But I Say...

    What makes you angry?
    Surely we can all think of something…
        Or someone…
    If your experience is anything like mine, we get angry.    
        I do anyway.    It happens.
    But the thing is - - I don’t really LIKE being angry.
So…why do I do - - what I don’t like?
    Usually my answer is that the situation justified my anger.
    Some situations just make you angry.
    For example, there was a skydiver who had a bad day and it went like this:
    Before his big jump he was told all the right instructions: jump when you are told, count to ten and pull the rip cord, in the unlikely event that the chute doesn’t open, pull the emergency backup cord, when you get down a truck will be waiting. So he jumped when told, counted to ten, pulled the cord and nothing happened. So he pulled the emergency backup cord and nothing happened. And so, understandably, he got angry with the situation! Who wouldn’t? And his last words were in anger: “Oh great! And I suppose the truck won’t be waiting either, when I get down!”
    So some situations just make you angry, I say to myself. So I approach anger as if I didn’t have a choice in the matter. I get angry because of circumstances that justify it, I say to myself. And so anyone in similar circumstances would get angry too. It’s the breaks. Life is full of…stuff…that…from time to time…makes us angry.
    But that logic doesn’t really work.
Because…some people seem to be LESS angry than others.
And Jesus says, in the scripture reading today: don’t be angry.
As if we have a choice!
    Jesus makes me so angry when he says that!
Jesus goes against the common wisdom, I believe.
There is a part of polite Christian culture that seems to equate being Christian with being NICE. With being polite. And in that culture expressions of anger are impolite and distasteful. But I don’t think that is what this scripture reading is about. And I don’t think that’s what Jesus is about here. There are all kinds of ways that Jesus upset polite culture by eating with outcasts and challenging the powers of oppression. So Jesus was not a slave to polite culture and being nice.
But he does say, in this part of Matthew: don’t get angry with your brother.
Which may be a little different that just: don’t get angry.
Actually what Jesus says is: “If you are angry with your brother you are liable to the same judgment as if you killed him”.
AND this advice is part of a series of sayings in which Jesus ups the stakes and revises common wisdom. It is in the middle of Jesus’ sermon which has been in the lectionary readings for the past few weeks. And over and over Jesus says, “You have heard it said…and then Jesus revises the common wisdom of the Torah and says…”but I say”.
So how does this statement on anger DEFY common wisdom, or the wisdom of the day?
These “But I say” sayings show how Jesus revises Torah.
Which is not to say that the Torah or the Jewish faith are outdated or wrong.
Rather, Jesus the Jewish rabbi, UPS THE STAKES.
Remember at the beginning of this section Jesus said, “I have not come to abolish the law but to fulfill it.”?
So how does Torah get revised here?
And how does everyday wisdom deal with anger? 
Well, the Torah says, “Thou shall not kill”. It’s one of the ten commandments. It is a central piece of Jewish law. And Jesus says, let’s look deeper. What is BEHIND that part of the law? His answer has something to do with anger…and reconciliation.
Later on in this sermon Jesus will advise loving our enemies.
It’s difficult advice.
And we might be inclined to look at this and say it has something to do with what we DO with our anger, and to whom it is directed. After all Jesus was angry when he turned tables over in the temple. So what’s that about, we might argue?
   One way to frame this discussion might be with some words from the classic wisdom of Aristotle. Aristotle said, “Anybody can become angry - - that is easy - - but to be angry with the right person, and to the right degree, and at the right time and for the right purpose - -and in the right way - - that is not within everyone’s power and is not easy”. 
So is there a proper way to be angry, in spite of Jesus words here?
Maybe.
But I want to explore how getting angry IS the common wisdom.
And then really sit with Jesus caution against it.
Because I think there is a tension that runs through the entire Bible…between judgment and mercy. I think that one of the defining themes of the Bible is this tension. It’s there in the prophets as judgment is rendered, God also from time to time repents of the wrath. And in the Gospels Jesus both challenges the power that would oppress the poor, and cries out for mercy on us sinners. Even in Paul’s letters the judgment and mercy teeter back and forth. 
There is a marvelous poem by Mata Angelou which captures this tension.
[ recite poem at lectern, table and font ]
Holy haloes, ring me round
Spirit waves on spirit sound
Meshach and Abednego; Golden chariot swinging low
I recite them in my sleep, Jordan’s cold and briny deep:
    Bible lessons, Sunday School; bow before the Golden Rule.
