t’s just about spring. We
know what that means! We arm ourselves with pails and sponges, and powerful
chemicals to exterminate the ugly dust bunnies that have gorged themselves
during the long winter months. Yesterday, for instance, more awesome than
clipping our dachshund’s toenails, more surprising than straight A’s, more
astounding than setting the table, was my daughter’s cleaning of her room. It
is no more a health hazard, no more a hard hat area. Spring has brought new
energy to clean in our home.
Lent parallels
spring cleaning. As we clean the dust bunnies and reclaim our homes, so
during the season of Lent do we seek to clean up our spiritual, inner lives.
The Bible says in Hebrews 12: “Let us rid ourselves of everything that gets
in the way, and of the sin which holds on to us so tightly.”
That’s what we’re doing each Sunday at EUMC during Lent; we’re looking at the
deadliest sins in our culture, families, and congregation, so that we can
truly be rid of them. The writer of Hebrews goes on to tel us how we can be
free from our deadly sins: “Let us keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, on whom
our faith depends.” That means that no one can single-handedly get rid of
what binds us so tightly. Only Jesus can free us and make us more
Christ-filled.
Today we’re going to
look at the deadly sin that we watched on our televisions in the past two
weeks. The Boston Bruins are playing the Vancouver Canuks. Marty McSorley
and Donald Brashear have exchanged some angry words. Broken up, they
continued the game. But quite unexpectedly, McSorley skated up from behind
and swung his stick like a baseball bat at Brashear’s neck. The player
crumpled to the ice with a concussion. That’s what anger does.
Tony Campolo tells
about a time when he was ten years old and returning from a rodeo at the
Philadelphia Convention Center. The next day he wore his Texas cowboy hat so
all the kids in the neighborhood could admire it. Unexpectedly, an older boy
twice his size grabbed his prize hat and ran off with it. Hysterically,
Campolo chased after the boy to get his cowboy hat back. Suddenly, the bully
stopped and pinned him to the ground. Then just to be mean, the bully torn
his hat in half.
Campolo says that as
he lay there helpless and in tears, he experienced an unforgettable surge of
rage. The adrenalin generated almost superhuman strength and he pushed his
enemy off and lept on his back, scratching his face. He fell to the ground
and the bully’s head accidentally hit the curb and he was unconscious.
Campolo said that at the time anger took over him, he no longer cared and
began kicking him. And if two men had not rushed to stop him, he might have
kicked him to death.
A man caught in
California traffic was bumped from behind. Infuriated, the man bolted from
his SUV and stormed back to the other driver. When Sara opened her window to
apologize, the man reached in and grabbed her little fluffy white dog by the
collar and threw it into three lands of oncoming traffic.
So dangerous is the
deadly sin of anger, that the US Department of Transportation now says that
road rage alone causes more than 8,000 deaths each year and leaves over one
million of us maimed. Anger has now contributed to ranking murder as the #2
cause of death among our kids.
“Fear an angry
king,” the writer of Proverbs warns, “as your would a growling lion; making
him angry is suicide.”
It didn’t take too many royal funeral services to convince the writer of how
deadly anger can be.
The Old Testament
writers used two words to describe anger. The first word is the same word
used for nose or anger. In their language, anger literally means “to have
pregnant nostrils.” Isn’t that an interesting way to put it? They noticed
that when people get mad, their nostrils flared. Remember that passage about
God being merciful and slow to anger? Well, literally translated, it comes
out, “God is merciful and long of nose.”
The second word for anger in the Bible is “to burn or grow hot.” We know what
that word means because we still get hot under the collar, get hotheaded and
boiling mad.
Probably the most
common image for anger is fire—blazing, flaming, scorching, smoking, fuming,
spitting, smoldering, heated, white hot, simmering, and boiling. Like flames,
anger may explode in rage, or it may smolder for a long time unnoticed. But
eventually if anger is not confronted with the saving grace of Jesus, it burns
its way through our whole being—into our words, our actions, and even our
gestures.
Anger howls and
screams. When anger grips us, our eyes blaze, our bodies to stiffen, our
fingers point, and our teeth grind. In anger we fling words and those words
have a way of finding unintended targets. As one writer said, “if we are
spraying the whole landscape with gunshot, the odds are that we will core a
hit somewhere.” Anger is deadly because it turns friends—even family
members—into enemies.
