Anger

Anger
For the last few weeks, we have been in the season called Lent…Lent is the season in the church as we prepare for Easter. Lent is a time of working on eliminating or trimming something in our lives that keeps us from recognizing the full potential & power of Easter…Jesus’ journey of Lent took him from his ministry to his death and ultimately his resurrection…As we join that journey with Jesus, our Lenten journey is also taking us from hurt to healing. As we’ve been on this journey, we have been packing our suitcase and putting in their some of our hurts & things that have kept us from fully understanding the full power of Easter & Jesus’ resurrection.
Our first week of Lent, we explored shame—the feeling that victims or those sinned-against feel when they have been wronged…Last week, we explored guilt—the feeling that sinners or offenders feel when they have done something wrong and feel bad about it…Now, both of those emotions lead into our topic & feeling for this morning as we explore anger.
Now, our first day with the series, I had asked how many people had been hurt or had hurt others and well, every hand was raised…I would guess that if I asked this morning how many people had been angry, the same thing would happen! All of us have been angry at one time or another and some people are just angry all the time and others it seems like nothing ever bothers them…And some anger can be helpful as a way that we preserve our boundaries or our integrity…Or to help propel us to work for justice. But, the problem is that most anger is not all that helpful…Especially prolonged anger and especially not rage! This morning, we’ll look at shame anger & guilt anger.
If shame is the emotion and reaction of those who have been sinned against, then shame anger is the anger of the offended…It’s also called assertive anger because it is positive and constructive. Assertive anger is a just response to injustice and evil, or a self-protective response to a threat. This type of anger seeks to make a relationship or situation better rather than worse. It doesn’t mean that you ignore the situation, just that you share your feelings with honesty to improve a relationship.
And if guilt is what we feel when we recognize that we have done something wrong…Guilt anger is the anger of offenders. It’s also described as aggressive anger which comes from a desire to control rather than repair. Some behaviors that are associated with this anger are: humiliation, exploitation, domination, denigration…It is usually expressed through shouting, threatening and blaming. Now these expressions may help momentarily to make someone feel better, but long term they greatly affect relationships and may remove trust, cooperation, and respect. This kind of anger usually comes about because facing the guilt of our sins is painful and that pain turns into anger. You may have heard it said that we often lash out at the things that we dislike about ourselves…For example; I once worked with an alcoholic who had secretly begun drinking again. Before he confessed this, he would go on tirades against anyone who had any alcoholic drink. He would belittle and mock and judge these people when really, he wanted to belittle, mock, and judge himself. The pain of facing his guilt caused him to act out in anger to others. This anger is what Paul is referring to in his letter to the Colossians…this anger that is destructive rather than helpful.
The acting out in anger that is uncontrollable is rage…Anger can be controlled, but rage cannot. Anger can be a strength that protects us, but rage’s explosive nature can harm us. We’ve probably also experienced this reaction both on our parts as we have acted out in rage and on the receiving end as someone has acted in rage towards us.
So how do we keep that from happening? From our anger turning into rage? In his book, From Hurt to Healing, Andrew Sung Park gives some helpful steps…First; wait until your fury has cooled down. In the passion of anger, our perception is exaggerated and warped and we don’t necessarily see things as they really are because we can’t see things out of the lens of our anger. In this state, we can say or do things to intentionally hurt the other person which would ruin the opportunity to make the relationship better. Now this cooling off time is not ignoring your anger, but rather actually acknowledging it. To understand that yes, I am angry which means I am not really thinking clearly, so once the heat of emotion has passed, the power of reason can balance our emotions out. You don’t have to lose the passion of anger because that’s controllable…rage is what is not controllable.
The second step is to accept our anger as it is. Which means that we don’t deny our anger or try to repress it, but we become aware of it and we own it instead of letting it own us. Being angry itself is not necessarily a bad thing because it’s a natural response to injustice or threat and that in and of itself is not a sin—but acting in rage is a sin. To be aware and accept our anger, we need to locate its source—not to rationalize, but to understand where it really comes from. When we find the source of the anger, we can decide what our response is to the one who provoked our anger…
The third step is to understand our offenders. Andrew Sung Park says it this way, “Understanding the bondage our offenders are in can give us compassion for them. When we understand our offenders in their vulnerability, anxiety, fear, false security and brokenness, the heart of concern emerges from within us. Also, although our offenders may appear to be invulnerable, strong, and arrogant, they are in reality miserable before God. They condemn themselves by their own actions.” This does not mean that it excuses the offender in any way, shape or form or that we in some way made them do something.

