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“Beyond Rage”
Psalm 10
Matthew 5:21-26
A sermon preached by the Rev. Douglas M. Donley
Four years
ago this very hour, most of us had our days rudely interrupted by grainy TV
images of unfolding terror in
We were lamenting.
We were holding each other close.
We were singing the hymns of comfort and challenge, including the hymn that opened today’s service.
We read scripture, including the 10th Psalm that we just read again today.
On TV the other night, Kim and I
watched a documentary made by survivors of the
But I find myself this year wanting to move beyond those raw feelings. I don’t want to minimize what happened back then. I don’t want to ever forget those who died. What I want to do is not be stuck in the cycle of rage any longer. I want to be set free from rage. I want to see what life might look like beyond our rage.
Rage is a raw emotion. Some say it is a combination of anger and shame. When we rage we cannot see straight. We cannot make rational decisions. We cannot be really helpful. All we want to do is to hurt and destroy. That’s what we do when we rage. We want to get back. We want to get even. The problem is that when we hit back with all of that righteous vengeance, the problem has not gone away. Because we most often attack the symptoms of the problem instead of its cause, our rage too often escalates the problem. Sure, we feel better for a time, but we really haven’t dealt with the problem, only the problems created by the problem. The evil stays there, and like any seething mass it smolders and burns and drags people down in its abyss. Can’t we get beyond rage?
Jesus encountered people who had plenty to rage about. Those that heard the Sermon on the Mount had lost their homes.
A brutal and vicious foreign government occupied them.
The Roman occupying army responded
to any kind of rebellion by crucifying hundreds or even thousand of people in
Their leaders, so scared of
The people were in debt.
They were poor.
They were hungry.
They were victims of racism, sexism.
They were tribal outcasts.
They were plenty filled with rage and they had every right to be.
Many of them wanted Jesus to be the military warrior messiah to thwart the Roman enemy and to establish a good and Godly government.
Many were ready to take up swords for this cause.
Many were ready to become martyrs for this cause. They were just waiting for Jesus to lead them with all of their righteous rage to defeat the enemy. They were gathered on the mount awaiting their marching orders.
But Jesus didn’t give them what they wanted. He didn’t fan the flames of hatred and hostility. He didn’t join in the chorus of “Let’s kill them before they kill us.” Or “let’s kill them because they killed those we love.”
Jesus gave them not what they wanted, but what they needed. Jesus gave them an alternative to rage.
Walter Wink says that every word that Jesus utters is an indictment against the domination system—that system that lords profit over people, hatred over love, might over right, fear over reconciliation, my needs over everyone else’s needs. The domination system is not interested in reconciliation or justice or mercy or compassion. It is interested in securing place for one group over another, by any means necessary.
Jesus’ mission was to say that the domination system, although in bed with popular religion, has nothing to do with God.
You have heard people say that they are blind with rage. When we are so enraged, we can’t see straight. We can only see the object of our rage. We become like a pack of animals devouring our prey. Our visceral rage is vicious and it often takes no prisoners.
Rage is the perfect tool of the domination system to blind us. And if we are blind with rage, then we can’t see the object of our rage as a sister or brother, only as an enemy to be conquered.
Jesus came to show us a new way. In the Sermon on the Mount, he said to the ragers among him, “You have heard it said, you shall not murder, but I say to you don’t even be angry. Don’t insult anyone or even call them names.” If you do, you will be liable to the same judgement as a murderer.
Jesus was interested in getting to the root of the problem. Murder is an extreme manifestation of a problem that starts much earlier. And the only way to stop murder is to get to its roots.
The Buddha gives us some wisdom here:
“The thought manifests as the word.
The word manifests as the deed.
The deed develops into habit.
Habit hardens into character.
So watch the thought and its ways with care.
Let it spring from love born out of concern for all living things.”
It takes a lot to make someone want to murder. You first need to dehumanize the object. Then you need to believe that they are evil or at least believe that you are better than them.
Think about this. The NRA is right that guns don’t kill people, but people do (using guns, of course). The problem is exacerbated by the prevalence of guns, but we as a society have not found a way to stop the hate speech that is part of our upbringing—a very potent weapon. We are used to insulting people. We have heard our government say that Islam hates our freedom. We have heard elected officials call Islam a godless religion. Talk about insulting! One of the former heads of the Southern Baptist Convention called the prophet Mohammed a demon-possessed pedophile. This is tantamount to calling every Muslim a fool.
We have
heard Pat Robertson call for the murder of President Chavez of
What I am saying is that we need to pay at least as much attention to the roots of violence as we do on the products of violence if we are ever going to stop the violence. The only way to stop rage is to make sure that rage doesn’t start in the first place. The only way to really address rage is to not give it fertile soil in which to grow. We never stop rage and violence through superior violence.
Martin Luther King said it so eloquently: “The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate...Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: Only love can do that.”
Jesus told us that we need to stop saying insulting things to each other. We are to curb our anger. We are not to call each other names. We are to seek reconciliation with our sisters and brothers. If we don’t, then the alternative is anger, which can lead to rage, which can lead to violence, which can lead to more violence, which can lead to murder.
And you know what, in the short term, it can be harder to address the problems we have with each other than it can be to act with violence and insult. Violence and insult are popular and acceptable ways to deal with or avoid conflict. It takes more courage to seek reconciliation with your sister or brother. It takes more work.
It takes looking at our own places where we are blinded by our rage. But in the long run, it is far better than the violent alternative.
Jesus said, “when you are offering a gift at the altar, and you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, (not that you have something against your sister or brother, but that they have something against you) leave your gift there and first be reconciled with your sister or your brother.” (Matthew 5:23,24)
In ancient days, people gave gifts at the altar to atone for sins and to make peace with God. It wasn’t the like passing the offering place these days. People ritually made gifts of food or meat in order to make amends to God. But Jesus says that you can only give these gifts when no one has anything against you. Not when you feel self-righteous, that you have done no wrong. The burden is upon us to think about how others might be feeling about us. The work we are to do is to divert and deflect the feelings of rage in another person. If anyone has anything against any of us, then we are to make amends to that person before we are seen as righteous before God. Do you see how this is harder than violence? Do you see how far this is from rage?
Think about
the ways our brothers and sisters feel about the
Have we done all we can to reconcile with our sisters and brothers?
Have we even tried?
Or have we given fuel to seething rage?
That’s the hard question of September 11th. Have we done anything to move beyond rage?
Most of us are not nation states. So the stakes are not as high for us. But each of us has the seed of rage in ourselves. All it needs is some good soil of distrust, some fertilization of insult and a hearty rain of name calling and our rage can grow.
Our task, in Jesus’ model, our subversive task, our spiritual task is to reconcile with our sister and brother, by trying to look at the world through their eyes. We are to see our potential adversaries as sisters and brothers. We are to seek to reconcile with them.
When we do that, then a new plant begins to emerge from out garden. Like kudzu it can expand and balance out those once tall plants of violence and rage.
It’s what Jesus called the
It is the presence of the spirit of reconciliation over domination.
It is freedom over dependence.
It is love over hate.
It is hope over despair.
It is the power of God over the power of terror.
When we live as Jesus had us live in our little subversive communities of Spirit, then we truly move beyond rage and into peace.