Uprooting Anger and Planting the Seeds of Reconciliation

Well good morning friends, it is so good to be with you as always.  So, this morning I want to start out our time with a little confession.  Now, I do feel a little embarrassed sharing what I am about to share, but at least I can use the excuse that I was only 19 years old when I did something pretty stupid.

So, the scenario goes something like this:  During the second semester of my Freshman year in college, my roommate Jess and I started to experience an increasing amount of friction about our different levels of organization in our dorm room and a host of other issues. 

Now, over time, I grew increasingly angry with her, and I personally felt judged by her, but I didn’t say anything.  Now on occasion, she or I might engage in some passive-aggressive behavior like shutting the window after the other one had opened it or some such pettiness, but we didn’t really communicate how we were feeling. 

So, for the most part, I left the issues at hand unaddressed and I suppressed my anger, and slowly but surely our relationship grew more distant over time.  And you know what?  Suppressing my anger didn’t actually make it go away.  In fact, it remained with me, and it grew and grew until one day I just had enough.  So, on that day, I did something pretty immature:  I wrote my roommate an angry note, voicing my complaints, telling her she was not my mother and how dare she act like it, and to basically tell her to back off.    

Not the most gracious of responses, was it?  Perhaps, you might be thinking, however, that it was also not the worst of responses, either, so why am I embarrassed by it all these years later?  Well, here is the thing, friends.  I didn’t just leave my roommate this note on her desk; I wrote this note in big letters on our dry erase board on our dorm door so that anyone in our dorm passing by, could read it.  Yikes, right?

It was the old school equivalent of airing my personal grievances against someone on Facebook, although even now, it somehow feels worse to me.  All to say, it was not a good move.  It took a personal conflict and unnecessarily made it public when it did not need to be.  It caused shame and embarrassment for Jess.  And not surprisingly, it brought shame and embarrassment for me, as well, which is not something I had thought about when I hastily wrote that note.

Well, as you can imagine, that note caused a bit of a stir on our hall, but after an initial tense time, Jess and I actually sat down to talk, and for the first time really, we listened to each, sought to understand each other, and to find a good way forward.  And you know what?  We did, and by God’s grace, we actually ended up being good friends after that debacle.  Previously, even when we weren’t feuding, we hadn’t really been friends, but our heart-to-heart conversation turned our relationship into something better than it had been, and in fact, all these years later, we are still friends. 

But it easy to see how my actions could have damaged our relationship for good and caused an unending cycle of shame, anger, and broken relationships among Jess, me, and other dormmates.  You see, unrecognized, suppressed, and unmanaged anger can do that.  It can lead to damage and death of relationships, self-harm, and even cause impaired relationship with the Lord.  And because of this, Jesus has something to say to us about our anger. 

So, in today’s sermon, we’ll take some time to hear what Jesus has to say, but first let us begin our time with prayer. 

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for creating us for relationship – with each other, with you, and the with the entire creation, and we lament all the ways we contribute to the disintegration of our relationships.  Lord, as we enter into this conversation this morning about anger and reconciliation, would you open our eyes to see what you would like us to know about this emotion you have given us and this call you invite us to pursue.   Amen.

So, in today’s Scripture passage, Jesus continues on in his teaching that has come to be known as the “Sermon on the Mount.”  Over the past few weeks, we have worked our way through the Beatitudes, Jesus’ teachings on being salt and light, and His invitations to truly follow the Law by living out of its heart for the world. 

And now picking up on where we left off last week, we start to take a deeper dive into the state of our hearts.  For as we learned last week, it is not enough to just be like the Pharisees who followed all the details of the Law to a t; we must live into the intent of the Law more deeply, which is ultimately about loving God and neighbor.  Thus, to follow the Law, we must pay attention to the intentions and desires of our hearts and bring transformation to them, not just engage in outward behavior modification. 

Listen to what N.T. Wright says about our Scripture today:  he says that this part of the Sermon on the Mount is the “blueprint for a way of being fully, genuinely, gloriously human.  This new way which Jesus had come to pioneer and make possible goes deep down into the roots and personality and produces a different pattern of behavior altogether.”  And we indeed see this in today’s passage because according to Jesus, it is not enough to just not murder someone.  We must look for the roots of murder in our hearts and uproot them before they cause damage.  Then, we must plant new seeds of life and flourishing.    

So, what are the roots of murder?  Well, more often than not, the roots of such behavior are anger, and Jesus makes this clear today in this part his Sermon when He invites us to identify our anger and to address it.  For even if this anger won’t lead us as far as taking another person’s life, anger can easily work against our call to love God and neighbor and can have a myriad of negative consequences, and Jesus even gives us examples of a few.  For example, anger can lead us to have contempt for others and to insult them, which is not exactly the recipe for good and flourishing relationships. 

Anger can also cause us to engage in actions that harm ourselves, for example actions that lead us to being brought to and then justly prosecuted in court.

