Scorched Earth

Poolesville Presbyterian Church

Rev. David Williams; 06.30.2013

Scripture Lesson:  Luke 9: 51-62

When we get mad, well, we don’t always think ideally.

Anger is one of those emotions that we tend to struggle with.  It’s a natural response, a basic aspect of the way we’ve been created.  Faced with a threat, anger stirs us to action, as our body spools up to defend either ourselves or our loved ones.  Our bodies pour out hormones, which fill our bodies with adrenaline and noradrenaline, heightening our ability to either flee in terror or lob a flint-tipped spear at that oncoming sabre-toothed tiger.

In our brains, anger hormones pour out of our lizard brain, which opens up blood flow into our frontal lobe, which counterbalances the great gout of fury hormones, and makes us think more quickly and more clearly.  This helps us to avoid lobbing a flint-tipped spear at that troublesome customer or fleeing in terror from a difficult client.  Both might be tempting, but neither goes over over too well when we reach our annual review.

As someone whose blood is at least one quarter Scot, I’m quite aware of how anger can form and shape reactions to the world.  When stirred to anger, the Scots had this tendency to take off all of their clothes, paint themselves blue, and go running around screaming while brandishing large pointy objects.  And while Presbyterianism was a Scottish tradition, I’m reasonably sure that’s no longer acceptable behavior at congregational meetings, no matter how much you disapprove of the color of the paint in Speer Hall.

My clan, Clan MacDougall, was particularly challenged by anger, perhaps because we weren’t just Scottish.  We were a mix of Scots and Vikings, which isn’t exactly the most mellow genetic blend.

Reading through the histories of that part of my heritage is a bit like watching Game of Thrones, or it would be, if I ever watched Game of Thrones.  It’s a long history of slaughter and butchery, followed by battles, followed by manhunts and stabbings and intrigue.  Brothers turned against brothers, who then turned against uncles, who then vowed eternal vengeance about something done by a third cousin twice removed.

Thankfully, my family gatherings now are nothing at all like this.

But though it’s an integral part of our nature, and a reality whenever there’s disagreement, anger is something we struggle to cope with as human beings.  We can lash out when angry, throwing our fury at the world, only to discover that we’ve shattered relationships that were important to us.  Looking at the damage it can do to relationships, we can often suppress it, which is equally unhealthy.

Anger and the desire for vengeance is woven into the passage today from Luke’s Gospel, as Jesus and his disciples come smack up against a very deep and ancient hatred.

As Luke spins out his story of Jesus, we hear that Jesus and the disciples are on their way to Jerusalem.  It’s the goal of the entire Gospel travelogue in Luke, as Jesus moves from Galilee in the north down towards the center of all of the cultic and ritual life of the Jewish people: Jerusalem.

Problem is, that wasn’t what the people of Samaria believed.  Samaritans play an interesting role in the stories of Jesus, because they were both Jews and not Jews all at the same time.

Samaritans were denizens of what had been the Northern Kingdom of Israel, which split from Judah almost eight hundred years before Jesus arrived on the scene.  The center of the religious life of Samaritans was the city of Samaria, which was established by Jeroboam, the first of the Northern Kings.   The argument between the North and the South was over power, and over how and where to worship.  For Samaritans, Jerusalem wasn’t the Holy of Holies.  It was the place where folks who would oppress and subjugate them worshipped.  It was the place where those who rejected their faith worshipped.

Samaritans, in other words, were not particularly fond of Jerusalem.  And if Jesus was headed there, and declared that this city was the focus and end goal of his ministry, a Samaritan town would not have been particularly eager to put him up for the night.

When word of this rejection got back to the disciples, they were...well...they weren’t happy.  We hear from Luke that James and John were particularly cheesed off.  Having gotten word of their rejection, they asked Jesus about whether they should take out the town.

In ancient Semitic cultures, what that village had done to Jesus was without question a violation of some rather basic expectations.  Within that society, refusing to show welcome to a stranger was a serious slap in in the face.  It was deeply and profoundly disrespectful, and for James and John, it was too much.

“Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?”  It’s an outraged response, and angry response, the kind of response you’d have if someone messed with a person you particularly cared about.  Whether or not James and John had either drones or an orbital battle station that would have allowed them to follow through with that threat is besides the point.  They were infuriated.  They were ready to fight.

 But the response they receive doesn’t encourage them in their anger..  In the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, we hear that Jesus “..turned and rebuked them.”  

What we do not hear, not unless we’re working with a decent study bible, is what that rebuke was.  In the ancient manuscripts of the Gospel of Luke, most don’t contain the fullness of what Jesus said when he corrected his ready-to-go-nuclear disciples.  

But a minority report of the ancient versions of Luke do fill in those words for us: “You do not know what spirit you are of, for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.”

As the majority of the texts we have don’t say this, it doesn’t make it’s way in to our Bibles.  But it works with the rest of Luke, and it would make perfect sense here.

Offense had been given, offense that goes deep and challenges some of the most essential understandings of who they were as human beings.  They are angry, and their anger would have felt, to them, as a completely justified response.  Destroy!  Obliterate!

Jesus, of course, was no stranger to anger. None of the Gospels paint Jesus in soft pastel colors.  Jesus gets angry plenty.  He is angered by injustice, angered by those who misuse faith to abuse the powerless, angered by those who try to use God as an implement to further their own power.  Luke’s version of the Gospel includes Jesus pitching out woes to those who are rich and prosperous in chapter six, and driving the moneychangers out the temple in chapter 19.

But what the Gospel is about is reconciliation.  It’s about the healing of the rift between ourselves and our Creator, and between ourselves and our neighbors.  Jesus challenged James and John not because they were stirred to anger, but because their response would have made healing impossible.   It’s a little bit difficult to restore your relationship with a pile of ashes.

What this little passage teaches us about the Christian response to anger is twofold.

First, anger itself is not the problem.  Anger tells us something has gone badly wrong.  It can stir us challenge injustice or brokenness.  It gives us the energy, the passion, and the focus to deal with things that aren’t as they should be.

Being able to express anger constructively can be powerfully healing and transforming.

Second, we also need to be aware that the energies we find in our anger must be tempered and focused by love.  That they give heat to our actions is fine, so long as we do not take that heat and allow it to tear apart the very thing we want to make better.

Take interactions with one’s children, for example.  Do we ever get angry with them?  Sure.  Of course we do.  But as we express that anger, if we forget the love that underlies that relationship, we can easily do damage.

Don’t fear anger, but don’t call down the fire.  Build up and heal, don’t destroy.

Let it be so, for you and for me, AMEN.