The Place for Rage

Sermon based on Luke 12:49-56 and Hebrews 11:29-12:2

Preached at Germantown Mennonite Church on August 14, 2016

 

My delegation to Palestine this summer had two nicknames for me.  “Iron Lady” and “Momma Bear.”  Momma Bear was the name that stuck.  When I told my family about this nickname, they liked it too.  They thought it was fitting.  

So, why did I get the nickname, you may be wondering?  I did not tolerate members of the delegation being late, or forgetting things and needing to run back to their room.  We were a team, we did things together, and we needed to respect each other by being on time and being ready for what we were going to see and do that day.  

What my team probably didn’t realize is that most of my momma bear behaviors came from being worried about their safety.  I was worried if there were stragglers, because we were in a refugee camp that was continually raided by watching soldiers.  I raised my voice if we couldn’t stay together in a militarized neighborhood, because there were soldiers everywhere, and they didn’t want us there.  Often the delegation didn’t see the soldiers, but the Christian Peacemaker Teams staff and I always knew where they were.  I became fierce if I saw the team doing things that would get us into trouble.  Because I know what can happen in these places.  I know what has happened in these refugee camps when others have visited.  I know, and I needed to be fierce so that we could stay safe.

Two weeks in protective momma bear mode.  It’s a several levels above regular protective parent mode, because thankfully I’m not responsible every day for 12 fiercely independent adults in occupied territory. I’m only co-responsible for two sensible, self-aware teenagers in Philadelphia.  

Why do I tell you about my momma bear self?  Because after two weeks of this protective mode, I came back home, and was forced to face the occupation I’d just seen.  My focus in Palestine was on keeping everyone safe, knowing what was next, how to get to the next event, how much the bus fare was, and trying to remember if it was a Muslim, Jewish or Christian holy day, and how that would impact travel.  I didn’t have time to let the occupation hit me.  

But when I came back home, and settled into the horrors of what I’d just seen, it was ugly.  I was angry.  Beyond angry, I was raging.  Everything set me off.  Innocuous emails.  My own forgetfulness.  The lack of toilet paper in the bathroom, misplaced shoes.   

Thankfully, I work with people like Michelle and John who have been to the West Bank, and who know this rage.  Thankfully, I am married to someone that has seen me in this mode before, and doesn’t take it personally.  

Today’s text and my last two weeks of adjusting to home has me wondering what about the place of our rage in our faith.  I’m wondering today about what good it is to us, what is says to us, and how it teaches us.  Because, I’m raging still, and maybe your raging too.  And Jesus himself in this text is raging.  

“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!  I have a baptism with which to be baptized, and what stress I am under until it is completed!  Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”

Don’t tell me that Jesus said this calmly.  Or with a sad, gentle demeanor.  No, Jesus said this in anger.  “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!”  Jesus was pissed.

Being in the West Bank, I witnessed the repeated indignities of the Palestinian people.  In the repeated raids of the Aida refugee camp, where children were afraid to play, and parents were afraid to send their children to the playground.  A camp where a net had to be put over the new soccer field so that tear gas canisters and stun grenades didn’t hit the children when the played, or set fire the new turf on the field.  I visited a village that had been demolished 101 times, in an attempt to drive these Bedouin people off their land.  I heard stories of families living across from an illegal settlement who were repeatedly harassed and shot at by settlers and soldiers.  I saw that checkpoints in Hebron have become more dangerous, more militarized, separating Palestinians from soldiers,and increasing the danger that they will be shot or arrested at a checkpoint.  

So, when Jesus yells and rages, “I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!”  I hear that anger.  I feel the rage, the quivering in his voice, the righteous anger of a man with a baptism to be completed, a Jesus tired of the slow change, and tired of people not getting it.  

I’m feeling some Jesus-y rage today, a rage that comes from seeing injustice, a rage of impatience for things to change for people I love.  I’m furious that despite my best efforts, and the efforts of so many of us, our nation’s politics moves towards self interest and away from caring for all God’s people.  

So, what is this rage, and where does it come from?

Rage helps us feel powerful when we feel powerless and small.  It’s is the emotion that stirs and motivates us to do things we wouldn’t otherwise do.  Sometimes that rage causes people to do some pretty bad things.  We see plenty of rage gone bad in our city–especially on these hot summer days–and that is terribly problematic and dangerous.  But often, if directed well, rage can motivate folks to move towards love, towards truth, and towards justice.  

Many of us have grown up being told that rage is a bad thing.  That’s especially true of women.  Our rage is sinful.  It’s not feminine, or socially acceptable.  So we need to tap that down.  Kill our anger.  Because nothing good can come from it.  Have you heard this before?

What happens when we kill our anger?  I believe that when we do that, we lose f touch with what scares us.  Our anger shows us our deepest fears.  For Jesus, his anger showed us his fear as that no one really understood what Jesus was talking about, and if they did, they would not follow him.  If they really understood the divisions that following Jesus would bring, they would go back to their homes, back to their neighborhoods that were under Roman occupation, but at least they weren’t on the front lines of family and community division.  

Jesus was fearful that no one understood.  And he knew they didn’t get it.  How many parables did this man have to share before people understood?  How many people did Jesus have to have to heal before his own disciples understood?  How many different ways did he have to say it nicely?  

I also believe that when we kill our anger, when we do what so many of us were taught to do, we lose that fire, we lose our motivation.  When we aren’t angry about the ways of the world we live in, we can become apathetic.  We don’t try to be better neighbors, personally and globally.  We don’t try to follow Jesus, because it can be such a challenge to us and to our community.  If we don’t tap into our anger, we don’t dare do the things that scare us, even if they are the right thing to do, and they right things to say.  

We need anger and rage.  Jesus needed the anger.  He needed the fear that it brought.  He needed to speak it out.  He needed to shake people from their apathy, and to be shaken to his core.  He said, “Do you think I’ve come to bring peace on earth?  No, I’ve come to bring division.  From now on, a household will be divided–three against two and two against three.”  

Here’s the other thing about rage.  It doesn’t bring us simple answers.  It actually complicates story lines that we’ve been given, and those polarizations we’ve created.  Our anger forces us to see the complexity of something that’s been made too simple.  It’s not as simple believing this or that.  It’s as complicated as the further down you get on the road of discipleship, the messier things become.  Because discipleship bring division.  It does not bring us simple answers.  And the anger keeps us going, as the scales fall from our eyes, and as the way becomes less certain.  

The  rage will be there.  It should be there.  It serves to drive us, to motivate us, and to force us to pay attention to our inner lives.  To pay attention to what lives under those strong feelings.  It forces us back to the very source, the fire of life, that lives and grows within us.  

But, we also need to step back from our anger, to get perspective.  And thank God for that Hebrews text today–this text gives us a long view.  Our ancestors have been doing the hard work for many centuries, for millennia.  They never quite arrived.  They never got their prize.  The injustice didn’t ever completely end.  The promised land was always just out of their reach.  But we still keep reaching.  We still keep moving towards the goal.  The rage is a motivator, but we can’t let it spin us out of control.  The rage is there, we can’t kill it, and we shouldn’t.  

We have Jesus as an example of how to live with our rage.  We speak it.  We let it motivate us.  We don’t fear it.  We don’t kill it.  We embrace it, and allow it to move us towards deeper faith and discipleship, just as it did with our ancestors.  AMEN.