March 7, 2010
Rev. Susan E. Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church

Texts: Ephesians 4:22-5:2; Matthew 5:21-26

We all know the feeling – whether it’s because of something someone says, or another driver being careless, or hearing a commentator we disagree with on TV or even because of something we ourselves did, or didn’t do, again – suddenly, our stomach clenches, our jaw tightens, our brow furrows, and there may be an inner intensity. We’re angry. And who knows what will happen next? We may say something we regret, or we squash down the words, feeling the tension increase, or we lash out, feeling powerful. And then the consequences roll in – we might be in a back and forth that never seems to settle anything; other people may be upset and/or hurt, and sometimes, things fall apart: a friendship is lost, or violence occurs, or any number of possibilities. As Rabbi David Wolfe of Sinai Temple said on the History Channel’s production of the Anger episode in its Seven Deadly Sins series, “Anger is like a boiling teakettle; when it overflows you have no idea who will get burned or where it will go.”

Sometimes acting out in anger can feel satisfying. As Frederick Buechner writes, “Of the 7 deadly sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back--in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you. “

Beyond the relational outcomes, anger can have significant health consequences over the long haul. A recent study at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine tracked 1,337 male medical students for 36 years following medical school, and found that students who became angry quickly under stress were three times more likely to develop premature heart disease and five times more likely to have an early heart attack.

Anger seems to be everywhere these days – there are angry TV commentators and people angry at TV commentators, there is road rage and shooting rampages and a Tea Party movement that seems to be all about anger. And ordinary people seem angrier – or at least more irritable – and this seems not surprising when you consider the stress people are under from a combination of the hurry we discussed two weeks ago, and the worry that we discussed last week. Stress makes us more vulnerable to anger, and there’s plenty of stress to go around.

But anger isn’t just a modern problem – it’s as old as humanity. And in the Bible, it erupts just after the Creation story. Adam and Eve had two sons, so the story goes, Cain and Abel. Cain was the older brother, and was a tiller of the ground, whereas Abel was a keeper of sheep. The rancher vs. farmer rivalry has ancient roots, it seems. They each prepared an offering for God, and God liked Abel’s better, so Cain grew angry and killed Abel. And that’s only the first story of anger in the Bible. Moses had anger issues as well. The first king – Saul – became angry with the young David and pursued him in a murderous rage. And on and on. Anger is something with which we all contend.

I’d like to discuss four types of anger this morning – first, there is righteous anger – this is the kind of anger that we experience when we see injustice. It’s the kind of anger that moves us to action – in defense of helpless children, in advocacy for the earth, in support of oppressed people. While getting overly angry in this way can be unhealthy, and unmanaged anger can lead to ineffectiveness instead of toward justice, I’m not going to worry about righteous anger right now. The prophets in the Bible were righteously angry. There were even occasions when Jesus was righteously angry.

The second type of anger is the kind of anger that flashes – we are all familiar with this kind. Someone pushes our buttons, and the response is quick and uncontrolled. A burst of angry energy, a flash – we’ve all seen it, we’ve all done it, and I’ll come back to this.

Anger isn’t intrinsically sinful. It’s what we do with our anger that matters. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians says, after all, “Be angry but do not sin.” The third type is one I’d like to spend a little time with. This is chronic anger, the kind of anger that we remember and nurture. This is the kind of anger that I think is the most problematic, and is the easiest place to start in our work to manage our own anger. This is the kind of anger of which most of us have a significant reservoir – the kind that comes from things that happen, when we go back and dwell on those things. You know the experience – it can be something that happened last week, or when we were children, but we can still remember it, and when we do, the anger festers again. We think back to the experience and wonder, “Why did he say that?“ “I should have said…” “Why did Mom take her side?” The injury can be long gone, but the anger can be revived anytime…and as we dwell on it, the anger continues.

There is a story told about two monks and a young woman. A senior monk and a junior monk were traveling together. At one point, they came to a river with a strong current. As the monks were preparing to cross the river, they saw a very young and beautiful woman also attempting to cross. The young woman asked if they could help her.
The senior monk carried this woman on his shoulder, forded the river and let her down on the other bank. The junior monk was very upset, but said nothing. They both were walking and senior monk noticed that his junior was suddenly silent and enquired “Is something the matter, you seem very upset?” The junior monk replied, “As monks, we are not permitted a woman, how could you then carry that woman on your shoulders?” The senior monk replied, “I left the woman a long time ago at the bank, however, you seem to be carrying her still.”

Yes – although we nurture anger usually in an unwillingness to forgive another person, we forget that our anger isn’t hurting someone else nearly as much as it is hurting us. This habit of nurturing our anger is a spiritual issue – it’s a refusal to live by an ethic of forgiveness, and unlike the flash of anger, nurtured anger is choosing to be angry. This is the anger that accumulates over a lifetime, growing and reminding us of the injuries we believe we’ve received. This is the anger that can become a world view. This anger is very common, and fortunately, this is the anger that we have the best chance of correcting.

