Sermon of the Week
No Insignificant Question: Is it Okay to be Angry At God?

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on August 25, 2019.
Part four of a nine part sermon series on questions and topics submitted by listeners for consideration

#pcusa

Keywords: Suffering, Anger, The West Wing, Jonah, Jacob wrestling with God.

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Genesis 32:22-31
and Jonah 3:1-5, 10, 4:1-3, 6

The thing that particularly struck me in researching this sermon
is how much pain people are carrying.

I read a lot about people’s anger,
and that, in turn, is often about their pain.

Anger is often in reaction to something that hurts
some wrong done
some loss that we experience.
Anger doesn’t just come out of the blue.
It is a response to something.

A dictionary tries to put words of definition to this emotion
by saying that anger is an intense emotional state induced by displeasure
but that’s kind of soft.

We can be displeased by things, or by people,
or often by circumstances caused by people,
and it’s not really accurate to say we get angry at things.

I stubbed my toe really badly the other night
when I was rushing around my kitchen too quickly doing something or other
and I wasn’t wearing shoes.
For a moment, I felt rather intense displeasure at that blimey stool that I hit rather hard
but I wasn’t angry at the stool.

I know better.

Anger, as an emotion, is reserved or directed at someone, at a person,
sometimes at ourselves,
for something that is done, or left undone,
or maybe for conditions that someone has control or responsibility over,
something that they can impact, or effect.
I should have been wearing shoes around my kitchen, you know?

And it is a powerful human emotion.
Anger itself can cause intense pain and hurt,
prompt us to make choices we otherwise wouldn’t.
Unresolved anger often is at the root of a lot of our ailments.
Sometimes it lingers, for days, for years
and if unresolved it can be one of those emotions
that bursts out of us.

People who study our emotions—
psychologists, ethicists, philosophers, advertising executives—
they tell us that anger can also be good thing, at times,
like the emotion of fear, or dislike of something,
because these emotions clue us into what is going on in our world.
Fear is important, right, because it helps keep us safe, when it’s working properly.

In a similar way, Anger tells us of a powerful disconnect
between what is and what ought to be
not just hurt about a situation, but a disruption of what is right, or just, or appropriate
or, sometimes, what I hope for, yearn for, dream about.

Those psychologists, ethicists, philosophers, advertising execs
tell us that these emotions, among others, are what they call basic emotions.[i]

These include happiness, sadness, fear, surprise, disgust, and anger.
They’re hardwired in us,
part of our evolutionary history,
and they form the building blocks of all of our other feelings.

Anger isn’t always a bad thing.
It can prompt us to do something important,
take on constructive work to tackle a problem
address an injustice, stand up to a bully.

There’s this great sentence in the book of Ephesians
that encourages people to “be angry, but do not sin.
Do not let the sun go down on your anger,”[ii]
by which the author was trying to make some of these distinctions
to acknowledge that anger can be a helpful thing sometimes
to distinguish between anger and sin…
not always the same thing.

That passage, in Ephesians
talked a lot about justice and righteousness
basically about the shalom or the peace that God intends for the Kingdom of God
and how we need to act in order to bring it about,
Thieves give up your thieving.
Don’t share evil talk with each other.
Use your words to help build up good relationships.

There’s another sermon about forgiveness in there
and maybe a third sermon about what might motivate us to seek the good.
Jesus himself showed flashes of anger, we might remember,[iii]
when he entered the temple
and saw that the moneychangers were taking advantage
of ordinary, everyday people
people who just wanted to be able to have the right dove
for the particular offering that God expected them to offer. [Read more…]

Sermon of the Week
No Insignificant Question: How Do We Know God is There?

A sermon preached at The Kirk of Kansas City, Missouri, on August 18, 2019.
Part three of a nine part sermon series on questions and topics submitted by listeners for consideration

#pcusa

Keywords: Particularity, Absence of God, Still Small Voice, Practices of Faith, Footprints.

Scripture readings (which you may wish to read prior):
Romans 8:26-27, 35, 37-39
and Psalm 22:1-11, 22-24

I’ve been trying to think this week about the times when I’ve been left speechless
with absolutely nothing to say.

It might not surprise those of you who know me
that this was a challenging exercise for me.

I almost always have something to say.

In part, I now know, this is because I find silences awkward.
And for much of my life, until I kind of worked to change it,
I would often be the one to fill the silence with a comment or idle talk or something.

I started seeing this in myself
as I was working my way through high school and college.
Helpful teachers would remark about my propensity to comment
about the subject at hand, all the time,
not that I was unhelpful or out of place or necessarily wrong, or anything,
just that, maybe, where I needed to grow
was to take in what others were saying a bit more
give it time to sit with me more
let the themes and the topics work a bit more
and that I didn’t always need to be the one driving that bus.

It wasn’t just school.
I have always been something of an extrovert
sometimes striking up random conversations with someone on a park bench
or at the check out line at the grocery store
or once at the DMV
getting my first driver’s license.

The DMV isn’t really the most social place.

Most people don’t want to be there.
The waits can be insufferable.
The space has all the charm of an empty airplane hanger.

Maybe the first time I remember being left speechless
was at the DMV going for my first driver’s license.
I was jittery and excited and probably was quite annoying
but I remember when the person in line in front of me
after hearing me say ‘good morning’ and ‘hey I like your hat’
looked me in the eye, and then turned back around
and in the most obvious way possible
put his earphones on over his ears
to tune me out.

I think I stood there with my mouth agape for a second. Speechless.

This has changed with me, as I’ve gotten older
and more aware of my propensities and nuances.

I learned how to sit through an entire class and not have to comment,
how to read other people and whether they’re interested in idle talk or not.
how to let the situation inform good social interaction
you know
how sometimes it is better to just let the silence be
which, by the way, is often the very thing that the DMV calls for.

I had to learn that the silence was sometimes a gift
that it was ok to sit with my thoughts and my feelings
even if those thoughts and feelings sometimes were racing around inside there.

I’m not sure why I was this sort of child,
or where we get our particular inclinations about this.

We’re all different with this sort of thing, I know.
Some people have the exact opposite inclination
never wanting to speak up, or contribute to a conversation
or be the one, God forbid, that the kid in line talks to as we’re waiting.

Why I was the more excitable sort, nervous about the quiet,
or wanting to explore more of the social connection, I don’t know.

But it helps us to note that we all have different personalities,
different approaches to this,
and that that’s ok,
we’re all made just a little bit different, a little bit unique
and we all have to learn about ourselves and our inclinations along the way.

///
We are all particular.

Sure, there are certain things that all of us experience, and feel, and yearn for
but these are more like guidelines and frameworks
than certainties.

For example: we all have capacity for love, yearn for love, need love to feel complete
but how we love, who we love, how potent this is in us varies from person to person.

Or, we all have the capacity for curiosity, for exploration, for seeking understanding
but some of us transform this into something like wanderlust
always seeking out new experiences, new people to meet,
and fill our time with books or travel or seminars or online learning programs
like the one I keep seeing ads for on facebook called Masterclass
where apparently Steve Martin can teach me how to do comedy
and Aaron Franklin how to master Texas-style barbeque,
whereas, on the other hand,
others of us are more inclined to chill out at home, where we are,
comfortable in the curiosity we’ve already undertaken, thank you very much,
taking the new experiences as they come
rather than seeking to make them for ourselves.

No two people are the same. We are all particular. [Read more…]