ten commandments – pastorsusan

“Be Like Joseph” – Jesus of Nazareth

There have been at least eight times when the Ten Commandments have been at the center of debates about the separation of church and state. Most of these controversies have been over monuments in public spaces and judges have rightly ordered them to be removed. I don’t have anything against the Ten Commandments, but it seems like those who want to erect these monuments are more interested in telling others how to believe and behave than in examining how they themselves are doing in keeping the commandments.

When I read the gospel passage for today, another section from the ‘Sermon on the Plain,’ I wondered what they would think about a monument listing these commandments that Jesus lays on us:
*love your enemies
*do good to those who hate you
*bless those who curse you
*pray for those who abuse you
*turn the other cheek
*if someone asks for your coat, give them your shirt, as well
*give to everyone who begs from you
*if someone takes your property, don’t ask for it back it
*don’t judge
*don’t condemn
*be forgiving

You know the game show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? I would call this passage Who Wants to Be a Disciple? And I wouldn’t be surprised if not many people would come forward to be contestants. This stuff is hard! And I would add that it can also be harmful. One reason it makes me uneasy is that these commandments have often been weaponized, especially by the church. Too often Christians have told people to be silent about their pain, swallow their suffering, using the Bible as justification. It’s have been used to silence the victimized, so others won’t be disturbed or inconvenienced by their stories. It was preached to slaves to keep them in their place. It’s been used to send victims of domestic violence back to their abusers. “If you are silent about your pain,” said writer Zora Neale Hurston, “they’ll kill you and say you enjoyed it.”

Another reason for my uneasiness is that, in the wisdom of those who put together the lectionary – the cycle of readings for each Sunday – this passage has been paired with the story of Joseph and his brothers. Today we read just a short piece of the story, Joseph’s emotional reunion with his family. But that happy ending comes after a long story of the brothers’ hatred of their younger brother, their intention to kill him, their decision to instead to sell him into slavery and fake his death to their father.

Joseph ends up in Egypt and manages to go from slavery to relative privilege in the house of a captain of Pharaoh’s army but is sent to prison after being falsely accused of rape. He was there for years until Pharaoh needed help interpreting a dream and someone remembered that Joseph had interpreted dreams for his fellow prisoners. He ends up becoming second in command to Pharaoh, a position of power and privilege. When his brothers come to Egypt desperately searching for food, he interprets it as divine providence. He reunites with his father and brothers, saves them all from starvation, and brings them all to Goshen to live in security. All’s well that ends well, right? Jesus appears to think so. Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; don’t condemn; be forgiving. In other words, be like Joseph.

So I’m uneasy with both of these stories because what they ask of us is so darn hard, if not impossible. I guess we can be thankful these texts come around in our lectionary only once every three years and only when Lent starts late and we get a seventh Sunday after Epiphany. But this year, Lent does begin late and we do get a seventh Sunday after Epiphany. So here we are.

We’re almost to the end of Epiphany – the season of revelation of who Jesus is. No longer the babe of Bethlehem, but the teacher of wisdom and of the ethics of the realm of God. In just two weeks, we’ll be in Lent – and we know where that leads. The way of discipleship leads to a cross. And Jesus lays it out plainly in this sermon, that his way will be counter-intuitive, counter-cultural, and for all the benefits of being in relationship with him – a big challenge. If this is the job description who would want to be a disciple? Well, evidently, we do, because here we are. And if we’re honest with ourselves, we must confess that the challenge is often too much.

In our individual lives, in our families, even in our churches, there are conflicts, often long-standing, unresolved rifts. Siblings who don’t speak to one another, children estranged from parents. Forgiveness and reconciliation is always hard to achieve, but especially when someone has taken away something that can never be given back. The life of a young person with a promising future snuffed out by a drunk driver or a random act of violence. Children whose innocence is forever taken away by abuse. Churches split apart by grievances they can’t seem to get beyond. I was just reading about the Lutheran church in Columbine, Colorado which found itself unable to minister both to the victims of the Columbine High School massacre and to the parents of one of the attackers. Real life on the ground is a lot messier than the resolution of Joseph’s story might have us believe – even for those of us who do try our best to be faithful disciples.