Because this is an anger that is nurtured, we can break the cycle by refusing to nurture it. When we catch ourselves beginning the familiar angry litany in our minds, we can choose to do something else. We can deal with this anger, not by turning away from it, but by turning to God with it.

When we learn to follow the advice of Jesus, later in the Sermon on the Mount, to pray for our enemies, we find them to be persons, recognizing that they have the same frailties that we do. As we entrust our anger to God in prayer, especially if we are willing to be changed, the anger can be transformed to compassion.

The Anger Workbook by Les Carter and Frank Minirth explains that anger is a function of finding ourselves at risk in some way – finding our essential needs not being met, or feeling our personal worth to be threatened. As we try to understand our own anger, it can be useful to think back to earlier experiences and realize what kinds of things push our buttons to produce anger. By gaining this kind of understanding, we are sometimes able to care for ourselves to meet our own needs and leave us less vulnerable to anger. We also find ourselves less vulnerable to anger when we care for ourselves in more basic ways – getting enough sleep, eating healthy whole foods, building relationships, playing and laughing, asking for help when we need it. It can be frightening to face our own needs, to realize how needy we are, but as we learn to face our needs, we can also begin to understand that the greatest human need is for God. As we accept our own humanity, we also accept our need for love, and that this is our need for God.

So even more fundamental than the compassion we show to others is the compassion we develop for ourselves. As we open our heart to God in prayer, we center ourselves in the love of God, and develop the ability to tenderly accept ourselves and our own flaws, that is, to begin to truly love ourselves. And it becomes easier to accept the flaws and mistakes of others, because we are living in the acceptance of God ourselves.

Just as Paul tells us to be angry, but do not sin, Vietnamese Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh suggests that when we find ourselves angry, whether as a flash or in nurturing old injuries, we should care for our anger. He acknowledges that the natural impulse is to lash out at someone else. He points out that if we find our house on fire, we don’t run after the arsonist, but first tend to our home and put out the flames. Similarly, he advises that when we are angry, we should tend to the anger. This will help us avoid the fourth kind of anger – unexpressed anger – the flash that doesn’t happen. On the face of it, that may seem like a good kind of anger, and sometimes it may be – if we manage our anger, instead of suppressing it. But anger that is suppressed doesn’t dissipate, it merely lurks under the surface, impacting us and always at risk of erupting. This is one of the mismanagements to which people of faith are vulnerable – we think that Christians shouldn’t get angry, that it’s unloving, and so we push our anger down, and refuse to address issues that eat away at us. Or we talk to other people about our anger without ever taking it to the right person. Paul wrote “Be angry, but do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger….” Sometimes, we need to learn to speak the truth in love – to speak our anger honestly but not aggressively. It’s not always the way to go – sometimes we can realize that our anger is misplaced, and by going to God with it, we can release the anger based on our understanding of it. But sometimes it is appropriate to talk out our anger in love. Being honest is not necessarily being confrontational – assertive and aggressive are not equivalent – we can speak the truth in love.

And on the other side, some of us need to learn how to receive that honesty without fear. Sometimes a fear of conflict can also be unhealthy, preventing the constructive working out of differences – those of us who were raised to always be “nice” may not have any experience with the kind of direct, loving conversation that both Jesus and Paul advocate – going to someone when we have offended them or when we are angry with them, and gently, lovingly, honestly sharing our feelings and thoughts. This is not aggression – it is the kind of mature, appropriate honesty in which Christians are called to learn to engage. When we are able to talk honestly in this way, anger can become constructive. And when we learn to manage our anger, we are less vulnerable to the anger that flashes.

The History Channel program on anger pointed out something very interesting about God’s anger in the Bible – the first experience of God’s anger is in wiping out the world through the flood, sparing only Noah, his family, and two of every species. Later, God becomes angry with humans at the Tower of Babel, in Genesis 11, but God’s anger is not destructive this time, and is only directed at humans – only those who incurred the anger. Still later, at Sodom and Gomorrah, God only expresses anger to the two towns that were withholding hospitality from the angels of God. By the Gospels, God has come to a point of transforming anger to nonviolence and forgiveness – Jesus teaches turning the other cheek – showing oppressed people how they can respond to violence in a way that preserves their dignity and personal power without resorting to vengeance. And then, both during his torture, and then in the crucifixion, does not express anger, but breathes forgiveness.

We find that by taking our anger to God in prayer, our anger can be transformed, too. In last Wednesday’s Lenten service, we reflected on a story of Jesus bringing peace in the midst of a storm. Let’s listen to this story, very familiar to some of you, and less so to others. Let’s remember how our own anger may stir up as quickly as a summer storm, frighten us and others. Let us imagine how God might be able to bring us peace. Listen, for the Word of God: On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, "Let us go across to the other side." And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. And a great storm of wind arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care if we perish?" And he awoke and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you no faith?" And they were filled with awe, and said to one another, "Who then is this, that even wind and sea obey him?"

God can bring peace to us, too. Let us trust God with our anger, let God breathe through the heats of our angers, let us be angry but not sin, let us open ourselves to God’s love, undertake forgiveness and walk in love. Amen.