Redemptive Anger

 

Blessed be God who animates our lives and calls us to open our hearts and minds to emotions which while uncomfortable can be redemptive when expressed as Jesus does. AMEN

There are no unsacred places;   

there are only sacred places   

and desecrated places.   Wendell Berry

I would like us to keep this wisdom in our hearts as we consider the Word of God this morning.

Today’s lectionary offers a plethora of preaching opportunities. At first blush I thought I would preach about the ten commandments and why it is important that we reclaim them during Lent. After all, we do pray the Decalogue each Sunday and this is becoming blessedly more intentional.

Then my mind went to John’s depiction of the cleansing of the temple which is more violent, more angry than the synoptics. I wrestled with desecration and wept again at the events of January 6th at the Capitol. It all felt too raw and too violent. 

And then I asked is violence ever justified? Does anger ever not cause desecration? There must be something to be learned from the anger expressed by Christ. And it might be about redemption and salvation instead of about desecration and profanity. It also may be related to the divine wisdom of which St Paul speaks which is different from our own often.

To answer those questions and to say something meaningful about Jesus’ loss of temper caused me to move backwards, which is to say more deeply into the wilderness, where anger and violence reside unfettered and threatening. Where our task for too long has been to distinguish between good and evil, oppression and liberation, falsehood and Truth.

Yet I have such faith in John that I felt accompanied in this frightening journey. I knew somehow, hoped really, that to be included at all in the good news of Jesus Christ this evangelist had some redemptive, not reportorial purpose. That all anger is not the same.

Like many of you I grew up in a home in which anger was judged to be wrong. One simply was not allowed to lose one’s temper. And so from an early age my body began to store and repress and sublimate anger.

And like many of you I have spent many dollars and much time processing this distortion and stunting of growth. Anger is a valid emotion and it can be constructive or destructive.

After events of this past year, and especially after recent outbreaks of falsehood and violence, there is a lot of anger, just as there is a lot of fear. One insight is that wherever there is anger expressed there is a hurt, a loss, a fear, just on the other side of that coin. The issue is whether the anger is justifiable. And justice or justification in theology is always related to love and compassion and mercy.

What might Jesus be responding to?

To cause his outburst and his taking up of a whip like a weapon? 

The temple scene had become loud, chaotic, frantic and mercenary. That is not to say that those engaged in selling animals for sacrifice or coins for worship did not feel they were engaging in practices which the religious law called for. It is to say however that religion, worship, prayer had become overridden and obscured by commercial enterprise, selfish endeavor and transactional inequalities.

Enter the ten commandments and the condemnation of idolatry. 

The other side of worshipping idols is worshipping the Prince of Peace, the true and very God.

It seems to me that Jesus in his anger is calling us out of idolatry and selfish endeavors to a difficult but holy truth. Moreover as St Paul reminds us, Jesus’ wisdom is difficult to comprehend and different from earthly choices.

And so is Jesus’ anger. It is redemptive. It is liberating. It points to true salvation. 

It is unlike our anger often is. It does not destroy that which is good or that which is of love. It furthers the mission of God, the Kingdom of God as opposed to any personal goals or desires. 

In this scene, as discomfiting as it is, Jesus points to Truth and the Way. He points to the true temple and the road to salvation, which is not of bricks and mortar, is not a bargaining chip, and is fraught with moments of anger which expose that which desecrates in order to enlighten that which is sacred.

Christ’s anger catches us up short and causes us to think differently and more reverently about the effect of buying and selling, the threat of idolatry, and the true meaning of religion. 

One of the consistencies between the Old Testament and the New is the occurrence of God’s anger. It is always in the stream of and in furtherance of salvation history. Redemption is the divine lens through which all Jesus’s actions and teachings and stories ought be viewed.

I invite you to lean into the notion of redemptive anger. I invite you to the hope of a blessed righteousness determined by a merciful God.

Let us pray:

Almighty God:

“We fear that to allow for anger is to become less like you. Let us meet the God of the prophets. For you tell the truth. You hold fury at injustice. You, in embodied anger, flipped the temple tables. Would you help us to become faithful discerners of when to calm and when to rouse? Rejecting that anger which leads to bitterness or hatred of another, yet tapping into a righteous rage when that which you’ve created is under abuse and neglect. The dignity of creation demands our emotions. Make ours a beautiful rage.”

— from Cole Arthur Riley, @blackliturgies, on July 29, 2020