"A Better Way" given Sept. 10

 The other day, a guy cut another driver off who had been trying for fifteen minutes to merge onto the expressway. Then the first driver turned around in his seat, laughed at the guy he'd cut off, and made an obscene gesture. So the other driver pulled a gun out of his glove compartment and shot the rude bum. A few years ago in one of our major cities, the police believe that some maniac may have blown up a house and killed an entire family. Why? Because he apparently mistook their house for the home of his ex-girlfriend. That's who he really wanted to kill.

They papers and Internet are full of outrageous stories, lately. A very dear African American friend of mine was grousing on Facebook that the way things are going, he might as well turn in his clerical collar for a “T’ Shirt with a target on the back. You don't shoot someone because they laugh at you, or because they’re their skin is the wrong color—no matter WHAT color. You don't try to blow up a house because your girl friend jilted you. All that ought to be obvious to any person of good will. Much less some who calls themselves a “good Christian”—or a good Jew—or a good Muslim—or a good anything! There's got to be a better way.

It's easy for you and me to sit back and shake our heads and tut-tut and say “there's something wrong with people today”. It's easy to blame television, or modern methods of education, or the modern family, or the Internet or computer games or the Democrats, or to simply sit back and shake our jowls and say that things didn't used to be that way in this country.”

But that's not true. Things have always‚ been that way. Not only in this country, but all around the world, all throughout history. Before we even got started as a nation, we were burning spinsters and midwifes as witches in New England—often with the ulterior motive of grabbing off their land. Back in the early part of last century, Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother forty whacks.

Jack the Ripper stalked the streets of London. But the first recorded serial killer in this country was a guy named Dr. H.H. Holmes, right here in Chicago during the 1898 World's Fair. In 1919, an African-American youth swimming at a segregated beach drifted into the wrong part of Lake Michigan, and the city of Chicago and the nation were plunged into a week of the worst race riots in American history.

Touchy pride, aggression, anger, even rage--these things have always been with us. I believe they're hard-wired into the most primitive, most elemental part of our brains. They are evolutionary hold-overs. Those feelings probably served our Neanderthal ancestors well when they had to protect their women and children from a maurading saber-tooth with only a pointed stick. But you know what? There's got to be a better way for people in our day and age.

Robert Bligh and others in the men's movement point out that as a society, we no longer honor that warrior energy that resides within all of us. Western culture no longer teaches young men (and young women as well) appropriate ways to control and channel their anger and aggression for the positive good of the larger community.

There aren't even enough mature adults around willing to lead Scout troops-- much less conduct rites of passage. As a result, our young people form street gangs. Children serve in armies and carry machine guns in many parts of the world. Ancient feuds are resurrected. Foreign terrorists blow up on of the world's largest office buildings in New York City.

In order to destroy a Government building, home grown terrorists blow up day care centers in Oklahoma, for Pete's sake! And lest we think it’s those darned “feerineers”, the, plain fact is that more people of all colors in this country have been murdered by white supremacists than by all the foreign “terrorists” put together. Racism and nationalism, rears its’ ugly head in professional sports events. Even at the Olympics, age-oldsymbol of non- violent competition on an international level are threatened. Watch the coverage and the commentators will solemnly keep score of how many medals are won by various countries—rather than the individual athletes. That by the way is why at the original Olympics, in ancient Greece, athletes competed nude—so you cheered for the individual—not the nation he was from.

We all know the destructive power of anger in our own everyday lives as well. We all know people who get angry and "let it all hang out". They blow up like volcanoes--with no regard to which direction or on who they're venting their rage. Shoot the other guy, kick the dog, beat your spouse, throw a brick through the neighbor's window. Just express your anger-- let loose and God help anyone who happens to be in range. There's got to be a better way.

Some people go so far as to justify their anger. A woman confessed her terrible temper to Billy Sunday. "But", she added, "It's over in a minute." "So is a shotgun blast," answered Sunday. "But it blows everything to bits."

It may feel good when we're “venting”. There may even be a temporary sense of relief or release. But it just doesn't work for us to blow off steam every which way when we decide that things get too much That's an emotional indulgence we human beings simply cannot afford. There's got to be a better way.

Some people claim they literally can't control their tempers. But that's a fallacy-- if no one could control their tempers, the streets would be clogged with dead bodies. Have you heard of the little boy who asked, "Mommy, why do all the idiots only come out when Daddy's driving?" We can control our tempers-- we just don't like to.

"Count to ten", some well-meaning folk will tell you. "Calm down". But anger doesn't go away that easily. This emotional energy is so powerful that even suppressing it can be destructive.

