An Angry Spirituality

Matthew 5:21-26

We’ve been talking about why Jesus matters.  Today, let me say it up front.  Jesus matters because of his angry spirituality.  He models for us an anger that is borne by love.  He shows us the energy available to those who live with hopeful anger.  So I want to convince you that there’s a difference between productive anger and destructive anger.  There’s a difference between anger fueled by hope and anger fueled by a kind of hopelessness.  When Jesus invites us to follow him, he is inviting us away from poisonous anger towards an anger that is full of love.  This is important for us to hear.  Jesus does not invite us to a way of life that avoids anger at all costs.  He invites us into a life that is angry in the right ways.  Anger is often our way of praying, hoping, and working for a world of love.

If you’re never angry, I’m worried about you.  The absence of worry, of agitation, of irritation, of frustration -- this can be a warning sign that you have grown apathetic and tired and cynical.  The lack of anger can be a sign that you’re done fighting, or not willing to fight.  It may be a sign that you have been deceived by a campaign of misdirection -- this is always what the powerful do to distract the public from the unfairness of their advantage.  A lack of anger may be a sign that you have looked away from the poor, that you have settled for a world that is broken and unjust and unloving.

For 30 years, 80 million Egyptians lived under the rule of Hosni Mubarak.  Mubarak resigned this week not because he had a sudden and unexplained change of heart!  He resigned because his people channeled their anger in productive ways.  They expressed their love of their country by means of an angry criticism of the current political regime.  They were angry that the life offered to them robbed them of possibilities and potential.  And for 18 days, that anger emerged in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and in a few other Egyptian cities.  It was a dangerous anger, a courageous anger, an illegal anger.  After all, Egyptians had no political “right” to express themselves in opposition to Mubarak’s rule over them.  The continual presence of the military tanks and armed personnel were meant as a threat to go home and be quiet.  Then the arrival of the hired thugs on horseback and camel back were yet another threat.  Finally, Mubarak’s last-ditch refusal to leave was a threat that he might just survive to punish all those who opposed him.  These protests couldn’t have lasted 18 days without the fuel of their anger.  Their anger was a sign of love and hope for a better life, with more freedom.

That’s fruitful, productive anger.  But not all our anger is like that.  Let’s look at Jesus’ warning about destructive anger.  The Sixth Commandment says, “You shall not murder.”  And Jesus takes up this command early on in the Sermon on the Mount in order to teach his followers what God wants.  And what God wants is not just a human community that refrains from murdering one another. (Though that would be a good start!  Some radicalized groups still see murderous violence against their enemies as something God blesses).  What God wants is people whose hearts are oriented to their neighbors in love.

Jesus focuses not on external behavior alone.  He shows an intense interest in matters of the heart, the interior landscape of desire, the often invisible terrain of anger.  While the Sixth Commandment warns us, “You shall not murder,” Jesus sharpens the warning.  God is creating a community whose lives are an expression of love for our neighbors.  What matters is not just what others can see, but what God alone can see in the movement of your heart.  Our interior lives, our imaginations, our desires -- all this matters to God.

When we’re angry with others, we set ourselves against them and relate to them as enemies or opponents.  Keep living that way, and you’ll miss what God wants to do in you and around you.

Destructive anger is poisonous anger.  And it is unhealthy because it can eat you alive.  Angry hearts don’t stand still.  They warp and deform and corrupt us.  They eat away at our capacities to love.  Here’s how Jesus pictures the dynamic.  Notice the poetic and insightful description 

1. if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment

2. if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council

3. if you say, “You fool,” you will be liable to the hell of fire

So let’s take a moment and ask ourselves how this destructive anger is manifest in our lives.  There is a quiet anger in some of us that never comes to expression.  This is the anger of people who want to appear polite and well-adjusted on the surface.  Then there is a hateful anger that begins to express itself in insults said about a third party who is not present.  To speak negatively about someone behind their back is a common form this takes.  Finally, there is the pointed anger that erupts in violent language shouted directly to another person -- “You fool.”  (Your word of choice might differ).

Jesus warns us that our anger towards others is a mortal sin - it can damn you to hell.  Is our destructive anger really all that bad?  Yes, because it is the failure of neighborliness.  The frustration of God’s dream for the world God loves.  If we see our angry hearts as no big deal, it is only because we have not yet caught sight of God’s arriving kingdom.  We as Jesus’ followers are to be a sign that love and care for our neighbors is the future God is bringing towards us.