Of course, not all
anger is bad, however. It’s called “righteous indignation.” Jesus
once got so torqued that he made a cord of ropes into a whip and drove the
money-grabbers out of worship. He was angered at commercialism aimed at the
poor. Yes, we should get mad when we discover landlords in our community
charging poor people high rent for houses in deplorable condition.
We should get angry
when our criminal justice system locks a black man away for fourteen years
only to admit later that it was a case of mistaken identity.
We should get mad
when we hear of drug-trafficking and crack houses, and drive by shootings.
Let’s review the
kinds of anger. First, there is Powder Keg anger. We’ve all
experienced this kind of anger. It was this explosive kind of anger that got
to Gabel Taylor. In an act of rage, he knocked off another man. The USA
Today reported that Gabel became angry when he lost a Bible-quoting contest;
so he just wiped out the competition. When this kind of anger teams up with
alcohol, it leaves black eyes, broken bones, scalded skin, and death.
If Powder Keg anger
is dangerous, then Crock Pot anger is just as bad. This anger just
sits in us simmering all day, all week, all month before finally exploding.
In Ephesians 4, Paul warns, “If you become angry, do not let your anger
lead you into sin, and do not stay angry all day.”
I think there is a
kind of anger reserved just for moms and golfers. You moms know what I’m
talking about when junior has dumped his glass of milk over for the fifth
time! That’s frustrating anger. And you golfers know the frustration of
having belted the ball 270 yards down the fairway, only to moan because it was
on the other fairway not yours!
I want to speak
about anger a little closer to home. All youth, please listen especially to
this: when you treat your parents without honor, when you call them
derogatory names, you humiliate them. And that opens the door for anger to
slip in. Just know that when you dishonor your parents experience anger
because they are humiliated. They has been willing to sacrifice so much of
themselves for you, that they become angry.
Some of you have
just returned from a ski weekend with Shane Claiborne. I’ve heard from you
that it was a great time. Just remember that the weekend means very little if
it doesn’t change the way you relate to mom and dad. There’s a lot of
pent-up anger in parents who have been humiliated by their kids. They feel
helpless.
Here’s my
translation of Ephesians 6: “Young adults, it is your Christian duty to
respect and honor your father and mother, and it is the first commandment that
has a promise added: so that all may go well with you.”
Okay? Youth-types out there: don’t give anger a chance to hurt your family
members. Ask God to give you honor, not angry words when you’re talking to
mom and dad.
Parents, some of you
have come to me about your kids. I’m not professional family therapist, but I
do know what the next verse says. “Parents, do not treat your children in
such a way as to make them angry.” That means don’t punish or discipline your
kids in front of their peers. They will experience loss of self esteem and
humiliation. Do the best to speak with your family members when anger is at a
low level.
How do we remove the
hook of anger and hate from our lives?
First,
anger will happen. Paul says, “be angry, but don’t sin.”
That means the impulse to be angry is not sin, but how we handle the anger.
It is the mismanagement of anger that we need to confess.
Second,
don’t try to get even. God is the judge; God will make sure that justice will
happen either in this life or the next. We’re not God.
Third,
Jesus says love your enemies. Karl Barth defines the enemy as anyone who
tempts you to return evil for evil. That enemy can be your spouse or your son
or daughter. Through forgiveness, God gives us the power to love and forgive
our enemies. Grace given to us is always on its way to someone else. When we
hate, when we nurse anger, we block it from not only our own lives, but from
someone else who needs it. “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those
who trespass against us.
Victor
Frankl, was imprisoned in one of Hitler’s concentration camps. He was
stripped of all his dignity, abused, and tortured. He was starved and forced
into slave labor. There were many in the concentration camp who didn’t
survive, but not because they were thrown into gas chambers, but because they
found that survival was intolerable. They were eaten up with rage against
their oppressors. They were humiliated by their Nazi captors and they finally
chose to die. They just gave up living.
But Victor
Frankl had another answer. It’s as old as the Sermon on the Mount. He
decided to do good for those who had wronged him. As Jesus said, “You shall
love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you, “Love your enemies
and pray for those who persecute you.”
When his
captors told him to scrub latrines with a toothbrush, he would do it twice.
He did it once for them and once to exercise his freedom from anger.
Take out
your bulletin as we close. I want you to rip this prayer from the bulletin
and take it with you this week. Memorize it and let it defuse anger and open
you up to an instrument of healing:
O Lord, make me an instrument of your Peace
Where there is hatred let me sow love;
Where there is injury, pardon;
Where there is doubt, faith,
Where there is despair, hope;.
Where there is darkness, light;
Where there is sadness, joy.
Amen.
