2024-03-04
Brooke Strong
Sermon Text...
March 3, 2024 Hamilton Coe Throckmorton
John 2:13-22 The Federated Church, UCC
Not long ago, as I was driving somewhere, I was pulling up to an intersection, coasting slowly to the red light that let us know what was expected of us. As I meandered up to that light, a car went careening by me, the driver laying on the horn as if to scream at me, “Why are you going so slowly?” The driver was clearly in a snit, furious that I was holding up their progress. It startled me, and left me frankly unsettled. Maybe like you, I don’t love it when someone is furious at me.
Not only is it discomfiting when others display their rage, though, but I also struggle with expressing my own anger. Is it legitimate to explode in righteous indignation, I wonder? Or is it a sign of some kind of character flaw when I lose my cool and snap at someone else?
I also find myself wondering if some sorts of anger are acceptable, while others are out of bounds. I still have regret about things I snapped out at our sons when they were little. They couldn’t help it. They were just being the kids they were. My anger can certainly be misplaced.
At the same time, though, I also remember being a seventh-grader in middle school and having a tall ninth-grader walk past me in the hallway one day and shoving a buttered dinner roll up my nose. Was my anger at him justified? We would all almost certainly say, yes.
Maybe we would say that my petty frustration at your irritating habit is inappropriate, but it’s fine and even necessary for me to express my anger at the abuse and injustice heaped upon you or someone else. In any case, maybe like you, I wrestle with the rightness or wrongness of anger, and scratch my head over its many nuances.
So when I read of Jesus’ uproar in the Temple at all the buying and selling that’s going on and at the violation of the Temple by those who are somehow misusing their money there in the very place that’s the heart of Jewish worship, the whole scene evokes in me a huge mixture of reactions. Part of me wants to shush Jesus and tell him to get control of himself: “Calm down, Jesus!” Another part of me, though, says, “Go for it! Don’t you dare stand for this desecration of the Temple. I’m glad you’re fried by their ignominious betrayal of the Temple’s reason for being.” It’s as if I’m both shocked at Jesus’ outburst, and at the same time secretly thrilled by his righteous indignation. He’s doing what I’m afraid of doing. And since it’s Jesus, it must be OK. And this is especially true because this is one of only a handful of stories about Jesus that are reported by all four gospels. If they all tell the story, it must be important.
So I’m wondering if there’s a model here for us in the way Jesus expresses his anger. In the first place, it seems appropriate to wonder whether Jesus’ anger in this scene devolves into the kind of violence that we would all agree is not acceptable. On the surface, it seems to do just that. He fashions himself a whip, after all, and then he makes quite a show of turning over the tables of the moneychangers. Though maybe it would be better if we left our whips at home when we come to church, and certainly that we refrain from overturning the tables with our coffee hour food on it, it does seem, at first glance, that the gospel story is excusing violence.
This story is a kind of hyperbole, though, and I think what Jesus is doing in the story is getting the attention of the people around him. It’s not unlike if you or I pound a fist on the table. The fist, which can easily devolve into a weapon, is, when we pound it on the table, more a way to get people’s attention. My grandfather, who was a minister, used to tell a story about a preacher who was preaching one Sunday morning. In the manuscript for his sermon, in a note intended only for himself, he had written on one of his pages, “Point weak. Pound pulpit!” If you don’t have much of substance to say, it may be best to pound the pulpit to make people sit up and take notice. I think the whip and the overturned tables are intended to get people’s attention.
Jesus’ anger here is not so much at the people as it is at what they’re doing. Jesus isn’t negating the moneychangers themselves. He isn’t demeaning their personhood. He’s ticked at what they’re doing, but he doesn’t violate them.
If I take this to heart, it means that I may not like something you’re doing, and it’s appropriate for me to be angry at that, but it’s never acceptable, in my anger, for me to attack you. This is a variation on the “Hate the sin, love the sinner” slogan. Extending this further, and utilizing contemporary insights, if I’m frustrated by something you’ve done, then it’s incumbent on me to talk about my feelings rather than what you’ve done wrong. Rather than my saying to you, “You’re off the wall,” or “That’s a stupid way to look at it,” the need is instead for me to own my own feelings rather than blame or accuse you. A former colleague of mine used to use this formula when there was tension or a disagreement that she was trying to help resolve: “I feel ___________ when you __________ because ___________.” “I feel angry,” for example, “when you don’t help me unload the dishwasher in the morning because when I have to do it myself, I end up being late for work.” That way of framing things puts the onus on me. It’s not that you necessarily did something wrong. It’s that I’m angry. And I’m responsible for owning that anger rather than undercutting you.
There’s another dimension to anger that begs to be explored, as well, and that is that anger that is habitual seems way off the mark, while anger at specific, and largely rare, incidents seems far more appropriate. We all know people, and maybe we ourselves are among them, who seem angry all the time. There’s a kind of bitterness that underlies their personalities. They’re angry at the service in the restaurant, angry at the neighbor’s leaf blower, angry at the latest news item, angry that the pants are wrinkled, angry at the noisy kids. When anger permeates much of life, it seems misguided. The Jesus we see in the gospels is not always angry. In fact, Jesus’ anger is reported very few times in the gospels. No, here Jesus is angry at a particular circumstance. If we’re angry all the time, there’s something off and uncentered about us. It’s no longer a case of us being angered by something justifiable, but now a case of anger overtaking us and holding us hostage.
