Ephesians 4:25 – 5:2

   Many of us grew up being told we shouldn’t be angry.  Some of us weren’t allowed to be angry.  In an article entitled, “Most Women You Know Are Angry — and That’s All Right,” journalist Laurie Penny writes that female anger in particular is taboo.  I don’t know whether it’s true that most women are angry, but it is true that most women have been given all sorts of coded messages that anger is shameful, like “Why so hostile?” or “Don’t get hysterical!”  One of the things we hear most often, either subtly or explicitly, is that angry women are unattractive.  Penny writes, “This is supposed to end the discussion, because more than anything else, women and girls are supposed to want to be attractive.”  That – that right there – that just might be one of the reasons most women you know are angry. 

   And that’s all right.  The Ephesians passage says be angry … but.  Be angry, but do not sin.  We could spend years on what the writer means by sin and whether sin is a helpful concept, but let’s just agree the writer means, “Be angry, but don’t make things worse.”  In a burst of emotional intelligence that is exceedingly rare in Scripture outside of Jesus himself, the author of Ephesians acknowledges that it’s okay to have feelings.  What matters is not how angry you feel, but what you do with it. 

   Brené Brown writes, “Internalizing anger will take away our joy and spirit; externalizing anger will make us less effective in our attempts to create change and forge connection.”  Externalized anger – anger that is acted out – makes things worse.  People often act out their anger by being belligerent and aggressive – in other words, they use anger to bully people.  Others act out anger by manipulating people through passive aggressive behavior, coldness, cutting off communication.  Both ways of acting out anger make things worse, make positive change or transformation less likely, make connection and understanding less likely.

   But anger can be useful.  It can keep you moving and working when you want to give up.  It can give you courage when you need it.  Anger can be a tool as well as a weapon, and it’s a tool we shouldn’t let rust or never learn to use.

   A number of years ago, Bill Moyers (one of my heroes) gave an address at Occidental College entitled, “A Time For Anger, A Call To Action.”  He cited the staggering statistics about the growing gap between the rich and poor in this country and then he told a story about two families in Milwaukee.  Moyers said, “One is black, the other white.  The breadwinners in both were laid off in the first wave of downsizing in 1991 as corporations began moving jobs out of the city and then out of the country.  …  They’re the kind of Americans my mother would have called ‘the salt of the earth.’  They love their kids, care about their communities, go to church every Sunday, and work hard all week.”

   “To make ends meet after the layoffs, both mothers took full-time jobs.  Both fathers became seriously ill.  When one father had to stay in the hospital two months the family went $30,000 in debt because they didn’t have adequate health care.  We were there with our cameras when the bank started to foreclose on the modest home of one family that couldn’t make mortgage payments.  Like millions of Americans, [these families] were playing by the rules and still getting stiffed.  By the end of the decade they were running harder but slipping further behind, and the gap between them and prosperous America was widening.”

   “What turns their personal tragedy into a political travesty is that while they are indeed patriotic, they no longer believe they matter to the people who run the country.  They simply do not think their concerns will ever be addressed by the political, corporate, and media elites who make up our dominant class.  They are not cynical, because they are deeply religious people with no capacity for cynicism, but they know the system is rigged against them.”

   Moyers talked about his own faith.  A life-long Christian, he’s angry about the fact that Jesus has been “hijacked,” as he put it, “and turned from a friend of the dispossessed into a guardian of privilege.”  He spoke of the Jesus who fed hungry people, broke down barriers, touched the unclean and brought them back into community; the Jesus who got angry, whose message of mercy and love was expressed in action that disturbed the peace.  

   Moyers’ speech shows how anger doesn’t automatically threaten disconnection and destruction of community.  Ever since unfairness was invented, the function of anger is to protect social connections by protesting unfair treatment.  It is an alarm clock, a signal that things need to change.  Anger screams, “Something is wrong!” and provides the energy required to restore fairness and social harmony.  Bede Jarrett said, “The world needs anger.  The world often continues to allow evil because it isn’t angry enough.”  In order not to make things worse, we need to transform our anger into something life-giving: courage, love, change, compassion, justice, but our anger is a calling.  It is God speaking to us, saying, “Get off your … get off your recliner and get out there and DO something!”

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources:

Laurie Penny, “Most Women You Know Are Angry – and That’s All Right,” August 2, 2018, Teen Vogue, https://www.teenvogue.com/story/women-angry-anger-laurie-penny. 

Bill Moyers, “A Time For Anger, A Call To Action, February 7, 2007, Occidental College, Los Angeles, http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0322-24.htm. 

Marshall B. Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life (Encinitas, CA: PuddleDance Press, 2003).

Brené Brown, Braving the Wilderness (New York: Random House, 2017).

Mark 6:1-13

The most famous line in Tennessee Williams’ play, “A Streetcar Named Desire,” is delivered by Blanche DuBois as she’s being led away to a mental institution following a breakdown: “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.” She’s always relied on others and given up some control over her life, because she’s always been out of touch with reality. Which makes relying on the kindness of strangers sound like not such a good thing, maybe even out of touch with reality. And yet in today’s passage in Mark’s gospel, Jesus tells his twelve disciples that’s exactly what they must do. He’s given them authority to heal, and they are to proclaim that all should “repent;” in other words, change the direction of their lives. He instructs them to take nothing with them so they have to rely entirely upon the hospitality and generosity of others for their meals, for a place to stay, for everything.

Being dependent on others feels vulnerable, especially to people with some privilege. We don’t like giving up control. Most church folks put a lot of effort into figuring out how to be welcoming, not just on Sunday mornings but all the time. But being the gracious host means we’re the ones in control, right? Our turf, our food, our rules, no surprises. And yet Jesus says, “Leave all that behind. Be a gracious guest.” Become the stranger who needs to be welcomed as a guest, with all the vulnerability that implies. Eat what’s put in front of you, listen to your host’s conversation and concerns, enter into your host’s reality.

