Righteous Wrath

I wanted to just remind people once again that we will celebrate Easter as the day that we are able to gather together again in person. And what we have decided to do in the meantime is to spread out Holy Week and basically turn it into a Holy Month. Join us each week for worship as we step into the different days leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.

Today we are looking at the first three days of Holy Week; Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. I lumped these all together because on Wednesday not much is actually recorded as happening. On Tuesday is where we find Jesus teaching in the temple and we have covered many of those stories during Lent through the Narrative Lectionary. Monday is the main focus of my message today and is a story that we don’t often talk too much about.

That is the story we heard a moment ago about Jesus disrupting the temple life. Whenever I read this story or talk about this story with other people the topic of anger has always come up. I always find that fascinating because none of the gospel writers associate any kind of emotion to Jesus. This story is also a story that happens to be in all 4 gospels, yet as I said none of them say anything about how Jesus felt about it. It doesn’t say driven with anger, or rage. It doesn’t say that as he looked around and saw all that was happening and he became upset. Yet as we read this text there is that sense that Jesus is at the very least unhappy with what is happening in the temple.

So what does that mean for you and for me that Jesus was unhappy or upset? Is this Jesus’ human side getting the best of him? At Pub Theology on Zoom on Tuesday night we talked about Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane on Thursday night praying and the question centered around doubt and the possibility of human nature creeping through. So is this turning of the tables similar to that?

When I was in seminary I took a course about the 7 Deadly Sins. You can look them up if you want to know all 7 of them, but one of them was obviously anger. The idea behind recognizing the 7 deadly sins was to keep people away from them and maybe even to a degree shaming people who exhibited any of those qualities which could be tied to one of them. However, one of the main conversations we had in this class was taking a more modern look at them and trying to have a better understanding of these characteristics or sins.

So each time we studied a ‘sin’ like anger we took a look at what was deadly about it. So how anger is destructive and can harm and even destroy relationships and communities. We also looked at the other side of each of them and discovered ways that there could be and in fact are healthy sides to each of them. I remember that the healthy side to anger was righteous wrath. Righteous wrath was the idea that there are times when we should be upset at something. When we see an injustice in the world like hunger and poverty and it makes us so upset that we are motivated to do something that is righteous wrath. Or we are so upset with COVID-19 that we sew masks, and offer food to those in need, or we grocery shop for those who can’t or shouldn’t leave their house. Anger or wrath become righteous when it drives us to do something positive in response to seeing or experiencing something negative.

So Jesus may be experiencing some righteous anger. Throughout the Gospel of Mark and especially during this season of Lent we have seen stories of Jesus tweaking and changing people’s understanding of faith and what it means to love God and one another. I see this as just another example of that only this time Jesus uses more of a physical act than just his words. Maybe that’s why it’s an uncomfortable text for people. Jesus isn’t healing or preaching or teaching in the usual way that he does it.

Jesus is helping people re-evaluate what is most important though and what is the purpose of a thing. The purpose of the temple is to worship God, but if there are so many things happening that could prevent that very thing from happening then why is it happening? Why sell animals and change money when the point is to worship God and to make that worship available to all nations? Why focus too much on a building when God is everywhere? We have already seen Jesus a few weeks ago talk about that the temple will fall. So clearing the temple wasn’t to keep it clear or clean. It wasn’t a way to protect the purity of the temple necessarily, but to again help people re-evaluate the core reason for the temple; worship of God.

What are the things in our lives that make noise and distract us from worship? As much as it hurts not to be together in this church, could the time away possibly be a time to clean things up so that when we do come together we could possibly set aside those things that were old and noisy so that we can focus on what is the primary reason for coming together as people of God? Could the righteous wrath of being forced apart by the coronavirus cause us to be more faithful to God’s call to be a light for the world, to go out into all nations and teaching them all that he taught us? I spoke with someone this week who told me they have been more focused on God, the Bible, and their faith than they have ever been in a long time.

We know that God makes all things new and that everything has a lifecycle. What is being let go that needs to let go and what is being made new during this time of pandemic? Know that God is at work in this time. God is at work in you, in me, and in this world. God is a God of all people and all nations and no matter where we are or what situation we find ourselves in that where we worship is where God is also. That your house and my house and all places we experience God are a house of prayer. May you feel God in everything and may those things that upset you drive you to do something God for the God to loves and cares for you. Amen.