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Mrs. Howell –
Anger
Mark 3:1-6
On a hot summer Friday afternoon while we were living in Atlanta I was
sitting on the interstate and the scene was pretty normal. The
interstate was a parking lot, the sounds of car horns fill the air,
along with the occasional yelling of an obscenity. I didn't see what
started it but I did se a man in about his mid fifties opened the door
to his traffic-locked car and get out.
He was balding and his pants hung so low on his waist I thought they
might fall. He walked to the trunk and opened it and began throwing its
contents this way and that until he found what he was searching for. It
was a block of wood. A 4X4 block of wood about 10 inches long. He
slammed the trunk just as traffic was beginning to move. But he didn't
climb back into the driver's seat.
He stormed by his car toward the car in front of his. He raised the
block of wood with his right hand and threw it at the Ford Econoline van
that was pulling away. He nailed the van squarely in the middle of the
hood, and from the looks of the van this was no the first time that it
had been treated so badly. Then the man with the thin hair and sagging
pants got back into his car and drove off, and I maneuvered my car
around the now littered roadway.
Frederick Buechner, wrote, "Of the seven deadly sins, anger is possibly
the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack you lips over grievances
long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter
confrontations still 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." (Wishful
Thinking Transformed by Thoms, p. 117)
I don't know whether I agree that anger is the most fun of the 7 deadly
sins, I mean is anger is more fun than say lust? But it certainly is as
popular. And while you hardly ever hear someone say they were justified
in their lust, anger is often considered righteous.
In his controversial movie The Last Temptation of Christ, Martin
Scorsese imagines that Jesus not only was guilty of Lust but of the sin
of anger as well. There was an outrage at the thought that Jesus might
have lust but there was not a word about His anger because everyone
knows Jesus got angry.
You remember those stories don’t you? Look with me at Mark 11:15-19
says:
And they came to Jerusalem. And he entered the temple and began to drive
out those who sold and those who bought in the temple, and he overturned
the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold
pigeons. And he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the
temple. And he was teaching them and saying to them, “Is it not written,
‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But
you have made it a den of robbers.” And the chief priests and the
scribes heard it and were seeking a way to destroy him, for they feared
him, because all the crowd was astonished at his teaching. And when
evening came they went out of the city.
Jesus overturns tables and drives the money changers out. He kicked over
tables, He ran the folks out, and didn't have any problems expressing
his anger, even in violent ways.
God has also shown His ability to express His anger.
And Numbers 11:1 says: And the people complained in the hearing of the
Lord about their misfortunes, and when the Lord heard it, his anger was
kindled, and the fire of the Lord burned among them and consumed some
outlying parts of the camp.
The rub comes with the fact that even though we see these examples that
the Bible is constantly warning us about the danger of anger.
Proverbs 29: 11, "A fool gives full vent to his anger."
Proverbs 22:24, "Do not associate with one easily angered."
1 Corinthians 13:5, "Love is not easily angered."
And the one my mom used to keep me and my brother up for hours at night
with, Ephesians 4:26 - 27, "In your anger do not sin: Do not let the sun
go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a
foothold."
So do you see this tension in the Bible: God is a God of wrath, Jesus
got angry and expressed it, but anger is considered by the Bible to be
the passion of fools, the opposite of love, and the foothold of Satan.
Now what do we do with that?
It will help to think about the differences between Jesus' anger and how
he expressed it, and our own and how we express it. Let's talk about
four differences.
First we need to notice that Jesus' anger was rare.
The gospels give us, at the most, three or four stories about Jesus
getting angry. And that's including every thing that remotely looks like
an angry moment. There's the story we have already seen in Mark 11.
Jesus "sternly charged" the leper in Mark 1 :43. He got angry at the
disciples when they tried to shoo away mothers and their children in
Mark 10.
Beyond that you have to look pretty hard to find Jesus having an angry
moment. It was an exception to the rule. For many of us, though, anger
is not the exception. It's the expected response.
How many times does your family tip-toe around you because they are
afraid of an angry outburst?
How often to people tell you the bad news last of all because they are
afraid of how you are going to respond?
How often do they just lie to you for the same reason?
For some of us, anger is the default setting. For Jesus, it was just an
option on the menu.
Secondly you need to see that Jesus' anger was expressed.
When He was angry, He kicked over tables. He spoke confrontational
words. He gave people a look that was unmistakably lined with anger.
What I'm suggesting is that when Jesus was angry people knew it. They
didn't have to guess where they stood.
Anger is most dangerous when it is hidden behind pleasant facial
expressions and apparent friendship and pretended peace. With our mouths
we say pleasant words to express one thing. But the whole time our angry
hearts plot something else. We behave toward those at whom we are angry
as if nothing in the world is wrong. But inside we seethe and boil. And
we always find ways to hurt them.
The classic way that we exhibit this in our lives is when we are
intentionally late for appointments or we refuse to return calls or do
any small thing that we can do to somehow way frustrate the people we
are angry with plans. We do this because we lack either the courage or
the knowledge to say, "I am angry with you," so we show it in other
ways.
Remember that Jesus came right out and said it or showed it. And
regardless of the hours that my mom kept us awake until we said I’m
sorry I think when Paul writes in Ephesians 4 "don't let the sun go down
on your anger." He's saying, "Resolve it. Now! Do something about it. If
you don't, that unresolved anger will give the devil a foothold in your
life."
How does Satan use anger? It would be worth our while to pay attention
to the patterns of your own temptations. When are you more likely to
give in to your besetting sins? I suggest that when you have unresolved,
unexpressed anger in your heart, you are an easy mark for Satan.
The man sitting at his computer screen surfing internet porn is angry
with his wife for something she said or didn't say, something she did or
didn't do.
