Sermon August 12, 2012

2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33

Psalm 130

Ephesians 4:25 - 5:2

John 6:35, 41-51

“Christ-like Living”

Anger in and of itself is not a sin. In a story in the first part of John's gospel and in the last third of the other gospels, Jesus was angry. In John's gospel it goes this way, “Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’”¹

If we are trying to live a Christ-like life that doesn't mean we are never going to get angry. We can be assured of that. Jesus was angry sometimes—and I'm pretty sure this was just the most public occurrence. But there is a difference between being angry and being malicious, hateful and full of vengeance. There is a difference between showing anger and violence toward others and toward yourself.

I've known folks who have lived very angry lives—angry because their role in family life was always unfair. I've know people who were angry and bitter because they had been convinced they weren't smart enough or pretty enough or slim enough. Sometimes the anger we feel seems justified, understandable. Yet even then it can seep into every other part of our lives. Sometimes I've seen people who live as if it seems as if everyone wanted to hurt them and so was able to hurt them very easily.

I've known other people who have been angry, too. They were also angry because unfair things happened to them—and they let that anger fuel solutions to their problems. They turned the anger into energy, into a motivation to fight the unfairness. And when the particular subject of their anger—the person, situation, or event was gone or over, they could move on. They were able to respond with love even to the unfairness or harshness of whatever or whomever they were angry with and when the situation changed, they could resolve their feelings.

Anger can make us bitter; or as the writer said in Ephesians, anger can help us “make room for the devil.” And anger can move us, shake us and make us stand up for what is right.

Anger is a powerful motivator. Anger can move us to stand up to injustice and give us the passion we need to change what needs to be changed. It may move us to write a letter and let people in power know what we are thinking and feeling. At camp this summer, one of the songs we sang was a little too sophisticated for the youngest of the campers. So one of the girls in my hogan wrote a letter to the director to protest its exclusion. When I heard her talking about it, I heard that she often deals with her anger with this kind of protest. She argues with passion and with a lot of logic. She didn't feel that it wasn't fair and she wanted the leadership to know it. I hope she continues to direct her anger this way—doing something about it instead of just fuming and fussing.

In the letter to the Ephesians, the writer gave a set of instructions regarding truth, anger and malicious talk. And most importantly the reason we are told to act in such a way was so that we could be imitators of God—God who doesn't abuse in anger, who instead responds to anger with love, as found in Jesus Christ. When Jesus tossed out the money-changers and people selling livestock, he was angry because the truth of God's law had gotten mixed up in opportunistic greed. I firmly believe he wasn't defending God—but protesting the fleecing of God's people.

There are times to be angry, urging us to passionate responses in the face of injustice and unethical behavior and violent abusive people and situations. And there are times when we have to give up anger—as the writer encourages—before the sun goes down, before we regret what we may do.

Skipping for a moment, the statement on theft—I'll come back to it—the author tells the people in Ephesus, anger or other strong feeling shouldn't make evil talk come from their mouths, but only encouraging words. Will we be angry? Yes. Should we always tell everyone about it? Good question.

My mother read once that parents shouldn't spank their children when they are angry, she wondered out loud, more than once, “Then when should I spank you!?” She may have missed the point of the article she was reading. (Maybe spanking wasn't always the best way of handling discipline?)

I think, along with this writer of Ephesians, the point was that anger shouldn't make us regret whatever it is that we do—not choosing when we do evil, but choosing instead to encourage and be a gift to those who hear our words when we are angry. If we can't be a gift or a grace, then we should probably calm down first, which also might have been good advice for my mother.

Stepping away from an angry situation—if we can't handle our anger well—and giving ourselves time to deal with our feelings so we don't slip into internalized anger, violent outbursts, unremitting anger, argument for argument's sake, spreading rumors (even if they are true) or lying to get back at people, but instead we can take time to be kind and understanding and forgiving people when they make us angry because we have and are and will be forgiven by God who forgives us.

Finally, coming back to the comment on stealing, “Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labour and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy.” I love the reasoning in this one. Those who are thieves shouldn't steal, not because stealing is dishonest or wrong, but so that they have resources to share with people who are in need.

This seems like an unrelated assertion, a side-bar, and it may be, but all of these rules or ways of living out a life imitating God in Jesus Christ—urge us closer to that ideal. We don't steal, not because other people's stuff doesn't belong to us—we don't steal so that we can care for other. Just like we don't cause other's harm when we are angry because God is love, we don't steal for the same reason.

Imagine the best day that you've ever had—the best day because you and the people around you were loving and caring for one another. It was the best day you've had because the people gathered around could be honest and helpful to one another; people were truly loving to one another because no one felt left out or abandoned by others. It's hard to imagine—but imagine that we live out of our membership in the body of Christ that way. Not out of fear, but out of love, love for all of the people that God loves and not only the ones that we like and understand.

“. . . a quick glance around this broken world makes it painfully obvious that we don’t need more arguments on behalf of God; we need more people who live as if they are in covenant with Unconditional Love, which is our best definition of ‘God’.”²

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life.” And if we are the body of Christ in this world—we carry the bread of life in ourselves, not for our own sakes, but so be God's beloved children and to live in love and perhaps . . . “as to have something to share with the needy.”³

To the glory of God and God alone. Amen.

1John 2:13-16

2Robin R. Meyers, from Saving Jesus from the Church

3Ephesians 5:28c