Getting Angry...for Good

A Sermon by Rev. Debra McKnight
Preached October 30, 2016
at Urban Abbey

And a leper came to him begging on his knees and said to him, “If you will, you can make me clean.”  Moved with anger, he stretched out his hand and said to him, “I do will; be clean.”  And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.  And, snorting with anger, he sent him away at once, and said to him, “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony against them.”  
Mark 1:40-45, Hendrick’s personal translation


Snorting….You might be looking at this scripture and saying to yourself, “I don’t remember snorting in the Bible.”  And you would be right.  You might also be looking at this translation and finding the phrase “moved by anger” strange…though perhaps not as strange as “snorting with anger.” This is not a typical translation of the Bible; it is a translation by Professor Obrey Hendricks.  It is not the work of a team of poets and scholars in deep deliberation but I share it because it raises the inescapable reality that our language is lacking.  The typical translation is “moved by or with compassion” rather than anger.  The Hendricks translation forces us to get in touch with anger and that, well, doesn’t seem very Christian.  We never see stained glass windows of a big angry Jesus.  And if we weren’t quite sure about the using the word anger in the place of compassion,….it a gets little more intense just a line later.  You see the phrase “snorting with anger”…well that is more typically translated into the moment where Jesus charges sternly…Jesus gives this man instructions make the offering their tradition commands.  When we read it we get the sense that Jesus uses a really strong voice there and points a finger…but the Greek manuscripts point us to a word that was also used to describe a horse snorting.  And sternly charging really seems different from snorting like a horse.  You can imagine this strong, powerful, beautiful animal snorting.  And if we were not sure about Jesus being angry… I don’t think snorting makes anyone more comfortable.

So now is the time where we have to pause and ask the question, “Why does Jesus being angry seem so strange?”  One explanation offered by scholars is a history where as Christianity ages it also becomes less comfortable with Jesus as human, with emotions, and I guess with the ability to snort..and not the kind of snorting that comes when someone tells a joke.  Language is powerful and we are part of a living tradition that seems to me to have this power of mutual shaping.  We shape and rediscover our tradition and our tradition shapes us, hopefully through a spirit of love and grace and courage and compassion and perhaps even anger.  So let’s pause and imagine that anger is not just ok but sacred.  Let’s pause and look at this compassion that can also have an edge that we name as anger.  

Compassion is nice - - nothing is wrong with compassion.  But compassion alone may not have the same energy or drivenness or edge that the word ‘anger’ invites.  If we were making a flyer about compassion, we might have a really pleasant photo of a person serving at a soup kitchen and we could point out how good everyone feels that people are being fed, particularly young people.  I imagine if we add this edge and energy that the word ‘anger’ suggests it would look more like a person serving at a soup kitchen and angry that the soup kitchen has to exist.  It might look like a relentless person; present, dependable, loving and kind…and perhaps so driven and passionate that they call every member of the city council, show up to every meeting, lobby every elected official from city and county to state and national government.  Maybe that is what moved by compassion/anger looks like.

When we look at why Jesus is angry here, we can probably assume that he is not angry at the man labeled ‘Leper.’  That seems pretty unreasonable.  And perhaps it helps us to understand this by putting it firmly in its context.  I think anytime we look at miracle stories, it becomes easy to say, “Wow, that seems crazy…I am pretty much done with this story and the whole Bible.”  Which, you might expect, I have a bias here, but I just don’t think that is a workable solution.  You see, where we read about Jesus helping people walk that couldn’t or see when they couldn’t or stand upright or stop hemorrhaging…he is not the only one in town doing this work.  This work of healing is the work that belongs to the Temple.  It is a part of the religious leaders role.  Borg and Crossan point to primary sources where people have offered testimony about their healing.  It would be like an ancient YELP review…“I can see again thanks to the great priest at the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem.”  Or “I walked again thanks to the great priests working for Minerva” or “the people at Zeus’s temple really rocked my world and cured my leprosy.”  Healing is happening in the Bible and in the world that surrounds it and just because we don’t understand the body or science or most anything in the same way does not mean we should assume ancient people are stupid or foolish.  People are naming lived experiences and I imagine one thing that may not have changed…good reviews are probably hard to come by.  People cannot run around proclaiming that they have been healed when their skin looks like they rolled in a bed of poison ivy or shout how they can see when they can’t..people are going to notice.  So here we have Jesus bringing the healing out of the Temple and into the streets.   He didn’t ask for an insurance card or a check for a co-pay; no paperwork has been filled out and the HIPA statement has not been signed;  he has just gone and done it.  And then he sends the man with leprosy into the hospital to pay a bill that does not exist.  He sends him to make the offering according to custom.

