June 13, 1999 - LESSON: Ephesians 4:26-27, NRSV

SERMON TITLE: Provocateurs

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INTRODUCTION:

Two young friends were working together in a factory. One morning one of them bent down to pick up a hammer. When he straightened up, the back of his head his a board. His pal laughed because he thought it was funny. The other boy became angry. Without thinking, he hit his friend with the hammer. The pal fell down and died. In his anger the young man had killed his best friend.

  1. Provocateurs or those things which provoke us to anger.
    1. The provocations are endless.
    2. We have heard about them
      1. Someone laughs at our discomfort and anger results
      2. Road Rage
      3. We work hard to create and it is not respected nor appreciated.
    3. Provocations arouse deep feelings.
      1. They increase our blood pressure
      2. They distort our emotions.

MAIN BODY:

  1. Human anger so often turns negative, threatening, and destructive.
    1. The eldest son in the parable of the lost child is angry.
      1. (Luke 15:25-31 NRSV) "Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, 'Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.' Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, 'Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!' Then the father said to him, 'Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.
      2. He refuses to go in, to celebrate.

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    2. Cain became angry because his offering is not accepted.
      1. He takes out his anger on his brother Abel.
      2. He kills him.
  2. We appeal to a set of rationalizations to justify our anger
    1. Anger does not have its origins in our ethnic background.
      1. Some ethnic groups are thought to be more emotional.
      2. We learn it from our parents
      3. We cannot blame our parents
    2. Anger is not the result of genetics.
      1. Just because my parents became angry.
      2. We learn it from parents
      3. We cannot blame our parents.
    3. It is said that God becomes angry
      1. God's anger is not to be equated with our general understanding of anger.
      2. God's anger is more sorrow.
      3. Another term for God's anger is wrath.
        1. God wrath is to be understood as a willingness to allow human individuals to experience the results of their choices.
        2. Romans 1:18-24 NRSV: For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. So they are without excuse; for though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their senseless minds were darkened. Claiming to be wise, they became fools; and they exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling a mortal human being or birds or four-footed animals or reptiles. Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the degrading of their bodies among themselves...

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      4. We cannot use God as an excuse
    4. We may appeal to our helplessness.
      1. WHO IS RESPONSIBLE?(1)

      "I can't help myself." It is the final exteriorization of man's moral predicament, of his loss of authority over himself. It is the phrase that, above all others, tortures the social scientist. In it is truth, but in it also is a dreadful, contrived folly. It is society, a genuinely sick society, saying to its social scientists, as it Says to its engineers and doctors: "Help me. I'm rotten with hate and ignorance that I won't give up, but you are the doctor; fix me." This, says society; is our duty. We are social scientists. Individuals, poor blighted specimens, cannot assume such responsibilities. "True, true," we mutter as we read the case histories. "Life is dreadful, and yet-"

Man on the inside is quick to accept scientific judgments and make use of them. He is conditioned to do this. This new judgment is an easy one; it deadens man's concern for himself. It makes the way into the whirlpool easier. In spite of our boasted vigor we wait for the next age to be brought to us by Madison Avenue and General Motors. We do not prepare to go there by means of the good inner life. We wait, and in the meantime it slowly becomes easier to mistake longer cars or brighter lights for progress. And yet-

  1. Paul writes: Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil, (Ephesians 4:26-27, NRSV).
    1. We do not have to respond to them.
      1. You cannot make me angry.
      2. I have defined anger as: "An irrational response to external stimuli."

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    2. We are free to choose
      1. East of Eden, John Steinbeck
      2. The degree to which a we are free to choose our own course of action has been a favorite theme throughout literature. It is one of the persistent questions of life. The novelist John Steinbeck deals with this theme in one of his greatest novels, East of Eden.(2) In the novel a contemporary family relives the story of Cain and Abel. Adam Trask has two sons, Caleb and Aron. Like the biblical Cain, Caleb feels that his brother is favored over him by their father. In East of Eden Caleb does not kill his brother, as Cain killed Abel. But he has many of the same angry feelings toward him. Eventually Caleb plays a part in the events that lead to Aron's death. In the biblical story, Cain's punishment was to be "a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth." He was sent out of Eden and "dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden."
      3. Through the lips of Lee, the servant-companion, Steinbeck says:

          4. "I think this is the best-known story in the world because it is everybody's story....I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt-and there is the story of mankind..."(3)

      4. Steinbeck is interested in more than the story of rejection and the crime that easily results out of anger. The Cain and Abel story is the story of mankind because it deals with how we handle sin. Steinbeck notes that in the biblical record there is a sentence that can be translated in several ways. In talking about how sin always is lying in wait, "couching at the door," the record goes on to say: "But you must master it" (Genesis 4:7, Revised Standard Version). In the King James Version of the Bible, these words are a promise: "Thou shalt rule over him." In the American Standard translation, rather like the Revised Standard Version, the words are an order: "Do thou rule over it." But the Hebrew can still be translated another way. The word Timshel can mean "Thou mayest rule over him."

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      5. Here suddenly is a whole new way of thinking about sin, for here is the declaration that we have a choice. Steinbeck puts his thoughts again in Lee's words:

          6. "...There are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the order, 'Do thou,' and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in 'Thou shalt.' Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But 'Thou mayest'! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win."(4)

      6. This kind of writing shows how some of our ablest authors draw upon the biblical heritage. When Steinbeck wants to wrestle with the question of our capacity to exercise choice in a way that distinguishes us from an animal, a biblical story provides the background. Here is a novelist helping to clarify a theological idea. Steinbeck is no stranger to the church. In his account of a tour he took across the country and back, he writes that he attended church every Sunday, visiting a different denomination every week.
      7. In his preface to East of Eden he suggests that his story is one that touches on good and evil, pleasure and despair, joy, gratitude, and love. His subjects are the subjects of the Bible, the subjects of life itself. His message in the novel comes through very clearly: we are free to decide how the circumstances of life will affect us-even the circumstances of the most awful kind of sin.

CONCLUSION:

  1. To overcome anger we need to identify the sources which invoke anger.
    1. I have what I call my Junior Gladwell Syndrome.
      1. Junior and I fought at two different schools in two different states.
      2. The fighting was the result of uncontrolled anger.
      3. When I begin to get angry with a situation, I try and remember Junior Gladwell.
    2. Provocateurs are some people and/or some circumstances which we simply allow to be provocateurs.
  2. We can learn, train ourselves to overcome anger
    1. What is the greatest power in the world?
    2. Who is the strongest person in the world.
      1. Muscles or will
      2. It is after all only love.

  3. The power of love and the strength of love can make us the strongest people in the world.

1. From "The Firmament of Time, written and copyright © 1960 by Loren Eiseley, Atheneum Publishers, New York, pages 143-144.

2. John Steinbeck, East of Eden, (Viking Press, 1952), p 268

3. Ibid. p. 270

4. Ibid. p. 303

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