Holy Anger (John 2:13-22, Lent 3B, Mar 11, 2012)

3rd Sunday in Lent - B
John 2:13-22
March 11, 2012

Holy Anger

Rev. John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa

The Temple in Jerusalem is where Iowa Nice goes to die.

On the slight chance that some of us here don’t know what I’m talking about, let me explain. We Iowans—and midwesterners in general—are not really big on feelings. I think of the couple, married for forty-some years, who were sitting on their couch watching television one evening. He looked at her and said, “You know, I love you so much sometimes it’s all I can do to keep from saying something.”

In some places in the country they have a reputation for being freer with their emotions. In California it’s a state law that you have to express every feeling you have. This explains their high prison population, mostly transplanted Iowans who just couldn’t let it all hang out. (Okay, I made up the parts about the state law and the prison population.)

It’s true we tend to keep things to ourselves. You know that I grew up in Rochester, NY, but my family is from Ohio and Ohio is much closer to being Midwestern than it is to being Eastern. Our neighbors behind us were part of an extended family of Italian Americans who got together every Sunday afternoon in the summer and played the Italian arguing game called bocce. Bocce looks like a form of lawn bowling. A small target ball is rolled out and then teams take turns rolling larger balls toward the target ball. At the end of the round, the team who has rolled the closest to the target ball gets a point. Only there’s a catch—you’re not allowed to measure the distances with a ruler or measuring tape. Instead you have to convince your opponents that your ball is closest, while they try to convince you that theirs is. So, every round comes in two parts: first, the balls are rolled, and then there is an argument. To make it more interesting, there was a good deal of beer and wine involved.

We would sit outside in the shade and read, while mayhem erupted in our neighbor’s yard. Our neighbors yelled and screamed. They said things to each other that, if it had happened at our house... Well, first of all, we did not fight in the back yard. We didn’t fight in the house, either. That’s not to say that we were never angry, but like good midwestern folk we didn’t say that we were angry. We stewed and simmered. We did not boil over. Not allowed. If we had said the things to each other that the family behind us said, it would have meant the end of life as we knew it. As for the family behind us, they said terrible things, but in five minutes they were back for more bocce.

Now, Iowa Nice is what happens when midwestern folks try to live together in a community. Sharing a community means rubbing up against each other. No matter how careful we are, we sometimes rub each other the wrong way. But we’re not allowed to saying anything to each other about it, so we don’t. We’re nice to each other. When we’re together.

Of course when we run into other friends of ours in the produce section at Fareway or at the beauty shop, well, that’s a different matter. And that’s Iowa Nice.

I’ve heard people say that this is because our part of the country was settled by homesteaders. Homesteaders depended on their neighbors for help, even sometimes for survival, so it was really important not to do anything that risked rupturing good relations. That makes sense, except that it’s been a long time since any of us were homesteaders and, besides, what happens in the produce section hardly ever stays in the produce section so the damage is often done anyway.

Iowa Nice gets pretty nervous around this story about Jesus in the Temple. One of the nicest women I have ever known once told me that Jesus only pretended to be angry in this story and its three parallels in the other gospels. Jesus couldn’t really have been angry because being angry is a sin and, as we all know, Jesus did not sin. Ergo Jesus was never angry. QED.

When I heard that, I was astounded. If Jesus wasn’t actually angry then why was he pretending be angry? Jesus acts angry, he sounds angry, he looks angry. If it talks like a duck and walks like a duck, it’s probably a duck. Jesus is probably angry.

Why was he angry? Anger is the feeling that we have when something that we value appears to be threatened. It’s a pretty primitive feeling that takes place way back in the oldest parts of our brains, the parts that we have in common with lizards and birds. If it’s true that when we’re angry were often bird-brained, it’s also true that anger is useful. Anger puts us on high alert. It raises our pulse rate and prepares our bodies for fighting. We become physically prepared to protect something of value to us from the threat that we see.

So what was it that Jesus valued that appeared to be threatened? He was in the Temple, actually in the outer courtyard of the Temple, in what was called the Court of the Gentiles, because non-Jews could enter that courtyard but could come no further. There were various booths and tables set up in this courtyard. At one they were exchanging coins commonly used in Roman Palestine for the special coins that were used inside the Temple area. At another they you could buy postcardsand t-shirts that read, “Mama and Papa went to Temple,and all I got was this meshugenah t-shirt.”At another table they were selling pigeons. At others they were selling sheep or cattle. These were the animals that were used for the sacrifices. These animals had to be unblemished—no sores or scars. People bought them at the Temple. There was a brisk business at the booths and tables.

Is this why Jesus was angry? Certainly, these money changers and sellers of livestock were the targets of his actions. He made a whip out of sections of rope and used it to drive these people out of the Temple. So maybe it was the mere fact of their making, as Jesus said, “my father’s house a place of business” that angered Jesus. Maybe Jesus looked around at the bustling business conducted in the Temple precincts and asked himself, “Is nothing sacred?”

