Don’t Get Angry

Summary

 

March 29, 2020

Don’t Get Angry

The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

Scripture Text: Matthew 5: 21-26

“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, “You shall not murder”; and “whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.” But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, “You fool”, you will be liable to the hell of fire. So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift. Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him, or your accuser may hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you will be thrown into prison. Truly I tell you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.”

As we are entering week three of shelter at home and self-quarantine, the possibility of frustration and patience wearing thin is rather high.  In fact, it might just be a guarantee.  So a teaching of Jesus about anger might be the most appropriate or the most frustrating.  Hard to say.

Before we venture into this unknown, let me make one thing clear.  Jesus’ teaching about anger is not a call for you to suppress anger or manage anger or deny anger.  We all do and we all will get angry.  The teaching here is: How do we become slow to anger?

As we work through the parts of the passage today, I want you keep an image in mind.  It is a handy image for anger.  Think of a dial with numbers one to ten. One is frustration or annoyance, ten is rage.  A lot of what we are going to consider today is this: how do we gain the ability to not turn the dial? We do turn this dial.  What if we were to gain the power to resist turning our frustration into anger and our anger into rage?

To do this I want to give you three myths about anger.  There are three really big misconceptions about anger that shape our lives and if we know them and see them, our life will change for the better, we may, in essence resist the temptation to turn the dial.  If we can resist this temptation, we will live better; we will be saved from the self-destruction of anger.

The first myth of anger is that you have a right to anger, you have a right to be angry.  We know this and trust this.  This confidence in anger forms the basis of categorically bad advice, that is all too common.  We have all heard, said, or most likely both: “you should be angry.”  Or, “You need to get angry.”  The right to be angry is behind the question, “How are you not angry about this?”

From this right we tell people, “Don’t take that!”  Or, “You need to give that person a piece of your mind.”  Which both may be very true.  We are not required to endure bad behavior and there are certainly times we need to speak up.  But anger is not necessary.  In fact, when it comes to protest, to opposition, to speaking your mind anger is a very bad thing. Anger will garble your words and overwhelm the truth.  You may have said, “All I can hear is your anger.”

In our Constitution there are a series of rights in the first amendment.  The right to speak, the right to assemble, the freedom of the press.  Each of these implies anger, but they do not make it right, or more importantly, a right.  We generally don’t worry about the right to speak if the person is saying nice things; we don’t worry about a gathering of people if they are happy; we don’t have much concern for a press that speaks complimentary words.  The right is in the need to critique, to oppose, to fight against.  All of these are sacrosanct in our nation; yet, none are about anger.  We do not have a right to be angry.  Speak, protest, gather, write?  Yes.  Be angry?  No.

The second myth is that anger gets things done.  That anger is a positive force for change and action is a myth; it is not true.  Anger is an energy for sure, but it is only a negative one.  Anger is not a positive energy.  If you want to tear things down, burn things down, destroy things, you can tap into the energy of anger.  But anger does not create nor sustain good things.  Hence, anger does not get things done that are positive.

More importantly here anger is a dangerous energy.  Consider power tools.  I have a lot of power tools.  Love them.  I have circular saws, routers, a table saw, a jig saw, a reciprocating saw.  And power drills?  Lots of them.  Drywall drill, cordless and corded drills.  My favorite drill, though, is my hammer drill.  It is really big and it makes holes in cinderblock and concrete.  Power!

Having all these tools though comes with a rule.  If I make a mistake in a project, then I stop entirely.  Even if I just started working on something, I walk away from the tools if I cut the wrong side or measured mistakenly.  I do because the mistake tells me I am too tired or unfocused to handle the power within the tools.  My day job is best performed with ten fingers and two eyes, I need not risk the danger.

And so it is with anger.  If you need to tear something down, demolish something, don’t do it with anger.  You will be at risk for injury.  The wild, out of control nature of anger is too risky; it is only destructive.  Convincing yourself otherwise is part of the power of anger to no longer think straight.

The third myth of anger is the one most likely to cause arguments.  The third myth is that there is righteous anger, or justified anger.  So not only is anger not a right, anger is not justified.

Often times when I say this, someone will raise their hand in a study and say, “Jesus got angry.  He cleared the temple and he was really angry.”  The logic here is that if Jesus got angry, so can we.  We are justified.  Our anger is just.

And I get that.  There is a strong logic here.  Only the text doesn’t say that.  Jesus cleared the temple; he had a whip according to John and drove the moneychangers from the temple.  Yet, never does it say, “Jesus got angry and then” or “in a rage he. . . .” We read in the anger.  It is not in the text.  The most any of the gospels every write about Jesus and anger is in Mark when it says, the disciples annoyed him, he was frustrated by them.  But anger, it is just not there.

Most of our belief though about righteous anger comes from an intriguing insertion in a translation of the bible.  In 1611 King James of England received and approved an English translation of the bible for the people of his kingdom.  It will forever be known as the King James Version.  This is a masterpiece of English literature as it was written during the time of Shakespeare.  Yea thou I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for thou art with me, thy rod, thy staff they comfort me.  Beautiful verse, a beautiful translation.  All others since sound clunky and stilted.