The Temple had the responsibility for healing and it had the responsibility for public health.  A label of Leper was no small matter; it could be assigned to someone with a contagious disease…and while this seems hard we could liken it to the containment of ebola patients in our recent past.  The thing is this label could be easily misplaced and attached to someone without a communicable skin disease…like eczema.  The reality of this label is hard.   It required a total exit from the community; it meant declaring yourself as you walked in public as someone unclean, wearing torn clothes and being treated pretty terribly by the fearful public.  This is where Jesus gets angry - a man can be healed and brought back into relationship and the religious leaders charged with this task have failed.  Jesus could have perhaps healed and left everything on the down low but no, he sends the man back to prove a point.

When Jesus gets angry, it is for this man suffering on the outside, labeled and limited.  Jesus does not get angry when people don't know how important he is, he never says, “Bow down” or “Confess me as your Lord and Savor.”  He does not get hurt or bruised by insults.  He has some intense moments and he doesn’t snort once when questioned by Pilate or when his childhood community  is trying to run him off a cliff.  He saves his anger for the mistreatment of others.  He loves so much he snorts.

Marge Piercy offers us poetry about a Just Anger.

A good anger acted upon
is beautiful as lightning
and swift with power.

A good anger swallowed,
a good anger swallowed
clots the blood to slime.

So what makes us angry?  What gets you mad enough to snort?  What gets your heart racing?  Perhaps we don’t use the label of Leper too much anymore but we do have other labels that hold power and keep people boxed in.  We can see this in the difference between the use of labels like ‘illegal alien’ or ‘undocumented worker.’  We can see it when we use the word ‘entitlements’ to talk about government support for people living in poverty but not when we talk about government support of big corporations.   We can see it in race and class and gender.  When people step out of their boxes or the boxes that we like them to stay in, we have plenty of words to help put people back in place.  If a man is too feminine we might say, “You throw like a girl.”  We might call him Nancy or fairy or wimp or some other words…one of which a Presidential Candidate has been caught tossing around.  We have words for women like ‘chick’ or ‘doll’ that reinforce a small place and not much brain power.  When a woman steps out of the box we might put her in her place by saying she is too aggressive or nasty or a word that rhymes with ‘Witch.’  These words are complicated to unravel and change.  They require constant, deliberate intention when we hear them.  It requires us to look at who we are and ask why people use the labels they use and the impact words have on how we see one another.

These labels make me angry.  In 2002 and 2003 I worked on a graduate research project about “Heterosexist Language in the Secondary School Climate”.  A lot, thank God, has changed in the years since.  At the time an anti-LGBTQ slur or insult was so common some researchers estimated it could be heard in a school every five seconds. When I interviewed young LGBTQ people (most of whom would not have been comfortable with the word queer..so for the time and place you can imagine the Q as questioning) about the school environment, they seemed to forgive this language.  They often used it and named gratitude for a few safe people along the way.  Listening I was always struck by the notion that these young people expected so little of their school and their teachers and their classmates.  The phrase “That’s so GAY” was peppered through the vernacular; students and even teachers often said it without even thinking about it.  When I asked about teacher intervention, one young person said, “At least I knew I wasn’t hated by everybody.”  So I tired an experiment in the classroom (of course I was only a substitute teacher… heading to seminary in the fall so I didn’t have much to lose).  The first time I heard the phrase, “That’s so Gay!”  I asked questions, invited brief conversation about the phrase and then I named my new expectation for our hour of class…I expected we could come up with more creative expressions that didn’t use a whole group of people as an insult.  I gave them a three strikes and you are out policy….like out to the office.  The first time I sent a student to the office for repeated use…well, it didn’t go well.  The Principal wondered why I had sent the student…in front of the student.  And while that wasn’t the first response I had dreamed of it was the later responses from curious administrators that mattered.  I even had a chance to share my research, which certainly impressed me, since it would have been easy for the school to just hire a different sub.  It was a small moment, among many that were bubbling up in our culture and raising questions and opening doors for new trainings about how a school climate could and should be safe for and empower every student.

This was a good anger.  I have had my share of not so good anger…anger that was for me or about me….anger about someone else’s advancement or success…anger at a person cutting in line or interrupting during a meeting.  Anger at the mistreatment of my ego rather than the mistreatment of others.  It can be hard to harness this driver, this passion, this hurt in ways that make something beautiful and powerful.  It is easier to get caught up in Perhaps that is the miracle we should be looking toward and seeking out.  Perhaps we can listen when we get angry and find what pushes us to make something good with our edgy compassion.  Perhaps we need to snort a little when people in power don’t do what they need to do to make the world a place that cares for everyone.   What makes you angry?  What makes that good?  Let’s get angry for good.