Slow to Anger

Exodus 34:1-8
Ephesians 4:25-27


Rockville United Church
Rev. Dr. Duncan D. Newcomer

October 28, 2007

Angry old Saint Paul, because he had been a violent man, because he had once seethed with rage when he saw the followers of “that” Jesus diluting the truth of Torah, the Law, because he knew all about anger from within himself, angry old Saint Paul writes: Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.

Boy that used to make me mad, especially in that soap-opera moment in marriage when you turn over in bed, punch-up your pillow and give that spouse of yours the old cold shoulder and the silent back. By then the sun is already “way” down.

When Paul’s words, “Don’t let the sun go down on your anger” would float through my head at such a trite but true moment it would make me mad all over again. Anger is kind of like the last fuel stop on the ego turnpike and you just don’t want to run out of gas when you’re speeding to cross the state line into what you hope will be an ego fortress but which always ends up being just your own “private Idaho.” Giving up anger when you’re angry is just infuriating!

Do I get an “Amen” on this one, or is this just me? At the risk of sounding like a televangelist, are you with on this ridiculousness we call our anger?

I gave a workshop on anger once at a church. I said that as a spiritual matter we have two places to be about anger: one, if it makes us angry to be told, or asked, to “give up” our anger, then psychologically we still have an anger problem. But the other place is this: If we welcome the advice to give up our anger, to not let the sun go down without it being transformed or transcended, if that feels like an invitation to a better place, not a condemnation to a weak place, then psychologically we are ready and able to move from anger, even if its hard to do.

Anger really is our ego’s last best friend and no body wants to, or should, give up their last best friend unless they have a better friend, which, of course, is what Paul learned when he went from being angry Saul, the violent defender of Torah-Judaism, to Paul an Apostle of Christ. Paul learned, experienced, what we sing, “What a friend we have in Jesus.” Paul found Christ to be a better friend of his ego than anger ever was.

For all of us on a faith journey, a spiritual path, what I am saying here is – I believe – very important and not so well understood. The message is not: Don’t be angry. In fact, Paul has just written, “Be angry.” He says, and our faith allows for, “Be angry.” What Paul adds is: Be angry but do not sin. and the sin is breaking up the truth that we are “all members of one another.” The sin is not anger. The sin is letting the sun go down pretending that we are not connected. The sin is to enter the night alone.

I find it’s important to be clear about this because so many people think that Christianity is about not being angry and about not having an ego. And that drives people away and for those who stay it drives them crazy.

I witness this all the time in churches. I witnessed it, if you permit, in my mother. Growing up, my mother let the sun go down every night on her anger. She thought it was a Christian virtue. I always experienced my mother as an almost frighteningly angry woman. I was shocked to realize some years ago, however, that I’d never actually seen my mother get angry, be angry. She never raised her voice! And so I plead with Christians to get this right: Be angry. But do not sin by breaking the body, letting the sun set on anger.

Anger may be ok for half a day, but it won’t get us through the night, and the philosopher Whitehead was wise in saying: Religion is what we do in the dark, and if we do anger in the dark we are a danger to ourselves and others. The promise of religion, the grace in our faith, is that there is life after anger, and actually a better life. Just as there is “more-better” life when we give up our ego, so there is “more-better” life when we give up and go beyond our anger. There is actually a green pasture and some still waters in the post-anger, post-ego, place of grace. And, for us, the Christian Faith is the challenge to get there. Christianity is not just an “interesting proposition” (something I want to tell the confirmation class this afternoon). Christianity is a challenge to change who you are, to let God change who you are. That’s actually what worship – sermon, song, scripture, silence, and sacrifice – is for: To praise God and let God’s blessings flow down on us, changing us.

So here’s such a Christian challenge. Old men. Old men like Paul – old men like me. Give up your anger! Let us give up our anger. Let goods and kindred go, said our Martin Luther hymn. This mortal life also. And most old men are mortally angry.

This comes as a great surprise to many women and children. But for years, I co-directed in Connecticut, “The Institute for The Masculine Spiritual Journey.” I would say over 5 years we worked intensely with some 200 men, mature good men. And 202 of us finally revealed our anger, our ego-based anger, at the bottom of our hearts. In fact, my colleague and I were so convinced of the value of men’s passions and how lost-in-anger those passions were, we both gave up on psychotherapy as the best path for saving men from their anger. Dr. Lopez became a Buddhist in Thailand. I hope you’ll meet him sometime. And I became a Christian minister, a pastor.

Now I’ll be installed here next week. So our opportunity here is that we can grow a little older together. And what I notice about men, mainly white men, especially old white men with a lot of education, is we just get angrier and angrier. I think our situation is this: we know more and more about things and we have less and less power to do anything about it, about what we know, and so it feels like nobody is listening. And that is frightening. Being a preacher may not be a good solution – because, “who’s listening?” is always the fear.

There was a big convention of bloggers recently, I think in Chicago. Hillary was there addressing them along with other candidates. The interesting demographic, which did not surprise me as it did others, was how large was the percentage of white men over 50 years old. Over 50 percent. Thoughtful, opinioned, educated guys with plenty of time to tell each other what to think and where to get off! And with 24-7 cyberspace, the sun never has to go down on their anger!

Now my life-long best friend is Thomas Jefferson Byrum, Jr. Jeff’s one of the guys I lived with in Great Falls in April. Jeff was notoriously angry when we were roommates at the Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He was, and is, a very exciting guy to know and to love partly because he’s always – like Saint Paul – pretty “cranked up” about something. He always has been. He’s a talented musician as well as a computer genius. He never became a minister (partly I’d say because he chose the wrong theologian to back in the theological wars of the 20th century! We used to argue angrily day and night about Paul Tillich vs. Karl Barth! I hope you get to meet Jeff sometime, too. But don’t tell him I mentioned Karl Barth!).

Jeff used to play Mozart on the piano in the fellowship hall at Union. And he played it like he was a one-man wrecking crew! It was great! It was explosive Mozart! One of our professors asked me once if Jeff was “ok.” Sometimes people would hurry through the fellowship hall for fear of falling debris. Others of us would gather on the sofas and big chairs and warm our souls on the heat of Thomas Jefferson Byrum and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

But you know Jeff has changed. Grace has flowed into Jeff’s life through music and through his long-suffering love for his two daughters from his first marriage. Music and daughters can do that. Jeff sings Brahms at the Kennedy Center now. And I recommend, as a faithful journey, this progression in passion. From piano forte Mozart to the soft and sorrowful Requiem by Johannes Brahms.

Even Moses had to get over his anger and he had a most challenging assignment by God to do it! When we heard Exodus 34:1-8, it’s easy to miss that Moses is having to fix what he broke in anger. He has to re-carve the two tablets of stone with the Ten Commandments. Unlike in the movie he does this in the valley and then has to get up early in the morning and take them to the top of Mount Sinai. Then, up there God will bless them. Now get this. Moses has to write them, carve them, this time. The first time (Exodus 32) they were, quote, the work of God. Up there on the mountain God did the writing.

So as you know or have guessed, Moses broke the God-written stone tablets, and now they have to be redone by the same hands, Moses’, that were so angry when he threw the stones down.

It’s important that we see in this story the second chance angry old men can get. And in this second time God blessed Moses and his work. God passes by and sings a poetic song about himself, proclaiming that he, God, is merciful and he is gracious, and he is slow to anger….

You see Moses was quick to anger, not slow. When he comes down with the Ten Commandments the first time and sees the Golden Calf party going on – false God of gold and nature being worshipped – he, well, listen: Exodus 32:19. After calling this crowd “losers”. “As soon as he came near the camp and saw the calf and the dancing, Moses’ anger burned hot (as soon as he saw, his anger burned hot), and he threw the tablets from his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain. He took the calf that they had made (this was melted gold jewelry they’d brought with them from Egypt) and he burned it with fire, ground it to powder, scattered it on the water, and made the Israelites drink it.” (Ex. 32:19-20). Let me repeat that: And made them drink it! This is a full blown temper tantrum, anger, violence, destruction of God’s handiwork, the stones, and personal vindictive revenge!

But I think there is hope for us, Moseses. You see he actually does a better job with the commandments the second time around. And, like St. Paul, several thousand years later, he asks for pardon for sin – although he’s not as thorough about it as Paul was – and then he really gets into talking about these commandments. And the covenant, the relationship with God, the people and him, is renewed (isn’t that good news, relationships can be renewed and made sacred again!) And most wonderful of all, and this is perhaps my favorite scene in the whole Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, Moses comes down from Mount Sinai, this time, with the happiest of faces.

This is not an angry fearful ego-driven man, in fact he’s so happy, really blessed to have both been with God and to have passed on God’s word and law, that he doesn’t even know it. Unself-conscious happiness is enlightenment and grace. These final words from scripture, “As he came down… Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God.” (Ex. 34:29) His face was shining so much that it was awesome to the people, so awesome that he had to put a veil on his face.”

When he would talk further with God, he would take the veil off – God could endure his shining face. But with the people he had to tone down even his happiness, and his anger was completely gone. Blogging with God, prayer, is such a blessing for old men, like me, who have so much knowledge, anger, wisdom, and love, really, so much we hardly know what to do with it. Sometimes that makes us mad. Sometimes, all the time, we can go a gentler way, in a more gentle spirit. Amen.