Sermon Archive

John the Baptist was one angry hombre! I mean, really angry! Imagine saying to the people who’d just walked miles out into the wilderness to listen to you and be baptized by you—imagineopening your speech to them by saying: “You brood of vipers!” (3:7) Or, as we might say it: “You bunch of slithering snakes!” If John were alive and preaching today, I think a lot of folks would suggest to him that he attend an Anger Management Seminar.

I mean, listen to what else Angry John had to say to them: “Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” (3:9) Wow! That man had some kind of righteous rage.

Do any of you watch “Judging Amy” on Tuesday nights? And did any of you catch the episode about “anger management” shown right before Thanksgiving? Actually I finally caught up with that particular episode just last Sunday, via video tape. And, as it happened, that same evening I’d just begun to mull over in my mind today’s prescribed lectionary passage from Luke, which opens with John’s rage.

For those of you who don’t watch “Judging Amy,” Amy is a family court judge in Hartford, Connecticut, and her mother Maxine, played by Tyne Daly, is a social worker. Most of Maxine’s case-load focuses on problems with abusive or neglectful parents and with troubled juveniles.

Maxine is, as a result, perpetually angry at some one or some thing, and one day she lashes out at a State’s attorney for no good reason other than her generalized frustration that goodness and justice and love seem to be missing in our society.

The very next morning, as if to confirm just how bad the world is, Maxine awakens to discover that her yard has been “decorated” with toilet paper strung from the trees and her door, with graffiti. She decides to stake out the yard that night, in hopes that the vandal will return and can be caught. Sure enough, a young boy named Terry is soon seen creeping up her driveway. You see, Maxine’s the case worker who’s taken Terry away from his drug-addicted mother and put him into foster care. Terry fears his mother will die on the streets if he’s not there to look after her, and he’s filled with rage at Maxine.

So Terry’s come to her house to take revenge a second night. Maxine,from her hiding place, sees he’s about to urinate in her gas tank, and she rushes out and slams the gas flap shut on him. Terry screeches and yelps in pain. Amy hears his cries and responds to them in time to save him from further injury.

The next day Maxine’s supervisor tells her that she’ll be fired for threatening a State’s attorney and injuring Terry if she doesn’t attend an Anger Management Course.

Soon we’re shown Maxine and 9 or 10 others in a classroom, each wearing a large name tag. The instructor begins by saying: “Anger is an emotion. Crying, yelling, screaming, hitting, sarcasm—these are all angry behaviors, actions that we choose to take. …there’s really no such thing as ‘losing our temper.’ Rage hits us within a tenth of a second. And in that minute space of time we don’t ‘lose’ anything. We choose to let [rage loose]. Just as we choose to take action.”

The instructor goes on to tell the class that he’ll be using some breathing and imaging techniques to redirect their anger’s energy into hobbies and housework and positive self-talk.

Maxine blurts out that she doesn’t think breathing and housework will work for her. (“John the Baptist would have agreed,” I thought to myself.) But the teacher proceeds: “Breathe in, and out—our palms open to the cosmos, our minds open to new thoughts.

“Now, imagine your secret place in all of its beauty—you’re safe and in control and content, comfortably at peace. You are your own secret true best self. Then comes rolling toward you a red ball. This is your anger; this is your rage. And as it comes toward you, it becomes ever smaller and cooler, more manageable, until it’s a tiny, harmless marble you can hold in the palm of your hand.”

Maxine is participating in this exercise quite reluctantly, but she does manage to conjure up an image of herself riding a carousel, with her long hair streaming freely behind her. And she does imagine a red ball of anger coming toward her, but instead of getting smaller, it becomes larger and larger, until it’s a menacing, red-hot fireball trailing a tail of flame and heading straight for her. In her vision Maxine screams out, ducks her head, … and then comes to, with considerable relief.

The exercise ends, and the rest of the class open their eyes, their palms still turned upward to the cosmos. The teacher holds up a small red marble, and says: “Now, share what ignites your anger. And let it pass from you to this marble of rage, and then deliver it to the next person.” He places the marble into Randall’s upturned palm.

Randall:
   “My anger is ignited by people who don’t signal and who drive slow in the fast lane.”

Instructor (whispering):
   “Pass it on.”

Barbara:
   “My anger is ignited by the banter of television news people.”

Instructor:
   Yes. (She passes the marble on.)

Nicole:
   “My anger is ignited by the fact that eating a 2 lb. box of candy adds 5 lbs. to my hips.”

Instructor:
   “Umm.” (She passes the marble on.)

Jim:
   “My anger is ignited by people who interrupt my dinner to sell me a new long distance server.”

Instructor:
   “Pass it on.”

Maxine:
   “My anger is ignited … by …”

(She halts, and chuckles nervously, not wanting to continue.)

Instructor:
   “Just let it flow, Maxine.”

Maxine:
   “…by men who beat children to death with extension cords, and women who plunge babies into scalding water so they’ll stop crying. My anger is ignited by fathers who rape their daughters, and pregnant women who take crack and drink alcohol without a thought for the tiny souls they’re damning to a lifetime of pain. Babies in dumpsters. Drug overdoses. Burns, cuts, gunshot wounds. Wasted minds and ruined lives.”

