Does God Get Angry?

Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28; Psalm 14:1-7; 1 Timothy 1:12-17; Luke 15:1-10

Friends, last week we talked about how some of the Scriptures we’re reading right now don’t really sound like a gentle, loving kind of God we probably prefer to think of, and we continue to get some of that this week.  So I’d like us to continue to explore what it is that actually might make God angry, as well as perhaps some things which don’t, and what happens afterwards.

When does God get angry?

Jeremiah tells us that God gets angry when people seem to be too good at doing evil and don’t seem to know how to do good.  When God talks about what it’s like when God’s angry--we hear about how the world grows silent and trembles with fear.  After all, the rest of creation knows God and what God is capable of doing.  When I read the description there of just how angry God is--no light, birds fleeing, land waste and void--I’ll admit:I kind of hear that western music that they always play right before the shootout.  God is sort of fantasizing about some really dramatic stuff here, because God is angry.

But even though God is angry, God hasn’t cut God’s people off.  They’re still God’s children, whom God calls, “my people.”  And so to help us understand a little better, let’s talk about parentalisms:  those things which parents say when they are really fed up with their kids.  Such as, “oh, you think this is angry?  You haven’t even seen angry…”  The Jeremiah passage reminds me a lot of that.  Or, can you imagine God, the parent, with the whole world in the back seat, bickering and squabbling and picking on each other and whining, and finally God saying, “Don’t make me pull this car over and come back there!”  

Have you ever asked yourself, as a parent or as a child, what exactly was going to happen if the car did get pulled over?  Did you try to find out?  Or did you just get the picture that it was time to knock it off?

Maybe God isn’t literally going to pull the car over.  However, like any parent knows, there are times when you have got to step in and get the kids’ attention before they really get hurt.  And God knows that if they keep going down the road they are going, they are indeed going to get seriously hurt.

Seriously: Don’t Eat People

So, what exactly makes God angry?  Well, the Psalm tells us God is angry when people become corrupt, that the evildoers are the ones who “eat up my people like they eat bread,” who exploit the poor and vulnerable.  If you’re going to get where you’re going by making life more miserable for those below you, then you should know that God is providing refuge for them, and your plans are in trouble.

I wonder if you’ve heard it said that if you took a knife and literally cut out everything the Bible had to say about something like healthy sexuality, or gay people, you wouldn’t notice the difference.  But if you tried to cut out everything the Bible had to say about our responsibility to care for the poor and vulnerable, the whole thing would fall apart.  Treating those who have less power and material wealth than ourselves with respect and dignity is at the very core of our faith.  So often, the world entices us to do otherwise, and to treat them like a nuisance, or simply forget them.

And wouldn’t that seem easier?  Even with the Gospel story:  If you had 100 sheep, and lost one, a 99% retention rate is still pretty good, like an A+, right?  Even losing just one coin out of ten, that’s still 90%, like an A-, right?  Ah, if only it were so easy, and the stakes weren’t so high.

More Joy In Heaven

The Gospel goes on to say that there is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents, rather than 99 righteous ones who need no repentance.  There’s a little bit of a sarcastic undercurrent there, since Jesus is responding to people criticizing him for eating with tax collectors and sinners, when a “good” religious person would know how awful they were and wouldn’t associate with them.  In criticizing, they’re demonstrating how very self-righteous they are.  Surely, they themselves don’t need to repent for anything.  But God isn’t that excited about such self-righteous people.  Besides, they’re really rather boring.

Re-calculating...

It’s hard for many of us to admit when we’re lost--literally or figuratively.  Literally speaking, how many of you have a GPS?  How many of you disagree with the GPS and then get irritated when it sits there and says, ‘reCALCulating, reCALCulating….’  How many of you just turn it off?  My mom is one of those people, who has no idea where the thing is taking her and everytime she comes out to visit, she gets within five miles of the house, gets frustrated, and turns it off.  Has no idea where she is or how to describe where she is, and I get to go out in the middle of the night (and it always is, by that point) go find her, and get her back to the house, where the grandkids are eagerly waiting.

When we get lost, when we miss the right turn, God re-calculates.

It’s hard to admit we’re lost in other ways too.  As you may have seen, the local chapter of Al-Anon which met in our building recently disbanded.  In the weeks since, I’ve had so many conversations with families who feel very lost, even helpless and hopeless, as they try to find resources to help their loved one struggling with an addiction.  And certainly part of the difficulty for many of the families as they try to find help, is not wanting anyone else to know--they’re worried what their friends will think, or maybe even worried about their insurance.  I admit I wasn’t equipped with a lot of knowledge about what resources were around and where to direct folks when they started coming to ask for direction.  But I’m learning, along with our other local clergy, and hopefully we can figure out how to offer folks more than a seeming dead-end.

God Understands Loss

There is so much pain in these families that I’ve met over the past few weeks.  And yet it helps to remember, God knows pain.  God even knows losing a child due to all the violence and evil in this world.  When God sees us hurting, or even our children hurting, even if it’s because of our own wrong turns, God hurts with us.  And God does not abandon us to our own devices, even when we are sure we can trust only ourselves.  God’s depth of love and mercy and grace surpasses anything we can imagine.  Indeed, God’s anger lasts for a night, but God’s steadfast love is forever.  [Now that is some pretty Amazing Grace].

A Real Rascal

Some people do get lost, and don’t realize it, until they are found--and that’s what’s going on in the letter to Timothy.  Paul, who is instructing Timothy in Christian life and leadership, admits that he once was a real rascal--a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a man of violence.  We might forget that Paul was formerly Saul, a man who was actually lauded for his harsh persecution of the early Christians, including holding everyone’s cloaks as they attacked and stoned Stephen to death.  This is a man with some real blood on his hands.  He is willing to admit he is the foremost of sinners, since he was working so hard to squelch the followers of Jesus--until he had his Damascus Road incident, literally knocked off his donkey by a vision of Jesus speaking to him, became blinded, and repented, and then was given a new role in life, as Paul, who would go on through his letters and teachings to build and support the new Christian movement and take it much further than any other person had before.  

Cause for Celebration

God got angry enough with Paul to stop him in his tracks, but God also didn’t get rid of Paul.  God had a purpose for Paul, and the rest is history.  That is cause for celebration.  When people we’d rather write off as total losers are found, that is cause for celebration.  When we cease our self-righteousness and join the celebration, that is cause for rejoicing.  And when we are found, over and over again, whether we realize when we’ve been lost or not, that too, is cause for rejoicing.  Thanks be to God!

Prayers This Week:

For all who are recovering from surgery

For all who are in hospice care

For all wrestling with chemical dependency, and those who love them

For all affected by flooding

For our Presbytery during this visioning process, grant wisdom and clarity of purpose

For a true peace in Syria

For all who wrestle with hunger and homelessness, that they not be forgotten