she
yelled obscenities at them and rolled up the window. They watched in horror as
the rims of the wheels began throwing off sparks until the chassis caught fire.
The driver made no effort to leave the vehicle and she was engulfed in flames
before rescue crews arrived.
She was dead on the scene and the coroner ruled this
an accidental death. Accidental death? It seems
like a rather lame verdict for such a disturbing incident, but what else could
it be called? Death by misadventure? Death by anger?
We probably all know someone who has what is described as a fiery
temper, or as a hothead. Sometimes we speak of a person doing a slow burn when
they are angry, or say that their eyes smouldered. We may have been
participants in a heated argument or two. We know people who have what we call
a “short fuse,” suggesting that they are quick to anger. We use the images of
heat and combustion to describe the emotion of anger, but these are metaphors.
Never would we imagine someone actually bursting into flames and dying
as a result of their fury, but truth is stranger than fiction. Rather than a literal conflagration, we
assume that anger has the potential to consume us, as a fire consumes fuel.
This morning we heard once again from the letter to the Christian
congregation in the ancient city of Ephesus, and within our passage there is a
fairly well known and truly perplexing phrase:
Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go
down on your anger and do not make room for the devil.
And just in case we don’t get it, we also find “put away from you all
bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all
malice, and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as
God in Christ has forgiven you.”
Bitterness, wrath, wrangling and malice are all variations on the theme
of anger. It’s as though the writer wants us to move around anger, examining it
from every angle. Sometimes anger is manifested in outbursts – that could be
wrath. Sometimes it is in the form of open bickering and arguing – that’s
wrangling. Anger also comes in the form
of simmering resentment – that’s bitterness. Backstabbing anger is slander or
malice.
Would you agree with me that anger is a subject that doesn’t get enough
attention in the church? We like to say that love makes the world go ‘round,
but if you’re a cynic you might argue that it is anger that makes the world
“tick.” Where would soap operas, reality shows, and a whole lot of action
movies be without anger, anger, and more anger? Anger and the resentment that goes
with it scuttles many a marriage. The hatred which
arises from anger leads nations to wage war and fuels ethnic divisions.
It’s interesting that the author of Ephesians eventually gets to
forgiveness in Christ, but he acknowledges that we are forgiving something, and
that something in this passage is anger. I have preached many sermons on
forgiveness through the years, and offered bible study series on forgiveness.
Invariably people seek me out afterward to speak about their difficulty in
getting to forgiveness, and often it is lingering anger that holds them back.
Is anger always wrong?
Theologians have wrestled with anger through the centuries, and come to
different conclusions as theologians are inclined to do, but many agree that
anger
They even go to far
that we have the example of God’s anger as a reminder that it is justified in
certain circumstances. The God of the Older Testament is often characterized by
Christians as the wrathful, angry God, even though biblical writers remind us that
God is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. While there are times
when the God of the first testament seems petulant and vindictive, we have to
wonder if that isn’t put on God by those who follow God imperfectly. More often
God’s anger is a response to injustice, the unfair treatment of the poor and
the weak and the dispossessed.
The same is true of Jesus in the New Testament. We tend to think
immediately of Jesus flailing around in the temple precincts with a whip,
chasing startled vendors who are selling birds and animals for religious
sacrifice. There is another, lesser known example of Jesus’ anger.
In the gospel of Mark, Jesus is in a synagogue on the sabbath, healing someone with a
withered hand, while religious leaders hover in the background, prepared to
accuse him of breaking the law. We’re told that Jesus “looked around at them
with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart.”
We could argue that there are moments when it would be wrong not to feel
anger, because it would be an indication that we had grown cynical or
indifferent to the suffering of others. I don’t know what it was like for you,
but when the body of eight-year-old murder victim, Tori
Stafford, was finally found my anger welled up and if anything it was stronger
than when the murderers were apprehended. No doubt many of us were angry when
we heard about financial advisors who were stealing from clients to support
their lavish lifestyles. Many of these victims have been left destitute, and in
the case of Bernie Madoff in New York, a number of
charities were deeply affected. We may also feel anger and rage if we have been
betrayed by someone we trusted. It’s fair to say that this anger at injustice
is reasonable. Sometimes anger motivates us to affect change in our lives or in
the world.
Here is the problem though. Much, maybe most of the anger which we
express is not what we might call righteous indignation. And even when it is,
if it takes hold of us it can block the fullness of life which is our promise
in Christ. In a thoughtful article from more than a decade ago in the Christian
Century magazine, Robert C. Roberts offers that there are four aspects to
anger:
1) casting blame on someone
2) wanting that person to be hurt
3) seeing the person as unattractive
4) seeing oneself in a position to judge
There is a very fine word which doesn’t get used very often but fits the
bill for describing a chronically angry person.
It is “irascible” and it means having an irritable and unpleasant
disposition characterized by anger. We all know irascible people who are the
three G’s, grumpy, grouchy and grindy.
Some of you have seen the excellent animated film called Up! which centres
around an old man who is the definition of irascible. Carl is a grumpy old...
well, he’s grumpy. We discover that Carl is an angry person because of loss and
disappointment in his life, although he does change.
Now, we can’t use irascibility as a stereotype of the elderly. A good
friend of one of our daughters, a young woman in her early twenties, could also
be described as irascible. About a year ago her beloved father died suddenly,
in his forties, and she has not recovered from the loss. Her friends are
dismayed by her constant pessimism and cynicism. At times she lashes out at
both family and friends in ways that are alarmingly inappropriate. Everyone
realizes she is suffering but in a way her situation is tragic in that she may
be setting patterns now that will last a lifetime.
Of course, often our anger isn’t expressed at all, because we have been
taught both by the church and our culture that anger is inappropriate. It
doesn’t mean that it isn’t there and suppressed anger can become depression.
So how can we be angry and not sin? The encouragement I hear in this
passage is that we not allow anger to linger in our spirits. For some of us it
may mean “coming clean” about our anger and its impact on those around us. Have
you ever heard someone say, or have you admitted yourself that you have “a
bit of a temper?” Usually we use that expression because we have more than “a
bit of a temper,” but who wants to admit that they have a problem with
angry outbursts that are destructive? There is lots of help available to get us
past the tantrum stage of our lives.
Whatever way we express or don’t express anger, as Christians there is
the opportunity to invite God so that real and effective change can take place.
It might seem odd that I quote a Buddhist writer at this point in my message,
but Thich Nhat Hanh is a very wise man who has written a number of books
including one entitled, Anger: Wisdom for Cooling the Flames. He invites us to look inward to address anger
even though the temptation is to move outward, toward the source of our
suffering in the hope we can punish that source, usually a person. Thich Nhat Hanh
offers this:
If your house is on fire, the most
urgent thing to do is to go back and try to put out the fire, not to run after
the person you believe to be the arsonist. If you run after the person you
suspect has burned down your house, your house will burn down while you are
chasing him or her. That is not wise. You must go back and put out the fire.
I share this with you because I can imagine Jesus nodding his head in
agreement. That’s where that pesky forgiveness business comes in. Forgiveness
invites us to begin a process of healing for ourselves which can overcome the
anger that threatens to send us up in flames the other in a new light which is
actually the light of Christ.
The happiest ending to any story in which we have been injured by others
is that we find the spiritual resources to live the full and abundant lives God
intends for us. We will not be alone in addressing our pain, because Christ is
with us every step of the way.
For this we can say, thanks be to God.