God cares more about your angry, broken relationships than about whether you go to church.  In fact, going to church when you’re not willing to turn away from our angry grudges and revenge fantasies is the worst thing we could possibly do.  Because going to church provides a veneer of religiosity that provides cover for the darkness and hatred we harbor in our hearts.  Jesus tells a little story that is exaggerated and comical.  If you find yourself walking into the Temple area to make a sacrificial offering to God while you’re in an estranged relationship -- don’t do it!  It’s ridiculous, says Jesus, to spend your energy trying to make things right with God when things aren’t right with other people in your life.  DON’T think to yourself -- Well, let me just go ahead and make my offering to God, and then after that I’ll go make things right with others.  NO, says Jesus.  Drop your gift right there.  Laying your grain offering or goat or doves down in a busy crush of people looks silly.  But not as silly as tending to God while harboring a murderous heart. 

The work of the kingdom is not attending religious services.  The work of the kingdom is the work of love.  So if you have to choose between going to church and patching things up in a broken relationship, go find that person and make it right.  You can come back to church another week.  Spend your energy restoring your relationships, not keeping up religious appearances.

And just in case there is someone listening to Jesus who isn’t sure they’re ready for the costly work of love, Jesus has one more warning.  Time is of the essence.  The kingdom is arriving right now.  And God is inviting us into the kingdom’s newness.  But those who dilly-dally may never make it.  If you don’t grab the kingdom when it comes.  If you don’t follow Jesus the minute he bids you come.  You might miss the boat.  As Jesus put the matter in metaphorical terms: it’s like a legal dispute that’s already on its way to court.  You’ve got a few minutes to get with the other party and hammer out an agreement.  If you don’t do it right now, the judge might find against you, and throw you in jail.  And its next to impossible to get things fixed at that point.

What is it that will change us if we have a murderous, angry heart?  Our anger and hatred of others can run deep.  It can spread its tentacles into every feature of our lives.  So we know that just trying harder to relinquish that anger won’t work.  Only an experience of God’s merciful, forgiving love enables us to change.  Nothing else will.  Until we have experienced God’s loving presence in our lives, we will probably not be able to extend this kind of reconciling, forgiving, merciful love to others.  Here’s the truth.  God isn’t angry with you.  In fact Jesus comes among us to show us that God isn’t angry with us.  Jesus is willing to go forward into torture, humiliation, suffering and death to show us God’s love.  And it is only this experience of being unraveled and overwhelmed by God’s love that can free us to love our neighbors.

Now we can’t stop with destructive anger.  Let’s turn now to anger that is fruitful and productive.  So here’s the question: What kind of anger is fitting in God’s arriving kingdom?

Consider Jesus’ life and ministry.  Anger was an important feature of Jesus’ work.  Jesus is angered by all who resist God’s arriving kingdom.  Jesus is angry with all who make life difficult for the poor in spirit.  For Jesus, anger is the corollary of love.  He is angry because he loves.   Jesus doesn’t teach that anger is wrong.  He does something much more interesting.  He calls us to get rid of our murderous hearts so that we’ll have more room for the right kind of anger.

I won’t belabor the point.  Let me just give you two examples.

Jesus’ contentious arguments with the religious authorities come to a sharp peak when Jesus enters Jerusalem’s temple area (ch. 21).  He enters the sacred Temple and furiously upends the tables of those exchanging money and those selling animals.  They weren’t, technically speaking, doing anything wrong.  Yet what was meant to be a holy place, a place expressive of trust and reverence for God, had become something far less.  And just in case we’re in doubt about how angry Jesus was, Matthew follows up this Temple scene with Jesus cursing a fig tree with no figs.  That’s why he was angry in the Temple: God’s people are to be fruitful with love and good deeds.  We’re not to use religious habits as cover for our selfishness. 

Chapter 23 is a collection of Jesus’ angry threats against the Scribes and Pharisees.  Six times Jesus utters an angry challenge, something that sounds like a curse: “Woe to you.”  “Woe to you, you hypocrites.”  “Woe to you, you blind guides.”  And if you want to kindle God’s anger, all you have to do is block the flow of goods that God intends for the poor in spirit.  Anyone, and anything, that resists God’s desire to bless the poor in spirit will be, in Jesus’ words, “liable to the hell of fire.”