So, as one who struggles with these texts, I have two insights that might be helpful for us today. First, I’m reminded of our Confirmation class when we were looking at the Ten Commandments. We read through each one and talked about what each one meant. We also read Martin Luther’s explanations of each commandment and saw that for each of the “thou shalt nots,” he adds a “thou shalt” (although we use more contemporary language), for example #8: “You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.” Sounds simple, don’t lie. But Luther asks: “What does this mean?” And answers: “We should fear and love God so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray, slander, or hurt their reputations – but defend them, speak well of them, and explain everything in the kindest way.”

And #5: “You shall not murder.” Again, simple; don’t kill anyone. But Luther takes it further: “We should fear and love God so that we do not hurt or harm our neighbors – but help and support them in every physical need.” And so on through #10.

What we realized was that Luther made the commandments even harder, impossible really. If just the bare commandments serve to hold up a mirror to let us see our failings, his additional explanations bring the mirror in even closer, exposing every wrinkle, pore, and blemish – every sin, both individual and corporate. For surely we are part of a system in which some of our neighbors are betrayed and slandered and some of our neighbors do not have all their physical needs met, like food, clean water, and shelter.

The good news in all this is that, even as we take sin seriously, we take confession and forgiveness just as seriously. We look in the mirror. We see the truth of our failures and own them – no denial, no sugar coating. And we accept the graciousness of God who also sees us in the mirror but can see past the sin into the beloved hearts within us. God forgives and God gives the encouragement, the heart to go back and continue to live into the vision God has for all of us. This is grace.

I don’t think those Ten Commandments monuments they want to put in front of courthouses can adequately convey the depth of meaning inherent in these so-called laws. These laws are about relationships – with God and with one another. They are not a black and white moral code. We are meant to wrestle with them, and continually examine ourselves, confess our failings, and receive God’s grace.

And speaking of wrestling, we have to talk about forgiveness, that is how we forgive others. Jesus says, “Be like Joseph.” But we know that oftentimes, forgiveness can be very, very difficult. As author Sue Monk Kidd wrote: “People, in general, would rather die than forgive. It’s that hard.”

And in our Covid-weary culture and our divisiveness amidst rage and meanness, it’s gotten even harder. The New York Times ran an essay with the title: “Rudeness Is on the Rise. You Got a Problem with That?” The author asked, “how do we respond to a world under stress, a culture in which the guardrails of so-called civility are gone? The evidence of that stress is everywhere. In airports and in the skies, airline passengers are angry about wearing masks, angry about inspection of firearms in their carry-ons, seemingly angry about, well, everything. Close to home, things aren’t much better, and it comes from both sides of our ideologically divided society.”

In the midst of all this, how do we live into God’s vision and Jesus’ call to discipleship? We have to begin by stating what forgiveness is not (with thanks to Debi Thomas in Journey with Jesus). First, forgiveness is not denial. It isn’t pretending that an offense doesn’t matter, or that a wound doesn’t hurt. Forgiveness isn’t acting as if things don’t have to change. It isn’t allowing ourselves to be abused and mistreated, or assuming that God has no interest in justice. And forgiveness isn’t synonymous with healing or reconciliation. Healing has its own timetable, and sometimes reconciliation isn’t possible. In fact, sometimes our lives depend on us severing ties with our offenders, even if we’ve forgiven them. In other words, forgiveness is not cheap.

Secondly, forgiveness isn’t a detour or a shortcut. Yes, we’re commanded to forgive. But the process of forgiveness calls us first to mourn, to lament, to feel anger, to hunger and thirst for justice. Forgiveness isn’t a palliative to simply numb the pain; it goes hand-in-hand with the work of repentance and transformation.

Thirdly, forgiveness is not instantaneous. It is a messy, non-linear process that might leave us feeling healed and liberated one minute and bleeding out of every pore the next. Forgiveness isn’t an escalator; it’s a spiral staircase. We circle, circle, and circle again, trying to create distance between the pain we’ve suffered and the new life we seek. Sometimes we can’t tell if we’ve ascended at all; we keep seeing the same, broken landscape below us. But ever so slowly, our perspective changes. Ever so slowly, the ground of our pain falls away.

I always wonder about the process that Joseph must have gone through in order to be able to forgive his brothers. What went on between the lines of the story? He was 17 when he was sold into slavery and 30 when he became prime minister to Pharaoh. We know that forgiveness is often, maybe usually, a process. Even those who immediately grant forgiveness have to still do the hard work that will come.

Consider that before Joseph forgives his brothers, he wrestles with a strong desire to scare and shame them. In fact, he does scare and shame them. Forgiveness is something Joseph has to arrive at, slowly and painfully.