And anger can also impair our relationship with God.  While this last point is not said explicitly in this passage, it is clearly implied when Jesus commanded his followers to first reconcile with someone who has something against them before leaving their gifts at God’s altar. 

What we see here is that repair of broken relationships caused by anger or any other sin takes precedence over our official liturgical acts of worship.  Why?  Because when we are angry with our neighbor, when our relationships are broken, we are not fully loving God.  Thus, reconciliation with those we have hurt is an act of worship in itself which pleases the Lord and draws us closer to the heart of God as we become more like Jesus who came into this world with a ministry of reconciliation. Therefore, God invites each one of us to uproot anger in our lives and replace it with the seeds of reconciliation. 

This, my friends, is a holy call, but I also believe is one that can be subject to misunderstanding, so for the remainder of the sermon today, I would like to make some necessarily clarifications.  For while God’s invitation to us to root out anger and seek out reconciliation may sound like a good one, it may also raise some questions in our minds, such as:

1)      Is all anger bad?  What about anger against injustice?

2)      What does it mean to root out our anger?

3)      Is reconciliation always a good thing?

So, let’s address these questions.  First, is all anger bad?  Well, certainly in some Christian circles, there has been this notion that emotions are not to be trusted, they are irrational, and that negative emotions, such as anger, are especially suspect.  This has unfortunately led many Christians to suppress their feelings.  But listen to what Dan Allender has to say:  he say, “Ignoring our emotions is turning our back on reality; listening to our emotions ushers us into reality.  And reality is where we meet God. . . . Emotions are the language of the soul.  They are the cry that gives the heart a voice.” 

And friends, anger is included in this heart cry.  It is how God made us.  The Apostle Paul himself recognized that at certain times in our lives, we would feel angry.  Echoing Psalms 4, Paul tells Jesus’ followers in Ephesians 4,   “Be angry, but do not sin”, thus encouraging Jesus’ followers to be like their master who also was angry at[r1]  times, yet remained sinless. 

The reality is that because we live in a broken world, we will be angry from time to time.  Even God the Father’s anger, we are told, burns against everything that distorts and destroys His good Creation.  So no, feeling anger in itself is not wrong.  Anger can be righteous when it is in response to the injustices of this world.  The things of this world that anger God should anger us, as well.

But our anger does not necessarily always arise from a good place.  It can also arise out of our selfish desires, our pride, our lust, our greed, our fears, and our false narratives about ourselves, others, and God.  According to James Bryan Smith, a particular recipe for unrighteous anger is when our unmet desires team up with our fears, and then we meditate on them again and again.  This generally leads to bitterness, resentment, contempt, despair, broken relationship, and at its worst injury and even death.   It also leads us to dehumanize ourselves.  N.T. Wright says that when we let our anger smolder, we become a little less human. 

And friends, even when our anger does arise out of righteous concerns, it can still turn in a destructive direction when we hold onto it too tightly.  It can turn into rage and unfortunately, as Howard Thurman has said, “. . . rage once unleashed tends to spill out beyond its intended target and consume everything.  [It] returns with us to our friendships, marriages, and communities.  It damages our own souls.”  So yes, even righteous anger can go wrong if it mixes with impure desires and sinful attitudes and actions. 

So then, you might ask, what are we do with our anger? When God invites us to root out our anger, what does that mean?

Well, the first step to rooting out our anger is to simply recognize it.  Some of us are so out of touch with our emotions, including anger, that we don’t even recognize that they are there.  So, we must learn to see and name all our emotions.

Secondly, if we are feeling anger, we must ask, “why?”  Is this anger here because of some injustice?  Is it because we expected something of someone, and they didn’t follow through?  Is it because we feel slighted and disrespected?  Is it because we are living under some false narrative about ourselves and God such as “I am all alone and God has abandoned me”?  Is this anger simply a dysfunctional coping mechanism learned in childhood?

There are so many reasons we may feel anger, so it is important that we take some time for self-examination or have someone we trust sort it out with us.    Are we rightly angry or is there something else going on deep down in our hearts that needs to be examined and transformed? 

Friends, it is good and healthy to acknowledge our anger and to talk it through, whatever its source.  On the other hand, it is problematic when we leave our anger unacknowledged and unresolved.  For even if that anger never results in actions that obviously hurt others, it will impair our relationships and may cause  irritability, poor sleep, anxiety, depression, and other emotional and physical issues within ourselves.

So, we are to acknowledge our anger and ask “why is it there?”  This will allow us to move forward in healthier, life-giving ways.  It will allow God to bring healing to the broken parts of our hearts that need healing, and will allow us to increasingly exhibit self-control, managing our responses in ways that bring life and flourishing rather than death and destruction. 