That’s a good question. Certainly it’s a question that we can ask about our world. It’s not so long ago—in geological time, at least—that killing an animal for food was an event of spiritual significance. We recognized the holiness of all life. That doesn’t mean that we didn’t eat plants and animals. It meant that we didn’t eat without a recognition of that holiness. We didn’t eat without asking permission. That sort of sacredness is in short supply these days.

I remember hiking in the Black Hills with our son Peter when he was about fourteen. We decided to hike up Harney Peak. In traditional Lakota understanding this mountain is the center of the universe. Like Zion for the Jewish tradition or Ayers Rock for Australian aborigines, Harney Peak is an example of what Mircea Eliade called an omphalus mundi, the bellybutton of the world. The mental and emotional geography of the Lakota world was organized around it. It was their closest connection to the spirit world. As such it was treated with a great deal of respect and reverence.

Peter and I climbed it one warm August day. We took along a lunch and plenty to drink. We made our way up through the trees until, just before reaching the top, we climbed up through the tree line and saw the Black Hills were laid out around us. A few more turns and we reached the top. And there, at the omphalus mundi, the bellybutton of the world, the center of the universe, was a worn out hut, a weather station bristling with instruments. It must have been a sacred weather station. (Pardon my sarcasm.) Is nothing sacred?

A world without sacred space is no longer holy. A world without places where a different set of rules applies, where a different set of behaviors is needed, is a place that is permanently disenchanted. We may say that God is everywhere, but if God isn’t somewhere, God is nowhere.

Maybe that’s what made Jesus angry. The vendors were carrying on as if God were not there, as if the place were not holy, as if they had a right to put a weather station at the center of the universe.

Or maybe Jesus saw the ethical travesty that was being perpetrated in that holy space. The vendors hadn’t simply set up shop in a convenient place to hawk Norwegian flags and horned helmets to visiting tourists during Nordicfest. They were licensed by the Temple authorities who made a tidy profit from these businesses. The profits were used to keep the Temple in good repair, to sustain its place as the religious center of Judea. The priestly families not only made their living from the Temple—nothing inherently wrong with that—but used the Temple to sustain the symbolic power that kept the profits flowing and kept their privileges in place.

In short, they used their power to sustain the Temple, and the Temple to sustain their power. In the process, of course, they were exploiting the spiritual allegiance of the pilgrims who came to the Temple to renew their covenant with the God of the covenant. God did not make covenant with Israel for the ease and comfort of the one percent. God made covenant for the sake of all of the covenant people, for the sake of the one hundred percent. The priestly families had hijacked the covenant.

Maybe that’s what made Jesus angry. The priests—and their agents, the vendors—were carrying on as if this sacred space were available for colonizing, as if holiness could be franchized, sold to the highest bidder, as if the divine could be owned, parceled, and leased out. Maybe that’s what made Jesus angry.

Of course anger is cheap. The plentiful supply of anger drives its price down. Anger and the fear that lies immediately behind it are far too abundant in our world. Rage ripples through our world: rage at the burning of the Koran, rage at the gutting of Greece’s social safety net, rage at taxes, rage at the sustained attack on collective bargaining rights, rage at liberals, rage at conservatives, rage at Muslims, rage at infidels, rage at latinos. Rage fuels our politics and much of our economy and culture.

If Jesus’ had only acted out in the Temple in rage, the authorities would have dismissed him as possessed by an evil spirit. Rage is undirected and it’s exhausting. That’s why it’s pretty much useless. Rage yields destruction without any thought about what comes next. Rage leaves us vulnerable to manipulation by demagogues and would be saviors.

But outrage. That’s a different matter. Outrage is anger that has done it’s homework. Outrage is ire using its head. Outrage is focused fury. Outrage is in it for the long haul. Outrage analyses and goes in for direct action. Outrage sits down in the front of the bus.Outrage marches to Selma. Outrage goes to jail in Birmingham. Outrage gathers at the statehouse in Madison. Outrage occupies the Tunis streets, Tahrir Square, and Zuccoti Park. Outrage makes connections and common cause. Outrage says, “¡Su lucha es mi lucha y la lucha continua! Your struggle is my struggle and the struggle goes on!”

Unlike rage outrage can’t be dismissed by the authorities. When they stomp on one expression of it, it pops up with a different form in a different place. Outrage makes the authorities crazy; it drives them mad. It drives them to show what they’re really up to. In Jesus’ case it drove them into a conspiracy to kill him. It forced them to show that they were not about peace at all, as their rhetoric insisted. Jesus forced the authorities to show that their power did not rest upon justice but upon violence. Jesus forced the regime to show its true colors. That’s the power of holy anger; that’s the power of outrage.

It was to put a stop to this holy anger that the authorities had Jesus killed. That’s how afraid of outrage the authorities are. They wanted to kill outrage and keep it safely entombed. And we all know how that worked out for them!

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