When You Are Angry

 Anger doesn’t require significant issues to raise its ugly head.  Several Tampa Bay baseball fans got into an angry fight over a foul ball that landed in a garbage can. After tempers flared, the security guard stepped in and ruled that the ball would remain where it landed, beneath a pile of peanut shells, beer cans, hot dog wrappers and whatever else had been deposited in the can. If we can’t get along with one another, nobody wins.

We are all acquainted with anger. We have felt the rising resentment and boiling emotions that overwhelm rational thought and take control of our words and our actions leading us to say things and do things that we later regret. We call it losing our temper. It is built into us. We are born with it. Anyone who cares for a newborn soon discovers that babies have a temper. For most of us, age helps. We call it “mellowing.” Things that once pushed our button and shoved us over the edge are not as frustrating as before. We become more patient; we gain greater perspective.

It is okay to become angry. When anger causes us to take action that will result in improved environment and behavior, it is good. Jesus became angry. He did not casually cleanse the temple. He drove out all those who were using religion for profit, overturned their tables, scattered their money on the stones and drove the bleating sheep, braying oxen and fluttering pigeons before him with a whip. Later, when the religious authorities wanted to prevent him from healing the sick on the Sabbath, the Bible says he looked at them “with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart.”

But it is not okay to lose our temper. Uncontrolled anger can be disastrously destructive. It is not okay to live an angry life as an angry person. Angry people alienate others, and, when their anger spins out of control, they inflict damage and injury to themselves and others. When anger cuts off conversation and communication that can lead to understanding and solutions to shared problems, it is a bad thing. When anger spills over into rage that lashes out at others to hurt and to harm, it is a bad thing.

Anger is one of those human emotions we all possess that must be channeled and controlled to produce constructive results. Left unchecked and allowed to run wild, it can destroy us. The Bible instructs us to “Be angry and yet do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger.”(Eph. 4:26). The Bible also says, “The anger of man does not fulfill the righteousness of God.” (James 1:20).

 When we are introduced to the Apostle Paul in the book of Acts, he is an angry young man. After assisting in the murder of Stephen, he proceeded to persecute Christians, going from house to house, arresting men and women and throwing them into prison. But, on the way to extend his rage to Damascus, he met the risen Christ. His life was changed.  His anger was quenched.  Later, he extended the love of Christ to those who persecuted him (Acts 16:22-30) and authored one of the greatest passages on love the world has ever known, (1 Corinthians 13).  

Spiritual Myopia

 Myopia. I learned the word when I was ten years old from the optometrist who checked my eyes and told my parents that I was nearsighted. I didn’t know I was nearsighted. I thought everyone saw everything the way I saw it. Trees were green blobs, the landscape blurred into blotches of pink, green, brown and blue, like an Impressionist painting. I wondered how other kids could catch and hit a baseball. I never saw the ball until it was on top of me. I could see some vague arm motion in the distance and then, wham! The ball was in my face.

My first pair of glasses changed my world. I discovered leaves on trees. I could see people’s faces inside their cars. I could read the blackboard from the back of the room. As a teenager I became the cleanup hitter on the all-star team, and could catch a fly ball over my shoulder while galloping toward the centerfield fence, like Joe DiMaggio. When I returned to the dugout, I heard the coach say, “I always knew if he could see it he could catch it.”

Myopia is not only physical. It can bespiritual. We are all born spiritually nearsighted. Like my childhood years, we think we see things clearly, but we don’t. We are unaware of what we don’t see. The only person who ever had perfect vision was Jesus. That is why He said, “I am the light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness … if anyone walks in the night he stumbles because the light is not in him.” (John 8:12; 11:10)

When the prophet Elisha and his servant were surrounded by the enemy at Dothan, the servant was gripped with fear. But Elisha told him, “Do not fear. Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.” When God opened the servant’s eyes, he saw that “the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.” (2 Kings 6) When we are gripped with fear and despair, we need God to open our eyes so we can see clearly. “If God be for us,” Paul said, “who can be against us?” (Romans 8:31)

Jesus once met a blind man in the village of Bethsaida. Jesus laid His hands upon him and asked him, “Do you see anything?” The man responded, “I see people; they look like trees walking around. Once more,” the Bible says, “Jesus put His hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened … and he saw everything clearly.” (Mark 8:22-25) Many of us are like that blind man. We may be religious. We may attend church. But we need a “second touch” from God so that we can see clearly.

