Weekly Sermon

"Getting Control of Destructive Anger" - August 22, 2004

The Reverend Anne Benefield

Exodus 4: 27-31, Exodus 31: 18-32

The Lord said to Aaron, "Go into the wilderness to meet Moses." So he went; and he met him at the mountain of God and kissed him. Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord with which he had sent him, and all the signs with which he had charged him. Then Moses and Aaron went and assembled all the elders of the Israelites. Aaron spoke all the words that the Lord had spoken to Moses, and performed the signs in the sight of the people. The people believed; and when they heard that the Lord had given heed to the Israelites and that he had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped. Exodus 31:18-32:8 When God finished speaking with Moses on Mount Sinai, He gave him the two tablets of the covenant, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God. When the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, the people gathered around Aaron, and said to him, "Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him." Aaron said to them, "Take off the gold rings that are on the ears of your wives, your sons, and your daughters, and bring them to me." So all the people took off the gold rings from their ears, and brought them to Aaron. He took the gold from them, formed it in a mold, and cast an image of a calf; and they said, "These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!" When Aaron saw this, he built an altar before it; and Aaron made proclamation and said, "Tomorrow shall be a festival of the Lord." They rose early the next day, and offered burnt offerings and brought sacrifices of well-being; and the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to revel. The Lord said to Moses, "Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf, and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it, and said, 'These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!" The sermon will also refer to John 8:1-12, the passage about the woman accused of adultery. Prayer: Lord God, we live in a world where anger has become epidemic. Help us this morning to use the stories of Moses to lead us beyond our anger to reconciling peace. In the name of Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen. Malcolm, a man with a terrible temper, was playing a round of golf with his pastor. After leaving three straight putts on the edge of the cup, Malcolm exploded. "I missed!" he screamed. "How could I miss?" With that, he heaved his putter into a nearby lake, kicked a wheel on the golf cart and drove his fist into a nearby tree. The pastor was shocked. "I have never seen such a terrible display of anger," he said to the poor man. The pastor went on to say, "Don't you know that God doesn't like it when we are angry? I have heard that there are angels whose one assignment is to search out people who express their anger so ferociously and send lightning bolts from heaven to burn them to a crisp." Malcolm was embarrassed. Heeding the warning of the pastor, on the next few holes, he managed to control himself. However, on the last three holes his putting failed him again. When the last putt veered off to the right just in front of the hole, Malcolm went crazy. "I missed!" he screamed. "How could I miss?" He broke his club across his knee and threw it as far as he could; he kicked up several large clumps of dirt on the edge of the green; and once more he drove his fist into a nearby tree. Suddenly the sky grew dark as an ominous cloud passed over. There was a clap of thunder and an awesome burst of lightning and the pastor was burned to a crisp! An eerie silence filled the golf course. All that could be heard was a quiet voice from heaven: "I missed! How could I miss?" Standing before you to preach about anger, I feel as vulnerable as that poor pastor. It's not an easy topic for me because over the years, I have lost my temper, but my own failures don't afford me an excuse to avoid talking about it. My consolation is that throughout the Bible we see God working through people who make big mistakes, including Moses who had a destructive temper. Because I didn't read the whole long story, which describes the consequences of Moses' anger, you might be thinking that I am going to hold Moses up as an example of self-control. I am not; I cannot, because Moses' temper was destructive not constructive. Let's talk about what Moses did and what he might have done better. We know from earlier in his life that Moses could be dangerously impulsive. Angered by the rough treatment of a Hebrew slave, Moses killed an Egyptian guard and had to flee to Midia where God called him to return to Egypt and lead out the Hebrew people. For Moses, leading them out of bondage was the easy part. Last week we talked about how his father-in-law Jethro advised him to share the responsibilities of leadership with elders. The next big challenge for Moses was to meet with God to learn the laws of God including the Ten Commandments. Moses spent 40 days and 40 nights with God, but the people became impatient. With Aaron's help, they made a golden calf and worshiped it, crediting the golden calf with rescuing them from Egyptian slavery. Poor Moses gets right in the middle of this mess, for God has seen what the people have done. God wants to destroy the people and start again with Moses as the father of a new nation. Moses quickly convinces God not to destroy the people. Then he hurries down the mountain-very angry, violently angry. The result is a massacre of those who did not quickly affirm their faith in God. The anger of Moses has brought death. Anger doesn't always cause physical death, but it surely can cause spiritual and emotional death-both for others and us. We mustn't minimize the results of our anger. As Benjamin Franklin said, "Whatever is begun in anger ends in shame." The first lesson