So it’s fair to say that Jesus was angered more at the situation in the Temple rather than that he was targeting the people themselves with his vitriol. And Jesus’ anger was an occasional rather than habitual occurrence; he wasn’t by any means always angry. A third dimension of Jesus’ anger is that he was, in fact, angry, not just papering over another emotion with an anger that comes to so many people far too easily. If I have learned anything over my years in ministry, it is that anger is astoundingly often a smokescreen. The anger displayed is so often obscuring another, deeper feeling. Anger is far easier to express for many people, and maybe for most of us, than grief or shame or embarrassment. If I’m embarrassed about something, it is often much easier to lash out at someone or something than it is to acknowledge that I failed. If Mary reminds me that I left a light on or left the door unlocked, my sense of failure may come out as a snippy retort to her. “Well, you do it, too,” I might say with an incredible display of maturity. And that’s because I’ve neglected to attend to what’s really going on for me—that I’m embarrassed that I made a mistake.
If I’m sad that someone has died, or that our new home isn’t what the old one was, or that the promotion didn’t take shape, how much easier it is to get mad at the funeral home for scratching the casket, or at my spouse who keeps irritating me, or at the boss who is foolish and short-sighted. Lashing out can make us feel righteous and wronged—“Oh, those stupid people!” How much truer to the situation it is, though, to grieve, to shed tears, to acknowledge the depth of the loss. Anger is fine as anger. It’s not so great as a shield against sorrow and grief and disappointment and embarrassment and shame.
Social scientist Brené Brown writes about this tendency of ours to paper over other, perhaps more difficult emotions, with the anger that can flow too easily. “[B]ehind the anger,” so often, she says, “is a tempest of pain, grief, betrayal, disappointment, and other emotions” (Atlas of the Heart, p. 224). Yes, it’s vital, when we are, in fact, angry, to be angry. When that anger papers over another feeling, though, it’s crucial that we express, instead, the underlying grief or sadness or sorrow or shame. That’s how we get through it. And that’s how we make life bearable for the people who love us.
All of this is borne out in the biblical story. There, Jesus is simply and truly angry. He’s not covering over other emotions he’s reluctant to face. Nor does he hold onto that anger and let it simmer and persist. He expresses it and then it’s gone.
It’s also telling what it is that Jesus gets angry at, not just here, but elsewhere in the gospels. In the gospel of Mark, he gets ticked off by some religious leaders who question Jesus’ healing of a person on the Sabbath (Mark 3:5). And it fries Jesus when his own disciples try to keep little children from coming to him (Mark 10:14). He’s angry when something gets in the way of healing, or when children are impeded from coming to him. In other words, he’s angry when the gifts of God are thwarted, when people seem to be kept from fullness of life.
All of which returns us to today’s story of Jesus in the Temple. Here, he’s angry at one particular incident, not chronically angry. And he is in fact angry, not covering over some other emotion with dramatized fury. Not only that, but what Jesus gets angry at in this story is worth getting angry at. And while it’s not entirely clear precisely what it is in this particular story that gets his goat, what we know is this: as Jesus surveys the scene, what he sees is a Temple and a religious faith that has lost its bearings. He sees that abiding faith in the living God who leads and heals and restores has been shunted off to the side. Rather than a deep trust, there is buying and selling. Rather than a transforming and self-giving love, there appears to have been a systemic taking advantage of those who are impoverished. Rather than leaning into the arms of God, there seems to be an attempt to manipulate and to defraud vulnerable pilgrims of their resources. This much at least is clear: God has been pushed off to the side and profit seems to have supplanted grace and people are evidently being victimized. That’s what Jesus is angry about.
This story from John’s gospel is, it seems to me, a kind of alarm bell for us. It says: for God’s sake, don’t always be angry. Chronic anger is wearying to everyone else and it’s destructive to you. And don’t let seething anger replace the courage to face the truth of our failure and embarrassment and grief. Instead, look deep and explore what’s really going on. And maybe most important of all, be angry, but be angry at what deserves our anger. Be angry at a withered love, a relentless blaming, an egregious abuse. Be angry at callous disregard. Be angry at the exploitation of those who are most vulnerable. Be angry at our relentless failure to face the climate crisis we’ve caused. Don’t live in the anger, God knows. Let it take second place to gratitude and joy and love. But allow that anger to catalyze compassion and action on behalf of, and by the side of, those who may lack their own adequate resources.
Because the deep truth of the matter is that God isn’t angry at us. God is angry at the things that keep us from God and the things that tear apart our fragile and tenuous connections. The anger of Jesus, the anger of God, is an anger rooted in the deepest, most sublime of all loves. It’s an anger that will not stand for cruelty or abuse or terror or callous self-centeredness. The anger of Jesus, the anger of God, is an anger that wants the best for all people. It’s an anger rooted in welcome and embrace and unending compassion. It’s an anger that grows from God’s unrelenting desire to hold us all close. May we trust God in all things. And out of a righteous anger, rooted in holy delight, may we join in that holy work that transforms the world and blesses it with love.