A few months ago, I attended a training in DC about impacting change in your community.
One of the trainers asked this intriguing question, “What are you passionate about? What motivates you? What makes you angry?”
Of course, I am passionate about a lot of stuff in life - my family, my ministry, a good hamburger - and lots of things make me angry, including as some of our church leaders shared in a meeting this past week, bad drivers and stupid people (who are probably one and the same).
But what the trainer wanted to me think about that day was not just those likes and dislikes - but my values, my beliefs, those people and issues which get my fire burning deep down within and compel me each day to get up and try to make this world a better place.
I had to think about the mission we do as a church and the neighborhood we serve - homeless neighbors, hungry families, uncertain moments in hospital rooms, difficult conversations laced with tears, students skipping school, fear and anxiety that leeches the joy from our souls.
And I thought about Jesus, my baptism, my journey of faith, and this compelling vision of the Kingdom of God, the beloved community, where in the words of Rev. Ralph Watkins of Wheat Street Baptist Church in Atlanta, Georgia, Jesus proclaimed, “IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.”
(Turn to your neighbor and say this.)
The trainer that day was challenging those gathered to see anger as a tool for the work we do as a church. To embrace this anger as we face the injustice and violence of our daily lives. To use it as fuel in our call to mold our neighborhood and our city into something beautiful.
Now, I get that this is tricky - we are taught from a young age that anger is bad. When you are a child, if you get too angry, what happens? You go to time out or the principal’s office. When we are angry, we tend to say and do nasty things to people we love. We lose control.
But that’s not the kind of anger the trainer that day was talking about. In fact, he had a name for it - cold anger. An anger that burns bright and fierce on the inside all the while you maintain your polite demeanor on the outside. An anger that gets you up each morning. An anger that doesn’t take no for an answer in the face of injustice. An anger that stirs up movements for peace, transformation, and reconciliation.
You know who else had this anger? Jesus.
I know this is a shock - we have been fed an image of Jesus as meek and mild, a huggable Jesus, a Jesus who will tuck you into bed at night, sing you a sweet lullaby, make sure your night light is on, and do your taxes for you.
While, yes, Jesus had enormous compassion for so many, he too got ticked off at the injustice in the world.
In our scripture today, Jesus goes into the temple in Jerusalem, the center of Jewish religious and economic life, within was the Holy of Holies, a room where God’s presence dwelled.
In Jesus’ days, the temple had been undergoing major renovations. For more than 40 years, walls had been built. Bricks had been laid. The grandeur and glory of the temple was expanded.
But here was the problem - in a time when so many in the countrysides were suffering under Roman occupation, money kept going into the temple to finance this elaborate project. More and more resources, while people starved. More and more bricks, while families suffered. More and more coins, while farm land was snatched up by the wealthy and military elites.
To walk in to the temple was to discover that it had been turned into a shopping mall.
Jesus knew this. And it made him angry.
In the midst of the Passover festival, when the streets of Jerusalem were crowded with worshippers, Jesus steps into the temple and gets mad. He grabs rope, fashioning it into a whip and drives out the livestock from the courtyard. Then he upends the tables of the moneychangers. Can you picture it in your mind? The chaos? The confusion?
Jesus was angry because IT DIDN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.
The temple was not intended to be a marketplace, preying on the poor in favor of stuffing the temple’s coffers.
The temple was sacred, holy, a house of prayer for all people - not a first century Wall Street.
Theologian Ted Grimsrud imagines it this way:
God intended the temple to be a center for justice in Israel, but it instead became a center for injustice.
That’s why Jesus was so ticked off.
The temple, like so many religious institutions of our time, had built walls that kept those who really needed God’s help on the outside looking in.
Jesus knew that it didn’t have to be this way and was willing to tear it down and build it again through his life, his death, and his resurrection. Giving voice to that anger no doubt made him Public Enemy No. 1, putting him on a collision course to the cross, but also capturing the attention of the poor and oppressed who yearned for justice.
Part of our call as church is to give voice to the anger of our community.
To rumble and moan when our neighbors are hurting.
To listen for those who are being silenced and notice those walled out of God’s love and justice.
And when political leaders or voices in our world say nothing can be done, we instead say:
IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.
When a family calls our church desperate for help to fend off a looming eviction, we say:
IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.
When gun violence takes the live of 17 in a high school or 9 in a church, we say:
IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.
When working poor in our community or neighbors on disability can barely stretch their paychecks to get by, we say:
IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.
When homeless neighbors are kicked out of libraries and shopping malls with nowhere to go, we say:
IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.
When spouses inflict vicious violence upon those they claim to love, we say:
IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.
When men and women are victims of human trafficking, sold into sex slavery or held against their will, we say:
IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.
When a child goes to bed hungry in our neighborhood, we say:
IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.
When anyone feels like they are de-valued and not worthy of love, we say:
IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.
Like Jesus, we are invited to use our cold anger paired with the vision of the Kingdom of God, where the last shall be first and the first shall be last, to disrupt, overturn some tables, and offer another way.
Following Jesus means being willing and open to this kind of resurrection revolution.
Friends, I am grateful as your pastor that I recognized right away that as a church we burn with cold anger for our own homeless neighbors, and because of that, you have been generous in hosting hypothermia shelters here in our church space, the Day Center in our Narthex, delivering food to families and meals to those who are hungry. But I’m always getting us into trouble by asking God - what else can we do? What is next?
A couple of years ago, we became the first church in Maryland to participate in a powerful mission called Bridge of Hope which aims to help homeless families one at a time. A team of church members, called mentors then, covenanted with one single homeless mother and her baby, living at the time in a car, and supported this young woman on a slow road to getting back on her feet. It was a challenging and incredible journey.
Today, we are excited to announce a relaunch of Bridge of Hope, partnering with the Gabriel Network to help one homeless single mother and her family escape the broken cycle of poverty and start life anew. You will hear more about it later in the service.
I am so proud as a church that we go beyond even immediate needs of food, laundry, and showers and be called to do our part in ending an injustice that should not exist in the wealthy, resource rich country in which we live.
I believe that cold anger we have comes from Jesus. It is Jesus’ anger for the way our world hurts and wounds so many. It is Jesus’ anger for the way neighbors are divided against each other. It is Jesus’ anger at poverty and racism and abuse that runs rampant. It is Jesus’ anger at violence consuming us. It is Jesus’ anger that the world still doesn’t understand that it doesn’t have to be this way.
Friends, I believe Jesus knows you and the state of your life, whatever it is you are facing - even now, he is prepared to knock over some tables and raise some holy hell so that you might know how precious you are in his sight. Hear him today say to you - “YOUR LIFE DOESN’T HAVE TO BE THIS WAY.”