And this is true for our righteous anger as well.  We can acknowledge it and let it be transformed by the Holy Spirit into lament and yes, even hope, for as the Rev. Dr. Esau McCaulley reminds us, the cross of Christ gives us the spiritual resources for such hope.  He says that when Jesus was being crucified, he “could have called down the psalms of rage upon his enemies and shouted a final word of defiance before he breathed his last.  Instead he called for forgiveness, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not now what they are doing.’”

We can do the same:  through the power of the same Holy Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead three days after he was crucified, we can forgive others and continue to work towards justice and reconciliation in a spirit of hope.  We can give up our quest for vengeance for the cross shows us that broken relationships, death, and injustice do not have the last word.  Right relationships, justice, and life have the last word, for that is God’s good intention for the world, and He will see it through. 

And friends, that brings us to the last part of our conversation today.  Because God’s intention for the world has always been right relationship, and because reconciliation was at the center of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, we who follow Jesus are also called to a life-long ministry of reconciliation – a ministry of repairing and restoring relationships so that they can become all that they were always meant to be.

This, by no means, is an easy task however.  It requires deep trust in the Lord and His good intentions for the world.  It requires a willingness to look into our own hearts to identify our anger and our distorted desires that lead to relational disintegration.  It requires great perseverance, and it requires the empowerment of the Holy Spirit.

Now friends, if we had another few weeks of sermons that I could devote to this topic alone, I would walk you through some very practical ways for you to pursue reconciliation and would dive more deeply into the Biblical roots of this call. 

Due to limited time, however, all I can do here is scratch the surface, but let me share a few of the most important take-aways I have had from my time working as a mediator and reflecting on the work of reconciliation.

First of all, when it comes to conflict, we are called to get the log out of our own eyes before we take the speck out of the eyes of those we are in conflict with.  Reconciliation requires self-examination and soul work no matter who is the greater offender in a conflict situation.

Second, we are to forgive those who hurt us, whether they repent or not, just as Jesus forgave those who were crucifying him.  That said, it is important to remember that forgiveness is a process and a gift from the Holy Spirit that we cannot just muster up on demand in the power of our own spirits.  It may take time.

Thirdly just because we forgive someone doesn’t mean that reconciliation will come.  Forgiveness involves only one party.  Reconciliation, however, involves everyone involved in a dispute, and if everyone is not willing to do the hard work of looking into their hearts, seeing where they have sinned against another, asking for forgiveness, changing hurtful behavior, and working towards just and right relationships, then true reconciliation cannot happen. We can do our part, but then it must be met with work by the other parties.

Here is an important point to remember.  Repentance and justice proceeds reconciliation.  Along with this point:  abuse and reconciliation do not mix.  So, staying in a relationship with a truly abusive person doesn’t equal reconciliation.  Making nice, pretending everything is okay when it is not, forgetting past hurts for the sake of relationship, and abandoning one’s healthy boundaries is not reconciliation, and we should never call it as such.  And it is okay to step away from such a relationship.

Finally, stepping away from certain relationships doesn’t mean that we don’t still desire reconciliation.  We can still pray for this goal, but it does mean that it is may just not be the time for it.  Reconciliation may come later on in life or on the other side of heaven.  We can hold onto hope while also embracing the reality of our situation.  I personally had to learn this lesson some years ago when I worked hard at reconciling with someone who had significantly broken trust with me, but finally I had to realize that it was just not possible at this time without good will coming from the other party.

But still, I hold out hope, and a Biblical story that animates me to do so is the story of Esau and Jacob.  In his book, “Journey Towards Reconciliation”, Mennonite peacebuilder John Paul Lederach talks about the fracturing of relationship that happened between Jacob and Esau because of Jacob’s deceit and stealing of Esau’s birthright.  Relationships were damaged, and Jacob had to flee from his family.  And yet many years later when the two brothers came together for a short time, Esau was able to embrace Jacob, and Jacob was able to say to his brother, “to see you is to see the face of God.”  God had been working deeply in Jacob’s and Esau’s heart for all those years, and the brothers now saw each other in a different light.

Thus friends, sometimes, we need to let God do his work in our hearts and in the hearts of those we are in conflict with and that may take a very long time, but we again can do as must as we can and then trust that God will one day make things right for that is His intent.

Well, friends, there is obviously so much more I could say on this particular invitation into a life-long ministry of reconciliation, but that is what we have time for today. My hope, however, is that we will not leave this conversation here.  But rather, we will let this brief exploration of anger and reconciliation lead us to dive deeper into the state of our hearts and the state of our relationships and that we would indeed become vessels of reconciliation in this world.

So, as we move into our time of the Prayers of the People, here are some questions that you can begin praying about.

Friends, where are you currently holding onto anger in your life?  Do you know what is the source of that anger?  If that anger is towards a certain person or group of people, what might the Lord be inviting you to do regarding that anger?  Do you sense any invitations from the Lord to move towards reconciliation, and if so, what would be your first steps?  Ponder these questions and let the Lord lead you.  In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.