God’s Anger

Psalm 85

Preached by Rev. Trina Zelle

July 25, 2010

Growing up, did you ever think that God was angry at you?  Why do you think that was? Is it what you were taught – that if you did – or didn’t do – certain things, God would be angry with you? Or, did you reach that conclusion on your own, based on what you were taught about God -- that more often than not, God was angry or about to get angry.

Over these many years of ministry, in conversations with hundreds of church folks, I’ve come to the realization that a lot of people grew up that way.  Grew up with the uneasy feeling that, not only were their outer actions and  innermost thoughts being closely observed by an invisible deity, but that they were being observed with great disapproval.

However, it’s also something that I can honestly say I never experienced as part of my religious upbringing  –  and so it has taken a long time for me to really appreciate the tenacity and courage of those who did grow up this way – believing that God was mad at them -- and yet didn’t cut God and the faith community out of their lives. If that describes you, I congratulate you for not going away and want to say that I am so glad that you are here today.

That’s not to say that I didn’t grow up with anger – there was a fair amount of it  at my house when I was a kid but it wasn’t about God – it was about human, everyday things – me ducking out on my chores, for example, or my Mom and Dad arguing about things that parents argue with each other about – discipline, permission, consequences.  Forgotten anniversaries.  You know the list.

But I never had the feeling that God was angry with me ; or when bad things happened, that somehow it was divine punishment for something that I had done.

In fact, even though, by the time I was ten I had read my Dad’s tattered copy of Hurlbut’s Story of the Bible cover to cover, several times over, I didn’t have the impression that God was perpetually ticked off about something; it seemed to me that God put up with an awful lot before working up a head of steam.  Of course, there was  lots of smiting in the Old Testament as in “smiting dead”  After the Israelites had made a golden calf  to worship for example – which they did the minute Moses went up the mountain to talk with God and get the Ten Commandments.  There are numerous instances like this where God gets angry but it’s almost always accompanied by this inner conversation that God has with God’s self – of wanting to wipe out the human race and start over and then deciding not to == that’s what the rainbow is supposed to remind us about remember? 

Taking it back even further than Moses and the Hebrew children in the desert, there’s Cain’s murder of Abel – a shocking sin – the first murder -- but does God get angry and lash out? mad?  God certainly isn’t happy and there are consequences, but God  doesn’t destroy Cain but marks him.  Not as a sign of punishment but as a sign of protection.  A message to all who encounter him that revenge for the sake of revenge is not a godly act and that no one was permitted to retaliate.

And maybe that’s a good place to start.  With God’s response to primeval sin – anger yes – but anger that expresses itself in natural consequences and then, counter-intuitively --  with protection.  Certainly not contemptuous anger which is the primary emotion I take away from  the preaching of some of my conservative brethren with TV shows.  

Did you know that contempt is probably the most corrosive human emotion there is?  Researchers in one fairly recent couples’ study were able to predict which marriages would last and which would not based on the presence of contempt in their communication styles. 

So then, maybe the problem then, isn’t so much about God’s anger as it is the kind of anger expressed by those who claim to speak on behalf of God.  Anger that devalues its object.  Tells us that we’re not good enough and can never be good enough.  What ever made us think that we were?  Tells us that our natural inclinations are not to be trusted.  Tells us that God would just as soon smite us as look at us.

Theologian Walter Bruggeman once famously said, that whoever controls the means of forgiveness, controls society.  So here’s a question for you:  who benefits most from an irrationally angry God who must be propitiated with expensive and repetitive sacrifices?  Hate to say it, but that would be religious professionals who claim to be indispensible agents of God’s economy of grace. 

But we know they’re wrong.  Or should.  Because scripture, taken in its totality, not ripped out of context like a Breitbart video of Shirley Sherrod -- tells us that God never gives up on us – Jesus shows us that forgiveness is not about others telling us we’re forgiven but our own acceptance of it.   Of course, the religious establishment would beg to differ and claims to hold the power to decide.  It’s one reason they wanted Jesus dead lo these many years ago.  He was threatening this great deal they had going.