(Maxine turns and passes on the marble, but then takes it back, now shaking with rage.)

Maxine:
   “My anger is ignited by a society that pays lips service to its children while treating them as nothing more than a marketing demographic, and by schools that are falling apart and teachers so numbed by violence and fear that they’ve stopped teaching.”

(Maxine has now leaped to her feet.)

Maxine:
   “But what’s really pissing me off today is a roomful of supposed grownups who think that bad drivers and loud talkers and hips are worth getting angry about when all the rest of that actual evil is loose in the world.”

(Maxine turns and walks to the door, then stops, looks at the class, puts the red marble in her shirt pocket, takes off her name tag, and says:)

Maxine:
   “Thank you. I think this helped.” (Maxine exits, leaving behind a class that’s stunned.)

As Maxine was delivering to her class this concluding soliloquy, I felt I was seeing and hearing a modern-day John the Baptist—one who was focusing her anger not on the superficialities of life but on the dreadful gap between God's hopes for human lifeand the reality of the life people actually experience. I felt I was seeing and hearing a modern-day John the Baptist—one who was focusing her anger on what she dared to call the “actual evil … loose in the world”; one whose anger was arising not from a desire for vengeance, but from what the theologian C. S. Song has called “love in agony”; one whose anger was directed at overturning the status quo and at creating a whole new kind of society. “Brava, Maxine!” I wanted to shout.

Maxine’s class was stunned by her rage, and in much the same way John the Baptist’s audience must have been stunned by his anger. As Luke describes that ancient crowd, which included even tax collectors and soldiers working for the Roman Empire—they responded to John’s anger by asking him not once, not twice, but three times, “What then should we do?” What is the new kind of society we should be creating? What should we be doing to prepare the way for God’s reign to come? And Luke describes for us John’s three-fold response to their question: “Share your resources with someone in need. Let the work you’re doing accomplish justice and equity. And start by changing the world one person at a time; then seek to broaden your field of influence to try to reshape institutions and systems as well.”

Any of you who watch “Judging Amy” regularly know that Maxine, whether she’s aware of it or not, is a person who actively practices John the Baptist’s message. In her role as a social worker, and in the rest of her life as well, she does share her resources with persons in need, she does seek through her own work to achieve justice and equity for others, and, while seeking to change the world one client at a time, she does go on to try to reshape the institutions and systems of her city as well.

In the final scene of this episode I’ve been describing, Maxine offers us a fine example of what then we should do, of how then we should tackle the actual evil that’s loose in our world. We see Maxine sharing her resources with another in need, and using her life’s work to accomplish justice and equity, and changing the world one person at a time.

In that final scene, we see a now much becalmed Maxine, her rage constructively channeled. She's sitting at a table across from Terry, who’s being held in a juvenile detention center for having vandalized Maxine’s yard and house.

Terry’s eyes are closed, his hands are on the table, palms up. And Maxine is saying to him: “Rolling toward you is a red ball. This is your anger. As it rolls toward you it becomes ever smaller and smaller, more manageable…”

Terry (suddenly opening his eyes and exclaiming in disgust):
   “Oh, this is whack, man!”

Maxine:
   “Close your eyes!

Terry:
   “Man!”

Maxine:
   … until it is a tiny, shining, harmless piece of glass you could hold in the palm of your hand.”

(She rolls the marble loudly across the table, and Terry catches it in his left hand, his right palm still turned up to the cosmos.)

Terry (eyes now open):
   “Yeah, but so what?”

Maxine:
   “It’s manageable, you understand. You are in control of your anger instead of the other way around.”

Terry:
   “Oh, so this marble is my anger?”

Maxine:
   “That’s the idea.”

Terry:
   “Is this marble gonna hold the fact you stole me away from my mother?”

Maxine:
   “I had to take you away. She was abusing drugs. She couldn’t take care of you.”

Terry:
   “Well, I took care of her. Now she’s got nobody. I mean, she’s on the streets. She’ll probably die. It’s your fault. Do you think this [marble] is going to hold all that? Is it going to hold that I hate you?”

Maxine:
   “You better hope it will, Terry, because if it doesn’t you’re going to wind up here again and make me sorry I’m giving you another chance.”

Terry:
   “Well, what do you care? I mean, according to you I’m gonna die a loser, and everyone’ll be glad."

Maxine:
   “That’s why I’m here. I’m sorry I said that to you. I apologize. I was angry, and I was wrong. And to prove it, I persuaded the State’s attorney to drop the vandalism charges against you. That means you are no longer in violation of your probation and you’re free to go home. Come on. I’ll give you a lift back to your foster parents.”

Terry:
   “I don’t want no ride from you.”

Maxine:
   “Well, it’s my job.”

(Terry gets up to go with her, puts the marble in his shirt pocket, and then, when alongside of her, asks:)

Terry:
   “Are you sorry ’bout slammin’ that gas flap shut on me?”

Maxine:
   “Nope! You keep out of my gas tank!”

(They walk off down the hall together, and the viewer knows that somehow the world is now a better place.)

“Brava, Maxine!”

Let us pray: