First Baptist Church on Littleton Common    

The Beautiful Daughters of Hope

John 2:13-25

Jon was angry.  The front porch on which he was standing and all the land surrounding it had been in his family for generations.  This had been his great- great grandfather’s farm and for years had remained within the family and produced many seasons of crops that had fed and provided for their well being.  It also held the memories of their family and the stories of their lives.   Jon thought back upon many family gatherings where everyone was seated around a long extended table filled with homemade foods and where the conversations lasted hours longer than the actual meal.   The homestead itself held memories of hard work and adventures with siblings and young cousin.  Jon thought back to the small stream in the nearby woods, where they would all gather to cool off their feet, skip rocks, tell stories and dream dreams.  

However years ago some of the family started to sell off portions of the property in order to pay for college tuition and help pay bills.   The old farmhouse was now flanked with a nightclub on one side and a mall on the other with an asphalt parking lot for hundreds of cars.  The developers recently announced that there were going to double the size of the mall and turn it into a marketplace – an emporium with a variety of boutique and fancy department stores.  

Jon now stood gazing out from the porch of his house and could see the tractors and bulldozers lined up across the way, ready to begin their work in the morning.  All of a sudden an uncontrollable anger rose up from somewhere deep inside him.  He could feel it in his stomach and it came over him like a wave and took a hold of his heart.  He felt the sting of the anger in his fingertips and his toes, and also clouded his vision.  All he could see was the impending destruction of his favorite place by the water, the one that held this childhood memories and dreams.   In a blind rage he ran all the way over to where the tractors and bulldozers were lined up and began to kick at their tires, throw rocks and swear at them.   He screamed and raged until he was empty and then just as quickly as it began – the anger stopped.  He walked over into the woods down by his stream and sat down there while tears poured out from him with the same force as the rushing water by his side.   There he sat for quite awhile, listening to the myriad of sounds surrounding him and within him.   He threw some rocks into the water, watching the initial splash, the rippling effect that it caused and pondered how quickly the rock sank to the bottom.   He began to pray through all the losses of his life and then he got up, walked home slowly, gathered up his children to take them out, determined to go and make new memories. 

Jon was angry.  We have all been that angry at times in our lives – haven’t we?

 All of a sudden, out of the blue, for one reason or another, we find ourselves filled with anger and rage, and we act or say things impulsively.   Everything we see for awhile is shaded by anger – as if we had put on a pair of anger glasses causing our insides and our outlook to be all stirred up.  We have all been angry like that – and there is a lot going on in these days of our lives - that can make us that angry.  

Jesus was also angry. 

In the lesson today from John, Jesus was angry.  And he must have been pretty angry because that anger and his actions became the talk of the town and wound up recorded in all four of the Gospels.   

This story of Jesus overturning the tables is found in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.   In Matthew, Mark and Luke the story is positioned right after the Triumphal entry, but in John it is placed at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry.  Mark and Luke take two sentences to tell the story.   Matthew adds that once Jesus drove out the money changers, there was room in the Temple courtyard for the blind, the lame and children to come in.   It was their presence which resulted in the temple authorities being indignant and upset.  Unfortunately not much has changed in our world because often when people try to make room for the outcasts of society – society gets a little indignant.  

In John’s gospel we hear more about the anger of Jesus.  I have thought a great deal about anger this week – because frankly I have found myself getting angry at times and I have discovered that I am not alone.  A lot of people are angry and some of that anger is expressed in unhealthy ways, some in a healthy ways and some remains bottled up inside of people.   It is helpful to remember that Jesus expressed his anger, but that his anger gave him energy and fueled his courage. 

I can imagine Jesus coming into the Temple that day and being so overwhelmed with what he witnessed that the anger appeared quickly.  I am sure he felt it rise from within him, grab his heart and that anger became the filter from which he saw things for the next few moments or hours.  In John’s version Jesus makes a whip out of cords and uses it to drive the merchants out of the temple.  He yells at the merchants telling them to “get out” and reminds them that they were in God’s house which was not to be a marketplace.   In the other versions Jesus reminds them that God’s house should be a house of prayer. 

Jesus knew within him that this was a holy place and that it was supposed to be a place for all people to approach God and worship God without having to buy their way in.  And so his understanding and knowledge of how the things of God were supposed to be - confronted the reality of how things were and that anger appeared quickly.  That anger became the energy from which he acted and the anger of Jesus was no small matter.  

