Today’s Readings: Psalm 87; Exodus 40:18-38; Luke 19:41-48; Philippians 2:6-13; Psalm 48
I’ll never forget a conversation I had a while ago with someone who had publically displayed their anger in a public setting. The person later came to me to talk about the incident. I could tell the person felt as if others expected the person to apologize but that the person personally felt no need to do so. This made our conversation a little awkward. As we talked about what had happened, the person said, “You know, what I did wasn’t really all that bad. After all, Jesus went off against the money changers in the temple. That means it was okay for me to get angry as well.” The words of the person were a great awareness raiser for me for they forced me to revisit the incident in the Temple and explore it on a deeper level – the same incident included in today’s reading from Luke. “Did Jesus’ outburst in the Temple serve as vindication for all angry outbursts,” I asked myself, “or was their something different about Jesus’ outburst that set if apart from the outbursts you and I are prone to?” Here is the answer I came up with. The thing that made Jesus’ outburst different than most of our own was the motivation that lie behind Jesus’ outburst. If you’re anything like me, my outbursts are most frequently triggered by the fact that I am not getting my way. These angry outbursts are often expression of self-righteous anger. Jesus’ outburst in the Temple, however, was triggered by something else. The outburst wasn’t about Jesus getting his way; the outburst was triggered by people dishonoring God. This outburst was an expression of righteous anger. The question then becomes, “How do we tell if our anger is self-righteous or righteous?” This is a tricky question simply because our minds have an amazing capacity to rationalize our behaviors so we can try to pass self-righteous anger off as righteous anger. My answer to that question is the annoying age old answer, “It depends.” Only the person him or herself can answer the question “Who is one’s anger serving?” That’s why we have to be so careful with the emotion of anger – because some of us (myself included) lack this sense of humility. So what role does anger play in your life? Is it something that appears to further you and your agenda, or is it something that is used to defend something larger than yourself? Something to think about in the days ahead. Til next time…
I’ll never forget a conversation I had a while ago with someone who had publically displayed their anger in a public setting. The person later came to me to talk about the incident. I could tell the person felt as if others expected the person to apologize but that the person personally felt no need to do so. This made our conversation a little awkward. As we talked about what had happened, the person said, “You know, what I did wasn’t really all that bad. After all, Jesus went off against the money changers in the temple. That means it was okay for me to get angry as well.” The words of the person were a great awareness raiser for me for they forced me to revisit the incident in the Temple and explore it on a deeper level – the same incident included in today’s reading from Luke. “Did Jesus’ outburst in the Temple serve as vindication for all angry outbursts,” I asked myself, “or was their something different about Jesus’ outburst that set if apart from the outbursts you and I are prone to?” Here is the answer I came up with. The thing that made Jesus’ outburst different than most of our own was the motivation that lie behind Jesus’ outburst. If you’re anything like me, my outbursts are most frequently triggered by the fact that I am not getting my way. These angry outbursts are often expression of self-righteous anger. Jesus’ outburst in the Temple, however, was triggered by something else. The outburst wasn’t about Jesus getting his way; the outburst was triggered by people dishonoring God. This outburst was an expression of righteous anger. The question then becomes, “How do we tell if our anger is self-righteous or righteous?” This is a tricky question simply because our minds have an amazing capacity to rationalize our behaviors so we can try to pass self-righteous anger off as righteous anger. My answer to that question is the annoying age old answer, “It depends.” Only the person him or herself can answer the question “Who is one’s anger serving?” That’s why we have to be so careful with the emotion of anger – because some of us (myself included) lack this sense of humility. So what role does anger play in your life? Is it something that appears to further you and your agenda, or is it something that is used to defend something larger than yourself? Something to think about in the days ahead. Til next time…
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