When it comes to God’s anger, how do we know if we’re being hustled by the religious establishment – or the intrusive thoughts banging around in our own heads.  When it’s hard to decide, I remember the very wise thing that my husband’s Pentecostal Grandma once told me – you remember me talking about Nelle right?  Anyway, she said, “Satan condemns, God (or God’s Spirit) convicts.” In other words, if you’re getting the message that you’re worthless and beyond redemption, that’s not God talking.  Even at God’s angriest, God doesn’t condemn.  God convicts.

And what does that mean – to convict?  To be convicted?  It’s a word that refers to a person being found guilty in a court of law but there are other, more subtle meanings as well.  The Latin convictus is also related to the word convincer but it takes us to a deeper place that our notion of being rationally convinced to that place of excruciatingly, piercingly accurate self-awareness. I can still remember the precise moment that I realized my life was out of control – that even the wisest human judge could not set right all those things that had gone wrong.  I was convicted of my powerlessness.  The only option left to me, besides falling into utter despair, was to turn everything over to God. This moment of conviction brought to my senses. 

But when we don’t go to that place of conviction but instead are led into a place of self-condemnation, that’s not God talking.  Being told that you are hopeless is not coming from God.  Stop up your ears and run the other direction. 

God convicts.  Satan condemns.

But that doesn’t mean that what God has to say is easy to hear.  To stand convicted of our own arrogance or selfishness or delusion  is not a pleasant experience.  It might seem like a blast of rage from an angry God.  But it’s not.  It’s a light that shows us that we’re up to our knees in mud -- and that there’s a way out. 

One more thing -- beyond self-aggrandizing religious professionals  and the devil --  contributes to our perception that God is angry and that’s God’s utter Otherness.  As scripture tells us, God’s ways are not our ways.  As far as the heavens from the earth are God’s ways from our ways.  Which we tend to interpret as distance or remoteness.  I don’t know about you, but I have always associated remoteness and silence with disapproval.  Which lead me and I suspect most of us to attribute qualities and emotions to God that have nothing to do with God.

It ends up working like this for us.  "A fellow was speeding down a country road late at night and BANG! went a tire.  He got out and looked but he had no jack.

"Then he said to himself.  'Well, I'll just walk to the nearest farmhouse and borrow a jack.'  He saw a light in the distance and said, 'Well, I'm in luck; the farmer's up.  I'll just knock on the door and say I'm in trouble, would you please lend me a jack?  And he'll say, why sure, neighbor, help yourself, but bring it back.'

"He walked on a little farther and the light went out so he said to himself, 'Now he's gone to bed, and he'll be annoyed because I'm bothering him so he'll probably want some money for his jack.  And I'll say, all right, it isn't very neighborly but I'll give you a couple of bucks.

And he'll say, do you think you can get me out of bed in the middle of the night and then offer me a couple of bucks?  Give me ten dollars or get yourself a jack somewhere else.'

By the time he got to the farmhouse the fellow had worked himself into a lather.  He turned into the gate and muttered. 'Ten dollars!  All right, I'll give you ten dollars.  But not a cent more!  A poor guy has an accident and all he needs is a jack. You probably won't let me have one no matter what I give you. That's the kind of guy you are.'

Which brought him to the door and he knocked angrily, loudly. The farmer stuck his head out the window above the door and hollered down, 'Who's there?  What do you want?'  The fellow stopped pounding on the door and yelled up, 'You and your stupid jack!  You know what you can do with it!'"

That’s what we do when we try to decipher God’s utter otherness from our own human perspective.  We project our own shortcomings and personalities onto God and then we get mad because we’ve created God in our own image and we don’t like what we see.

But we don’t have to stay stuck there.  Stuck with a God of our own devising.  Because we have Jesus.  The great bridge builder.  The tearer down of walls.  The face of God.  Not a face of anger and condemnation but one of love and compassion.  The face of God.

Is your understanding of God that of a remote and disapproving figure who is frequently moved to murderous outbursts?  You’re not spending enough time with Jesus and you’re not seeing him for who and what he is.  Immerse yourself in the gospels – my favorite is Luke – they’re called the good news for a reason.  Get to know Jesus better – we all talk about loving Jesus but I think that it’s just as important to like him – which I believe you will if you spend enough time with him.  And remember his words in the good news of John:  if you know me, you know the one who sent me.  What a relief.  What good news.  Amen.