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I am sometimes angry about a great many things.
And so I struggle with the instructions we hear today from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
We hear four instructions this morning, and they are daunting. They begin the same way, with this formula:
“You have heard that it was said… But I say to you…”
“You have heard that it was said… But I say to you…”
Each time, the thing we have heard was a command from the Torah, from the Book of books, from the great gift of God to the people Israel, and the great gift of Israel to the world: a Book that illumines for us the majesty of the One God, and God’s intentions for the life of the whole world. “Happy are they…who walk in the law of the LORD!” the psalmist sings today. “Choose life!” we hear Moses say today, in Deuteronomy. To choose life one need only follow the mitzvot, the commandments of the Torah. If we keep the mitzvot, the Book of books says, then we will stay in the land, and the land will be abundant with life and peace.
“But I say to you…” Jesus says. He is a rabbi, he has read and studied the Torah, he chooses life. But he doubles down. He asks for more.
(I do want to digress for a moment, though, and note that in one of today’s commands, we see a surprising move in favor of sexual equality. One of the “You have heard that it was said” statements points to a sexist rule about divorce that was more about economic injustice than marital relations: men could divorce their wives, but not the other way around. Divorce in the time of Jesus could be literally life-ending for a woman, whose identity and well being depended on her legitimate economic connections to a man. So this new rule—no divorces—makes the most sense when we remember that context. Today, divorce plays a far different role in our economy, and in our human interactions. Sometimes, in our own day, divorce is the life-saving move, for both women and men. But we can still see that Jesus is asking a lot of us on this: he does not want us to be casual about our commitments to one another. He wants us to take each other very seriously.)
But even before we try to mine Jesus’ teachings for meaning and direction in our marriages, we are confronted, all of us, single and married alike, with far harder strictures: we are not to be angry, and we are not even to feel lust.
Let’s talk about anger.
Right out of the gate, I feel like I want Jesus to understand that he asks the impossible. Do I get angry every single day? I think so. Whether or not I act on it, I sure do feel it. Someone cuts me off in traffic: this is a classic example. Even if I am having a good day and manage to breathe a small prayer for that person (which has happened at least once in my lifetime of traffic behaviors, I’m pretty sure), even on that great day of peace and serenity, I will feel some small flicker of irritation.
Sometimes I feel anger at inanimate objects, the jar that won’t open, or the tricky dishwasher in our apartment that follows its own rules on its own time. And yes, sometimes I act on that anger.
But the anger I worry about, the anger that runs deepest, is the anger I feel for people who matter to me, the anger that guides my actions and interactions, the anger that becomes a powerful motivation to move against my neighbor. This anger can stretch its roots deeply into my soul. I sometimes am almost blinded by this anger. It bears the colors of deep, dark blue and gray and black: it is sad, it is sorrowful, and it marks my soul like an angry bruise.
Have you ever felt this way? And have you ever acted on that feeling?
If so, please be welcome here in church today. You are home.
Ten years ago I was in seminary for the first time, in my preparation to be ordained a deacon, and I took a class called “Ministry in a Multicultural Context.” The professor was a Latina scholar who specialized in the native cultures in the land now called Mexico, the cultures that gave rise to the modern-day cult of Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe. The professor had grown up in New York, and she had an often delightful, but sometimes startling, direct communication style. “Lots of people of color are angry,” she would say, “and white folks just have to deal.” She was talking about righteous anger, about anger that wells up inside you when something deeply unjust has happened to you, or to your family, or to your people. This teacher helped me, a white person who has always enjoyed white privilege, to understand that if I feel upset or affronted by the anger of a person of color—by her anger about white privilege in particular—then I need to simply deal with that. Anger about injustice is righteous anger. It makes sense; it has a place in our public affairs; it may even be necessary.
But Jesus says, “But I say to you, if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment…” He seems uncompromising about this point. So we need to sit with anger a little longer, and try to understand what Jesus means. (Short answer: my professor still has a good point.)
Last month I was in Jerusalem and heard an American Jewish rabbi tell our group, “Jews care about actions, not motives. The Torah consistently commands us to do this or do that, not to feel or think a certain thing. Actions matter, not words.” But Jesus goes right into not just words, but motives, and perhaps even feelings. I say perhaps because it would be an easy mistake for us moderns to hear this teaching from Jesus and assume he means anger the feeling, not anger the motivation, or anger the set of behaviors.
Let’s map this out.
Anger at its most basic level is a feeling, a natural one, even an adaptive one. It is a human feeling that arises when something is in our way: a slow driver who doesn’t signal his turn; a kitchen appliance that doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. Or maybe something much bigger is in our way: an unfair economic condition that privileges some and not others; a death-dealing relationship; a betrayal; a harm; an injury. When something like this gets in our way, we don’t just feel mad. We act on anger, and those actions are I think what Jesus is concerned about.
And so, at first glance, Jesus seems to be departing from the Jewish priority that looks first at a person’s actions, and second at their motivations, the Jewish idea that if you do the right thing, then that is an unalloyed good, even if you did it for the wrong reason. But if we sit with his teaching a little longer, we see that Jesus is making a more subtle, insightful point: anger is more than a feeling, or even a morally complex motivation: anger is a behavior set.
Anger:
Narrows my perspective so that I am focusing on threats and dangers
It causes my central nervous system to send red-alert chemicals into my bloodstream, setting me up for a fight
It flattens my neighbor into a two-dimensional adversary, an object, a thing that is in my way
And then I go off and do lots of damaging, upsetting things, big and small.
All of this is why, when Dr. King finally took the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 to speak about civil rights, he did not talk about enemies, or battles, or getting even. He talked about a dream. “I have a dream today,” he said. He was a person of color who had every right to be angry, and likely was angry several hundred thousand times in the course of his life. But when it came time to talk about what needed to happen next, what God wanted to accomplish on the face of the earth, Dr. King set anger to one side and talked about a dream of equality and fellowship, a dream of every single human person being recognized and embraced as a sister or brother, as a friend, as another person lovingly made in the image of God.
And that’s what Jesus is talking about. When I feel angry—and I have, and I will again—then that only means I am an ordinary human being. But Jesus says to me, and Jesus says to you, do not let anger guide you. Do not let anger bruise your soul. Notice it, understand it, listen to it, even—but don’t be overcome by it. Don’t make it your god.
This Table stands here in the most prominent place in our room. It is a Table of reconciliation, a Table set for bruised souls who want to be healed. It is not a Table for emotional perfectionists who never get mad. (If it were, I couldn’t and wouldn’t go near it.) It is set for me and for you. Can you put down your weapons, embrace in peace, and gather at this Table?
If you do, then you will meet Jesus, the lover of souls.
He will be kneeling right there beside you.
***
Preached on the Sixth Sunday after Epiphany at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Burke, Virginia, on February 16, 2020.
Deuteronomy 30:15-20
Psalm 119:1-8
1 Corinthians 3:1-9
Matthew 5:21-37