My Anger
First an apology for the audio quality. The batteries in my digital recorder died 2 minutes and 2 seconds into the sermon. So I was stuck using the audio tape. To make up for this, I now have the battery for the microphone to the recorder. This will give wonderful clarity. Next week.
Next an apology about using offensive language. Westboro Baptist ‘Church’ is going to use it, I hope that using it will remove the first blush offense that the words have.
If you are not in our media area to hear about this group and visit, you can get more information at Barre Times Argus In brief they are the Kansas group calling itself a church that likes to picket the funerals of our military to make the point that they died because God is angry at the US because we are soft on gays and Jews. They even have their church’s website named godhatesfags. They are visiting to protest that Vt. will now allow equal rights in marriage for gays and lesbians.
I spent a little time on their website. I would not encourage it. It made me really sad. I can understand them better. I mean I know the roots of their theology and understand its lineage. It is extreme and fueled mostly from their own psyches, but I do see where they are coming from in our tradition. But it is just gross and ugly and icky.
The Lectionary scripture for this Sunday was James 1:17-27. The sentence that I keyed in on was “You must understand this, my beloved: let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger; for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.” And the first thing I say in the sermon is that scripture helped me this week. It did. My self righteous adolescent really wanted to take it to these people. Scripture helped me.
In the sermon I mention some scripture verses that I want to shout out at them. Just so you know, this is what they are: Romans 2:1, Matthew 5, Ezekiel 16:49-50, John 3:17-18. I wanted to mention I John 4:18. But I got going too fast and did not. Check them all out.
Of the things I mentioned that we were doing in response to this hate ‘church’ group was a letter to the editor. Becca Clark, the Montpelier Methodist minister with a blog at Becca Clark, emailed and stopped by so we might have a bit of a unified voice in response. After talking around and around the pros and cons of active silence and proactive response, we decided a letter to the editor would prevent people from assuming that our silence was agreement. Plus we could also be clear that we have a different understanding of God and scripture. So we worked on a letter together. After agreeing in general what it would/could say I plunked down a starter document. Becca clarified, cleaned up, punched up (especially the beginning) the letter. A bit of back in forth later and we had a letter. We LIKED it. It was also about 2.5 times too long for the Times Argus. So, in a hurry, I chucked it into the Cuisinart and came up with a letter 300 words or less. We then asked other four other Montpelier to sign on. Here is what was printed Letter to the Editor
The long version may appear some where. Who knows.
But in the sermon as in the letter, I wanted to do more than bash Westboro Baptist ‘Church’. I wanted to bring out what we/me could take away from it all. It is so easy to bash. And when the target is so easy and richly deserving of a good bash it can make us feel real good. So I wanted to do more than that. This is what I came up with My Anger
All hail those who saw a way of responding to them in such a way that it was not about you or them and only about the issues. I did not think I could do it. My internal adolescence is very strong and use to getting his way. Amazingly, once I gave up thinking I could make them think/believe/act like I wanted them to they stopped having a lot of power over me. Once I said what I needed, they had no hold over me. I could not even pray for them as those who persecute me because they lost the power to persecute me. I just did not care.
So, scripture helped me to be slow to speak and slow to anger. As such I think I could do a better job of producing God’s righteousness. If I did our not is always a question. But I have to think that living with the values of God’s realm has to be a good start.
May scripture touch you this week. May it help you. [And may you give it a chance to touch you...]
Dear Mark,
Angry thoughts, when left to fester on their own, can suck the pristine air out of a crisp fall day. Good for you that you took sage advice from the Apostle to slow down angry thoughts. Breathing air is a gift taken for granted until rage steals it, as angry thoughts always take what is not their own. Then, all you want to do is get away for a walk to escape the thieves who have overrun your home.
The storm-trooper Westboro strike teams that make announced visits contain people who have participated in making themselves prisoners of hate and fear. When the last Judgment bell rings my name, Christ will probably tell me what I should already know about visiting Him in prisons of hate and fear. For had I done that, I would have visited Christ.
I am thinking about the logic, or lack thereof, which some well-intended Christians apply during prison visits. Many go to a structure called prison while carrying an ethereal prison inside, hidden from exposure by pat-down searches and metal detectors. These Christian visitors actually sneak this contraband to people called prisoners. The visitors’ prison sentences could last a whole lot longer than “life,” because it is built of fear and hate. Therefore, it would be impossible for one prisoner held captive by fear and hate to identify Christ in another prisoner also captive to fear and hate, no matter how long the sentence.
The logic of what I say seems like common sense to you and me, but angry thoughts that balloon into resentment must bring a wicked kind of pleasure or else I would catch every angry thought and dismiss it straight way otherwise. Evagrius called these angry proto-thoughts “logoismoi.” I do not create the thoughts, but I decide whether I want them to take up residence and not pay rent. For this reason, I am in a war with wicked pleasures that come from negative self-talk except when I recite holy words ex corde, or listen to what I read with the ears of my heart.
You mentioned that you visited the website of Westboro, and then cautioned others not to follow. I gathered that you collected a few souvenir resentments from your time spent with the cyber-version of this cannibalistic tribe. No doubt you saw the photographs of Westboro idolaters boiling their opponent’s missionaries. Certainly not fit for human consumption.
Afterward you assessed the damage to your soul. That must have been when you got the bill for the damage. It can cost these days an extra $50.00 in baggage fees during the flight home for excess weight from souvenir resentments. Once home, you must then decide who would appreciate these chatchka’s in a Christmas stocking next year. Yes, it takes work to do all this. I feel sucked of air and exhausted just imagining the assault on my soul having done something similar.
Westboro is for the type of fairies that live far distant from people–the bad sect of fairies. They are located in a land called Wichita not far from Auntie Em’s house, where “nothing is but what is not” [Macbeth in 'Macbeth, 1.3 141-2: Macbeth is confused as he plots to murder Duncan]. When coming back to your right mind after a trip to fairy-land, I think that it’s best to speak holy words–even immerse yourself in repeating them, as if inside a mikhva following an occasion that defiled your soul. Then, repeat after me three times, “Oh, there’s no place like home!”
When I come out of these metaphorical immersions in ritual baths, I feel fresh and clean like a daisy. Then, I ask myself, what wicked pleasure could compare with the peace of mind that I experience when I stay out of Wichita? Maybe Hero was right in ‘Much Ado About Nothing,’ “Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps” [3.1 106].
Pray for me, Mark. I am fighting some wicked arrows bearing fantasy pleasures of holding court better, quicker and cheaper than the Holy One who alone can judge. Besides, the mikhva is short on water. May we continue to witness Christ in the Great Fast soon to start.
–Ioannis
Miami Beach, FL.
P.S. My remedy for preventing and treating the demon of anger represented by souvenirs piling up is simple. # 1: Do not pack a camera and keep your eyes closed when visiting cannibals. # 2: Always pay your water bill so that the mikhva never runs short.