"Anger Management"
Romans 12:9-21
August 31, 2008
St. Paul United Methodist Church
Rev. John A. Fleming
Whenever two or more people gather together in the close quarters of family or church or work or community, conflicts are bound to happen. The Bible affirms that from cover to cover. Jacob had trouble with his brother, Esau. Joseph's brothers threw him into a pit and eventually sold him into slavery. An older brother did not appreciate his younger prodigal sibling. King Saul tried to kill David. The apostle, Paul, wanted nothing to do with Mark, someone who accompanied him on missionary journeys.
The New Testament is full of advice on how to resolve difficulties. Today and next Sunday, I want us to look at how we might go about doing that using first this lesson from Paul's letter to the Romans and then a passage from Matthew's gospel. Before we look at our lesson for today, can I ask you if you have ever been so angry that you just about lost it? Maybe you have lost it on an occasion or two.
Last week Liz Wright sent me a series of four video clips by way of email that had as their theme stress and anger at the office. I hope she was not trying to tell me something. In one of them a young secretary is talking on the phone. Obviously it's a personal call. She is laughing as loudly as she can moving about the office using the wheels of her office chair. One of her co-workers takes that as long as he can. Then he had enough! He marched over to her desk, grabbed the phone from it, and smashed it into a million pieces. The young secretary looks on with disgust.
In another of the clips, a man is trying his best to send a document from his computer to a printer. He tries three times unsuccessfully. Each time the printer spits out a blank piece of paper. Frustrated he goes back to his desk, yanks his computer's monitor from it, goes over to the copying machine, and slams the screen of the monitor on it. Then he repeatedly hits the copy key. Everyone in the office is watching him, but no one dares to say a word. I don't know about you, but there have been several computers I would have liked to have done that to!
Andre Dawson, the now retired professional baseball player, once paid a thousand dollar fine for arguing a strike call with an umpire. He gladly paid the fine. He wrote out the check. He signed his name to it and in the memo line of the document, he wrote these words, "Donation to the blind."
We all get angry sometimes. I know I do. To be honest with you, I have to watch my temper. Most likely you will not see my temper. I keep it hidden most of the time. Those that I work with have rarely seen it in my six years here. Unfortunately my family has seen my temper way too often, more times than I can count. They saw it this week even though I was working on this sermon on anger management. Wow!
The truth is that sometimes we just get so fed up that we almost have to do something about it. We are not alone in this. Jesus, you will remember, was not always meek and mild in his dealings with the religious authorities. He did not get mad often, but he did get mad. Three out of the four gospel writers tell of the time he walked into the Temple, saw money changers there. In anger, he turned over their tables.
Everyone gets angry sometimes and when people tell me that they never have, I worry about them. I had not heard this until I started working on our sermon this week, but the great thinker, Sigmund Freud, said this about anger, "Depression is anger turned inward." I am not a therapist. I have only had a couple of counseling courses, but even I know that inward anger is not a good thing.
Let's turn to our scripture lesson now. It is taken from the twelfth chapter of Paul's letter to the Roman Christians. Paul, I hope you will remember, wasn't the pastor of the Roman congregation. In fact, he had never visited Rome. He hoped to. He hoped that the Romans would financially help him spread the gospel to Spain. Because he did not know them and because he was about to ask them for a love offering and an offering for love, he spends most of the letter letting them know who he is and how he thinks. Commentators tell us that the first eleven chapters of his letter to the Romans is the greatest collection of Paul's theological thoughts.
In the twelfth chapter, Paul turns a corner and begins to write about the importance of a community. Paul will address specific problems in the Roman church in the thirteenth chapter. If he is going to do that, he has to let them know how important a community is. For Paul, a community is a living witness to God's abundant grace and power.
Paul is quick to applaud the Roman's diversity. In last week's first scripture lesson, we heard the Roman version of the importance of spiritual gifts. Paul let the Roman Christians know how the Holy Spirit plays an important role in their communal life. Then Paul talks about love. He uses phrases like, "Let love be genuine. Love one another with mutual affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. Rejoice in hope. Be patient in suffering. Persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints." That is part of his plea for the love offering. "Extend hospitality to strangers." That is Paul, too. He hoped to soon be with them.