I may have used this example before but it’s an excellent example of this painful process. In 2006, a gunman stormed into a one-room schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, PA and shot ten young Amish girls, killing five and then killing himself. People around the world were astonished that the Amish immediately expressed forgiveness toward the killer and his family. There was also the perception (totally mistaken) that granting forgiveness meant they were then able to quickly get over the tragedy.

But a year after the shootings, Jonas Beiler, of the Family Resource and Counseling Center, reported that members of the community suffered from nightmares, some were still startled by the sound of a helicopter overhead. Survivors, including some of the older boys who were let go by the killer, wondered if somehow they could have stopped the massacre. Some of the schoolchildren suffered from emotional instabilities, which therapists working in the community expected to go on for several years. But Beiler said, that because the Amish could express forgiveness, they were better able to concentrate on the work of their own healing.

And right there, I believe, is the key to these teachings. They’re not meant to be easy. We are meant to be challenged by them. We are meant to wrestle with them. Ten years after the Nickel Mines shootings, Aaron Esh Jr. reported that he still struggles with the memories. He says that despite the Amish’s legendary powers of forgiveness, it’s a struggle to stay constant. “You have to fight the bitter thoughts,” he said. Another mother of one of the girls killed that day said, “It’s not a once and done thing. It is a lifelong process.”

So, how do we work on our own processes, especially in those places where bitter thoughts reside? How does forgiveness happen? First of all, it’s not something that anyone else can make you do, either by quoting Jesus to you or trying to make you feel guilty. To be forgiven and to forgive are always gifts of grace that come from some place beyond ourselves. It’s your process. Nor can anyone else tell someone who has suffered evil at the hands of others that God is bringing something good out of it. No one else could say to Joseph, “God has brought you here.” He had to discover it for himself. If it is going to happen at all, victims have to discover for themselves that God has somehow created something new out of their suffering, that out of their survival God’s grace can even provide something that someone else will need.

We can learn from Joseph that his decision to not keep score against his brothers created the possibility of a new future for himself and his family. Otherwise, they would all still be controlled by and captive to the past. Can we begin to, at the very least, be open to the possibility of giving up the scorecard? Is there anything good that has come out of a situation of suffering at the hands of another?

I was asked once whether, if given the chance, I’d go back and change my life so that times of suffering did not occur. I thought really hard about it. What a blessing that would be. No painful memories, no residual fears or hang-ups. But I finally decided that, no, I wouldn’t change my past in any way. Distressful as it may have been, it’s part of who I am, has contributed to my resilience, and has enabled me to have more empathy for others going through similar situations. So I can agree with commentator Barbara Brown Taylor: “When Joseph looked at his life, he didn’t see himself as a victim. He did not see a series of senseless tragedies. He saw a lighted path.”

I doubt very much that Joseph saw that lighted path when his brothers threw him into a pit. Perhaps we can remember his outcome and hold out hope when our process is still in the pit, so to speak.

Perhaps we can hear these hard teachings of Jesus, not as imperatives, but as a promise that God will be with us in the process of forgiveness, all along the way – from a faint acknowledgement of a possibility that forgiveness could happen, to openness to the spirit of healing working within us, to the desire to let go of the person or persons who hurt us (for our sake, not theirs), and maybe (but not necessarily) to reconciliation.

This is what Jesus reveals to us, late in the season of Epiphany revelations and on the cusp of the Lenten journey: that all through our processes of forgiveness, healing, and reconciliation we can breathe in the “deep, joyous generosity of God,” and allow our lives be transformed – opening our hearts and minds and lives to the healing purposes at work in each beloved child of God.

Amen

Genesis 45:3-11, 15

Joseph said to his brothers, “It is I, Joseph. Is my father still alive?” The brothers couldn’t answer, so dumbfounded were they. Then Joseph said, “Come closer to me.” When they had come closer, he said, “I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. Now don’t be distressed or angry with yourselves because you sold me here; for God sent me here ahead of you so that I could save your lives. There has been a famine in the land for two years, and for the next five years there will be no plowing and no harvesting. But God sent me ahead of you to guarantee that you will have descendants on earth and to keep you alive as a great body of survivors.
So it was not you who sent me here, but God! God has made me Pharaoh’s chief counselor, the head of his household and governor of all Egypt. Hurry back to our father and give him this message from Joseph: ‘God has made me governor of all of Egypt. Come to me here at once! Do not delay. ‘

You will live here near me in the territory of Goshen: you, your children, your grandchildren, your flocks, your herds, and all your possessions. I will provide for you here – for the next five years will be years of famine – so that you and your children and all you own will be spared from destitution.” And he kissed all his brothers and wept upon them; and after that his brothers talked with him.

Luke 6: 27-38

Jesus said, “But I say to you that listen, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.

“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again. But love your enemies, do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return. Your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, since God is good even to the ungrateful and the wicked. Be merciful, as your loving God is merciful.

“Don’t judge, and you won’t be judged; don’t condemn, and you won’t be condemned. Forgive, and you’ll be forgiven;give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the amount you measure out is the amount you’ll be given back.”

Holy Moses! Did Jesus Really Just Do That?!

Is it ever OK to be angry? Whether or not it’s OK is a question we’ll delve into in a minute. But first we have to acknowledge that anger just is. If you check out any emotion chart – the kind that helps kids identify their feelings – or an emotion wheel that breaks the primary emotions down into even more categories – anger is on every one of them. Even so, “Don’t be angry” is a phrase often heard, often in church circles. Anger is seen as a negative, inappropriate, and definitely unspiritual emotion.

But in today’s scripture readings, we’re confronted with a dilemma: some of our greatest religious heroes got angry. The account of Jesus tearing up the Temple gives lie to the notion that he didn’t experience the full gamut of human emotion. And Moses – well, it wasn’t long after he was given the tablets that we know as the Ten Commandments, that he smashed them to the ground in anger as the Hebrew people danced around the golden calf they’d made while he was up on the mountain with God.

Today, we continue our exploration through Lent of the covenants that God has made with humanity over the eons. The covenant with Noah, the promises to Abraham and Sarah (by the way, did you notice that Abraham is in the news this week? Pope Francis made an historic trip to Iraq this weekend and yesterday visited the ancient city of Ur – traditionally held to be the birthplace of Abraham, patriarch of Islam, Judaism, and Christianity).

Today brings us to the covenant with Moses on Mount Sinai. I’m really liking the way the lectionary has been taking us through the history of the relationship between God and humankind. We don’t often get to see the ‘big picture’ when we get just a snippet of a story here and there. But as we read all these covenants in order, we can see how God does relate to us: with steadfast love, forgiveness, transformation, and renewal. That story continues with us today.

But today, with the gospel reading and knowing what comes next in the Moses story, I thought we needed to make a stop and consider this matter of anger. A year or so ago, I was asked to contribute a chapter to a book that Pastor Megan Rohrer is writing about chaplaincy. It’s supposedly going to be called something like The Body of the Chaplain and will have chapters like “The Chaplain’s Heart,” “The Chaplain’s Hands” – you get the idea. I was asked to write the chapter on – are you ready for it? – “The Chaplain’s Gut.”

So – I’ve been with you for a whole year now, so I’m feeling confident enough to share one of my deepest secrets: sometimes I get angry. Now don’t be alarmed. My philosophy of anger is described very well in the book, The Gift of Anger: And Other Lessons from my Grandfather Mahatma Gandhi. In it, Arun Gandhi describes how at age eleven he was sent to live with his grandfather, and for two years learned pivotal life lessons about social justice and community transformation.

In an interview he said, “My grandfather said that anger is a wonderful emotion. It’s not something we should be ashamed of. It’s a very powerful emotion, but we need to learn how to channel it intelligently, so we can use it effectively. Anger is like electricity. It’s just as useful and just as powerful but only when we use it intelligently. It can also be just as deadly and destructive if we abuse it. So we must learn to channel anger so we can use that energy for the good of humanity rather than abuse it and cause violence. If we learn to channel anger effectively and positively, it can turn into courage, it can turn into something positive that we can use.”

I have a long way to go to achieve the level of Gandhi’s serenity, but it is a beginning on the path of channeling this energy.

Some of you may have heard me mention a spiritual tool called the Enneagram. If you know the Enneagram, you may know that there are nine types. I’m a Type One, which is often called either “The Reformer” or “The Perfectionist.” And, as a One, anger is almost as natural to me as my brown eyes. As Catholic Worker Movement co-founder Dorothy Day replied when asked to hold her temper, “I hold more temper in one minute that you will in a lifetime.”

These nine types are then divided into three centers of emotional responses: the Heart (or feeling) center, the Head (or thinking) center, and the Body (or instinctive/gut) center. The personalities of the types in each center are particularly affected by a particular emotion.

