The world we live in can be a very angry place.
This is part of what lies behind the riots of recent months. People were angry. Angry at the government. Angry at large businesses. Angry at who knows what. But when given the opportunity to form a crowd and take that anger out on something, they do so.
Sure, I know there’s more to be said than that. The looting was caused by greed, which is a different subject entirely. And we have to ask what has caused the anger. But one of the things behind the rioting was anger.
Anger is a subject that Jesus talked about. Jesus may have lived on earth 2000 years ago, but time and again we find his words have a striking relevance for us today. And one of the occasions when he talked about anger was recorded in the reading we just heard.
Anger = Murder in our hearts
Actually, he’s talking about murder. Those words were part of the famous Sermon on the Mount, and in this part of that sermon he’s unpacking the ten commandments. Those great laws, given to Moses 12 hundred years earlier, are a little brief, and Jesus is opening them up. Showing us what keeping them looks like for his followers. How to keep them in the fullest way possible. How to be shaped by them right in our hearts.
So he’s talking about murder. And the connection with anger comes when he explains that anger in your heart amounts to murder.
Verse 21: You have heard that it was said to those of old: ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgement.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgement; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.
That’s the link to anger. Anger in our hearts amounts to murder.
It’s important we don’t mishear him. He’s not saying that murder is no more important than anger. He’s not reducing murder, making it a small thing. No, it’s the reverse. He’s saying that anger is more serious than we thought it to be. He’s saying that the kind of penalties we think murder deserves are entirely appropriate for us when an angry word comes out.
So the penalties he suggests build through that paragraph. The person who is angry – is liable to be judged for that. The person who insults – is liable to appear before the council and give an account. You’ll remember the scenes of the Murdoch father and son team, being summoned before a special committee of parliament to explain things. Jesus is saying that the person who insults his brother should appear before a specially convened committee of parliament. And then the biggest of al, the person who says “you fool – is liable to the hell of fire.
The penalties build through the paragraph until they reach comic proportions. It’s almost a joke, intentionally so, to suggest that such severe sanctions should be imposed for someone who does something we consider so minor.
But that’s the point. Jesus certainly isn’t trivialising murder. If an angry word is that serious, how serious a matter is murder? It doesn’t bear thinking about.
So anger amounts to murder committed in our hearts, in our thoughts, in our imaginations, deep down inside us.
That’s why Jesus is talking about anger.
Now, when Jesus says that we are to see angry words and thoughts in this way, that has a big effect on us. In fact it has two big effects on us.
First Effect: Shows us how much we need Jesus
The first effect is to show us how much we need Jesus.
You see we tend to think that the commandment not to commit murder is something that other people break. People on death row, who are not like us. We watch the legal dramas on TV, and there’s been a raft of them this summer, and we see people put away for murder. We watch the jury debate whether it’s manslaughter or murder. And we think we are watching someone else’s story on TV. We watch the rioters on the news, and see their CCTV pictures in the paper. And we think to ourselves that these are people who are not like us. And we are not like them.
The commandment not to murder is something that other people break.
What Jesus has done here is bring this commandment back home, to our own front door, to our own hearts. Those TV dramas are telling our story. The attitude that causes that kind of behaviour is in each and every one of our hearts.
Jesus is saying that every time an angry word comes out of our mouths, we’re betraying what is going on deep inside us. How often has someone cut you up at the lights, and even though the only person hearing you was you and the dashboard, and you’ve shouted out, “What an idiot”? Jesus is saying that every time we do that, inside our hearts we’ve broken the commandment not to murder.
Now, what I said was that the effect of what Jesus is saying is to show us how much we need Jesus. The effect is not to make us shrivel in despair. It’s not to make us give up and get depressed. Because Jesus did not come to make us feel guilty. As John 3 says, God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. He came to save us. This is the same Jesus who says later in Matthew’s gospel: Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Rest. Relief. Rescue.
When we turn to Jesus, we find in him forgiveness for all of our failings – past, present and future – and we find the help of his Spirit to change us from within. He gives us a new heart.
What Jesus says here shows us how much we need Jesus.
This is why the baptism service is shaped the way it is. It sounds really odd, doesn’t it? We just got the parents and the godparents up the front here. Adults with children they are bringing up well. People with a mortgage and a good job. People who have a respected place in the life of the village. And they stood up the front here and said that they repented of their sin. Surely it’s others who need to do that – not decent people like this?
But that’s the point. The commandment not to murder, indeed any commandment you could pick, is not about others. It’s not about them. It’s about us. It’s about me.
And having turned away from sin, they haven’t said they’re going to turn to an anger management course to sort the problem out. That’s because the problem is not our behaviour; the problem is in our hearts. What we need is a new heart, and that is something only Jesus can do. So, on the contrary, they say: I turn to Christ. I submit to Christ. I come to Christ.
What Jesus says about anger and murder shows us how much we need Jesus.
Second Effect: Shows us how to live
The second effect of Jesus’ teaching here is to show us how to live. He shows us how to live.