Paul says that love is important, it is especially important when there is evil around. Paul wants the Roman Christians to be a witness for God's love in the midst of evil. How do you do that? Well, according to Paul you don't repay evil for evil. You are careful to do what is right in everyone's eyes. If it is possible (and by the way it is not always possible), so far as it depends upon you, you live peaceably with everyone. Paul says that if you enemy is hungry or thirsty, you feed them and give them something to drink. You leave vengeance to God; vengeance is God's to do, not yours to do.
I have to tell you this. This is a tough lesson for us. It is a tough one for me. It goes against our very nature to be nice to someone who has wronged us. Anger is on the menu, not love. So when you get angry, how do you manage it?
Well, with the time we have left in our sermon this morning, I'd like to offer some
suggestions. Let me quickly say this, again. I'm not the expert here. I walk with you if you struggle with anger. Still, let me offer three things.
First, be careful with your anger. People are watching us. We must set the standard and the example with our tempers. My two girls are watching me. Annie Grace is old enough to notice how I act. Maybe Julie is, too. I've noticed that when I tell her no, often she falls to the ground and starts crying. I wonder where she learned to do that. Did she learn that from someone or was it passed genetically down to her?
We must be careful how we express our anger. About five years ago, there was a great movie starring, among others, Adam Sandler and Jack Nicholson. The movie's title is the title of our sermon Anger Management. Jack played the part of a therapist who was helping Adam's character with his anger. One of Jack's famous lines was this one, "Your temper is the one thing you cannot get rid of by losing it!"
First, be careful with your anger. People are watching us. Second, don't hang on to your anger. To another church, this time the one in Ephesus, Paul writes, "Be angry, but do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger."
In that one sentence, Paul says three great things. He says that it is all right to be angry. Anger is one of our emotions and it is as real as joy and it is as genuine as sadness. Saying do not be angry to someone is like saying when a baby is born, "Don't be happy." Or when someone dies to say, "Don't be sad." Paul is saying that anger in and of itself is all right. He also says, in that one sentence, that our anger should not cause us to sin. There are all kinds of things to do when anger comes on. Some people count to ten. That has never worked for me. Some people take a walk. That is not bad advice.
You might do what the great boxing legend Muhammad Ali did. When he was a kid, his parents gave him a bicycle. He was proud of it and one day he parked it just outside a gym. The bike was promptly stolen; that broke his heart. He went inside the gym looking for help and found a police officer who also was a boxing instructor. The soon to be boxing legend told the officer that he wanted to beat up whoever stole his bicycle. The officer taught Ali to box. He never found the one who stole his bicycle, but I am told that whenever Ali faced someone in the ring, he pictured the one who had stolen from him. I am not suggesting you take up boxing, but I am suggesting that you frame, claim, and tame your anger. That is so important.
Paul also counsels the Ephesians with these words, "Do not let the sun go down on your anger." To me that means that we must deal with anger in a timely manner. We should not hold on to anger for soon anger will hold on to us.
At weddings I like to tell the story of the grandson who went to talk with his grandfather the night before the younger was to marry. He was seeking advice from his grandfather who had been married for more than fifty years this is the advice he received, "Never go to bed angry at your wife. Your grandmother and I never did that." The grandson was amazed. His amazement left when the older man said, "But one night the two of us were up for three years."
You may already know this. I did not, but the number one killer in our world is still heart disease. Did you know that the number one cause of heart disease is anger? According to a study, people who struggle with anger are five times more likely to have heart disease than the average person and people with heart disease more than double their risk of an attack when they lost their temper. I don't know about you, but for me that is incentive enough!
Let me finally and quickly say this. Perhaps the best thing we can do with our anger is to ask God's help with it. There is a great line from Peter's first letter. The fifth chapter has these words, "Cast all your anxiety on him, because He cares for you." For me that is the best advice of all, for everything in my life. Let us pray.
(I would like to thank a pastor and friend of mine who helped with a story in this sermon and with several ideas in it. My hope is that we will all frame, claim, and tame our tempers).