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The Third Sunday in Lent WOW! Daddy’s Gone Bye-ByeGrace and peace to you. While I was in seminary, one of the every other Saturday morning rituals for my children Kara and Larson and me would be to have a bistro-style breakfast at a small pastry shop called Snuffies. Kara and Larson would have chocolate long-johns and milk; I’d settle in with an espresso, an almond croissant, and the weekend edition of the USA Today. One particular Saturday morning, the ritual became toxic. As we were driving to Snuffies, Larson was tinkering with my tollway change dispenser. As we drove, I repeatedly asked Larson not to play with the change dispenser. We pulled into a street-side parking space, I got Kara and Larson out of my Ford Ranger XLT extended cab pick-up, told them to stay on the curb sidewalk while I locked the truck and got some change for my paper out of the coin dispenser. By this time, the dispenser had become all jammed up. I kept trying to extract two quarters, or five dimes, or ten nickels; a USA Today cost 50 cents in those days. With each click and jam I became madder and madder. Suddenly and without much thought, I pulled the dispenser off of the dashboard, threw it on the side walk and began jumping up and down on it, screaming at the top of my lungs; all the while, Kara and Larson just stood there. Finally, it shattered into pieces sending coins and plastic all over the side walk. I then calmly picked up all the coins, put them in my pocket, threw the large pieces of dispenser plastic into the truck, shook myself off, and every so calmly, as if nothing had happened, turned to Kara and Larson, and said,“There, daddy’s ready for breakfast.” The looks on their two faces told me exactly what they were thinking,“WOW, Daddy’s gone by-by!” Have you ever been publicly this angry? So angry that not only were you shamefully embarrassed, but also a little bit afraid of yourself? What do we know about anger? Anger is simply an emotion. It’s your body’s way of telling you that your will has been blocked. What you want to happen isn’t happening. The problem isn’t the anger; the problem is what we do with it. It’s where we take it. It’s where we go with it. My little sidewalk tantrum was a response to anger that was essentially all about me; my ego, my pride. As Rob Bell notes in the DVD many will be watching this week,“our response to anger is all the ways we work so hard to prop up and protect and defend our selfish little kingdoms.” What was my kingdom that Saturday morning...a five dollar Target coin dispenser. Today’s gospel story is that of Jesus cleansing the Temple; tearing the place up and kicking out all the money changers and merchants. Jesus is angry; there is no doubt about it. Yet, rather than a smash the coin dispenser, self-serving anger, Jesus anger is about something entirely different. Jesus anger is righteous indignation. Righteous indignation. Righteous indignation is an emotion one feels when one becomes angry over perceived mistreatment, insult, or malice. In other words, a feeling involving anger mingled with contempt or disgust." Jesus righteous indignation wasn’t so much about “business transactions” taking place in the temple. Rather, it was about the injustice and disgust with which the poor and marginalized coming to the temple were being exploited. Jesus acted on his righteous indignation for the sake of those who had no advocates, no one to guide them through a fair and equitable process of converting offerings into the Temple coins with which all offerings were to be made. Jesus was taking action for the sake of others. Jesus was simply doing what he’d been called, sent and promised to do. “When we’re talking about calling and mission and vocation and purpose, what we’re going to give our lives to, one of the questions we often ask is,‘What do you love?’ But there’s another question that we can ask. ‘What makes you angry?’” It was January of 1997… the annual senior high ski trip. Our youth were fabulous! After an exhilarating day of skiing, they were all tucked in their beds. All was quite until 2:00 a.m. when I woke to the sounds of yelling and screaming echoing down the hallway. I jumped out of bed and bolted out the door into the hall. There I found a group of Green Bay Packer fans, who quite obviously had begun their Super Bowl partying early. As I approached them with eyes on fire and nostrils flared...my hair hanging over my shoulders and cross necklace bouncing on my bare chest...I heard one of them yell..."Oh no! It's Jesus.... and he's ticked!" My anger, my righteous indignation wasn’t at all about the pre-Super Bowl revelers interrupting my sleep; that would have been self-serving. Rather, it was about my calling and vocation as the Pastor of Youth Ministries. The action taken in the early hours of that morning was about only one thing; to protect my youth. It made me angry when people were compromising the safety of “my kids” and the peace of our retreat! That’s an indication of my vocation… what I’ve given my life to. Often, people struggle with the notion of their pastor(s) being or becoming angry. Maybe that’s because of seeing the anger as self-serving, rather than as something bigger than themselves. Similarly, we often struggle with the idea of an angry God or an angry Jesus. Yet, as Jewish scholar Abraham Heschel writes,“Man’s sense of injustice is a poor analogy to God’s sense of injustice. The exploitation of the poor is a misdemeanor; to God, it is a disaster. Our reaction is disapproval; God’s reaction is something no language can convey. Is it a sign of cruelty that God’s anger is aroused when the rights of the poor are violated, when widows and orphans are oppressed?” During this season of introspection, consider your own anger. What makes you angry? Are the things you usually get angry about self-serving, or do they point you to a cause, a purpose, a task that makes the world a better place. Let us pray. |
St. Paul's Lutheran Church § 824 N. Lewis § Waukegan IL |
