James 1.17-27; Mark 7.1-8, 14-15,
21-23
I had
hoped—honestly—that now, in our Gospel readings, we had moved away from all
that bread imagery we’ve been hearing over the last several weeks, that we
would get a break this morning. Maybe some nice, sweet Gospel reading about
lambs or miracles. But…no.
Instead,
we get this reading from the Gospel of Mark. One of those finger-shaking
scriptures. That list
Jesus lays out at the end of the reading for today is a pretty strong and
straightforward one. And most of us can feel pretty
confident we’re free and clear for the most part.
After all, most of don’t steal,
don’t murder, don’t commit adultery, aren’t purposely wicked, are deceitful,
don’t slander A few we might not really understand:
avarice (which is just another word
for greed)?
licentiousness (which just means
immorality, being immoral)?
And folly?
What’s so horrible about folly? I’m guilty of that all the time.
But then,
there are a few we find might actually hit home a bit, such as Envy and Pride. All right. Yup. I stumble with those. I do.
What it is especially apt about this
morning’s Gospel reading is that Jesus takes these ugly things we are capable
of doing and uses them to engage fully the Pharisees and the scribes. He takes
their condemnation of him about cleanliness and keeps the conversation going
regarding cleanliness. He simply takes
the conversation up a notch.
You are
worried about what defiles the hands. I
am concerned with what defiles the heart.
The heart,
for Jewish people of Jesus’ day, was truly the center of one’s being. From the heart everything emanated. The heart directed
the mind. It directed our thoughts. If your heart was pure, then you were pure. If your heart was evil, then you did evil. If your heart is full of darkness, you live in
darkness. Because where your heart leads, your actions follow.
But one we
could easily add to this list is one we might not want to admit to. And the
only reason I even consider it in this context is because of our reading from
the Epistle of James today.
“Anger.”
Now, if we did add this to the list, then this
would win the prize with me. Now most of you know me as a pretty laid-back kind
of person for the most part. I don’t
seem to fly off the handle very often. Except
when I drive. Luckily, few of you have ever driven with me. And those few of
you who have, you don’t anymore.
I am an impatient and grouchy
driver. And the things I say—well, let’s just say, it’s best left between me
and Jesus.
But I don’t think there have been
too many people who have actually seen me completely lose it with anger. Once
or twice. But we all live with anger and
every so often I am forced to confront my own.
When I do, I
find myself experiencing anger in all its force. Anger can be all consuming. When it boils up from within, all other senses
seem to shut off. I see red. Like,
glaring red. It rages and roils and
knocks me—and anyone else around me—around, and in the midst of it, I find I am
not only angry, but almost scared by my own anger. Because it can be powerful.
Now, there is such thing as a kind
of righteous anger. By righteous here, I’m not talking about self-righteous. I’m
not talking about superior kind of anger. I’m talking about “right anger.” And
there really is such a thing.
Anger at injustice. Anger at
oppression and racism and sexism and homophobia and all the other ugly things out
there. Such anger can motivate us and
move us forward toward seeing justice and equality.
But…in such cases, we need to be very,
very careful with our anger. I need to be careful with my anger Because anger can be a powder keg. It can become something more—and something uncontrollable.
Which only, of course, leads me back
to our reading from St. James for this morning. This past week, our reading from James been a
special scripture that I have lived with:
“…be quick
to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger.”
He’s not saying you can’t be angry. Just
be careful with your anger. By being
slow with our anger, we kind of control it. Anger is something that needs to be
confronted and dealt with.
But uncontrolled anger needs to be
systematically slowed, because it is like poison in our systems. Anger can destroy us and those around us. And, as St. James says, “anger does not
produce God’s righteousness.” If we think that by acting out in anger we will
gain something, we won’t. The anger may
motivate it, but it cannot guide us or sustain us. If we think about our heart as the center of
our being—as the center of ourselves, we find that anger truly can poison the
heart and therefore the whole system.
When we continue to harbor anger in
our hearts, we become a slave to anger. And
if we are slave to anger, we can let love flourish. And if we cannot let love flourish, God cannot
come and dwell within us. We block out
God and we block out the Kingdom of God.
Anger does
not help the Kingdom break through into our midst. We are not helping build up the Kingdom when
anger rules us. So, these words of James speak strongly to us this morning.
“Be quick to listen, be slow to
speak”
We know how speaking sows the seeds
of anger. And if we’re speaking, we are
not listening. And sometimes, when we
listen—truly listen—we find that anger can be defused.
“Be slow to
anger”.
I have come
to conclusion that it is simply impossible to love God and to love our neighbor
as ourselves when we allow anger to rule and flourish, when the storms of anger
are raging within us. Anger prevents
love. It stifles love. It kills love.
Yes, we can be angry at injustice,
but we can’t let it kill love. We can angry at wrongness, but we can’t let it
dominate our lives and come between us and our relationship with God and one
another.
One of the best books I’ve ever read
about anger was a book called Anger
by the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh. There are so many
incredible nuggets of his wisdom in his book, but one of the best is one in
which explains that we do allow, at times, the seeds of anger to be watered
within us and that when we do that, our anger will grow into unruly weeds.
He also goes on to say that essentially
each of us have a wounded child within us. And it is this wounded child, with
her or his unhealed wounds, that often feed our adult anger. Because
when we’re angry, and we’ve seen this happen, we do often act like wounded
children. We cross our arms We get grumpy. We stomp our feet. We throw a
tantrum. I love that image!
Another wonderful image he uses is
that when we allow anger to fester and grow, our very selves become battlefields
between good and evil.
Thay’s advice to us is that we must
work hard at now allowing the seeds of our anger to be watered. We must strive, he says, to cultivate the
seeds of peacefulness and love within ourselves. We must nurture our wounded
child and help her or him to grow up. And
we most definitely must not let war rage within us. Because when it does, we
are the ones who continue to be hurt the most by our own anger. We are the ones
who are most hurt by our anger.
So, in addition to Thich Nhat Hanh, let
us listen to St. James from our epistle reading today. Let us
use his words as our own personal motto. Let his words speak in us. Let love squeeze out those festering seeds of anger
within us. And let us banish from our hearts—the center of our very beings—anything
that prevents love from reigning there. Let
us banish from it those vices—both easy to banish and difficult to banish—so
that the pureness and holiness and wholeness of Christ can reign within us. And if
we do, God’s love will settle upon the very center of our being and give us a
peace that no anger can destroy.
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