The area around my computer desk is littered with post-it notes, stuck all over every surface. A few are always current but many of them carry some arcane message from the past. Sometimes a phone number, other times a date – but most of the time there are thoughts or quotes that once upon a time tweaked my interest.
Over time the stickum wears off and the note falls down behind the desk, to be replaced eventually by a newer thought. Recently, while rooting around under the desk for something I’d dropped, I found an old post-it which read “I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.”
Before I even read the name at the bottom I remembered this one was from Anne Lamott. It is, in fact, from Traveling Mercies, the first of her many books that I have read over the years. And this, unlikely as it may seem, has become my starting thought for today’s message.
It’s a funny sentence. It makes me laugh every time I read it, and yet its ridiculous humor doesn’t entirely mask s serious topic.
I’ve been there. I suspect most of you have been there, too., at some time or another. Those “awful thoughts” when we’ve been so angry, so outraged about something or someone that we have wished them evil and poured out curses on them. These are rarely our finest moments.
We live in a world today when outrage is all around us. People accost total strangers to yell at them that they are in the wrong place at the wrong time – or just that they look wrong today. Some screech in rage at customer service clerks, just because, I suspect, they know they’re helpless to retaliate. Others turn every on-line conversation into insult-hurling competitions.
Road-rage leads to physical violence and people wave guns around for the smallest non-reasons. Our politics are based on rage against someone or something, rather than respect or concern for anyone.
My own examples of verbal violence exists only in my own head, thank heavens, but as a committed follower of Jesus, I am often ashamed of what goes on in there and have to first sternly remind myself that whatever I’m thinking is probably not something that Jesus would be pleased with – even if it didn’t drive him to gin -- and then I apologize to God – for losing it again.
If nothing I’ve said so far applies to you then you probably don’t need the rest of this message. But if you are occasionally fallible, like me, then let’s see together what scripture has to say on this topic.
There are certainly stories of anger and rage in the Hebrew Scriptures and often the God depicted in the earliest books of the Bible is the greatest offender – swiping people off the planet because they had somehow offended Him. And we often find both compassion and patience counseled in one story while shortly after God orders the people to wipe out whole populations. The Old Testament can be a very confusing thing if we’re looking for teaching on how to treat each other.
So even while these examples of violent rage exist, they exist along side of many examples of patience and caring, such as this one from Proverbs 24: Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles. Or this warning from Proverbs 12: One who is righteous is a guide to his neighbor, but the way of the wicked leads them astray.
And there are numerous teachings to be found throughout the prophets, calling us to live justly – to care for the widow and orphan, to give alms, to treat servants fairly, to welcome the stranger, to leave the gleanings of the harvest for the poor to gather. All of these recognize God’s demand that we care for each other – without regard to all the things that we believe should divide us.
One of the loveliest stories we are familiar with comes from the story of Ruth and Naomi where Naomi urges her daughters-in-law to return to their own people because that will be best for them – even though it will leave Naomi all alone and basically helpless, and Ruth answers her with “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.” This is love and caring, even in the face of great stresses.
It is, not too surprisingly, in the New Testament that we find much more preaching of kindness and forgiveness, even though the people of the New Testament lived under an often harsh Roman rule. We might think they would have good reason for anger and hatred but we find little, if anything, suggesting that it is perfectly all right for them to indulge their hatreds.
In St. Paul’s letter to the Romans we find repeated urgings to live with love and patience, starting with a reminder that ”all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” followed by another reminder to not allow ourselves to copy the ways of others around us: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
But it is, as might be expected, in the words of Jesus himself that we hear the clearest teachings that our role is to love with God’s love and not follow the ways of the world. In Matthew 5 we are told: “I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” – which should, all by itself, take care of most of our angry rants against each other -- and again in Luke 23, where Jesus says, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
But possibly the strongest statement of all comes from the 15th chapter of John’s gospel: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.”
We are human beings, even the best of us, and we may try to tell ourselves that the things we do or think while angry are not that big a deal, but it appears Jesus has a different idea about that.
Every day when we wake up, we have a new day ahead of us. And every day we are faced with a choice between building up the reign of God or helping to tear it down. Every day we can add to the goodness in the world or we can subtract from it.
I know that our individual actions seem quite minuscule in the overall scheme of creation and yet we are part of this world God gives us. We are brother or sister to all that God has made. What we do matters.
We may think the angry thoughts we think don’t really matter because they never leave our mouths and no one hears them – but we hear them and God hears them. When we allow ourselves to judge others we are the ones being judged. We are the ones we hurt. We are the ones who receive the harm when we let anger guide us.
God expects better of us. As we are reminded in 1st John, chapter 4, “Beloveds, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.”
I began this with a quote from Anne Lamott. Let me end it today with words from Henri Nouwen:
It isn’t really a lot that is asked of us. Just to love each other – in spite of ourselves.
Thanks be to God.
Over time the stickum wears off and the note falls down behind the desk, to be replaced eventually by a newer thought. Recently, while rooting around under the desk for something I’d dropped, I found an old post-it which read “I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.”
Before I even read the name at the bottom I remembered this one was from Anne Lamott. It is, in fact, from Traveling Mercies, the first of her many books that I have read over the years. And this, unlikely as it may seem, has become my starting thought for today’s message.
- “I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish.”
It’s a funny sentence. It makes me laugh every time I read it, and yet its ridiculous humor doesn’t entirely mask s serious topic.
I’ve been there. I suspect most of you have been there, too., at some time or another. Those “awful thoughts” when we’ve been so angry, so outraged about something or someone that we have wished them evil and poured out curses on them. These are rarely our finest moments.
We live in a world today when outrage is all around us. People accost total strangers to yell at them that they are in the wrong place at the wrong time – or just that they look wrong today. Some screech in rage at customer service clerks, just because, I suspect, they know they’re helpless to retaliate. Others turn every on-line conversation into insult-hurling competitions.
Road-rage leads to physical violence and people wave guns around for the smallest non-reasons. Our politics are based on rage against someone or something, rather than respect or concern for anyone.
My own examples of verbal violence exists only in my own head, thank heavens, but as a committed follower of Jesus, I am often ashamed of what goes on in there and have to first sternly remind myself that whatever I’m thinking is probably not something that Jesus would be pleased with – even if it didn’t drive him to gin -- and then I apologize to God – for losing it again.
If nothing I’ve said so far applies to you then you probably don’t need the rest of this message. But if you are occasionally fallible, like me, then let’s see together what scripture has to say on this topic.
There are certainly stories of anger and rage in the Hebrew Scriptures and often the God depicted in the earliest books of the Bible is the greatest offender – swiping people off the planet because they had somehow offended Him. And we often find both compassion and patience counseled in one story while shortly after God orders the people to wipe out whole populations. The Old Testament can be a very confusing thing if we’re looking for teaching on how to treat each other.
So even while these examples of violent rage exist, they exist along side of many examples of patience and caring, such as this one from Proverbs 24: Do not rejoice when your enemy falls, and let not your heart be glad when he stumbles. Or this warning from Proverbs 12: One who is righteous is a guide to his neighbor, but the way of the wicked leads them astray.
And there are numerous teachings to be found throughout the prophets, calling us to live justly – to care for the widow and orphan, to give alms, to treat servants fairly, to welcome the stranger, to leave the gleanings of the harvest for the poor to gather. All of these recognize God’s demand that we care for each other – without regard to all the things that we believe should divide us.
One of the loveliest stories we are familiar with comes from the story of Ruth and Naomi where Naomi urges her daughters-in-law to return to their own people because that will be best for them – even though it will leave Naomi all alone and basically helpless, and Ruth answers her with “Do not urge me to leave you or to return from following you. For where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord do so to me and more also if anything but death parts me from you.” This is love and caring, even in the face of great stresses.
It is, not too surprisingly, in the New Testament that we find much more preaching of kindness and forgiveness, even though the people of the New Testament lived under an often harsh Roman rule. We might think they would have good reason for anger and hatred but we find little, if anything, suggesting that it is perfectly all right for them to indulge their hatreds.
In St. Paul’s letter to the Romans we find repeated urgings to live with love and patience, starting with a reminder that ”all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” followed by another reminder to not allow ourselves to copy the ways of others around us: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.”
But it is, as might be expected, in the words of Jesus himself that we hear the clearest teachings that our role is to love with God’s love and not follow the ways of the world. In Matthew 5 we are told: “I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” – which should, all by itself, take care of most of our angry rants against each other -- and again in Luke 23, where Jesus says, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
But possibly the strongest statement of all comes from the 15th chapter of John’s gospel: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you.”
We are human beings, even the best of us, and we may try to tell ourselves that the things we do or think while angry are not that big a deal, but it appears Jesus has a different idea about that.
Every day when we wake up, we have a new day ahead of us. And every day we are faced with a choice between building up the reign of God or helping to tear it down. Every day we can add to the goodness in the world or we can subtract from it.
I know that our individual actions seem quite minuscule in the overall scheme of creation and yet we are part of this world God gives us. We are brother or sister to all that God has made. What we do matters.
We may think the angry thoughts we think don’t really matter because they never leave our mouths and no one hears them – but we hear them and God hears them. When we allow ourselves to judge others we are the ones being judged. We are the ones we hurt. We are the ones who receive the harm when we let anger guide us.
God expects better of us. As we are reminded in 1st John, chapter 4, “Beloveds, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.”
I began this with a quote from Anne Lamott. Let me end it today with words from Henri Nouwen:
- Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone's face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love? These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, right here in this world.
It isn’t really a lot that is asked of us. Just to love each other – in spite of ourselves.
Thanks be to God.
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