What do you do with the mad that you feel? Preached on December 8th, 2019 At Wollaston Congregational Church Scripture: Matthew 3:1-12 On Wednesday night, a good number of us gathered for our weekly Advent soup and meditation. The form of meditation we are using this year is the ancient practice of Lectio Divina. This is a mediation on scripture. The idea of Lectio is that we read the scripture as though it is a letter written lovingly from someone who cares about us deeply. It is the kind of letter you keep in your pocket for days, even weeks, and pull it out when you have a quiet moment. You re-read, slowly and carefully paying attention to the words of your loved one. Over several careful and slow re-readings of the scripture, you pick out a word or a phrase that speaks to you. And you ask God “What are you saying to me, for my life at this time, in this letter.” And so, for those who did not attend on Wednesday, I am going to read the gospel passage again, this time more slowly than last time. You may like to follow along in your pew Bible Matthew 3:1-12 In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said, "The voice of one crying out in the wilderness: 'Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'" Now John wore clothing of camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. "I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire." This reading from the gospel of Matthew comes right after the story of the birth of Jesus. You may remember that story ends with Joseph taking his wife, Mary, and the infant Jesus to Egypt. They do this to avoid the wrath of King Herod, who orders all boys under two years old be killed. Herod is so fearful of the threat of the newborn who has come to be king of the Jews. After Herod dies, Mary, Joseph and Jesus return to Israel and live in Galilee. And years pass by as the story moves on. Then John the Baptist appears in the wilderness, preaching “repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” He is preparing the way for Jesus to begin his ministry. When we read this passage on Wednesday, a number of the women in the group were struck by John’s anger. This is not a “gentle Jesus meek and mild” type passage. As a prophet of God, very much like the prophets of the Hebrew scriptures, John comes with stern words from the God of Israel. We imagined the Messianic figure who is ready to cut down trees that do not bear good fruit, who carries a winnowing fork to separate the grain from the straw. And inwardly we cringed a little. Is this really a love letter from our God? We were not comfortable, because we are rarely comfortable with anger. And still, anger is part and parcel of being human and being in relationship with God. In order to grapple with the possibility of God’s anger, here is an image from the prophet Hosea. It speaks of God, whose anger is like that of a bear robbed of her cubs. Have you ever been warned, if you see a bear cub, to be sure not to get between him and his mother? Even the small black bears of New England will become ferocious if they are afraid for their babies. Hosea expresses the righteous anger of God as being like the fierce love of a mother bear. (Hosea 13:8) We witness the fierce love of God each year at Advent, when we remember that God so loves the world fiercely enough to send God’s own child to be with us. We are reminded that if God’s love is bound up in the abundance and beauty of creation, God is angry about its destruction. God, our fierce loving parent, cares for every infant, every child, every creature on the planet. And so pain inflicted on children, through abuse, inequitable distribution of resources, through warfare and disease, all must anger God. There’s no escaping it, fierce love and righteous anger go hand in hand. Besides being uncomfortable with the anger of our fiercely loving God, we also tend to be uncomfortable with our own anger. And yet, if we are to love fiercely, like our parent God, we will experience anger too. I think of: The anger of the parent of the child who is being bullied at school and on social media. Or the anger of the parent whose adult child has been refused marriage in the church because their partner is the same sex. Or the anger of the parent whose child has experienced abuse, sexual or otherwise, in their religious institution. Or the fierce love of a foster parent I know, who takes in babies born to addicted mothers and rocks them as they go through withdrawal. It is not only parents who experience anger, of course. We have recently witnessed the anger and fierce love of Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg for her own generation and for the planet. Whether or not we find it palatable, Thunberg expresses righteous anger for our generation’s lack of urgency in the face of the climate crisis. Many of us here today have not been raised to deal with our own anger. This is problematic, because anger is the tip of an iceberg of feelings. Emotions such as grief, depression, sadness, shame, regret and hurt remain hidden under the surface, when we do not speak to our anger. [1] As girls we were discouraged from feeling anger at all. We were expected to be nice and show only our patient, nurturing, caring selves. On the other hand, boys were discouraged from feeling the things that come underneath the anger iceberg. They were taught to keep feelings like grief, sadness, and hurt to themselves. Instead, anger was the only emotion they were allowed, expressed through aggressive behaviors and outbursts, rather than dialogue. Some years ago, I helped organize a women’s retreat for my church. The theme was “women’s anger.” 