One day when Margaret and I were college students, she said, “I think you ought to know that the deacons are going to ask for our pastor’s resignation.” We were members of the same church and had shared in appreciation for the thoughtful, exciting sermons our pastor brought us week by week. But her family was more connected to the inner circle than mine, and so she got some insider information.
It shocked me. I was stunned. I could not believe it. Frankly, I just about idolized the man. He had come to our church when I was eighteen years old, and had demonstrated to me that you didn’t have to park your brains outside when you came to church! He mattered to me; he had influenced me deeply; it was to him I had gone only a few months earlier when I first responded to God’s call to ministry. The very idea that the church’s deacons would want to get rid of somebody this valuable made no sense to me at all.
Sure enough, in a week or two it was announced that there would be a special business meeting to bring up “concerns” about the pastor. I sat through that meeting in misery. To my astonishment, from every corner of a tense sanctuary, filled with people I didn’t even know were members of our church, came words that were incredible, awesome, hateful.
One father stood up and claimed that the pastor had written a dirty book and had given it to his lovely daughter as part of her preparation for marriage. It later turned out that it was a book on sexuality, from a Christian perspective, and that the illustrator, not the author, had a name similar to our pastor’s. But that’s just how irrational things were at that meeting.
One husband and wife stood up together, and, with their voices choked with emotion and their faces twisted in pain, cried out that the pastor had ignored them, had refused to visit them, had insulted them, and they wanted him out of there. Still another man, the church’s elder statesman, a man so entrenched in the leadership of our church that when I was a small boy I thought his last name was “Moderator” -- this elder statesman rose to lay out the deacons’ concerns, but would only say, “It is just a whole lot of little things, no one big thing, just a lot of small complaints; but we think he has to go.”
On and on it went that horrible night. Certainly there were some who defended our pastor; of course there were many who sat in silence, some of them weeping. But the more the angry ones spoke, the more the mood of anger grew and spread around the room, and by the time it was all over, the church voted to dismiss that pastor, and, I guess, if somebody had not pronounced the benediction, they would have lynched him and boiled his wife and children in oil. So corrosive, so pervasive, so devastating, so contagious, so draining, is the power of anger.
Anger destroys lives, anger damages institutions, anger warps the fabric of society, and, most of all, anger drains us when we submit to it. Anger renders us incapable of healthy relationships. To say it as clearly as possible: hot heads make cold hearts. Anger drains us, it exhausts us. Hot heads make icy cold hearts.
The poet of Proverbs has much to say about anger. He offers us a number of very astute observations about anger. Frankly, I’m not sure he really knows what to do about it. For that I think we have to go to one wiser than Solomon and more profound than Proverbs. But we can gain some very significant insights from the poet of Proverbs about how hot heads do give us cold hearts.
There are three words that I want you to hear and to think about this morning. Three ideas that sound a bit alike, so let’s make sure we get them right. The three words are: displaced, misplaced, and replaced. Anger drains us. It can be displaced, or misplaced, or it can be replaced.
I
First, displaced anger. When we get angry at a thing, an inanimate thing, it is really not all that appropriate. But that’s where our anger goes. Anger is displaced when it is anger at a thing.
Usually displaced anger comes from our frustrations. We have not been able to accomplish something, we have not been able to do what we want when we want it. And that frustration, which is really our being angry at ourselves, takes us over, gets out of control, and it has to go somewhere. It has to be expressed. So we get angry at things instead of ourselves. We displace our anger.
Let me give you a home kitchen example. Not long ago we bought a new kitchen garbage can. Margaret picked it out. It looks all right and it holds the garbage, but we’ve found it that the lid flies off. Any time you try to pick it up and move it the lid will come right off. When this happened to Margaret the other day she looked and sounded, well, not like your Sunday School teacher, as she said, “I hate this thing.” She said, “I hate this thing”, but what she meant was, “I’m angry at myself for buying something that doesn’t do what I thought it would do.” Now that’s displaced anger; and in and of itself it’s harmless. Not a problem.
But the poet of Proverbs thinks it could go deeper than that.
“A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger ...those who are hot-tempered stir up strife, but those who are slow to anger calm contention.”
Those who are hot-tempered stir up strife. Internal strife. Anger drains us. And displaced anger can drain us emotionally and stir up strife. Hot heads make for cold hearts.
My friend Jim would get so frustrated at his job. Jim was trying to do a job for which he was not really qualified. He didn’t have the education for it, but he did have interest and energy, so somebody took a chance on Jim and hired him. He found it frustrating. It took Jim all week to do what someone with more knowledge could have done in two days. Jim was always talking about how he really should have gone to school, how everybody else knew more than he did, how he was stuck in this job, with no way to advance beyond it, but it was too late to start college now. Just a picture of total frustration.
So what Jim did was to go out in the back yard every now and then and grab a huge ax and split wood. The fact that Jim was barely over a hundred pounds’ weight and about as thick as two pencils made that a serious challenge! But he would chop that wood and release his anger, and after a morning of woodchopping, could go back to work again. We displace our anger, we take it out on things, even though it’s really about us being angry at us. And it can help, for a little while. But eventually hot heads will lead to cold hearts, and displaced anger will stir up strife inside. It will drain us.
Maybe you know this kind of person. Always upset at something. Angry at the government; it’s corrupt. Angry at the schools; they don’t teach any more. Angry at stores that cheat you, at insurance companies that have ruined medicine, and angry at the church, oh my. This person has pretty well lost hope that the church can ever truly be the church; and though he comes and sits through worship and takes responsibilities, somewhat out of duty rather than out of joy, this person is really immensely frustrated at himself. He is angry at himself. But has no other place to put it, so he vents his anger at things, and especially at high expectation things like the church.
Be warned! Displaced anger eventually corrodes our lives. It’s not long before that hot head, which sees conspiracies around every corner, creates a cold heart. It’s not long before no one can deal with us because in our sheer frustration, we have grown bitter, suspicious, and hostile. It’s not long before displaced anger becomes misplaced anger. Displaced anger becomes misplaced anger.
II
Misplaced anger is anger at other people. Anger not because they have done anything in particular, but just because they are there. Misplaced anger lashes out at other people because they are in the way, they are convenient targets. It’s not that they may actually deserve our anger; but we misdirect it to them. Why?
Because what started out as frustration has now turned to guilt. Unresolved, unrelieved guilt. What started out as the fear that we were not going to be able to what we wanted to do has now become a full-blown acknowledgment that, no, we are not right. We are not OK. We feel totally out of kilter. We feel guilty.
Friends, there are a host of people who come to their mature years accusing ourselves of being weak, faithless, lazy, and stupid. There are a lot of people walking around with unresolved guilt. You have to deal with that somehow. And so we misplace it. We boil over on other people. Hostility bursts out all over the place and splatters everybody in sight. That is misplaced anger.
The poet of Proverbs saw that in his day too. But he hoped that we would find a better way:
“Those with good sense are slow to anger, and it is to their glory to overlook an offense”
It is to our glory to overlook an offense. It’s better to try to understand than to blame. But not everyone is ready for this. Not everybody is ready to overlook the offenses that others may cause, because we misplace and misdirect our guilt.
Let me go back to the story of my friend Jim. Chopping wood in the back yard only went so far. It relieved Jim’s frustrations for the moment, but when he went back to work, it built up all over again. And frustration gradually became guilt. Jim began to withdraw from people. He began to express anger toward others that just didn’t measure up. Others didn’t share his values. I have not told you this before, but Jim was in church work, trying to do ministry without either a college or a seminary education. In my opinion, he brought lots of natural talents and energy to the task. But Jim’s frustration became guilt; and in that guilt he began to say things like, “Nobody in this church really loves the Lord.” “Nobody here cares about reaching new people for Christ.” Then it got a little paranoid, “The Catholics, they’re the ones. They have ruined it for us; everybody is running over to them.” I began to get concerned at that point. My anxiety grew when Jim’s pronouncements got more personal, “That pastor of ours is the worst. He doesn’t care about anything but money. Money, money, money, that’s all he has on his mind.” I knew it was all about guilt then, because Jim almost weekly would say, “I won’t take a gift for doing a wedding or a funeral. That’s greedy. I refuse to take extra pay for doing what I am supposed to do anyway.” That may sound good, but I saw Jim getting smug, self-righteous, judgmental. I heard guilt coming out. So I tried to talk to him about it, and I took it on the chin too, “You’ve got all this Bible knowledge, but you won’t use it for our Sunday School. You just use it with all those college students, but you don’t bring them to our church. You yourself don’t sing in my choir. You didn’t help with this project, you didn’t do that, you, you, you .....”. Guilt was bustin’ out all over.
When anger is misplaced, it’s not really anger at other people. It’s our anger at ourselves. We have disappointed ourselves. We set impossibly high standards, we can’t met them, then we feel ashamed and guilty. Misplaced anger, when I tell you I am upset at you, in truth means that I am upset at me and cannot forgive me.
The last I knew of my friend Jim he had quit his church position, had taken a laborer’s job, and was spending his spare time writing scathing letters to the editors of Kentucky newspapers, complaining about everything from court decisions to church politics to railroad schedules. He had become a bitter, lonely man, drained. Displaced anger had grown into misplaced anger; anger at things had turned into anger at people; and a hot head had brought about a cold heart.
III
Do you know that all of that was unnecessary? Do you realize none of that had to be? If only my friend Jim could have discovered replaced anger. Replaced anger. If only my friend Jim and you and I could discover that God has a plan to replace anger with something else. God wants to take the anger that has bottled up inside us, and He wants to replace it altogether. God wants to replace our hot heads and cold hearts with a relationship that will absorb our anger, handle our hostility, and bear the burdens of our guilt. God wants to replace our hot heads and our cold hearts with a warm and tender heart. God wants to love us out of our displaced anger; and God wants to love us out of our misplace anger.
Proverbs has its insights about anger, but I’m not sure the poet of Proverbs really knew what to do with it. We have to go one wiser than Solomon and more profound than Proverbs. So hear the good news this morning. Hear the good news from our Lord Jesus Christ and from his servant Paul:
“Be angry, but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger ... put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”
As God in Christ has forgiven you. Oh, here is the good news. The way beyond anger is a relationship with Christ. The way beyond anger is to receive His forgiveness. The way to the soft answer that turns away wrath is to know that God in His mercy loves us, and loves us unconditionally. The way to the good sense that overlooks an offense is to know that even though you and I have offended God with our sin, still our God looks on us with love. Our God in Christ claims us as His own, our God in the crucified Christ takes upon Himself the burden of our guilt and the sorrow of our shame, and destroys them.
Do you feel angry? Likely you do. But we do not have to feel angry and frustrated. We do not have to displace our anger on mere things. Wonder of it all, He who knew no sin has become sin for us, and has taken all of our frustration to His cross and made us victors. “Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” Victory! We do not have to displace our anger onto things. We can put off our bitterness, for God in Christ will forgive us.
Nor do we have to feel guilty any longer. We do not have to misplace our anger and splatter everybody around us with accusations. Glory be to Christ, in His cross He has broken down the barriers that separate us from God and from one another. And “my sin, not in part, but the whole, is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more. Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh my soul!”
Hot heads? Of course. We are human. We will always deal with hot heads. But in Christ Jesus hot heads no longer drain us down to cold hearts. In Him they become tender hearts, forgiving, for God in Christ has forgiven us.