And here we get to the nut of why Jesus wanted the twelve to rely on the kindness of strangers. Offering hospitality is important and always will be, but there is something about accepting hospitality that changes us profoundly, that opens us to new perspectives in a way that being a host does not. It means being open to what God is doing in someone else, on their turf. It means recognizing that everyone has something to offer, and every conversation is two-sided. As one writer quips, “We might have to reconsider some of the hymns we take along with us.” Instead of “We’ve a Story to Tell All the Nations,” “We’ve a Story to Hear from the Nations.” Or “Go, Listen on the Mountain!” or “Onward, Christian Guests!”

We celebrate Independence Day this week, and maybe that’s a good time to remember we are a nation of strangers, alternately called to receive and be received. In 1956, Dwight D. Eisenhower put it this way: “We are a people born of many peoples. Our culture, our skills, our very aspirations have been shaped by immigrants – and their sons and daughters – from all the earth. Sam Gompers from England, Andrew Carnegie from Scotland, Albert Einstein from Germany – and Booker T. Washington and Al Smith – Marconi and Caruso – men of all nations and races and estates – they have made us what we are.” I suspect if he’d said this today, he’d have said, “men and women of all nations,” and he’d have added Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Maya Angelou, Sonia Sotomayor, Amy Tan, and Kamala Harris. I hope he’d also have noticed that the original inhabitants of this land are still here among us.

An English video that went viral a while back gives some perspective on all this.

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyaEQEmt5ls

We Americans are proud of claiming the term “melting pot” but the fact is each one of us, all over the globe, is a melting pot of sorts; each of us is an immigrant, an alien, a stranger. Whether it’s us or our parents or grandparents or “back and back and back” as the video puts it, our people have been strangers in strange lands. We all have needed and will continue to need to be welcomed. And we all have the opportunity to welcome. Sometimes, we will be the stranger who brings truth and peace; sometimes others will be that to us. “Go, Listen on the Mountain!”

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Kelly Belcher, “Go,” July 3, 2016, http://nextsundayworship.com/july-3-2016/.
Dwight D. Eisenhower, Address in Convention Hall, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 1, 1956, https://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/education/bsa/citizenship_merit_badge/speeches/address_convention_hall.pdf

Mark 4:26-34

Eugene Peterson calls parables “narrative time bombs.” Parables are meant to undermine our assumptions, challenge cultural myths, and offer us a vision of something different. These two agricultural mini-parables in Mark’s Gospel offer an alternative vision for the Kingdom of God.

The Kingdom of God is a phrase that deserves explanation pretty much every time we use it. First of all, and let’s just get this out of the way, it isn’t about the afterlife. Second, many people prefer not to use the term “kingdom” because it’s patriarchal and monarchical. Both patriarchy and monarchy made sense to Jesus’ audience, but neither are necessary to understand that this phrase was Jesus’ primary metaphor for describing the world, this world, our world, as it would be if we made God the ruler of our hearts and minds. If you don’t like the word “ruler,” we could just say the phrase describes what this world would be if we made God’s priorities – love, justice, and compassion – our consistent priorities. I’m fine with the term “the Kingdom of God,” but I’m also fine with newer phrases that make it easier for people to digest the metaphor: the Reign of God, the Kin-dom of God, or creative alternatives such as these suggested by Brian D. McLaren: the dream of God, the revolution of God, the mission of God, the party of God, the network of God, and the dance of God. Whatever phrase you choose, the central point is that the Kingdom of God is both now and not yet. It is among us now, at hand, as Jesus put it, when we live as though God’s love and compassion are our priorities, but it is so very obviously not fully here, as we can see when we read the news or just look around us. It is both present choice and future goal.

The “narrative time bomb” in both these little parables emerges in the hiddenness, ordinariness, and inevitability of the beginnings of the Kingdom. The sower doesn’t make the seeds sprout and grow; the sower doesn’t even water or weed. Likewise, the tiny mustard seed is “sown,” but we aren’t told that it is sown by anyone in particular. It may just spring up organically the way it does in our Northern California fields and on our hillsides, where it’s a beautiful wildflower that spreads quickly and widely but, for the most part, is a weed.

That weediness is an interesting quality, as well. The cultural bias of first century Palestine identified order with holiness and disorder with uncleanness. There were strict rules about what you planted and where. The images in these little parables may point to something vaguely unclean and somewhat disorderly, perhaps not welcomed and perhaps not recognized as valuable by everyone. Nevertheless, the birds make their nests in the shade of the wild mustard, an image of welcome, safety, even gentleness and beauty.

Tiny, hidden, ordinary, weed-like, disorderly, uncontrollable, unrecognized, and perhaps even unwelcome, but spreading inevitably and a welcoming home to the vulnerable. These images are the starting point for the Kingdom of God.

What does this mean for us, for the present choice and future goal of the Kingdom of God? For one thing, achieving it isn’t up to us. It is God’s project. Certainly, we may participate by choosing to be aligned with God’s purposes. One of our own cultural myths is that big problems must be tackled in big ways. These Kingdom parables challenge that myth. Many people throughout the world have found not only that some of the best and bravest ideas come from people outside the traditional corridors of power, but often large problems are best tackled in small ways, at least in the beginning, at least until the mustard spreads, so to speak.

The parables further invite us to notice that God is already at work, in small, perhaps even hidden ways, in our lives, in our communities, and in the world. In time, God will complete the work God has started. It can be hard to trust this promise when we look at the world around us, but these parables give us hope in small, inevitable changes. Maybe even enough hope to inspire us to join in God’s project.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.