Having turned to Jesus for our new hearts, we discover that the death and resurrection of Jesus is a wonderful thing indeed. When Jesus died on the cross, the anger of God was turned away from us. Once, God had every right to be angry with us. After all, deep down inside our hearts we broke his laws. We’ve disrespected him. God had every right to be angry with us.
But when Jesus died on the cross, that anger is turned away. So we can discover the joy that this is no longer so. God is no longer angry. And as we are moved deep down, by the joy of knowing that God’s own son turned God’s anger from us, our hearts are stirred deep down to deal with the anger we feel towards others. We no longer need to be angry either.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I look back on my past week and can see times when anger has come out at somebody in a way that I regret almost as soon as I opened my mouth. That’s true for me every week, and I’m guessing most of us here would say the same thing.
So next time you sense you are about to fly off the handle, you get a split second before you do, but that’s usually all it is. Try training yourself to think of the love of God in that split second, the love that turned his anger away from you. Try saying: “I will try to see if I can be like that”.
And so Jesus follows this teaching with two little cameos that show us what he’s talking about in practice. Two little vignettes to show us how important it is that we deal with the anger we feel towards others.
The temptation is there, is it not, to think that being angry with other people isn’t terribly important. To think that we can just live with our resentments, and it doesn’t matter.
So cue cameo number 1:
Verse 23: If you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go. First be reconciled to your brother, and then come and offer your gift.
Jesus is saying that we mustn’t think everything can be fine with God if we ignore our resentment and anger. Leave your gift, he says. Don’t just come and do the religious bit of your life and pretend that everything’s OK then. Leave the gift. Sort out the relationship. Then offer the gift.
And notice who takes the initiative. It’s not the person who is offended. The person who did wrong in the first place has to go and make amends. If someone else has stopped coming to church because of something you did, it’s you who have to make the first move.
Some time back, I received a letter. I’m not even going to tell you which church it concerned, or how many moons ago it was. That’s not the point. Someone wrote to me anonymously complaining about a neighbour of theirs. That neighbour happened to go to the church I was serving at the time. The person who wrote the letter felt that this churchgoer had been acting in ways that were neither neighbourly not churchly. And so they wrote me a rather garbled letter to complain.
Well the letter went straight in the bin. Partly because I don’t deal with anonymous letters. Partly because it was none of my business. Partly because I couldn’t actually understand what it was this person was supposed to have done.
Now I’ve not even told you whether that letter concerned Kemsing, Woodlands, or some church from a long time back. But if you find yourself thinking: “I wonder if that was so and so, writing about such and such”, then there’s a neighbour you need to go and make up with this week.
Even worse would be if two of us within this church harboured resentments against each other. If there were two people who wouldn’t help serve coffee after church on the same Sunday.
That’s Jesus first cameo, and it is there to stop us thinking everything can be fine with God if we ignore our resentment and anger.
The second cameo comes in verse 25: Come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are going with him to court, lest your accuser hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the guard, and you be put in prison. Truly I say to you, you will never get out until you have paid the last penny.
This time, Jesus is saying that we mustn’t think everything will be go well with us if we ignore our resentment and anger.
Jesus is the one who is wiser than King Solomon, and here he gives us some of his wisdom. If you are accused of wronging someone, there’s usually a chance to make amends. But that door isn’t always open forever, so he advises us to take the chance while we’ve got it to sort things out. Leave it too long, and what you’ve done might catch up with you. And if it does, says Jesus, you won’t hear the last of it. You have to face all the consequences.
Thinking that we can ignore the grievances others have against us, and ignore them forever until they just go away, is misguided. So says Jesus in his wisdom.
The other evening it was dark, and I was walking back from visiting someone along the High Street. Outside the Club, there were cars parked on one side, and two cars were trying to get down the High Street at the same time, but in the opposite direction. The car that didn’t have right of way didn’t wait. Both cars ended up trying to squeeze through the gap, and the kerbs there are high. One car was a 4x4. One driver got out, walked up to the other car, and shouted at the driver through the window. Apparently, that driver was an idiot, or something unpronounceably worse, but not knowing him I couldn’t comment on that.
It’s a familiar scene for many of us. And Jesus’ advice to us all is that we can’t play that scene out with others, and keep doing it, without at some point discovering that what we do comes back to bite us.
That’s Jesus’ second cameo, and it’s there to stop us thinking everything will go well with us if we ignore our resentment and anger.
Conclusion
Let’s wrap things up.
The subject of dealing with anger is right at the heart of the Christian gospel.
First of all, we recognise that we all harbour anger in our hearts. The commandment not to murder is not just about those who get sentenced for murder. We all have issues here to face up to.
Second, we have to recognise the anger of God at our human anger.
Third, we have to enjoy the delight of Jesus. By his death and resurrection, he averted that anger from us. So we repent of our sins, and we turn to Christ.
And then fourth, knowing that God has done this for us gives us a new heart. Which means that, with the help of God’s Spirit, we can deal with our anger towards others.
As I say, dealing with anger is right at the heart of the Christian message of good news. What God has done in Christ is to take our society where there is a lot of anger, and to turn that around so that grace and forgiveness have the last word instead. And he wants us to be a part of that transformation from anger to love.