Leave Rage Alone

Are you aware that it is now in vogue to rail against people with whom you disagree? And it goes beyond that. It is possible, just going about our business, to witness people profanely attacking others, with language that sounds like verbal violence. I do not mean to belabor the negativity, but it is possible to see, firsthand, people getting physically violent. I was stuck in traffic recently. I don’t know the details but later learned it was an incident on Interstate 10 which involved two drivers, a crash, a theft, a gun, one man shot, and an arrest. I thought I had it bad being stuck in traffic. What a terrible ordeal!

We do have personal experiences with rage, or its lesser form, agitation, which is much less violent. But all of these, anger, castigating others, and holding scorn against a person, are gradations of violence. When I have been caught in it, the violence that emerges is principally internal. The violence is mainly to my own person, emotionally and physically.

In the lessons coming through the liturgy this Sunday, we get a hard teaching from Jesus, telling us to love our enemies, do good to those that hate us, to bless those who curse us, and pray for those who abuse us. He tells us that loving those who love us is too easy. Everybody does that quite naturally. Loving those who love you does not require cooperation with the Spirit and counting on the grace of divine love. To align with the reign of God is to love more radically than this. I cannot do it but I sure would like to learn. I reckon only God could bring such about in me.

The coming with this “Sermon on the Plain” in Luke beautifully set up Jesus’s radical teaching. The Psalm says this, “Refrain from anger, leave rage alone; … it leads only to evil. Look at the larger context within these three verses

Psalm 37

8          Do not fret yourself over the one who prospers, *
the one who succeeds in evil schemes.

9          Refrain from anger, leave rage alone; *
do not fret yourself; it leads only to evil.

10        For evildoers shall be cut off, *
but those who wait upon the Lord shall possess the land.

See, verse eight exposes the matter of resentment. Verse ten reveals that to take hold of real blessing we need to learn to wait upon the Lord.

Severe impatience and volatility are a problem. Once I changed lanes on the beltway, moving over to the right. Then I noticed I had pulled right in front of a large pick-up rushing up in the lane faster than the speed limit. I could see in the rear-view mirror he was physically disturbed, uttering things, shaking a fist. He zoomed around me on the left and pulled back in front of me, forcing me to tap my brakes. The feeling I had was he wanted me dead for the offense I had committed. The fact that he was recklessly maneuvering a truck of about 5,000 lbs. of metal and plastic meant my life, his life, and possibly others were actually were in some risk. Leave rage alone; it leads only to evil. Pretty sound wisdom!

The story of Joseph, son of Jacob, in Genesis is rich with meaning but too involved to cover here. I will say that a passage from the saga comes our way this Sunday. Joseph had been wronged years previously by his pack of brothers. In our reading, he faces them again, only they do not know it is their brother, Joseph. He is not at their mercy anymore, but quite the reverse. They are endangered with the whole broad region in a deadly famine. Joseph has risen from slavery and imprisonment and is now essentially the “grain czar” for the Pharoah of Egypt. He can supply his brothers with nourishment and save the life of his whole family. He has been playing cat and mouse with them, not revealing his identity. This was all to manipulate them into bringing their youngest brother on the scene, whom he has never met. He wants his father and all the family to relocate to Egypt where he can take care of them.

Read the passage below, and realize that he remembers everything they did to him; realizes if he wanted to, he could lower the boom on them and get revenge:

Then Joseph said to his brothers, "Come closer to me." And they came closer. He said, "I am your brother, Joseph, whom you sold into Egypt. And now do not be distressed, or angry with yourselves, because you sold me here; for God sent me before you to preserve life. For the famine has been in the land these two years; and there are five more years in which there will be neither plowing nor harvest. God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant on earth, and to keep alive for you many survivors. (Genesis 6:27-31)

You see here Joseph left rage alone, he refrained from anger. Emulating God, whose property is always to have mercy, he showed generosity and mercy. Cooperating with God is completely opposite of making a god of yourself, and operating from that human basis. Whenever I say, “I can manage my emotions and reactions myself; I do not need help.” I am wrong. Moving from the self-directed to the Spirit-directed life can arise from something as simple as our breathing. It is discovered in the wisdom of waiting. We have heard the advice, “Wait and count to ten.” We have heard, “Take a couple of deep breaths.” These simple breaks from our busy, distracted, reactive minds can make a difference. Listen to this description of the holiness available to us as a feature of the indwelling Spirit. It is from the writing of John Main, priest and Benedictine monk:

Life has an ultimate significance and value that is only really discovered in the still steadiness of being, which is our essential rootedness in God…  We must be open to the love that redeems us from illusion and shallowness. We must live out of that personal infinite holiness that we possess as a temple of the Holy Spirit. We must discover that the same Spirit that created the universe dwells in our hearts, and in silence is loving to all. This is the purpose of every life.

In the spirit of this wisdom and the practice of stillness and silence, perhaps we can experience what sounds impossible from the psalmist and Jesus. Perhaps we can live in this way: refraining from anger, leaving rage alone, loving our enemies, and blessing those who curse us. Welcome to life in grace and mercy, you, are the temple of the Holy Spirit.