Untying the Cords of Anger

 

PROPERS:          3 EASTER, YEAR C    

TEXT:                ACTS 9:1-20        

PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SUNDAY, MAY 1, 2022.

 

ONE SENTENCE:        Paul’s anger was released; such release can bring about a healthier, more holy life.        

 

            Paul is one of the most widely-known characters of the New Testament era.  We learn a lot about him in the Book of Acts and in the thirteen letters of the Christian scripture tradition attributes to him.  He is, in a very real sense, the theological foundation for much Christian belief today.

 

            But it could have been otherwise – except for the story we have in the first lesson today. The well-known and well-trod Road to Damascus. It was during that horseback jaunt that a blinding light struck the person then known as Saul from his horse.  A voice from the light called out to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”

 

            The result of that epiphany – and Saul’s subsequent actions – was a pivotal point in church history.  The world was about to change.

 

            Saul, the militant, Pharisaical religious authority, was not in good space as he embarked on the journey.  He had stood by and held coats as others stoned to death the first Christian deacon, Stephen.  He was obsessed with a desire to rid the people of Israel of this subversive cult begun by an executed criminal.

 

The first words of the lesson from Acts tells us what we need to know about his state of mind: “Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord…”

 

The author of Acts seeks to convey Saul’s obsession to remove the vermin of The Way (an early name for the church) from the body of the community of faith.  He was relentless in his quest for that end. It overwhelmed him and brought out his dark side.

 

My use of the word obsession is descriptive, but also clinical.  Saul, it appears, was consumed with a desire to root out these heretics – these canker sores on the body politic.

 

Something had to give…

 

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            I have had recent cause to think about anger. Like the famed cellist, Pablo Casals, said in his later life when he was asked about his continuing practice even at 90 years of age, “I’m beginning to notice some improvement.”Perhaps I am, too.

 

            It is a lesson which I have sought to learn over the years.  I recall one vivid moment in my early vocation of saying exactly what I thought to a parishioner.  Bad idea. 

 

I was given a gift of insight. I went back, apologized, and claimed responsibility for my feelings and inappropriate reaction. I learned the truth of the saying, “Speak when you are angry.  You will make the best speech you will ever regret.”

 

            Anger typically has roots of reactiveness.  We perceive a slight. We suspect a wrong. We assume ill motivations. We fail to see other factors.  The foundations of our obsessive anger have rotten roots.

 

            And when we hold onto that anger long enough, it becomes resentment, which I call anger with dust on it.  When we embrace and hold that resentment, there is a tendency to hold people at-bay, to become isolated, or to develop a hole in our psyche. In the worst case, there is a compulsion to medicate that anger. In those cases, the old Alcoholics Anonymous saying is true: “It’s not the drinking, it’s the stinking thinking.”

 

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            As Saul later found out, releasing that obsession… that anger… can be enormously freeing.  Sometimes that ability to release the anger is beyond our own ability – it comes as a divine gift.   We find that we are able to say, “Free at last! Free at at last!” But it is essential that we are ready to receive it.

 

            As the Apostle Paul later wrote, “Wretched man that I am, who will save me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” He found that release on the road to Damascus.

 

            The truth is that we do not stop being who we are.  We become more of what God created us to be.  We are more focused.  We are free to move forward, not constrained by the cords of anger or resentment. New life abounds.

 

            Paul showed us much during his subsequent life.  His keen theological mind was not dulled.  His passion was not lost. But his writings… his ministry… his theology… overcame the bitterness of his prior life.