We are born with spiritual nearsightedness so that we only see things close up, our own self interests. As a result, we are often filled with fear, doubt, anger, resentment and despair. When we turn from our sins and place our faith in Christ, He is able to touch us so that we see clearly and walk in the light. Only Christ can cure the spiritual myopia that afflicts us from birth and enable us to see the world as God sees it.

This We Believe

 Over the years I have preached many funerals for friends and family.  None stands out more in my memory than the funeral I preached for my niece.  By the time she ended her long battle with breast cancer she was in her fifties.

 I still remember her innocent blue eyes as a child.  I watched her grow through childhood and into her teen years.  When she was a young adult, she was lured down painful and destructive paths refusing to heed the warnings of those who loved her. I prayed for her, along with others and she fell deeper into addiction to drugs and alcohol. She gave her first born up for adoption and eventually served a sentence in prison.

 But somewhere along the way, whether in prison or afterward, she came to faith in Jesus Christ. Just as He said to the woman who pressed through the crowd and touched the hem of His garment, Jesus said to her, “Daughter, your faith has made you whole.” 

 In the last decade of her life, I saw her reunited with her first-born whom she gave up in her youth. She was reconciled with her family who surrounded her with love.  God brought a good man into her life who, like herself, was a recovering alcoholic.

 She often shared with me her testimony of faith and what God had done in her life.  She still wasn’t perfect. She still had issues. But she was different. God was healing her on the inside.

 The week before she died, we visited.  Family and friends gathered around her, comforting her, praying for her and loving her.  On Wednesday of that week, she drew her last breath.

 Once again, I thought of her as that innocent blue-eyed girl I first knew. It reminded me of Jesus’ visit to the home of a mother and father whose twelve-year-old daughter had died.  The house was surrounded by people who were weeping. But Jesus entered the child’s bedroom with her parents and spoke these gentle words to her.  “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”   She immediately breathed, opened her eyes and got up.   

 This is the faith we believe as followers of Christ.  We make mistakes.  We may wander far from God.  We may cause pain to ourselves and others.  But He seeks us out.  He never lets us go.  He reconciles, redeems and, in the day of our death, He raises us up!

Did Jesus Do Dishes?

 Did Jesus do dishes?  The very question sounds sacrilegious.  That might be the point.  Sometimes our “religion” prism causes us to miss the real miracle about Jesus.  The whole idea of “religion” tends to confine our thinking to “church” related activities and theological conversations.  To most people, Jesus never enters day-to-day conversation because to do so is to introduce “religion,” and daily life has little to do with religion.

 Those who knew Jesus, who met him, heard him, saw him, ate with him, and walked with him were struck by his humanity.  He was real, but, as some say, “not real religious.”  He went to the synagogues and spoke there, but it was the religious people who had difficulty with him.  He ate with tax collectors, visited with prostitutes, and befriended lepers, violated religious laws by healing the sick and allowing his disciples to harvest grain on the Sabbath.

 Jesus’ divinity continued to shine through for all to see:  he made the blind see, caused the deaf to hear, enabled the lame to walk and raised the dead.  Even the wind and the sea obeyed him.  But, just as importantly if not more so, he made the mundane extraordinary.

 He lived most of his life as a carpenter in a remote village.  As Dallas Willard wrote, “If he were to come today as he did then, he could carry out his mission through most any decent and useful occupation.  He could be a clerk or accountant in a hardware store, a computer repairman, a banker, editor, doctor, waiter, teacher, farmhand, lab technician, or construction worker.  He could run a house cleaning service or repair automobiles. In other words, if he were to come today he could very well do what you do.”

John described him like this:  “The Word became flesh and lived among us and we saw his glory, glory as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14);  “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.”

 The Bible never says that Jesus did the dishes.  It does say that he washed feet. Which, it seems to me, required a great deal more humility than washing dishes.  I expect dishes were prized possessions in most homes of Galilee. They weren’t cheap.  You could not pick up dishes at the local Walmart or the Dollar store.  They were all hand crafted and often passed down from generation to generation.  Most homes likely had little more than the essentials when it came to dishes. They did not pile up in the sink waiting for someone to unload the dishwasher. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jesus helped his mother out, or even lent a hand to Martha in the kitchen at Bethany, and washed dishes.

I always think my wife will be most impressed when I buy her flowers.  She does appreciate them. But what she really seems to like is the times that I do the dishes.  It may be that the most spiritual thing you do today is to do the dishes.  It could be a God thing.