Lent III

The Third Sunday of Lent

2021 – Cycle B, Exodus 20:1-17; Psalm 19; 1 Corinthians 1:22-25; John 2:13-25

I always thought that the opposite of love was rage, the extreme, irrational, uncontrollable expression of anger, the force that drove people to hurt others with their words or weapons. Rage was to be tamed…  Thus writes Valerie Kaur, Sikh activist, author, and civil rights lawyer.

But is rage to be tamed rather than expressed? And what is the price of suppressing anger? Repressing anger comes at a cost. [Because] suppressed anger always finds a way to explode. For women and girls, [repressed anger] is more likely to explode internally as self-hatred or stress or illness. For men, itis more likely to erupt as violence against others.

We have witnessed suppressed, unbridled, and unfocused human rage explode into violence against other people. From young men marching through Charlottesville, Virginia shouting the Nazi slogan “Blood and soil” and “Jews will not replace us” to terrorist groups, foreign and domestic. From the hidden physical and verbal abuse against women to the cowardly and anonymous slandering on Facebook and Twitter. Lest we forget, let us recall the litany, the Oklahoma City bombing, the mass shooting of people praying at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, the Pulse gay nightclub, the cries of George Floyd for his mother and breath. Violence is exploding across our nation and world like a plague.

And what is at the root of this violence? Feelings of being marginalized? Marginalized from what? Is it feelings of losing control or perceived power? Or is it a feeling of powerlessness that lashes as power over others, even if irrational? It is the frustration against a person’s economic situation? Kaur writes that people who want to kill [or harm] others…actually want to kill something inside themselves. Is that true? And what might that be?

At the root of so much of this irrational violence I believe is fear. And look at what fear creates; human devastation. A world out of balance since Cain raised his arm against Abel.

From murderous violence against members of her family after 9/11 [Sikhs wear turbans for religious reasons. They are confused with Arabs and Muslims.] to the violent treatment of women by men that Kaur personally experienced, she came to learn rage was not the opposite of love. She posits that the opposite of love is indifference. Love engages all our emotions, she writes. Joy is the gift of love. Grief is the price of love. Anger is the force that protects that which we love.

I immediately envision the fierce reaction of a mother bear protecting her cubs. Is that what Jesus is expressing today with his whip of cords? And if fierce anger is the force that protects what we love, what is it that Jesus loves that needs to be protected?

To counter the ruin of human rage expressed in violence, I want you to consider that what Jesus is expressing is divine rage. Divine rage is fierce, disciplined and visionary. Yes, it is the fury of Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers in the Temple. But the aim of divine rage is not [hate, the power to control others or] vengeance but to reorder the world.

Many Christians have diminished the person of Jesus and his message distilling it to ‘being good’.  Following Jesus is not about ‘being good’. Jesus was not crucified for ‘being good’. Jesus came to reorder the world. First becomes last. Last becomes first. Everyone gets paid the same wage no matter how long they’ve worked. Love of enemies. One sinner is more important than ninety-nine good people. The worthless have eternal value. The outcast is placed in the center with honours. The sinner is welcomed home with a banquet. This is a world in which God dies so that we might eternally live. Jesus embodies God’s just rage for a world disordered and out of balance. This is why Jesus was crucified.

This reordered world, like the divine rage that seeks to bring it about, makes us uncomfortable: it can feel disruptive, frightening, and unpredictable. Is this why some people within the Church oppose Pope Francis? His vision places the wounded, sinful, person at the center of the human circle proclaiming the church a ‘field hospital’. As Jesus placed a valueless child in the midst of his disciples and proclaimed the Kingdom of God. It can feel like the rules are being ignored or worse jettisoned. Yet what is being revealed by Jesus is the human experience in all of its shades of grey overturning like money changing tables the black and white world we prefer that involves little to no response on our part.

Saint Augustine said that “hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.”

Are you angry at the way things are?

We have witnessed gay women and men beaten and the bloodied faces of people of darker skin colour, young Palestinian men and boys throwing rocks at armed Israeli soldiers, the bodies of refugees and asylum seekers tossed by the Mediterranean on to unwelcoming shores or locked in cages like animals, the marches in Hong Kong, Myanmar, Tiananmen Square, and our American cities. We have heard the stories of sexual assault against girls and women; hidden yet are the stories against men and boys.

Are we angry at the way things are? Do we have the courage to see that these situations against racial, human, economic and social injustices do not remain the way they are? 

I am reminded of the final remarks of Ebenezer Scrooge to the last of his spirit visitors, “Are these the shadows of the things that Will be, or are they shadows of the things that May be only? Men’s courses will foreshadow certain ends, to which, if persevered in, they must lead, but if the courses be departed from, the ends will change.”

 “…if the courses be departed from, the ends will change”.

If fierce, righteous, divine, anger is the force that protects what we love, what is it that Jesus loves that needs to be protected? What is it that you and I love that need to be protected?

All text in italic without quotes are taken directly from See No Stranger by Valerie Kaur, chapter 4.

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PLEASE NOTE: Homilies presented here are also being videotaped and put up on the Saint Mary, Oneonta website: http://www.SMCCOneonta.org.