In the light of the Gospel, let us reflect again
this year upon the kind of anger that deserves our time and energy.
When Jesus chased the money-changers from the
Temple, he was clearly angry, but not for any injustice done to him. He had
gone to the holiest place in Jerusalem to proclaim and inaugurate the kingdom
of God. The corruption he found there provoked his wrath against the Temple's
guardians. Perhaps he was protesting the Temple tax or the use of coins with
pagan images. Perhaps he was angered that the selling of animals had taken over
the only area where Gentiles were allowed to pray. Perhaps the vendors and
money-changers were overcharging or cheating the people. In any case, Jesus
sensed that the Temple no longer expressed the holy Covenant between God and
Israel; the holy place where God and people meet had been defiled, its hallowed
mission betrayed. He was angry for God's sake and attacked the whole Temple
system with its modes of worship, purity laws, and prescribed compliance. He
would replace the Temple, not with another structure, but with himself as the
New Temple, the resurrected place where every human being can meet God.
I do not have a precise gauge to determine
whether particular degrees of anger, irritation, hurt, disappointment, or
sorrow are appropriate for our various circumstances. However, in response to
many unjust situations a steady, calm and cool indifference is wrong, and
degrees of anger are right.
Indeed, righteous anger accompanied by
purposeful action is a moral responsibility for us individually and as the
Church: especially, when human beings of any age are abused or exploited
financially, physically, or emotionally; when individuals knowingly engage in
activities that jeopardize their own health and well-being; and, when
institutions such as schools, governments, hospitals, the courts, and churches
do not effectively serve the human beings for whom they exist. Principled anger
with resolve is a moral responsibility when we confront greed, fraud, gluttony,
laziness, envy, aggression, or murder. Righteous indignation should be our
response when the holy name of God or of Jesus Christ is profaned, and when
God's sacred places are defiled. The authentic Christian life includes remedial
anger for God's sake: prophetic anger for change, reversal, and generating good
will among human beings.
Going beyond the noble outrage of Christ in
today's Gospel, anger is also a proper reaction to personal betrayals: when
promises have been broken, confidentiality breached, when we have been lied to,
and when we or those we love have been victimized by ignorance, lechery, theft,
arrogance, back stabbing, and other injustices. We may respond with appropriate
anger that motivates remedies or which we allow to settle to levels of
irritation, hurt, sorrow, disappointment, or perhaps compassion and
forgiveness. Alternatively, we may respond with devilish, ongoing rage and
resentment: hate-filled, avenging, wallowing bitterness damaging to ourselves
and others. One commentator states it this way: "To lick your wounds, 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 giving back -in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The
chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at
the feast is you." [1] Our difficult responsibility, then, is to dissipate
ungodly, lingering hostility and be energized by godly anger; to meet this
challenge we might now and then need counsel from others.
Furthermore, our lives (like Christ's) should
not be monopolized by anger, even for God's sake; there is room for joy and
peace. Even as Jesus was aware of a multitude of personal and social
injustices, he was not angry all or most of the time. We are first and foremost
an Easter community! It is up to us to discern prayerfully when anger is
timely, wise, and constructive.
The prayerful poem "Holy Anger" is a fitting
conclusion to this sermon:
With holy anger, Christ,/disrupt the power
that feeds/upon the cruel sacrifice/of others' rights and needs.
As you turned over tables/and sent
coins/spinning and jangling/across the temple floor,/disrupt the unholy
commerce/in our hearts:/selling faith/for security/and trading justice/for
peace.
By your holy anger/drive out every
transaction/that profanes/the house of prayer.
By that same anger start/what evil can't
defeat:/a stubborn passion in the heart/to see God's Will complete.
Baptize us with fire/hotter than Herod's
wrath/until we no longer mute/ the fury in our hearts/at the slaughter/of the
innocents./Baptize us with fire!
But do not let our rage/grow bitter as the
din/of fierce mean minds that fail to gauge/when anger turns to
sin.
Instead, let anger be/the first note/in
love's ascending scale,/the starting tone/of heaven's dove:/"O Jerusalem,
Jerusalem,/if only you knew/the things that make for peace..."/Instead, let
anger be/compassion's kindling fire/that lights in us the energy/to live as you
desire.
Amen!
[Thomas H.
Troeger]
[1]
Buechner, Wishful Thinking [as quoted on page 21 of The Living
Pulpit (Vol. 2, No. 4; 1993); this issue's theme is "Anger" and was
instructive in the preparation of this sermon.