Concerning Anger
Concerning Anger
Matthew 5:21-26
A big tough samurai once went to see a little monk. “Monk,” he said, in a voice accustomed to instant obedience, “teach me about heaven and hell!”
The monk looked up at this mighty warrior and replied with utter disdain, “Teach you about heaven and hell? I couldn’t teach you anything. You’re dirty. You smell. Your blade is rusty. You’re a disgrace, an embarrassment to the samurai class. Get out of my sight. I can’t stand you.”
The samurai was furious. He shook, got all red in the face, was altogether speechless with rage. He pulled out his sword and raised it above his head, preparing to slay the monk.
“That’s hell,” said the monk softly.
The samurai was overwhelmed. It dawned on him that this monk had to be a man of great compassion to offer up his life in order to teach the samurai about hell! Very slowly, the samurai did what samurais almost never do: having drawn his sword from its sheath, he returned the sword to its sheath without striking. The odd thing was that as he did this, the samurai was overwhelmed with gratitude. He was at peace.
“And that’s heaven,” said the monk softly.
For a lot of people, heaven and hell are the two ultimate retirement destinations that await us at the end of this life. Live a good life and you spend eternity in the good place. Live a bad life and you spend all of eternity burning. What I love about this Buddhist story is that heaven and hell are not places that we go after we die. Rather, heaven and hell are ways of being in this world which all of us have known at various times. Every time we allow ourselves to be overwhelmed with rage, to be estranged from the people around us, to give into the temptation to take out what we’re feeling on the nearest human being, we are in hell. And every time we open our hearts to love and reconciliation and forgiveness, we are in heaven.
To put the matter differently, while some believe that the consequences of our choices in this life are tallied up at the end of our lives, I think we are living through those consequences from moment to moment, every day. Sometimes, we are aware of those consequences immediately. Sometimes, we only become aware of the hurt that we’ve caused when we are confronted by those we’ve injured. Sometimes, it dawns on us years later when we ask, “My God, what was I thinking? What have I done?”
How do we know that we’ve done the right thing? Like the samurai, we will feel peace. This peace is not simply the absence of conflict. No…this peace is a harmony. This harmony happens not just when do the right thing. Rather, this harmony happens when our hearts are in the right places, too. We all know that it is possible to do the right thing for all the wrong reasons. I can do the right thing because there is something in it for me: the admiration of the crowds, a fistful of cash, an increase in my power. Jesus is going to push us past such transactions. When my heart is in the right place and my actions flow from my heart, I will know peace. When my heart is in the right place and my actions flow from my heart, God’s light and God’s love will shine through me…in this lifetime.
Just before our text, Jesus speaks about the law. The law, since ancient days, has been a guide for right action. The law tells you what you should and should not do. In fact, the law has done this since Moses received the Ten Commandments. Jesus says that he didn’t come to get rid of the law. He came, in part, to show us that there’s even more of a challenge before us. We aren’t just supposed to do the right thing. We are supposed to deal with the feelings inside us that lead us to do the wrong thing in the first place. There are things inside of us that can eat us alive and destroy any chance that we have for God’s light to shine through us.
In our text this morning, the thing inside us that Jesus is focused on is anger. He invites us to consider this in a wonderful way. He says, “You’ve heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder…” What’s Jesus doing here? He’s quoting one of the Ten Commandments. At the same time, he’s doing what great speakers do: he’s starting with a premise with which we all can agree—murder is wrong, right? “Yes, Jesus, we’re with you so far!” Jesus then pushes things a step further: “But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or a sister you will be liable to judgment.” He goes on to say that it’s not okay to insult someone and call them a fool. And, by the way, if you are ready to have your big day at the temple and make some big sacrifice and you realize that you’ve got a problem with your brother and sister, the right thing to do would be to drop that sacrifice on the ground and go get right with your brother or sister. Finally, if you are on your way to court, find your accuser and settle the problem.