    Now I wonder if I tried, could I turn my cheek aside?
    Let he blow fall saying naught, marveling with afterthought…
    Of my true Christ-like control, and the nature of my soul?
    Or…would I strike with rage divine?
    ‘Till the culprit fell supine.
    Hit out broad all fury red, ‘till my foe is fallen dead.
    The teachers of my early youth taught forgiveness, stressed the truth.
    Here then is my Christian lack: you strike me, and I’ll strike back.
    In this poem Maya Angelou captures the righteous rage that we all feel at one time or another, when we want judgment for wrongs. The poem has been playing over in my head as I watch the news from Egypt.
On January 31 the NBC nightly news headline was “Rage and Revolution”. And there reports of calls for a “Day of Rage” in Jordan that was organized on Facebook. The Newsweek headline for February 7 was “Rage goes Viral”. Rage, rage, rage….Anger, anger, anger….
It’s all over the reports of the events in Egypt.
And…it seems to have worked.
As of yesterday, Mubarak has stepped down.
The common wisdom is that sometimes you have to get angry. Especially when standing up against the empires of this world. And when you do, it eventually works. Revolution happens.
But then what?
This seems to be such an age old story.
Egypt was the first empire in the Biblical story. That is where the people of Israel fled with Moses in the lead. Remember the story? Crossing the Red Sea the people of Israel fled slavery in Egypt, assisted by the ten plagues.
After that, Israel was invaded by first Assyria, and then Babylon.
In Jesus day Rome was the empire in power.
And empires continued to follow…
Spain, Britain…dare I say…the USA?
And dictators like Mubarak are noting unique.
So is standing up in anger against oppressive dictators and evil empires REALLY
working?   They just keep coming…
Maybe we do need another way.
And maybe Hennie Smit has tapped into the revolutionary truth that Jesus is getting at in his sermon that we read for today, about not being angry. Look at your bulletin cover to see his face and his dove. The book from which the photo comes is referenced on the back of the bulletin.
Hennie Smit is from Pretoria, South Africa. His eight year old son was killed in a bomb blast in the violence of the Apartheid struggles. Three people were executed for the violence. After one of the bombers, Andrew Zondo, was hanged, Hennie he went to visit Andrew’s parents. He said that he had hated the people who had killed his son. He was angry. But he realized that his son’s death would lead to freedom from violence for others. And so he became an outcast in his own white community. An outcast because…he sat with the black parents of his sons killer and consoled them instead of being angry with them.
This photo from 1997 shows Hennie and his doves. As of 1997 he lived in Pretoria breeding doves and fixing broken television sets.
    Maybe we do need another way.
    Maybe that is what Jesus is getting at.
    Anger is like nails. We pound them into a wall to relieve anger. Bam. Bam.
    When we can finally control our temper we begin to pull them back out.
        Each day we can hold our temper we pull another nail back out of the wall.             If we can calm our anger enough the nails will eventually be gone.
            But the holes remain in the wall.
    Anger does leave holes in us.
        Wounds.
    And sometimes we can even stand against the violent and greedy powers of the empire, while at the SAME TIME doing so in a spirit of reconciliation. Rick Ufford-Chase the former moderator of the Presbyterian Church USA talked about one example of this at a conference that Lisa, Melissa and I attended in Albuquerque last week. He described a reconciliation service held in Sangla Hill in Pakistan. It was a service attended by both Roman Catholic and Moslem people. It was defined by a spirit of reconciliation, which is deeply challenging to the interests of a greedy empire. Because the empire trades on fear. And distrust.
    What will it take to heal the wounds of anger in our world and our lives?
    Will we have the courage to be, like the man described by Jesus, who left his gift at the altar in order to be reconciled to his brother?
    It seems to me that Jesus UPS the STAKES in two ways. Both in the direction of judgment on those who dwell on their anger; AND in the direction of reconciliation.
    And it seems to me that in doing this, Jesus points us to a future.
    And though the future is not yet here, it is coming.
    There may be times when anger leads to standing up to greed, and violence, and oppression. BUT:    There will come a time when we all sit at table in the Kingdom of God.
       There will come a time when we all leave our gifts at the altar.
    There will come a time when even our enemies are more important than our things.
    There will come a time…
    You have heard it said that there is really no hope of this.
    You have heard it said that there will always be anger.
    And you have heard it said that there will always be reasons to be angry…
        But I say to you….
            I have heard what Jesus says to us…
                And I wonder…
                    Have you heard it too?