40 women signed up almost immediately, it was the maximum number for the space we had reserved. It was one of the best-attended church events I’ve ever been involved with. This was a wakeup call for me: there is a deep need, in our culture, to speak about anger, and to understand God’s righteous anger. When my children were small I reached a point where I was trying to deal with their anger and with mine. Sure, I felt frustrated when the children would not do what I wanted them to do. They would not eat what I wanted them to eat and they would not cooperate with me. But I the anger I was feeling had nothing to do with them and everything to do with those things hidden beneath the surface. The kids also felt frustrated and angry that they sometimes had to do things they didn’t want to do. Sometimes they were frustrated simply because they could not express themselves. I wanted to allow my children to be angry in healthy ways. I wanted to manage my own anger so that it would not impact my children. My help came from the children’s TV program, “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.” Although the show was intended to speak to children, it became my go-to for parenting advice. This is because Fred Rogers modeled a beautiful way of speaking to children in which he would honor them as individuals and allow them to express their feelings. And in the words of journalist, Tom Junod, Rogers also spoke to adults in a way “that we could remember what it was like to be a child … he could talk to anyone, believing that if you remembered what it was like to be a child, you would remember that you were a child of God.” [2] Fred Rogers helped adults to honor their inner child. This past week I took a trip down memory lane, and went to see the new movie about Mr. Rogers: “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” The movie tells the story of an angry young journalist, Lloyd Vogel, who interviews Fred Rogers for a feature article for Esquire magazine. Rogers is drawn to Vogel, even as other people are put off, because of his anger. Vogel is angry because his own father was absent for much of his life. Rogers helps Vogel access his inner child, who is carrying the burden of anger. He helps the journalist understand the hurt and pain that is beneath his anger and eventually to transition to forgiveness. In his TV show Fred Rogers gave children permission to feel and express anger in healthy ways. In the song “What do you do with the mad that you feel?” He asks: “Do you punch a bag? Do you pound some clay or some dough? Do you round up friends for a game of tag? Or see how fast you go? It's great to be able to stop When you've planned a thing that's wrong, And be able to do something else instead And think this song: I can stop when I want to Can stop when I wish I can stop, stop, stop any time.” [3] In a recent article, Tom Junod, reminds readers that Fred Rogers “was an ordained Presbyterian minister who was … appalled by what he saw on 1950s television,” such as “adults trying to entertain children by throwing pies in each other’s faces.” And so Rogers “joined the medium as a reformer. He considered the space between the television set and the eyes of his audience sacred [making] nearly 1,000 episodes of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, [in an attempt] to make that space less profane.” [4] Rogers was passionate about his ministry to children through television. It’s quite likely that he felt angry when his show was threated by proposed cuts to government funding of the Public Broadcasting Service. In 1969, Fred Rogers appeared before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Communications. He was given only a few minutes to speak and still he spoke slowly and softly. He described his show, saying that it spoke to the inner needs of children. He told senators that he addressed anger in family situations, speaking to it constructively. He reminded the senate of the importance of mental health for the nation’s children. He told them that his program provided a neighborhood expression of care, such as two men working out their feelings of anger by talking. And then he ended his short speech by reciting the song “What do you do with the mad that you feel?” In light of the interview, the senate decided not to cut the proposed $20 million for Public Broadcasting. [5] ------------- Sometimes our anger is righteous anger, like God’s. Other times it is anger for ourselves and our own pain. Neither is wrong. Both need to be expressed. In the case of anger for ourselves, and our own inner child, we will need to do the work of unpacking what is beneath the surface. As we work through Matthew’s gospel this year we will hear the call to express righteous anger in the face of injustices to most vulnerable in our world. We began today with the slow reading of the gospel text as though it was a letter from our beloved. We were thrown off guard by the imagery of anger. And so here is the message for us this Advent. We are to prepare to welcome our fiercely loving God come to us in Jesus. Love like God’s cannot be wholly expressed by gentle words and niceness. The gospel message is of a God who loves us fiercely enough to be angry. And that is reason to rejoice. May all God’s people say Amen. [1] https://www.destressmonday.org/monday-uncover-iceberg-look-beneath-surface-anger/ [2] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/what-would-mister-rogers-do/600772/ [3] http://www.neighborhoodarchive.com/music/songs/what_do_you_do.html [4] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/what-would-mister-rogers-do/600772/ [5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yXEuEUQIP3Q
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
If you enjoy a sermon or have a question, please leave a comment. If you would like to quote any of my material in your own sermons or writings, please use appropriate attribution. I look forward to hearing from you!Archives
April 2022
Categories |