22nd Sunday in Ordinary Time - 2024b
Old Testament - Deuteronomy 4:1-2, 6-9
New Testament - James 1:17-27
Grasping a Hot Coal
INTRODUCTION: So very year Gallup releases what it calls a Global Emotions Report.
Interviewing people from about 140 different countries, Gallup seeks to measure the world’s emotional state. Who’s happy in the world? Who’s sad? Who’s depressed? Who feels good about life? That sort of thing.
And perhaps not surprising, Gallup says there has been a steady rise in recent years in the number of people from all around the globe claiming to have feelings of anger on a daily basis. And while there was also a slight uptick in 2023 of people feeling happy each day, 23% of respondents from across the world still claim to regularly have feelings of anger. That’s almost a quarter of the world’s population, folks.
Even here in America we don’t seem to be exempt from the rise of anger in people. The Federal Aviation Administration says incidences of air rage continue to rise and that 92% of us have at least witnessed an incident of road rage within the last year. Why, I saw one just the other day on Jackson Street as one driver chased another car down the road so he could roll down his window and yell obscenities.
And in England, hardly a rough, backwater nation, 60% of those who work in the customer service industry claim to have experienced hostility in the last year while trying to provide service to people.
Even locally we don’t seem to be exempt from the growing rash of anger. Yep, whether in the fall or spring, the Tullahoma Soccer Association usually has to deal with a few parents or coaches who can’t seem to manage their anger. Last spring one person was so disruptive at their child’s games we had to ask her not to come back. The child, by the way, was playing on a team for kids that were under 8 years of age!
And me personally? Well, as a referee for soccer games, I can assure you the parents, coaches, and even some players can be a real pain in the you know what. And I am (allegedly!) a grown adult. On more than a few occasions, I’ve actually had to counsel teenagers left in tears after games because of the rough verbal treatment they received while refereeing a game.
ONE: So maybe it's apropos to hear from James right now.
Admittedly, tucked toward the back of the New Testament and only 5 chapters long, James is not one of the more popular, better-known, books in the New Testament. Why, some of us might be surprised to learn there is even a Letter of James in the first place! “James? I had no idea there was even a book in the New Testament called James.”
But the Letter of James, well, it’s actually one of my favorite books in all of Scripture. For, you see, James is obsessed with the idea that there should be agreement between what we believe and how we act. For James, in other words, we should “practice what we preach.” Yep, for James there’s nothing worse than someone who says one thing, only to then turn around and do the exact opposite.
Or as James likes to put it, “But be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and upon going away immediately forget what they were like.”
And for James? Doers of the word, those who give tangible expression to their faith in the world, well, it’s the people who are quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger. They think before they speak, they allow others space to offer their own thoughts, and they slowly count to ten before acting in rage.
Well, in a world where anger seems to be increasingly prevalent, condoned, and even readily accepted, James advice sounds almost trite, doesn’t it? What’s more, people are hardly quick to listen or slow to speak for that matter these days either. Nope. Along with anger, we are increasingly reactive, and quick to respond reflexively to the events of life. Too many people these days seem unable (or unwilling?) to think before speaking, or acting.
And yet, there’s James telling us doers of the word are those people who are quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger.
TWO: That’s not to say, mind you, we should never have feelings of anger.
There are, after all, plenty of things in life that should, rightly, anger us. The Bible, for example, is full of prophets who rail and fuss over injustice in the world.
Why even Jesus was known to get angry. After all, when cleansing the Temple by turning over the tables of the money changers and driving them off with a makeshift whip, he was hardly inviting people over for tea and crumpets. So sometimes we’re right to be angry. We look at the way the world is, compared to the way God wants it to be, and it’s hard not to be mad.
But anger left unchecked or allowed to run rampant can all too quickly spiral out of control only making matters worse. In the end, aren’t we really at our worst when angry?
What’s that line Martin Luther had about how he would deal with the indignities and injustices of life? “It’s a good thing I am not in charge of the universe,” Luther more or less declared, “because I would have smashed it to bits years ago, if I was.” And so it goes with humans and anger. We humans, after all, aren’t very good at being subtle, are we? Especially when we allow anger to get the better of us.
The American poet and novelist Mary Rose O’Reilley tells about a friend attending a Quaker meeting one night. The meeting, apparently, got off to a bad start when the friend saw a man sitting across from her wearing a shirt that said, “Support Your Right to Bear Arms.”
Well, the woman had an immediate, visceral reaction to the shirt and stewed all meeting long in anger - even giving herself a stomach ache. “How dare that man show up to a Quaker meeting wearing such a shirt!” Quakers, you might recall, have a long history of being pacifists.
But later, during the fellowship time after the meeting concluded, the woman was sufficiently chastened when she realized she hadn’t bothered to take the time to actually read the man’s shirt. Turns out, it didn’t say, “Support Your Right to Bear Arms,” but instead, “Support Your Right to Arm Bears.” It was actually a play on the famous phrase, but she had missed it because of her quick and angry reaction.
But that’s what happens in a world where people are hyper reactive and fast to get angry. No wonder we’re told in Ephesians, “Be angry but do not sin; and do not let the sun go down on your anger.”
THREE: So I will readily admit we have an unhealthy love affair with sports in this nation.
In a 2013 survey, right at 25% percent of those polled said they were likely to be at church on any given Sunday. But right at 17% also said they were more likely to be watching a sporting event on Sundays.
But I also still think sports is a good way for people - kids and teenagers in particular - to learn important life lessons, like being a good teammate, working hard to get better at something, and playing fair. And yes, even though people often lose their minds at sporting events, I believe sports is also a good way for people to learn to control their anger - maybe for that very reason, ironically enough.
So when I periodically find myself coaching the under 16 co-ed rec soccer team in Tullahoma, I spend a lot of time talking to the kids about learning to manage their emotions in general, but their anger in particular. “It’s okay to be angry sometimes,” I tell them, “the question is how do you handle those moments?”
And while I know it’s not a guarantee for success, I also spend a lot of time telling them that in my experience, it’s the people who know how to manage and control their emotions that usually do well in life. After all, who wants to be around someone who can’t regulate themselves when angry - even if the reason for the feelings for anger are justified.
FOUR: The real issue, of course, is that anger, like envy, probably does as much damage to the person harboring anger, as it does to those it is being directed toward.
Or as the Buddha is supposed to have said, “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”
The great Frederick Buechner, like a lot of people, had assorted reasons to be angry. When he was about 10 years old, his father went out to the garage, started the car, and waited for the carbon monoxide to take his life.
On his 72nd birthday in July of 1998, Buechner’s brother Jamie called to tell him he had been diagnosed with an incurable cancer and that he wasn’t expected to live more than two weeks. And roughly two weeks later Jamie’s prediction became reality.
And then there was Buechner’s daughter, who spent a good bit of her life wrestling with anorexia nervosa. At one point even being on death's door from the illness.
So like all of us, Buechner had reason to be angry about life. But like the Buddha, he seemed to realize anger, left unchecked, was, in a way, its own self-inflicted punishment. Or as he once wrote:
“Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past…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 for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you.”
CONCLUSION: So being angry is only natural, right? We gaze at the state of the world around us, or at our own personal trials and difficulties, and we’re right to be angry.
But anger can also be its own punishment. We can become so comfortable and settled in it, before long we’ve got nothing but burned hands and fingers from all those hot coals we’ve been trying to throw at other people.
Or even worse, maybe you’ll suddenly realize the source of your savory feast the whole time has actually been, well, you.
And now blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen.