A sermon by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Menking, Director of LSPS, delivered on December 5, 2006, in Christ Chapel

Isaiah 1: 24-31

Psalm 90

Luke 11:29-32

At some point in your ministry, you will encounter texts in the lectionary -- like today -- that will make you wish you were a Baptist, or at least affiliated with some denomination that gives you latitude in choosing the text for your sermon. No doubt, that is a temptation this morning: to find something more soothing and palatable.

The truth is that no one likes to hear a sermon on God’s wrath, especially given the abusive ways that such sermons have manipulated and oppressively controlled people. Fearful of being stereotyped as a fire and brimstone type, and out of an understandable desire to stay on the good side of their congregants, preachers generally avoid these sorts of texts, if not the whole matter of wrath and judgment altogether.

Yet the fact is that these texts have been handed down, and as Walter Brueggemann has said, it is in and of itself remarkable that these texts have survived and remain part of the canon to which we give our allegiance. And that by the way, might be a comment worth remembering when you are tempted to discount these texts or avoid them altogether – they are part of the canon and the tradition to which you have given allegiance. It’s not unlike a marriage – you take a vow to be faithful to the whole of the other, not just the parts you like! So here we are, like it or not. We must grapple with these texts and ask what it is they say to us in this time and in this place.

To begin with, I wonder if one of our difficulties with texts like these is that we read them through the lens of our culture’s relational dysfunction. Anger is more often than not associated with distance, emotional cut offs, intimidation and on the far extreme, violence. Anger is not associated with intimacy or love, and so it is generally the case that we work to keep anger out of our relationships. But this is not the case in the biblical tradition. The ancient biblical writers – especially the prophets and even Jesus seem to suggest that God’s anger is as much a part of God’s love as is God’s mercy and tenderness. In fact it might be said – and it seems especially true in the Isaiah text this morning -- God’s anger and wrath are deeply rooted in God’s love and are really an expression of the deep ache and hurt that comes from being a jilted lover. This is not arbitrary or capricious anger.

The pastoral care scholar, Andy Lester, has written a good book on anger, and what he says might be helpful in understanding these texts. He observes that anger is a defense and reactive emotion. It’s the systems way of letting you know that something of deep and intrinsic value is being violated. As uncomfortable as anger is – both expressing it and being on the receiving end of it – it needs to be listened to and attended to because it’s telling us that something in the very core of our being is being violated! It means we are being hurt. It is generally the case that underneath all anger lies a deep, deep world of hurt! Could it be that it’s God’s deep, deep world of hurt that we are getting a glimpse of in these texts? It’s the same hurt that the jilted spouse is trying to express when she screams at her unfaithful husband “Get out of the house you bastard!!” What she’s really saying is, “I am so wounded and hurt by what you’ve done!!!” If we retune our ears to what’s being said, the jilted lover’s shouts and fits of anger are not words of distancing; they are strange expressions of trying to get close, expressions of trying to show the other the wounds, the vulnerability. In a paradoxical way, the shout and fit is a way of trying to bring the other back!

I wonder if this isn’t what God is up to. Distraught over the faithlessness of his people, hurt by their giving of themselves to other gods, wounded by their unwillingness to live in this relationship to which he has so willingly given of himself, God lashes out. Yet underneath, is not God trying to bring the faithless lover back? The good news is that amid the threats of cut-off and destruction, the door isn’t shut. In all of the texts this morning, we hear and read that the door is open to the repentant, to the one who turns around and returns to relationship with God.

But now the question is: what is the motivation for this repentance and return? On the surface it would seem fairly obvious that God’s anger in and of itself is motivation enough. One might want to repent and return simply to avoid the wrath that is to come. I am fairly clear that when my spouse is angry with me, repentance is a good thing to avoid the wrath that is to come! But the avoidance of wrath and anger is not enough motivation to bring about the sort of change and repentance that the texts seem to be talking about. They are not talking about avoidance. They are talking about a complete return, something that is more than lip service and superficial. It is a return that involves a change of heart, a change in loyalties. It’s the kind of change that requires more than anger avoidance as motivation.

The noted author, Walt Wangerin, tells the story of an event in his family that seems close to what we are talking about. In the community where they once lived, their home was situated directly across from the city library. Unbeknown to he and his wife, their son began to steal comic books from the library. One day the librarian called to apprise them of what was going on. Sure enough, they went to his room and found an entire drawer filled with comic books. Being the good parent, he made his child gather the comic books and march across the street to return the books and apologize. So he thought, the matter had ended and a lesson was learned. Not so! The stealing continued, and one punishment after another did not seem to abate the activity. Finally in frustration Wangerin says he resorted to a punishment that was against his own parental philosophy – he spanked his child. After executing the punishment, he says he went to his room and cried, overcome by the anguish of the whole scenario and especially of having to resort to a punishment he despised. But the stealing ceased. Some years later, the child and his mother were driving along and she wondered out loud, “You know, we never talked about it, but why did you stop stealing the comic books? Was it because your dad finally spanked you?” He responded, “Oh no; I stopped when I saw him crying!” The motivation for repentance was that the child’s heart was affected by the father’s heart.

Strange as it may seem, these texts that speak of God’s rage and wrath may in fact give us the same glimpse of God’s heart that Wangerin’s child saw in his father’s heart – a heart of anguish and hurt over our own faithlessness and disobedience.

Perhaps these texts are calling us to ponder God’s anguish, to consider the ways that God might be shedding tears over our own faithlessness. What tears might God be shedding over you? For what might God be in anguish over you, over us? It is never easy – yes sometimes even deeply painful - to confront the ways that we have inflicted hurt on those we love. Yet we know that this confrontation with reality is always the beginning of healing and restoration. Might it be the same in our relationship with God? It is not easy to acknowledge God’s anguish and hurt, and it is even more difficult to confront our actions and behaviors that have caused that hurt. Yet, it is that very heart that is calling us, not with a threat of destruction, but with a promise of life restored. In this season of Advent, listen to God’s wounded and hurt heart calling you, and then let that heart affect your own!