Preached on 16th July 2017, at St. Michael and All Angels, Bedford Park
Evensong: 2 Sam 7:18-end; Luke 19:41-20:8
When playing the game Tomb Raider a thing occurs in the heat of battle where a red mist forms around the edge of the screen and with a few shakes of the nunchuk (Yes, my platform of choice is the Nintendo Wii) Lara Croft will suddenly do all sorts of stunts which result in whatever’s attacking her being obliterated and the player left trying to work out precisely what just happened…
‘When the Red Mist comes down’… When anger is so great, so consuming that our vision, our senses, our capacity for reason blur and we completely lose control: Rage becomes the driving force and all we can do is cling on as tight as we can and hope we can ride out the storm.
I received some training on it as a teacher. One tip, which I thankfully never had to use, had been appropriated by an in-service-training leader from the training of riot police: In the event of a physically threatening confrontation with someone who has completely lost the plot, tell them the one obscure but simple fact you have memorised for just such a situation. The sudden, unexpected, statement of objective fact will stop the assailant in their tracks for just a moment giving you time to get away:
“All mammals have seven vertebrae in their neck.”
That was mine… As I say, thankfully I never got to try it out…
The Buddhist monk with whom I used to work had a way (I think as much a part of his natural demeanour as any acquired skill) of pitching his voice at a frequency which could suddenly pacify even the most furious: And on more than one occasion I saw him transform angry, six-foot tall sixteen year old boys into calm, humble, sedate young gentlemen… I hope I picked up something from him on that.
We don’t deal well with anger, as a rule: It’s bad, it’s problematic: We vilify it as a ‘negative’ emotion: When our children have ‘tantrums’ we do everything we can to stop them; we avoid certain people or news outlets if we know they’ll start to press our buttons; we tell ourselves to count to ten slowly, not to go to bed on an argument, or to wait until we’ve calmed down before replying to emails we’re not happy about.
In the Christian framework, anger is ranked, perhaps quite simplistically as one of the seven deadly sins. We counsel people against getting angry. We tell each other to control ourselves. The idea of this destructive, chaotic, hating emotion doesn’t square with the creating order of our loving God…
Does it?
Tonight we heard how Jesus looked at Jerusalem, weeping and prophesying its inevitable destruction. His next step is to enter the temple, and in Luke’s quite brief account of an event that warrants a bigger wordcount in other Gospels, He drives out those who have turned the House of Prayer into a Den of Robbers…
Upset. Frustration. Anger. Red mist. … If that was Tomb Raider there’d be a dead bear and Lara Croft would be out of ammo… Do we chalk this emotional pressure cooker up to Jesus’ human side winning out over the Divine nature which would surely be above all that? Or would that be heresy?
If Jesus had been the sort of Christian we might tell ourselves we aspire to be he would have looked at Jerusalem… Stopped himself… Taken some deep breaths… Composed a ranty post for Facebook… Read it through… Deleted it… Rewritten it… Decided it was still too ranty… Set it for a limited number of friends to see… Waited an hour… Deleted it completely, hoping no one had seen it… And then gently alluded to the issue when he met with his Spiritual Director a couple of weeks later…
Red mist averted…?
Red mist diffused…?
Red mist suppressed…?
Christ left with a nagging irk that he hasn’t been able to fully vent and it comes back every time he returns to the Temple and the money changers and costermongers are still peddling their trade because he’s done nothing about them…
There are advantages to getting angry: Great psychological damage can occur if we try and contain our anger within ourselves: bottled rage builds up within, affecting our relationships with others, our blood pressure, our breathing, our mental wellbeing. Spiritually that anger can sit like an oil-spill, polluting the clear waters with thick, black, suffocating sludge.
Think about the times you’ve really lost your temper about something: You’ve shouted and screamed and sworn and waved your hands about and punched the wall… And then felt so much better for it afterward… When we teach our children not to have tantrums, are we teaching them to be happy? Or teaching them not to express their emotions?
And there are also times when anger can actually be a force for good: As a general rule, we only get truly upset by the things we really care about and so to be full-on angry about something should, usually make it clear just how much it matters to us:
Would Christ have wept for Jerusalem if he didn’t love her? Would he have been so offended by those selling things in the Temple if He saw no Holiness in the place?
I sometimes wonder, when I want to reply to an email in anger… Whether I should indeed wait until I’ve calmed down… Or whether replying there and then will convey exactly how I really feel about the issue!
Think how much change has been brought about in the world because people were angry: Revolution, reformation, liberation – all happen when someone refuses to contain their anger and allows it to become a driving force for change.
That isn’t to say there isn’t a darker side to this: Of course there is: When a person’s wrath fuels hate, discrimination, violence, abuse, warfare: When the things we’re getting angry about aren’t the things that matter or the things that are the best for our world… Not all indignation is righteous.
So there’s a task of discernment for us. To reflect. To listen. To pray, as David did in our first reading: presenting all that’s happened to God and asking for His blessing on all that is to come.
We need, as we pray, to hold our anger before God. To find Him speaking to us in our most turbulent feelings – to ask: What is it I’m really upset about? Why am I upset about it? How can these emotions best serve God?
How can we, if people question our authority as the chief priests and scribes did Christ’s, be confident that when we pick our battles to fight, we do so with an authority greater than our own, for a cause that is greater than ourselves?
We must, ultimately give our anger to God so that, when the red mist comes down and we feel we no longer have control we can rest in the hope that, by God’s guiding hand, something good will come from our fury and that our anger will be something godly, passionate and Kingdom building when the fire of our rage is ignited with the fire of the Spirit.
Amen
Fr. Edward 