Yet, in addition to the poetic license the translators also felt the need to insert a phrase.  In our reading today, in the King James Version, the translators wrote, but I say unto you that whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of judgement.  The insertion is “without a cause”.  Sometimes it was written “without just cause.”

Well that changes everything.  Don’t be angry, unless you have reason to be.  Don’t be angry, unless the person deserves your anger.  Don’t be angry unless anger is what must be.  That pretty much justifies all anger.  For at some point we can convince ourselves we are right about anything.

For more than 400 years the Bible, because of the insertion “without a cause”, shaped our culture our thinking our faith about anger.  In many ways we can trace our trust of anger to this tiny mistake in translation.

The topic of righteous anger, or the anger of God, is a whole different direction that would require many sermons.  Our focus today is our anger, not God’s.  How we turn the dial.  Mostly what we need to remember is that Jesus says, anger is destructive.  Don’t trust anger, don’t follow it, don’t seek to keep it. Don’t turn that dial no matter how right confident you may feel.

Let’s spend some time with the passage to be sure we too don’t imply or insert something that is not here.

There are three key teachings here.  Anger condemns us, or makes our life bad.  Hence if you are angry you are liable for judgment he says.  If you insult or ridicule (use words born of anger) we are liable to reprimand or to the hell of fire.  In other words anger is a path to destruction.

Instead of this path Jesus says, resolve your conflicts. Come to terms quickly he says.  And then the third key: there is a series of steps with anger- kind of like the dial.  The steps are judgment, prison, and punishment.  It may just be me, but this is not a positive image; Jesus is not painting an ambiguous image of anger.  Anger is a path that leads to destruction.  Don’t follow it. Don’t turn the dial.  One thing leads to the next and then to the next, none of which are good.  Judgement, prison, punishment: the path of anger.

One more piece about our passage today.  Like the teaching last week, this one is unique.  The teaching about anger is the first of six steps so it is not unique in that it is part of a set.  From anger Jesus will teach on desire and then disdain.  After disdain he will teach about delusion and vengeance.  Finally, the sixth step of this set is hatred.  Each time Jesus will say, “you have heard it said . . . but I say to you.”

Our passage today is unique in that it is the first teaching in the Sermon on the Mount where Jesus tells us to do something.  The nine beatitudes, the salt and light, the law and the prophets all proceed this teaching.  But those are descriptions, things we are, things we must be.  The teaching about anger is unique in that it is the first thing to do.  Yes, five more things to do will follow. But this is the first one.  The first step and thus unique.

This is important, crucial to a faithful life, this first step.  For truly, the rejection of anger, losing confidence in anger, no longer seeing it as a right, a tool, a justification, losing this is the first step of salvation, freedom.

In American Protestant religion and tradition, we often identify the first step of salvation as the sinner’s prayer.  We confess our sins and accept Jesus as our Lord.  This is a tradition that goes back to the Puritan’s and their “anxious” or “sinner’s” bench.  It goes through the great revival tents of Kentucky and the burnt over district of New York.  The first step of faith as the sinner’s prayer is the single focus and purpose of the powerful Billy Graham Crusades that shaped the 20^th century.

And this is fine and well.  We need to confess our sins and Jesus is our Lord.  Yet, the sinner’s prayer is like being given a ticket, a place on the train or the ship, for a journey.  But it is not the journey.  The journey of faith, how we are to live unto freedom begins in our reading today.  This is the first step on the path.  And the path is going to get more and more difficult.  After anger we must put down the desire to control or possess.  Then we must put down disdain and disregard.  After disdain we must lose the delusion of arrogance and false confidence.  Only then do we confront vengeance, the need to strike back, to use violence, to be violent.  Lastly, we are given the challenge to love the enemy.

Here is the thing, you will never reach the end, the love of enemy, unless you start with losing the confidence we have in anger.  You have to stop turning the dial. And there is no skipping ahead.  We must walk the path.  Losing anger is the first step and as such it is the first step toward freedom.

I am not sure we are feeling very free today.  Cut off, maybe.  Closed in to be sure.  Not free to move about, definitely.  Although none of these are good or something to desire.  They do cast a powerful light.  This is what anger does, Jesus teaches.  Anger closes us off, burns bridges of connection, tears down the connections.  We can see this and feel this truth today.

Remember the dial.  One is frustration; ten is rage.  Keep that dial in mind this week.  Week three of being self-quarantined may prove a bit of stretch.  But it will get a lot worse, trust me, if we start turning up the dial.  We will all get frustrated; that is life.  But we all have a choice about turning up the dial.  We can come to see how it is never good.

To be slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love is the path of patience and compassion and faith Jesus bids us to follow.  In this path we will be saved from the destruction of anger.  But to keep up, to keep following him, we have to shed our confidence and trust in anger.

Amen.