As a One, I live in the Gut Center, where we use an intuitive way of making our way in the world. We process information through our instinctual responses. Each type within the Center processes anger differently, but anger is the “gut feeling” that fuels our energy. You might think it odd for a Gut person to function as a pastor or chaplain. Wouldn’t someone from the Heart Center be better suited to the job? But a good pastor or chaplain can come from any of the centers. Each type has its gifts and its areas of growth. Self-awareness is the key.

Within the Gut Center, we Ones deal with our anger differently from our Eight and Nine siblings. You can always tell when an Eight is angry because they’ll immediately express it in a very forceful way (moving physically, raising voice). On the other hand, you might not even know that a Nine is upset because they’ll try to deny their anger, but then be passive-aggressive about it. You might not be able to tell that a One is angry either. Ones, on the unhealthy end of the continuum, try very hard to control or repress their anger, believing they have to always stay in control of these “bad” feelings. Because they don’t want to allow their anger to overflow, it will often show up as irritation and frustration. It can also often show up as depression because the anger is turned inward. I have to pay careful attention to these signs of regression in myself. I am also aware that depression in others may be masking untended resentment and anger.

So, even though we are commonly told that feelings such as anger, sadness, and frustration are bad, the truth is that they just simply are.

An animated movie from about five years ago did a pretty good job of getting at this subject of our emotional landscape. Inside Out tells the story of 11-year-old Riley uprooted from her midwestern home and transplanted with her family to San Francisco. The disruption of her world causes her feelings (the wonderfully voiced characters Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust) to take over. Sadness is the predominant one. But Riley believes, at least up until the end of the movie, that she can’t let her parents know how she feels. I loved this movie. I especially loved the Anger character, voiced by the ever-fulminating comedian Louis Black. That would definitely have been the main character in a movie told from my perspective! Still, the message of the movie is clear: there are no bad emotions!

But all too often we will retreat from friends, family, and other activities when we’re feeling “bad,” believing that we shouldn’t impose our suffering on others. Even some religious traditions discourage the expression of “negativity.” To them, doing so is a sign of spiritual dis-ease. But I believe that we have to honor all our feelings, including anger.

I used to visit a man named Roger, who was in a skilled nursing facility for over 15 years after a tragic accident. Although his physical condition was very poor, his mind was sharp and alert. Almost to the day he died, he exhibited the intellect of a scholar and author. Roger was often angry, although more often than not he was depressed. He still mourned the sudden death of his wife years ago. Between lack of control over just about everything and sub-standard care in the facility, he had every reason to be angry and depressed. He had every right to his grief. I never tried to talk him out of those feelings. Even when he wished for death, even when he railed against God for punishing him for some ancient sin, I listened and acknowledged his pain. For one thing, I had to admit that I’d probably have some of the same feelings if I were in his position. For another, I found that when I listened and his feelings were honored, usually after a while we were able to move into conversation about other matters.

I must confess that my ire is often kindled when I visit places like this. My fury is directed, not only at one poorly run facility and certainly not at any underpaid and barely trained employee, but at a health care system that leaves the elderly who have no financial resources at its questionable mercy. This is one example of how anger can become righteous. As an Enneagram One, I’m not called a “reformer” for nothing! We see what’s wrong with the world, get mad about it, and are determined to do some-thing about it. As Martin Luther wrote,
“I find nothing that promotes work better than angry fervor. For when I wish to compose, write, pray and preach well, I must be angry. It refreshes my entire system, my mind is sharpened, and all unpleasant thoughts and depression fade away” (It’s generally believed that Luther was a One).

Or as Matthew Fox (channeling Gandhi) wrote in one of his daily on-line meditations: “The prophet trusts anger and one’s moral outrage and strives to mold that anger into creative possibilities . . . recycles the anger of oppressed peoples away from sublimation, denial, passivity or depression into ways of transformation, self-expression, and New Creation. Isn’t this what Gandhi and Martin Luther King did—give birth to social art? Lassoing anger so it served the greater good?”

Is this what Jesus was doing in the Temple? Jesus, who we usually think of as more soft-spoken and even-tempered, makes “a whip of cords,” drives out the sacrificial animals, overturns merchants’ tables, dumps coins on the floor, and tells the moneychangers to stop making God’s house a market-place. When stunned bystanders ask for a sign to authorize his violent actions, Jesus doesn’t bat an eye: “Destroy this temple,” he dares them, “and in three days I’ll raise it up.” Not exactly gentle Jesus, meek and mild.