The woman running up her charge card at the mall is angry with her
husband or her children or her friends.
He child that disrespects his parents does so because he is angry with
he way that they treat him.
Unresolved anger makes us feel like we've been wronged, and we might
have been. But instead of dealing with the issue, we seek instead to
pacify our pain by applying a healthy dose of pleasure. We begin to
imagine that we deserve the pleasure of our favorite sin. We've been
unjustly hurt, so we have the right to unjustly ease our pain.
Remember what your mom used to tell you, “Two wrongs never made a
right.” And two unjust actions never lead to justice.
Jesus dealt with his anger out in the open. He didn't let it become
infected.
Next we see that Jesus anger was most often the result of injustice done
to others.
His anger at the disciples, for example, was not because they had
prevented him from having fun with the kids. He was angry that they were
perpetuating a system that devalued women and children.
His anger at the Pharisees in the synagogue was because they were hard
hearted. His anger in the temple was because that holy place was being
desecrated.
Our anger, on the other hand, is often because we feel we've been
personally attacked or slighted or denied something we think we deserve.
Charles De Gaulle once said, "When I am right, I get angry. Churchill
gets angry when he is wrong. So we are often angry with each other."
That's sort of how we are. I'm right. You're wrong. I'm mad about it.
While you are thinking about your patterns of temptation and when you
are most weak and vulnerable, you might also want to think about what
makes you angry. Is it when someone else is being treated unfairly? Or
is your passion reserved only for when you are the victim?
Finally Jesus' anger and ours differ because he was a mind reader.
He knew what people were thinking.
In Mark 3:1-6 we see a time where Jesus gets angry because of the
stubbornness of the crowds hearts.
Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there with a withered
hand. And they watched Jesus, to see whether he would heal him on the
Sabbath, so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man with the
withered hand, “Come here.” And he said to them, “Is it lawful on the
Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” But they
were silent. And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their
hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He
stretched it out, and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and
immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him, how to destroy
him.
Now even though us guys might believe that our wives are mind readers or
that we might possess the ability ourselves, at best all we can do is
make assumptions about why people do what they do.
If I like you then I will usually think favorably about your motives to
their behavior. But if you do something and I just assume a positive
motive, even that can get us into trouble.
But on the other hand if I have hard feelings toward you and you do
something, we will generally assign a negative assumption. Even if you
do the nicest thing in the world we will say that you just did it out of
spite or to make us look or feel bad. If you make an honest mistake, one
that we've made many times, we will assume that you did it
intentionally, on purpose and out of their hatefulness toward us. So we
lash out in anger.
We tend to assign the motives we're looking for. For good or ill. And
often, we're just flat wrong. Jesus could do that because he knew what
was in people's hearts. We don't, most of the time we don’t have a clue
what’s going on inside our own mind much less what’s going on in the
minds and hearts of others.
So before you lash out in anger or before you allow anger to begin
boiling inside you, be sure you really know what's going on with
someone. There's no point wasting all that energy on a mistaken
assumption.
Okay, those are four of the ways our anger differs from that of Jesus;
frequency, how we express it, why we get angry and our false
assumptions.
Let's close quickly by looking at some ways to avoid letting anger give
the devil a foothold.
Abraham Lincoln's secretary of war, Edwin Stanton, was angered by an
army officer who accused him of favoritism. Stanton complained to
Lincoln, who suggested that he write the officer a sharp letter. Stanton
did, then showed the strongly worded letter to Lincoln.
"What are you going to do with it?" asked Lincoln.
Surprised, Stanton replied, "What am I going to do with it? Send it."
Lincoln shook his head. "You don't want to send that letter. Put it in
the stove. That's what I do when I have written a letter while I'm
angry. It's a good letter and you had a good time writing it and feel
better. Now burn it and write another. "
I don't think I need to unpack that little parable for you. Find a safe
way to express your anger, then go to the person after you've blown off
the steam and confront them intelligently. In other words, focus on the
issue, not your feelings.
Then there's prayer.
The Psalms are full of passages where people pray out their anger,
sometimes violent requests. Read what Psalms 137:7-9 says Remember, O
Lord, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem, how they said, “Lay it
bare, lay it bare, down to its foundations!” O daughter of Babylon,
doomed to be destroyed, blessed shall he be who repays you with what you
have done to us! Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and
dashes them against the rock!
I'd say there's some anger in there. But where is it directed? To God.
To the one who knows it's there and has the power to do something about
it. Pray your anger.
Our sin tonight is characterized by Mrs. Howell. And I know that you are
thinking “I get Mary Ann and Envy and even get the Professor and pride
but how does Mrs. Howell serve as the example of anger.
I want you to think back to the show, and her personality. Here is an
older, affluent, woman who is used to being served now stranded on an
island with two women that are very much her younger and much more
attractive. And now instead of being served she has been relegated to
taking up some of the slack. So I would say that her new circumstance
would leave her frustrated at best and down right angry at worst. But
the results of her anger are what we need to focus on as we close
tonight.
Normally when we think about anger we think of rage, yelling and
screaming, and throwing a 4x4 at the van in front of you. But like we
have already noticed that’s not the way that Anger always surfaces in
our lives. IN the case of Mrs. Howell her anger surfaced in
condescending tones, her grumbling and complaining, and her gossiping of
the other castaways. Watch it again and see if you can see the
manipulation she uses to get Mr. Howell and the others to jump through
her hoops.
All too often that’s how our anger plays out in our lives as well.
Instead of going in to a rage and killing someone we are content to
allow our anger to murder someone’s reputation, or joy. We gossip about
them or act condescendingly towards them. And while we think that we are
showing our superiority to them we are really showing our separation
from Christ.
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