Epiphany
4C SABC 2-3-13 Jeremiah 1-4-10, Psalm 71:1-6, I Corinthians 12, St. Luke 4:21-30
Wrath is one of the 7 capital or
deadly sins – Wrath, Avarice, Sloth, Pride, Lust, Envy, and Gluttony. All these sins are natural human
characteristics taken to an extreme that dominates our lives and control
us. St. Paul calls wrath (in Galatians
5:20) one of the works of the flesh, and tells the Christians to put it
away.
By God’s grace we can put away wrath
and replace it in our lives by the love of God we read of in First Corinthians
13 in today’s epistle.
In today’s gospel, “When they heard
this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage” Rage is anger out of
proportion. The congregation began with positive feelings toward Jesus. “All
spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his
mouth.” But Jesus disappointed them. He called them to repentance and a change
of heart.
An hour walk northwest of Nazareth is Sepporis,
the traditional home of Mary’s parents, a center of Roman authority, with many
Gentiles and Greek-speaking Jews, despised neighbors. Jesus calls the Nazareth
congregation to repent of their attitude toward the Gentiles.
The crowd’s response to Jesus’ call to
repentance was anger, and more than anger, murderous rage. “They got up, drove
him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town
was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the
midst of them and went on his way.”
Acts 19 is similar. At Ephesus in
Turkey was a great temple to the goddess Diana of the Ephesians with an image
carved from a meteorite. (black and
white picture of an ivory statue) She was an ancient goddess of fertility. St. Paul preached there over two years, and
his ministry had been blessed by the Holy Spirit. Many had been converted and
many healed, so many that the idol-makers feared for their business and raised
a riot. But the city authorities held a hearing in the city theatre, and St.
Paul’s friends sent him on his way to Macedonia.
From these bible accounts and our own
experience we learn about thumos or
rage. Rage is anger carried to such an extreme
that it takes control of our emotions and actions. Rage leads to extreme
actions - in the biblical accounts to attempted murder, in our experience to similar
tragedy. Rage comes on us suddenly without much warning.
Anger is a reaction to disappointment,
a feeling that comes when things are not as they should be, when we feel we are
not getting what is due to us, what is fair. One of the spiritual gifts God
gives children is a keen moral sense of what is fair to them. We are of course
better able to discern what is not fair for us because we are keenly aware of
all our circumstances – or think we are. We don’t know the details of others’
lives, and it is harder for us to see the unfairness that leads to their
frustration.
We all learn more or less well to deal
with our angers. We can learn to stop, to “count to ten,” to withdraw and not
be consumed by anger in others. Jesus “passed through the midst of them and
went on his way.” St. Paul moved on from Ephesus to Macedonia, to begin
proclaiming the good news of Jesus on the continent of Europe.
We all have different triggers for our
anger. Over time we can learn what situations evoke anger, what experiences
tend to hook us in. Parents, siblings, and spouses learn what actions and
situations give us pleasure and which evoke anger. Those of us who have taken a
long car trip with two children in the back seat know what I’m talking about. And that’s a small example. There are more
serious ones.
Anger and rage are human emotional
reactions. So is love. And love is God’s antidote for anger and rage. Sometimes
the hard word has to be said. The people
of the synagogue in Nazareth needed to hear Jesus’ true word of God’s love for
their Gentile neighbors. St. Paul’s ministry in Ephesus was a fruitful ministry
of preaching and healing. The church in Ephesus that Paul founded later offered
refuge to St. John and the Blessed Virgin Mary.
But as we learned from our parents, “Mean
what you say, but don’t say it mean.” The God who made us loves us and pours
out his love on us so we can love others in his name. St. Paul in today’s
Epistle reminds us of this love. By
God’s grace we can put away wrath and replace it in our lives by the love of
God, love that is patient, kind, not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude,
love that does not insist on its own way, is not irritable or resentful, does
not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth, bears all things,
believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” This love is God’s love in Jesus given to us
to share. May God give us grace and opportunity to drive anger and rage from
our hearts and replace it with his love.
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