Now, what will it take for you to live with the same energetic passion that fueled Jesus himself?  It’s not as complicated as you might think.  In fact, those of us who gather in his name, who share a meal in which we’re fed by his brokenness - we are promised God’s Spirit so that we can be for our neighborhoods the hands and feet and voice of Jesus Christ.  Churches are nothing more, and nothing less, than humble, fragile, messy, powerful continuations of Jesus’ ministry.

Sister Joan Chittister is a Roman Catholic nun.  And a feminist.  So you might guess that she lives with a bit of frustration with the church that she loves and serves.  She says this: “Don’t let people talk you out of your anger.  Strong emotions like anger can give us the energy we need to change the world.”  I agree.  Don’t trust anyone who tries to tell you to get rid of your anger.  They’re likely threatened.  They’re threatened because they like the status quo - they want things to stay the same.  This happens in families.  This happens in workplaces.  This happened for too long in Egypt.  Jesus bids us to live forward facing, turning into the future of God’s arriving kingdom.  Anger is the way we inhabit this conflict, energetically on the side of the poor in spirit.  Cultivating the right kind of anger is the only thing that will enable you to fight for God’s peace, justice, and love to come on earth, as it is in heaven.

Let me ask you - what does it mean to be a spiritual person? Let me predict for you the answers you’ll get from others.  Those who like things how they are, those who are afraid of change, will tell you that spirituality always means forbearance, quietness, patience, and passivity.  Those who want a better world, a world with more sharing, a world with more hospitality, more justice, more love - they will tell you, the poor in spirit will tell you -- the spirituality of Jesus is an angry spirituality.  It’s an energetic life of resistance and criticism, never satisfied until the world has become the world of God’s love, shared by all.

I have struggled with anger in my life, and not the good kind.  I get angry when I lose.  I hold angry grudges against people I see as “fools” (I’ll use Jesus’ word here!).  I’m easily frustrated by my 4, 7, and 10 year olds, often because they’re acting like 4, 7, and 10 year olds.  I can be sent into a rage by any kind of device, machine, or contraption that is supposed to work but doesn’t.  As a twelve year old who earned money mowing lawns, I was not above kicking the living daylights out of a mower that wouldn’t work. 

But I’ve occasionally been angry for the right reasons, and so have you of course.  I spent nine years learning and working at Yale in New Haven.  There is considerable tension between the wealthy university and the struggling, poor, crime ridden neighborhoods of New Haven.  And the University is by far the largest employer in New Haven.  Yet in its labor negotiations the University was squeezing its clerical and technical and janitorial support, in order to lower their costs.  Yale wanted to grow at the expense of its neighbors.  So many of us as students and teaching assistants felt that our role as cheap labor for the University placed us on the side of these workers.  So when the service workers went on strike to protest the stinginess of Yale’s labor contracts, many of us banded with them and went on strike as well.  

My pay was tied to my teaching.  And teaching jobs were sometimes hard to come by.  You needed the good graces of the professor to hire you for a course.  During the spring of the strike I was teaching a history course.  So the professor taught two lectures a week on Monday and Wednesday, and I led the discussion sections on Thursday and Friday.  A few weeks into the semester I walked into the Professor’s office to tell him I was going on strike, and would not be teaching his sections as long as the strike lasted.  He would have to teach his own sections.  I already knew that this professor did not support this strike.  So I fidgeted, my hands were sweaty, my voice was shaky.  What I read in his eyes was, “How dare you do this to me when I gave you this job!”  I wasn’t doing anything special.  Thousands of workers and students did the same thing - most of them taking bigger risks than I was.  But still, I could not have taken this risk without anger.  We were angry that certain kinds of work, like intellectual work and administrative work, were valued and paid at one level.  And that other kinds of work, like cleaning and repairing buildings and serving meals, were valued less and paid less.  We wanted those who live and work in New Haven to have a share in Yale’s success.

Here at Incarnation we’re in a fight.  We’re fighting without fighting, as Ghandi put it.  We’re fighting without recourse to violence, as Jesus put it.  We’re fighting for the freedom to live in a world of love.  We are working and praying for a world where we and our neighbors are free to love God and one another.  It’s that simple.  And it’s that large.  May we leave here with the anger borne of love, the anger of Jesus Christ, as we live in hope for God’s love to win.