Anger turned inward will express itself on our bodies. Depression, ulcers, high blood pressure, obesity, even limited susceptibility to cancer, have all been linked to suppression of our more powerful emotions. Our bodies become like pressure cookers--the steam builds up and up and unless it is vented, the cooker explodes. There's got to be a better way.

Some people try to laugh off their anger. They use jokes and jibes rather than curses and screams. But often there's a cruel edge to such humor. And even when they allow themselves to be the butt of their own joke, even when the tension of the moment is dispelled, still the underlying conflict isn't resolved. It's a nice thought, but the truth is that hostility doesn't always miraculously vanish if we laugh at it.

Some people simply break off relationships. That's probably the most common solution--especially in families and in churches. We all know stories of brothers and sisters, parents and adult choldren who don't speak, of families engaged in generation long feuds with other families. We all know of situations where here might as well be a barbed wire and border guards right down the middle of the living room, or the main street, or even the Sanctuary. There's got to be a better way.

There's nothing intrinsically wrong with anger. At times, righteous indignation is the most appropriate emotional response to wrong or injustice. Recall Jesus overturning the tables of the money changers in the Temple courtyard. But there can be consequences—look what happened top our Lord.

Back in the 70s, one of the American former hostages in Iran was quoted as saying that the way he kept sane during many months of captivity was to work to keep his anger up. He recognized that he needed the emotional and mental energy that his anger gave him to keep sharp in those trying conditions. He found a good way to use his anger. Hopefully, on his return home, this man found a way to get rid of it.

Our aggressive impulses, properly channeled, can sometimes serve us. They can open possibilities for us we might not have otherwise seen. There's the story of the chef at an exclusive restaurant whose french fries were sent back to the kitchen because they were too thick. So the potatoes were re-cut, thinner. Again they were returned, still too thick.

Angry now, the chef cut more potatoes, this time razor thin. I'll show him, the chef must have thought as he dipped the potatoes in boiling fat and personally carried them out and served them. The customer loved them, and the chef to his surprise, found that he had invented the potato chip.

That chef found a good way to use his feelings. Anger can be used as emotional fuel to accomplish positive things in our lives. But when we feel our hearts pound, our pulse race, our faces get hot, we realize that inventing the potato chip isn't necessarily going to get rid of our anger. It still may need to be expressed.

Those are good ways. But the question for you and for me is, how does a Christian deal with anger? We all get angry. How do we change our anger from a stumbling-block to a stepping stone? How do we transform this emotional energy to the good? There's got to be a better way.

Jesus puts it rather bluntly in this morning's Gospel reading, "If your sister or brother sins against you, go and tell them of the slight, just between the two of you. If he or she listens, you have regained a brother or a sister."

If we can't express our anger constructively, if we can't sit on it, if we can't laugh it off, or suppress it, and if we know that we can't bring ourselves to break off relationships with the person, then the only thing left is to attempt reconciliation. That's undoubtedly the hardest choice. It's easy and tempting to let our anger stew, to build resentment and plan retaliation. But ultimately, the Christian way of dealing with anger is to approach the other and seek to square accounts. We must go to the other seeking reconciliation, not recompense. In order to express our anger we may have to confront the other. But we must also immediately make a gesture of love in order to transform that moment of confrontation into a moment of healing.

The truth is though, even that may not always work. If that honest attempt doesn't work, Jesus urges us to involve representatives of the congregation in the dispute--privately, not as partisans or allies to our cause, but as neutral, prayerful mediators and witnesses. Jesus understood that unresolved conflicts poison not only the parties involved, but the# larger community as well. The community has a stake in reconciliation. But only if all efforts fail is the whole community to be informed.

Then and only then says the Messiah who ate at table with Gentiles and included tax-collectors among his disciples, we are free of them. Not free to hate them, not free to seek revenge, not even free to treat them as if they were outsiders and foreigners. \

No, says Jesus, we are free to treat those who we are angry at as if they were "gentiles and tax collectors." We are in other words, free to take the situation to God-- still praying for strength to forgive, for a heart to love, for a better way—a way to be reconciled.

In China, a Christian owned a rice paddy next to a Communist. The Christian would irrigate his field by pumping water by hand from a nearby canal. Each evening, after the Christian had pumped enough water for his field, his neighbor would sneak out and remove some boards that kept the water in the Christian's field. Then the water would flow into his field# without his having to do any work.

Beside himself with rage, the Christian took his complaint to God in prayer. The next day he rose earlier than usual and started pumping the water into his neighbor's field. Then, he replaced the boards, and filled his own field. Within a few weeks, both fields were doing well, and the Communist neighbor had come to Christ. That's how it's done. That's the better way that Jesus lived out.