to learn from this story is to slow down the process. When anger sparks in you, pause. Have you ever jumped to a conclusion and hastily took action, only to discover you have made a mistake? During a transit strike, a young man was walking home from work through the park. It was late and he was alone. In the middle of his trek, he saw someone approaching him on the path. There was, of course, a spasm of fear: He veered, the stranger veered. But since both veered in the same direction they bumped in passing. A few moments later, the young man realized that this could hardly have been an accident and felt for his wallet. It was gone. Anger triumphed and he turned, caught up with the pickpocket and demanded his wallet. The man surrendered it. When he got home, the first thing he saw was his wallet lying on the bed. There was no way to avoid the truth: He had mugged somebody. [Joseph Sittler, The Anguish of Preaching, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1966), 10] When we are angry, we need to slow down. Good grief, we don't want to mug anyone! The finest example of slowing down dangerous, self-righteous anger is the way Jesus handled the scribes and Pharisees who brought the woman accused of adultery. He pauses and bends down to write in the sand. He forces the crowd to slow down. After slowing down, the second thing to do is to own our anger. We need to recognize it and take responsibility for it. I don't know about you, but when I lose my temper, I usually blame someone else. I don't like to think that I have an anger problem. I'd rather think that my anger is justified by other people's behavior. In other words, I tell myself that it isn't my fault if I lose my temper. And that is sinful. Period. When Jesus saves the woman accused of adultery, he makes the scribes and Pharisees recognize their own sin with his declaration: Let he who is without sin be the first to cast a stone. In a book called Getting Anger Under Control, Neil Anderson tells a story about D.L. Moody, the "Billy Graham" of the nineteenth century. Moody had a sharp temper that he learned to control, usually. One evening Moody was conducting two evangelic services back-to-back. After the first service, as Mr. Moody was standing near the door welcoming the new crowd, a man approached him and delivered a highly offensive insult of some sort. In a sudden fit of anger, Moody shoved the man and sent him tumbling down a short flight of stairs. The man was not badly harmed, but Moody's friends wondered how the evangelist could now possible preach at a second service. "When I saw Moody give way to his temper," said one observer, I said to myself, 'The meeting is killed.' The large number who have seen the whole thing will hardly be in condition to be influenced by anything more Mr. Moody can say tonight." But Moody stood up, called the meeting to order, and with a trembling voice spoke these words: "Friends, before beginning tonight I want to confess that I yielded to my temper, out in the hall, and have done wrong. Just as I was coming in here tonight, I lost my temper with a man, I want to confess my wrong before you all, and if that man is present here whom I thrust away from me in anger, I want to ask his forgiveness and God's. Let us pray." Instead of being a lost cause, the meeting seemed unusually touched that night, with many people deeply and eternally impressed with the Gospel. [Neil T. Anderson and Rich Miller, Getting Anger Under Control, (Eugene, Oregon: Harvest House) 81-82] We have to admit honestly that we are angry and that we are responsible for our anger. Unresolved and unrecognized anger smolders like an underground fire. I grew up not far from Centralia, Pennsylvania. You may have heard of it. The town is in the midst of anthracite coal country. In 1961, when some trash was burned in an old open pit mine, veins of coal under the town began to burn. For a while, you could drive through town, seeing smoke rising through vent pipes. The town is mostly deserted now. For forty years, the coal has been burning and they haven't been able to put it out. It might have been possible to put it out earlier, when it first began, but that would have required recognition of the problem and decisive action to rout it out. That is the problem with unresolved anger. It burns below the surface, eventually releasing toxins that destroy. Whatever anger we are holding onto is dangerous, even lethal. Getting beyond the anger seems to be something that Moses was able to do. Surely, he was furious with the people and especially with his brother Aaron, but somehow Moses was able to get over it. God forgave Aaron, too, for Aaron was the priest in whom God entrusted the fulfillment of the statutes and laws. Jesus forgives the woman accused of adultery, releasing her with the words, "Go, and sin no more." It is time for her to move one. We must get over our anger before it does great damage to us. Two of my favorite authors have something to say to motivate us to forgive: Anne Lamott says in Traveling Mercies, "…not forgiving someone is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die." [Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies: Some Thought on Faith, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999), 134] Frederick Buechner writes: Anger: Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back-in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you. [Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 2] It is hard to get control of destructive anger, but the rewards are powerful. I have a friend who sends me many emails. Like most people in the world, she has troubles, so she looks for the positive pieces and passes them along. A few weeks ago, she sent me a simple quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson. I'd like to end with it: "For every minute you are angry, you lose sixty seconds of happiness." Amen.