A singular image of anger often lives in my head.
It’s an image that comes straight from all the cartoons I watched as a kid: generally involving some sort of animal, a mouse or a chipmunk, a duck or a turtle gets incensed about something. Someone ran them off the road. Someone stole a carrot.Someone slept in their bed when it wasn’t their bed to sleep in in the first place. Whatever the someone (or the something, for that matter) was that happened, the cartoon face would soon turn a deep shade of purple. Their body would start to rumble, soon, oftentimes followed by an accompanying shake and jumble of the ground. Sweat poured down their forehead, steam came out of their ears, and the sound of a train, screeching to a halt – the sound of all that built-up anger, I suppose – soon blasted through the speakers.
This was what anger looked like, I reasoned. This is what it looked like to get so worked up about something that your face and your body and the world around you couldn’t help but also see and hear and sense the anger present in you.
In turn, this became the most real, tangible definition of anger for me for a very long time. An image straight out of the Looney Tunes playbook became the most real image for it when my family of origin also didn’t necessarily know what to do or how to deal with the basic human emotion. So together, we leaned into pixelated versions of steamed-up animal cartoons to show us the way.
Fast-forward nearly forty years later, and our collective family, as in you and me here, is presented with an image of anger that doesn’t necessarily fit the beloved, peacemaking image of Jesus some of us hold.
Jesus, meek and mild. Jesus, lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus, the gentle one we welcomed in just a couple of months ago with songs of cradles and mangers – and of nearby cattle who are lowing, who wake the poor baby, “But little Lord Jesus, No crying he makes.” (Now that’s one angel baby, I tell you).
Where is that Jesus now, when in this week’s gospel reading Jesus goes to Jerusalem and finds people in the temple “selling cattle, sheep, and doves,” along with the “money changers seated at their tables,” and is found turning a deep shade of purple, complete with steam coming out of his ears and a shaking, rumbling earth?
“Making a whip of cords,” John writes, “he drove all of them out of the temple, with the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!’”
Jesus becomes quite angry in this moment, to say the least. He becomes a disrupter, a leveler, an upender; a questioner and a destroyer who does not seek to protect the status quo.
What then does this Jesus have to offer us? What then might this version of Jesus, which isn’t necessarily what we want to see, which isn’t the prettiest version of himself, be inviting us into this morning?
So much, it seems. So much, if we’ll be so brave as to lean in.
As it goes, that emotion called anger is quite natural. Author Mirabai Starr writes that “the power of our anger often correlates with the depth of our love.” Even though “we are conditioned to justify our anger, to find the right place to put blame, and to always feel good about ourselves,” anger can often be an invitation to see new things. Anger can act as a sign of potential change.
In this particular scenario, when Jesus is making whips and dumping out coins and flipping over tables – really, when Jesus is doing everything some of us have been led to believe he shouldn’t be doing or exuding in the moment – he also extends to us a holy anger.
Holy anger moves through him, “on behalf of a more robust, equitable, holistic, and impassioned spiritual practice,” one writer says. Holy anger no longer accepts “business as usual,” at least not when it comes to consumerism in the house of God or to selling holiness on behalf of the one who requires no sales pitch.
Yes, Jesus is peace and Jesus is calm, but also, and also, in this moment, Jesus is zeal. Jesus is determination. And the usual demeaner of Jesus – which is, for some of us, the only image we carry of him – is interrupted for the sake of justice and holiness.
Because that’s exactly what these nine verses are about: holy anger for the sake of justice and holiness.
What holy anger do you then hold for the sake of justice and holiness?
Do you do honor your holy anger when it comes to the fatal shootings that continue to plague the city of Oakland or for the estimated 8.4% (which others say is closer to 28% in another report) of the population that experiences food insecurity in our city? Do you let loose holy anger for more than 30,000 Palestinians who have been killed and over 70,000 who have been wounded in the Gaza Strip since the Israel-Hamas war began? Do you do something about the holy anger that calls for justice and holiness in this place?
Just as holy anger is a call toward justice and holiness, holy anger is a call to liberation. Holy anger is a call to wholeness.
This is what Jesus was doing in the temple that day, when he couldn’t hold the righteous rage inside himself anymore. This is what came out in flipped tables and dumped out bags of change and perhaps even let loose the cages of doves, previously purchased for a guilt offering.
What then are we going to do? Who then are we going to be? What then shall mark us as the people of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, shall mark the holy anger we so righteously are allowed to have for the sake of justice and holiness, for the purpose of wholeness and liberation?
For some of us, our job will be to let our bodies experience holy anger for the first time. When our cultures and our genders, our socioeconomic backgrounds and our families, haven’t allowed us to feel this emotion, we will lean into the One who led with holy anger.
For some of us, our job will be to step up. We will write our senator a postcard; we will give as we are able to give; we will get involved in social justice efforts in this place and with these people. We will do everything in our power to make good on Jesus’ example of holy anger so as to be justice and holiness fighters, so as to be wholeness and liberation bringers to a neighborhood, a city, and a world that so desperately needs it.
Our job will be to turn the tables over.
Turn the tables, turn the tables over
Turn the tables, turn the tables over
This is the chorus from a song called “Turn the Tables” by Caroline Cobb. It’s a song about the time Jesus turned over tables in the temple, but it’s also a song about the tables we too are invited to turn over.
It’s a song about holy anger made good for the sake of justice and holiness, made real for the purpose of wholeness and liberation.
Amen.
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This is from a sermon preached on March 3, 2024 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Oakland, California. If you liked reading this, you also might like my thoughts on a wild kind of mercy. Regardless, permission to turn the tables!
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