Biblical scholars have different theories about this story. Some argue that what Jesus is railing about in this ‘cleansing’ of the temple is the system of exploitation that the collaboration of religious authorities and Roman occupiers had created. At normal times, they levied exorbitant tithes and taxes. At Passover time, when Jerusalem’s population could be doubled or even quadrupled, powerful economic interests were at work. Jesus performs a kind of material exorcism.

Others argue that what angered Jesus was a Sabbath-only kind of religion that separated Temple rituals from daily living, or a compartmentalization of faith that renders the temple “sacred” and the home “secular.” As New Testament Professor Amy Jill-Levine describes: “The church member sins during the workweek, either by doing what is wrong or by failing to do what is right. Then on Sunday morning . . . heartily sings the hymns, happily shakes the hands of others, and generously puts a fifty-dollar bill in the collection plate. That makes the church a safe place for those who are not truly repentant and who do not truly follow what Jesus asks. The church becomes a place of showboating, not of fishing for people.”

Either way, these interpretations point to a truth about discipleship: Jesus is not about “business as usual.” Jesus is not a protector of the status quo. Jesus has no interest in propping up institutions of faith that elevate comfort and complacency over holiness and justice. His righteous anger causes us to consider our own anger at oppressive systems and what to do about them.

I have opened up this matter of anger knowing that there’s a lot more to be said. I do not want to appear to condone just popping off at everyone over every little thing. Sometimes, even though the emotion might indeed be there and acknowledged, there should be no action taken or words spoken. I don’t think we can criticize Moses for his anger over the golden calf incident. But his actions didn’t serve any purpose. He had to eventually make things right with God and go back up for new tablets.

We have to make decisions about our own anger. In the chapter I wrote, I asked:

Now what about you? What is your relationship with anger? Ask yourself these questions:

Do I have difficulty expressing my angry feelings?
Do I express my anger in ways that are hurtful to others?
Does it get in the way of healthy relationships and/or cause work-related problems?

If any of these resonate with you, it might be time to seek help. Doing so in no way implies any weakness; in fact it demonstrates your strength of character in moving towards healing and wholeness.

Now ask yourself about your religious or spiritual belief about anger.

Was I taught that it’s a sin to be angry? Who told me that? Parents, pastor?
Have I ever thought that getting mad is un-Christian?
Have I ever been told that I’m not very spiritual because I have anger issues?

If any of these sound familiar, a pastor or spiritual director is someone who can help you work through the spiritual aspects of anger. Again, it’s a normal part of emotional and spiritual growth to confront the places within that trouble us. Pastors, chaplains and spiritual directors have done this work for themselves and are trained to help.

Finally, do you experience righteous anger? Ask yourself:

Does a news story about some kind of societal injustice make my blood boil?
Am I affected by knowledge of oppressive systems, such as racism, homophobia, poverty, etc.?
Am I involved in any activities that address these issues?

If you are not involved, you might find joining a cause to be an outlet for your emotional energy. A quote often attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas says: “Anger looks to the good of justice. If you can live amid injustice without anger, you are immoral as well as unjust.” The note of judgment is a little too harsh to my liking, but I appreciate the acceptance of righteous anger and the call to action

But if you are already involved in such activities and are still troubled by your angry feelings, it might be helpful to find additional ways to release your anger. There are a variety of ways to do that and it’s up to you to find what works for you, with help if necessary.

The bottom line is that anger is a natural part of being human. How we deal with it can cause us difficulty, but there is always hope and help. My chaplain’s gut lets me know when I am angry and it tells me how I can best respond to that feeling. Yours can too!

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John 2:13-22

Since it was almost the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the Temple, he found people selling cattle, sheep and pigeons, while moneychangers sat at their counters. Making a whip out of cords, Jesus drove them all out of the Temple—even the cattle and sheep—and overturned the tables of the money-changers, scattering their coins. Then he faced the pigeon sellers: “Take all this out of here! Stop turning God’s house into a market!” The disciples remembered the Words of scripture: “Zeal for your house consumes me.”

The Temple authorities intervened and said, “What sign can you show us to justify what you’ve done?”

Jesus answered, “Destroy this Temple, and in three days l will raise it up.”They retorted, “It has taken forty-six years to build this Temple, and you’re going to raise it up in three days?” But the temple he was speaking of was his body. It was only after Jesus had been raised from the dead that the disciples remembered this statement and believed the scripture—and the Words that Jesus had spoken.