Here’s what we’re like sometimes…you heard as I talked with the kids this morning about being like Coke…Sometimes I just feel so refreshing and cool…but then someone says or does something to rile me up and I just shaken a little bit…Or something happens here and I get a little more upset…and a little more and more and more…Now, we can see from the bottle here, that I’m a little bit less than refreshing right now, right? But to myself, I still am…I’m cool and refreshing, so I should just open myself up, right? Now I see once again the panicked looked on some of your faces as you think about me opening this bottle…Why? Because it would go all over, right? And you can see that pretty clearly through the bottle…But what if I’m more like this can? And the same things have happened…Several things have happened and I get shaken up and shaken up…But you can’t see that through the aluminum of the can…But the same reaction would be there…No matter how refreshing I still think that I might be, I might just explode instead…And then what happens? Well, there are two options…Clearly, there’s a mess that’s been made…and I can do two things…I can wipe up the spill and clean up the mess or I can ignore it and leave it…Now, if I ignore it and leave it what happens? Maybe it’ll collect some ants or other insects…but anyone who’s been in a movie theater has probably felt that stickiness of the floor…the floor which has had plenty of pop spilled on it and probably not cleaned up right away and so it gets sticky…So that the next person who walks through there as innocent as they may be gets a little bit stuck…The same is true when we are angry and we’ve acted out of rage…we can clean up the mess that we’ve made…apologize try to make amends—As Jesus says from our Gospel passage, come to terms with our accusers—those that we have truly wronged—admit it to them and apologize and make amends…So, we can try to clean up the mess that we’ve made…Or we can just leave it there and someone else might get stuck by the mess we made…They may not have been there in our original outburst, but they still feel the sting of rage. Sometimes we know that we’re not all that cool & refreshing anymore, but we think that we’ll be the only ones affected when we open up that can…but the thing with the carbonated beverage is that it doesn’t really just go one way—it’s kind of unpredictable and goes its own way and we can’t control it…Like our rage—it’s not just something that effects us, but we can’t control where it goes and it may hit someone else in the process.
Jesus says in our Gospel passage from this morning…that “you’ve heard it said that you shall not commit murder or you will be liable for judgment…But I tell you, anyone who is angry with or insults or says “you fool”, they are just as liable to judgment…” It’s not necessarily a bad thing to be angry, but when we act in rage, it can be extremely hurtful. In the movie Gran Torino, Clint Eastwood’s character, Walt Kowalski, is very racist and extremely stubborn. The way that he expresses himself is often very hurtful, even in cases when he may be right. Walt’s prize possession is his 1972 Gran Torino—beautiful and in perfect condition…Walt’s next door neighbor, Tao broke into his garage one evening because he needed to steal the car in order to be initiated into a gang. Tao really didn’t want to do it at all, but was pressured and forced into trying to steal the car…Walt catches Tao in the act and forces Tao out of the garage at gun point. Trying to entice Tao or someone else to just try and steal his car, he puts it out front and shows it off…What happens instead is the gang members come back to Tao’s house and try and punish him for not succeeding…As the fight rolls over into Walt’s yard, he forces the gang members to leave the property, which in return probably saves Tao’s life. Here’s the response from the community. (clip). First of all Walt doesn’t want the attention because he doesn’t think he’s done anything heroic and he has a lot of guilt over the mistakes he’s made in his life…He takes his guilt out on everyone else in the form of his guilt anger…and in this case, he has been wronged by Tao trying to steal his car—something that is not okay…But by acting out from his shame anger, Walt makes it clear that he is not interested in making their relationship better, but instead threatens Tao’s life… What we say and do affects other people…Whether we think it does or not…What we say and do affects other people…How we say it, what we do…What we say and do affects other people…What other people say and do affect us, whether we want to admit it or not…How do you respond…Do you seek reconciliation like Jesus says or do you try and destroy the relationship? St. Francis of Assisi offers this blessing, “May God bless you with discomfort at easy answers, half truths, and superficial relationships, so that you may live deep within your heart. Amen. May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace. Amen. May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection, starvation and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy. Amen. May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done. Amen.”
This morning during our invitation to the Lenten journey, you may come forward with your pop can to place in the suitcase—opened or unopened to symbolize putting your rage aside…or maybe there is something in particular that you need to let your fury cool down before you are able to fully embrace Easter. Write it down on this paper and put it in an envelope with your name on the front and then place it in the suitcase. Evrett will play a song for you to reflect what that might be and give you an opportunity to come forward and then we will sing the 3rd verse of Amazing Grace…