Sermon of the Month - February 2010
Feelings and Faith 5: Anger & Frustration
Readings: Ephesians 4:22-32; Matthew 5:21-26; John 2:12-17
Introduction
Anger and frustration – very common experiences, aren’t they? You know, they say that we British still are known for our ‘stiff upper lip’. And for men it’s especially true: you shouldn’t be emotional, they say, you shouldn’t cry, they say. And when it comes to religion, it’s even more often said, don’t be emotional! If you’re happy and you know it – keep it to yourself! That’s why “happy-clappy” is such a sneer word against churches where people do express their emotions of joy. And then, what if the person next to you is crying in church, how do you feel? Uncomfortable? Just imagine you are that person crying. I’ve known people who stop coming to church, because if they do, God will touch them so much that they can’t suppress their emotions any longer, they will cry, and the look on other people’s faces of disapproval or discomfort is just too much for them.
It seems as if we – especially we British men – are supposed to suppress all emotions, and (and I know things have changed a bit), but generally we still do suppress these emotions. But there’s one great exception: anger; anger and frustration. That’s the one exception. That’s the one emotion men are allowed to have and express. Indeed, go to the football match, or rugger, and that anger will be frequently expressed: “The Ref must have been blind!” and so on. You can be macho, manly, strong, British and all the rest of it, but this emotion of anger and frustration is the one you’re allowed to express to the full.
1. Justifying anger
We have our justifications. It’s in our genes. It’s the way we were brought up. But the trickiest one is the one that comes in Christian circles: it’s righteous anger, righteous indignation, righteous wrath. It’s a passion of justice. Jesus after all turned the tables of the money-changers in the temple. John comments, that his disciples remembered that it is written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” And so we have Christians justifying their anger at all sorts of things on the basis that they, too, are like Jesus. ‘Zeal for God’s right ways consumes me.’ Now let me get more controversial here: we have these people in the United States who have violently attacked abortion clinics and doctors, and they justify their actions on the basis that it’s righteous anger against sin.
It’s not just in the States. It happens here. You remember all the hysteria whipped up by The News of The World a few years back against paedophiles, which resulted in chaotic frenzied anger expressed against a paediatrician, a doctor caring for children, just because her professional title began with the syllable ‘paed-’. It’s not just in the world. It happens in churches. People think that God’s will is supreme, and that that they should campaign for the fulfilment of it. But what if someone gets in the way? The minister, or the youth leader or the deacons or whoever, for example. He or she may not see things the same way, and stop what this Christian is sure is God’s will, and they get angry. And they say this is righteous anger. My anger is God’s anger. So the minister or whoever has to be removed. I am angry for God.
Not let’s be honest about this: this is not straightforward. Christians definitely express both sides of the argument here. Verse 2 of BPW 534 gets pretty close to encouraging us to be angry: “Jesus Christ is raging,/ raging in the streets,/ where injustice spirals/ and real hope retreats./ Listen, Lord Jesus,/ I am angry too:/ in the kingdom’s causes/ let me rage with you.” Let be honest with you: I have real difficulties with that verse. At one level it seems right: all those Old Testament prophets, they rail against injustice and corruption. And we too should follow their example: we should be passionately against injustice and corruption, against greed and sin. But as soon as we read what the Bible says about anger, we see we have a major challenge here.
2. The Bible on anger
If you want to know in a sentence what the Bible thinks and says about anger it’s pretty clear: it’s against it! Most of the time it’s not nuanced at all. Let’s just quote some verses to illustrate this:
Psalm 37:8 says, Refrain from anger and turn from wrath; do not fret – it leads only to evil.
Proverbs 16:32: Better a patient man than a warrior, a man who controls his temper than one who takes a city.
James 1:19 says: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to becoming angry, for man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.
Jesus himself, of course classed anger with murder, in the Sermon on the Mount: I tell you that anyone who is angry with his brother will be subject to judgment...Anyone who says ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.
It’s not just Jesus who comes out with this link between our inner motives and murder. 1 John 3:11ff., tells us we need love not hatred, and goes straight to the example of Cain who mudered his brother Abel. Why? John points to the contrast betwen them, and explains it as hatred: Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him. In Genesis 4:6 God challenges Cain at exactly this point: Then the Lord said to Cain, ‘Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? When we lose our temper we lose other things as well, our reasonableness, and our joy.
Simon Peter was a disciple who found it difficult to stop his explosion of anger. When Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus, and Jesus was arrested, Simon Peter got his sword out and cut off the servant’s ear. Jesus immediately stopped him in his tracks. Not only, as Luke records, did he heal the servant, he rebuked Peter: Put you sword back in its place, for all who draw the sword will die by the sword.
Two other disciples, James and John, had the nickname ‘sons of thunder’, no doubt because of fiery tempers. Luke records that when a Samaritan village spurned Jesus and his disciples because they were heading towards the hated city of Jerusalem, James and John blurted out, Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to destroy them?’ But Jesus turned and rebuked them.
In fact it’s the transformation of such people, not to mention the change of Saul of Tarsus, from murderous bigot to apostle of love, that demonstrates the heart of the gospel in practice.
3. The Alternative
If for the Bible, the expression of anger and frustration is so fraught with danger, so characteristic of a slide into violence and worse, what is the Bible’s alternative?
Well here we are back into the challenge of the fruit of the Spirit. That shouldn’t actually surprise us. When Paul summarises the characteristcs of a life lived according to the sinful nature, our flesh, our unredeemed lives, half-way through the list of vices he continues: hatred, discord, jealousy, fits of rage, selfish ambition dissentions, factions and envy; they’re part of that slide into violence and ultimately murder, which Jesus speaks of.
But the alternatives and the strength to fight against these all too human tendencies also come from the middle of the list of fruit of the Spirit: peace, patience. These, like all the fruit of the Spirit are aspects of Christlike love growing in our lives.
4. Peace
So this is true with peace: peace, like all the fruit of the Spirit, is one aspect of love. Now it is peace with God, and living according to the dynamics of it that leads, that must lead, to peace with one another. So we should not be surprised that 1 John, having given us the problem of anger, violence and murder, gives us the solution as love, first in chapter 3 (v.16) in Jesus, then in chapter 4: If anyone says ‘I love God’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar (vv.20-21).
5. Patience
Patience is another expression of love. One side of this is patience, the kind of patient forbearance that resists hostile reaction, and puts up with hostility, praying with such forbearance that God will transform the people showing the hostility. The example of Saul of Tarsus transformed into Paul, the apostle of love we have already mentioned. Jesus’ words guiding us to change from ‘an eye for an eye’ to ‘turn the other cheek’. That’s one side: patience as forbearance. Another closely realted side is patience as perseverance. There are many sides of this that would take us into other themes – patient, persevering prayer, for example. Both sides of this patience: forbearance and perseverance are shown above all in Jesus, as Peter tells us in his first letter: Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example ... When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. (see 1 Peter 2:20b-25).
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