In a mirror

Scripture Lessons: John 2: 13-18 and James 1: 17-27, NT page 229 Sermon title: In a Mirror My Mom has always been a counselor. She was an actual school counselor for several years, but in reality, long before she earned her degree making it official, I always knew that she was a counselor because from the time I was a child on, I remember people who could not stop talking to her. There was the man who came to replace our driveway for example. On the first day he worked at our house he drove up in this great big truck, unloaded his jackhammer, and went to work. Each day after, his image crystalized in my mind for now that his tools were unloaded at our house he could drive up on his Harley Davidson Motorcycle. It was several days of this guy doing the manliest work possible. He broke up our driveway, then loaded the broken chunks of cement in the back of his truck, but when the work was over, our new driveway as hard and solid as this man appeared to be, he kept calling the house to talk with my mother, who had helped this man unpack the hardships of his childhood and now he would crack over the phone as though he were our old driveway, crying to my mother who knew how to listen and couldn’t help but hold the bucket as the tears fell. It was the same with the man who put a roof on our back deck. He was going through a divorce and called the house for free counseling for months after it seemed. There were neighbors too, who would come by to talk to Mom in the front yard. I was too young to listen, so Mom would send me inside where I’d be eating as much ice cream as I wanted because I knew that she was going to be distracted for a while. She is just one of those people who can handle emotions. So she knew how to listen to me when I came home from school and told her there was nothing wrong. She’d poke and prod until the sadness or the anger came spilling out. I got so used to her profound listening skills that I assumed she was just a normal person and that it would be appropriate to open up about my deepest sadness or frustration to anyone, which was not always good for my reputation. I was not raised in a stoic family – so I had to learn that not everyone can handle human emotions, neither mine nor their own. You’ve probably seen it enough to know that what I’m saying is true. A lady is crying in the grocery store and people treat her the same way they’d treat a dropped gallon of milk spilled all over the floor – telling the other shoppers, “You might avoid the cereal aisle. There’s a broken woman right in front of the Fruit Loops whose emotions are getting all over the place.” Or at the bank it happens too. A man who’s done everything he can to present himself with dignity. It’s an old suit, an old white shirt – but it’s pressed. He holds his hat in one hand, a stack of bills in the other, and when his request for a loan is denied something inside him just breaks, right there. The loan officer is kind, but just not trained for this kind of situation, so she stands behind him and pats him on the shoulder once or twice. It’s an admirable effort but it does little to assure this man and only convinces him of what he knew already – that he’s all alone and there’s nothing left to be done. Emotions. Most people fear them, and they don’t just fear other people’s emotions, most people are more scared even of their own. So scared are we that we take those emotions, and without even looking at them put them in an old mayonnaise jar and turn that lid as tightly as we can. Then we bury the jar, lay a cement driveway over it, and we think we’re doing just fine until the cracks appear. Chinks in the armor. And a good listener, a disarming listener, will sit there with you as you uncover what’s hidden under years of denial and can help you face what’s there. It’s usually one of those painful emotions: shame, fear, old sadness from long ago, or, if you’re as polite as I try to be – it’s probably anger. Despite the fact that I was raised by a counselor, there is nothing I am less comfortable with than anger – both yours and my own, and so it is still taking me some work to get to the understanding that anger can be good – that it tells us when something is not right and needs to be fixed – that Jesus, while in so many instances is out petting sheep and smiling at children, is also known to have stormed the Temple in Jerusalem, driving all the money changers out, pouring the coins of the money changers on the ground and overturning their tables. And when he said, “Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace,” I am confident that he sounded less like Mister Rogers and more like Mister T. Anger. It’s not bad – but I fear it, because when it bubbles up inside of me, when I give in to it, so often I don’t recognize myself anymore. “Be doers of the word,” the author of our second scripture lesson wrote, “Be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive themselves. For if any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget who they are. This image of one who forgets what he looks like after walking away from his reflection comes at the end of a wider teaching on the dangers of anger. Verse 19: “Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.” Verse 21: “Rid yourselves of all sordidness and rank growth of wickedness” – let the Lord do for your spirit what the gardener does for her garden – pulling up those weeds of “spoiled virtue” and “cancerous evil” so that the implanted word that has the power to save your soul can grow and flourish. Here in the book of James is a warning – that those who “do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts” make a mockery of their faith for what they claim to believe has nothing to do with how they actually live – and anger will drive you to such hypocrisy, for if anger is like a horse than it is a horse who will run wild without a bridle, a stallion who will stampede through friendships, break relationships, harm children, and humiliate the speaker if it is not controlled. Is that to say that anger is bad – hardly – for the Lord himself was angry. There is no other way to describe his reaction to the money changers at the Temple who so defiled his father’s house, but remember this: his disciples watched and remembered that it was written, “Zeal for your house will consume me.” In other words, his anger was rooted in his faith. It streamed directly from his best impulse, to worship the Lord in justice and truth. His anger was the sure sign that he was consumed, not with hate or rage, but with righteous indignation – zeal for the house of his father. But what about your anger? What about my anger? A husband and a wife argue in the kitchen. Tempers flare. The fires that have been smoldering rage now that the children are in bed. All the pent up resentment pours out all at once as he calls her names and she throws a glass, but a small voice extinguishes the fire like a bucket of cold water. “Why are you talking that way Daddy,” the little girl asks. “I was sleeping, but I kept hearing scary voices so I woke up. I didn’t know that the voices were yours.” “If any are hearers of the word and not doers, they are like those who look at themselves in a mirror; for they look at themselves and, on going away, immediately forget who they are.” So when you act out of anger – are you proud? Have you given voice to your best impulse or have you given in to your worst? Do you recognize yourself, or are you like the Presidential candidate who promised campaign reform, but after his opponent launches his attack adds, resorts to slander, and as he watches his add for the first time, what follows a tirade of filth and slander is his very own voice saying, “I approve this message.” When you come face to face with your anger, what do you see? Consider the members of the crowd when they saw Norman Rockwell’s painting, “The Problem We All Live With” for the very first time. Four deputy US marshals escorting six-year-old Ruby Bridges on her way to an all-white public school in New Orleans on November 14, 1960. On the wall behind her is a racial slur, the letter’s KKK, and a smashed tomato that almost ruined her brand new white dress. Her tennis shoes are white too, her socks folded down, and in her hand is a ruler which reminds me of the Prophet Amos’ plumb line. “The Lord was standing beside a wall with a plumb line in his hand. And the Lord said to me, “Amos, what do you see?” And I said, “A plumb line.” Then the Lord said, “See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel.” For anger will pull the worst out of them, and the mirror shows not a Christian but a monster. Anger can make our righteousness a mockery, for our anger can give voice to all our worst impulses and before long we will be like that crowd, turned into animals by the presence of a six-year-old girl walking to her first day of school. We reread the email we wrote yesterday and feel the same way – a mirror is held up and we see ourselves without recognition. Anger isn’t bad – but it must be bridled – for while our emotions cannot be ignored, cannot be buried down deep and covered up, our Lord calls us to self-control, that we be “not hearers who forget but doers who act and who are blessed in their doing.” The hymn we will soon sing gets it right: “We are not free when we’re confined To every wish that sweeps the mind, But free when freely we accept The sacred bounds that must be kept.” Bind your anger with self-control. Give it voice in so much as it leads you to express the truth that is within you. But if you are consumed by rage, it may turn you into a monster you will not recognize – one that you claim not to be. So instead, let your actions be so pure, that when you look into the mirror you see the image of the one who created you. Let your anger lead you to righteousness and not hate – for there is plenty out there to be angry about but what does your anger say about what’s in here? Amen.