Jesus knows us well enough to know that most of us are never going to be murderers. He knows us well enough to know that most of us will hear that commandment and get puffed up and think, “Well, I’ve got that one right!” He knows us so well that he understands how we minimize the ways that we have hurt those near us and how we hold a grudge against anyone who has hurt us. Left to our own devices, we are only human, right? However, a part of what he’s working to get us to understand is that we are not left to our own devices at all. We are called to be better than that. We are called to fill our hearts with something better than petty grudges and anger and rage. We can live in this better way if…
We can live in this better way if we are willing to take responsibility for what we feel and what we do. If I am willing to listen to what I’m feeling, then feelings can be feedback. You ride a bike and attend to what you are feeling because those feelings allow you to make the adjustments that are necessary to stay in balance. Sometimes those adjustments are tiny—a matter of leaning a hair further in this direction. Sometimes those adjustments are dramatic and urgent, “Hit the brakes now!” The key, though, is that the adjustments are mine to make. Feelings are not here for me to just dump on someone else.
Anger is a particularly tricky feeling. Anger usually arises in response to something that’s happening to me. It comes in a variety of “flavors” from feeling irritable to feeling afflicted to feeling enraged. The urgency of these different flavors may vary and as the urgency increases, so may the temptation to dump that anger on the nearest person. This is how anger gets a bad name. Anger, unchecked, eats away at relationships and community and eventually destroys them. Anger that just festers inside me can eat me alive. Anger comes, in part, to tell me that something needs to change. The trick, though, is anger is always an invitation to examine my own choices. Usually, anger is there to tell me that I’m not making good use of my own power to make my own choices. The solution to that problem is not to tee up the nearest human being. The answer is to be better than that.
Go back to the samurai in the story. The monk gives the samurai the chance to learn something essential. That essential lesson is not that it would be great to kill the monk. Rather, the essential lesson is that it would be great to master himself and his own impulses. As a samurai, he has the power to kill. However, peace lies in the decision not to give into the anger. When anger does not rule him then there is room inside him for love and compassion and care.
We all have known that person who pushes our buttons, right? Have we tried to avoid that person? Isn’t it amazing how either that person finds us or someone new shows up who pushes the very same buttons. It’s as if life, itself, keeps putting the same invitation before us. That invitation is to deal with our own stuff and grow past having those buttons. (For all you Star Wars fans out there, we all know that until we learn not to give into the anger and the hate, “the force” cannot work through us, right? What if our anger can block the way that the Holy Spirit can work though us, too?)
If I can take responsibility for my own stuff and accept that no one can make me feel anything and that not everything is everyone else’s fault, then I can begin to do some really important work—the work that Jesus is going to keep urging us to do throughout the Gospel. This is the work of forgiveness and reconciliation. If I get busy doing the hard work of getting what’s inside me right, then I can also begin to do the work of repairing my relationships with the people around me. Jesus essentially looks each of us in the eye and says, “You’ll know that you are really doing this work if…you go first.” You won’t sit around and stew on your grudge. You will reach out to the person from whom you are estranged. You will do the hard work of owning what you’ve done wrong. You will find a way to settle things. You will seek forgiveness and you will forgive. You will do this work not because you’re afraid of going to hell but because it has dawned on you that if you don’t do this work then you are already there. And, lest we forget, this work was so important to Jesus that he was still forgiving people as he hung from the cross.
One more story for our angry, hurt, divided world. There was a man named Mahaghosananda, a Cambodian monk, who opened a Buddhist temple in a barren refugee camp of the Khmer Rouge communists. Fifty thousand people had fled to this refugee camp. In the camp, the Khmer Rouge leaders threatened to kill anyone who went to the temple. Yet, on the opening day at the new temple, twenty thousand refugees surrounded it. These were the sad remnants of families: a father and his one surviving child; an aunt and her sister’s daughter; a woman who had been a wife and a mother who was now simply alone. Their schools had been burned. Their villages had been destroyed. What could possibly be done or said to comfort people who had lost so much?
Mahaghosonanda began the service by starting the traditional chants which had permeated village life for thousands of years before the Khmer Rouge arrived. Though these words had been silenced through eight years of war and though the temples had been burned, the chants remained in the hearts of these people who had known as much sorrow and injustice as any people on earth. These are the words of that chant: “Hatred never ceases by hatred but by love alone is healed. This is the ancient and eternal law.” As he chanted these words over and over, thousands of people joined in. “Hatred never ceases by hatred but by love alone is healed. This is the ancient and eternal law.” Tears streamed down thousands of faces because their hearts longed for forgiveness. Truth began to heal their sorrow.
No one has ever been healed by lashing out in anger: “Hatred never ceases by hatred.” Rather, we take responsibility for our selves. We learn from our anger and make better choices. We hope for reconciliation. We are the first to forgive. The whole time, we pray like crazy for God’s healing and God’s help.