St. Augustine was an early church father who wrote that “Hope has two beautiful daughters: their names are anger and courage.  Anger that things are the way they are. Courage to make them the way they ought to be.” 

Jesus was the hope of humankind.   We sing at Christmas that the “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight.” (O Little Town of Bethlehem)   The anger of Jesus was a result of knowing how things were supposed to be, seeing that they were not and helped give him the courage to walk with the outcasts of society and towards the cross, where he would die and be raised again in three days.   Jesus was and is our hope.  His disciples and the gospel writer did not understand at the time of the incident in the Temple, but when this was written years later, they could recall his actions and his words and understand.  “After he was raised from the dead, his disciple recalled what he had said.  Then they believed the Scripture and the words that Jesus had spoken.”  Jesus was and is our hope and sometimes it takes time for us to come to understand and to remember that. 

These days many people are angry which often builds as a result of seeing and feeling the tough and relentlessly cruel effects of the marketplace and the economy.   I sat with a group of friends the other day and the conversation got started about systems such as schools, churches, and governments running out of money.  That led into greedy investors, shortsighted politicians, bad business practices, people losing their job, their homes, and their health– and the anger was just flowing from all of us as the conversation wound up.   When the injustice that we saw around us smacked up against the reality that we hoped for – the anger was alive and kicking.   We talked faster, we talked over each other, we sat on the edge of our seat and if we had been able to take our collective blood pressures they probably would have been sky high.  That anger became the filter for our conversation and it affected our physical body, our emotional stability and our spiritual center.   Anger can do that.  Anger can easily become the filter for which we view the world around us. 

I like to think that anger is like my glasses.  The lens is adjusted often for my weak eyes - but the lenses help me see clearly.  When we get angry - anger becomes the lens that adjusts how we view everything around us, including things that have nothing to do with the original source of our anger.   I read an article this week about anger where a woman had a huge confrontation with her boss and never resolved it.   Her anger lived and festered within her and it became the lens with which she viewed “her children, her husband, her friends….the clerk in the grocery store, and the stranger on the bus.” [1]  It became all encompassing.

That is a very unhealthy way to see and live our lives because it will affect us physically, emotionally and spiritually and all of that can take its toll on who we are.   If we are able, as Jon did in our story, to take time to listen and to pray, God will give us courage to move forward and make changes, whether it is a personal injustice we feel or one that involves the systems that we see that are crumbling around us.   So many of our systems that were once structured and designed to serve us well are falling apart –  but we need our anger be the energy which gives us courage to make changes and to help where we can.  This is where we get our hope.    Jesus was and is our hope. 

Christians very often hear that you ought not to be angry – but the reality is that there are times that we are very angry.   In Ephesians, Paul says:  Be angry but do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry and do not give the devil a foothold.” (Ephesians 4: 26-27)

When we feel the quick rise of anger building inside of us, it is important not to let it get a hold of us and that we don’t act at times when we are angry.   When angry – do not act.   Instead we might try to face the anger in our prayers.  God is tough – and we can wrestle with God in our prayers and in the way we reason things out in our head or with others.  We might need to go off somewhere and talk it out with God.   When I used to work in the kitchen at Grotonwood, which was many, many years ago, when we got angry we used to go into the big walk-in refrigerator, shut the door and let ourselves get angry.  We could scream, pray, talk it through with God, open the door and come back out.  God is strong and is there to help us in our wrestling with the many conundrums that life does bring upon us.   Through prayer, worship, time with God and talking with friends – our anger can be an energy that fuels courage and gives us hope to get through the day, or the week, or the problem of injustice that we see before us.  

And so in this time of worship, may we spend a few moments in prayer together and give to God our anger, so that we might find the courage we need live in hope. 

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God be with us in our humanness and when anger rises within in us – help us not to let it sink us and pull us under.   We acknowledge all the losses in our lives and in our world and the rippling affect that those losses have upon us.   May we not be afraid of our anger,  but seek to understand what it means and then with your help, may it give us courage to change ourselves and a portion of the world around us, always in your name, who was and always will be our hope.

In your name we pray.

Amen 

Rev. Deborah J. Blanchard