Holy Tuesday: Is there a place for Righteous Anger?

Reflect with Aimee Copley Mulder on the moment where Jesus gets angry.  What does it mean when Jesus flips tables and drives out cattle from the temple? Are you righteously angry this Holy Week? 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

All glory to God. This is Amy Cockley Mulder. It's Holy Week. And so I'm so glad you chose to join me. Please continue to listen to my podcast every single day this week as we walk the last week of Jesus together. The last week where Jesus was on the earth before he was crucified. This Holy Week is a time for us to set aside moments where we really think about what Jesus did for us. Holy Week. Join me here at all glory to God.

SPEAKER_00 0:45

Doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, doesn't matter if you're young or alive. All that matters is you answer the door when Jesus comes to change your life. And it's about time we give it up to God. And I catch a free. All the glory to God. And let's give all the glory to God.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Happy Holy Tuesday on this holy week. This is the All Glory to God podcast with Amy Copley Mulder. I'm so glad that you've decided to join me this week. And this day we are talking about the time when Jesus got angry. Now we are going to reflect upon this event from the book of John. And this event in the book of John comes at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, right after he does the miracle at the wedding where he turns water into wine. But the tradition in Matthew, Mark, and Luke is that we are pretty positive that this event happened. And John has his reasons for placing it where he places it. But this morning, I just want to reflect on this event during this Holy Tuesday, and it could have happened on Holy Monday. I want to reflect on this event from the book of John. And before we get to the scripture and kind of some meaning behind it, I really want to ask you this. There is no doubt that Jesus got angry, especially in this moment. And what is your relationship with getting angry? I don't know if you grew up in the church that I grew up in, but there was a real nobody get angry culture. I don't know if you grew up in the church that I grew up in. And or maybe even the culture in Texas and this, but you know, if you knew Jesus, you always let the honey flow. You never got angry. Anger was kind of suspicious. And my home that I grew up in was a wonderful home. And my dad was more like if he was, if he was angry or mad about something, he was more passive, aggressive, and quiet. So you can imagine what it was like for me as an only child to marry the loudest human who I love dearly, Devin. And believe me, he's just as loud or louder than me, which is a kind of a miracle that I found someone that's that way. Um and then now I have three sons. Now I promise you, I have a 19, 17, and 15-year-old son. I promise you, friends, that I said to my boys, you can have all the feelings. It's okay to cry. Um, you know, I tried to do all of this, but I'm telling you, the testosterone up in this house, from my husband and from my three boys, there is a very easy access point to anger. And I don't know if it's personality or if it just comes with being male. I'm not sure. I mean, of course I get angry. It just turns to tears very quickly, and that's a very irritating when you're trying to be mad and you just end up crying. But anger has been a complicated relationship with me. I've had a hard time when I feel angry. It feels wrong. Like I should not be angry. And anytime you're putting the shouldn't on any behavior that you have, you've got to realize that's not from the Lord, that's from some other thing. Jesus, in this moment, and we're gonna start reading from John chapter 2, and we're starting at verse 13 to the end of the chapter. Jesus' relationship with anger, he is righteously angry here. He has every right to be angry. And I wonder why sometimes we want to forget that this happened or not realize the significance of it happening very close to the Palm Sunday parade, Hosanna near the entrance of Jerusalem. So let's start reading from John chapter 2, starting with verse 13. The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, Take these things out of here, stop making my father's house a marketplace. His disciples remembered that it was written, Zeal for your house will consume me. Then the Jews said to him, What sign can you show for doing this? Jesus answered them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews said, This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and you will raise it up in three days. But he was speaking of the temple of his body. After he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus, on his part, would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone, for he himself knew what was in everyone. So this is the word of the Lord for this morning, this righteous anger of Jesus. I want you to I want you to just in case you've heard this scripture or you lost your attention span, I want you to imagine this scene. So we go from palm branches, Hosanna, Joy, Jesus is coming. And then in the temple, he found people selling the cattle, sheep, and doves and the money changers seated at their tables, and he made a whip. Jesus went Indiana Jones on the whole temple and he drove them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. So this was a scene. Jesus is in the middle of the temple with his whip. He's getting the sheep and cattle out. He doesn't want them to be the temple sacrifices, and he pours out the coins and of the money changers and overturns their table. He flips the table. So do you understand that this was not an event that Jesus was trying to fly under the radar or not being noticed? Jesus was there to make his presence known and say to them, You will not use my father's temple, this temple that was built by the people of Israel, this temple where we worship, you will not use this temple this way. And why was Jesus so mad? Okay. Why was Jesus so mad? And there's two reasons in my research that I've that I found. You do get part of those reasons in the direct scripture. What made Jesus mad in this moment in the temple is the place where all of these shops were set up to sell cattle and sheep for offerings, and it had to be agreed to, the place that was flooded in the temple that the priests let happen was the place where the Gentiles could gather and worship without going inside the temple. It was the place of inclusion where all were welcome to worship and see what was up with the Jewish God, with the people of Israel. And so the marketplace that was there with the sheep and the cattle and kind of the shystery um events that were taking place to take advantage of people, it was also excluding a whole population from being able to worship God. And Jesus was saying, this is not what this space is for. We are supposed to include everyone. We're supposed to leave a place for everyone to come and hear about the God, you know. And Jesus was saying, the God that I am as I walk the earth. It was righteous anger. It was something that Jesus should have been angry about. So I don't know what your complicated relationship to anger is, but you need to ask yourself: do I feel angry about certain things? And am I letting God sanctify my anger to drive out what needs to be driven out of the temple courts? Jesus mentions, and John is very theological as he's telling us what the disciples thought and what they did. He wants everyone to know through the telling of his gospel and the gospel of John that we figured out what who Jesus was after he was here. When he ascended, we were like, oh, and we went back and we thought about everything he said and we put it in categories, and now we know that Jesus is the Messiah. We also know that Jesus is God, fully God, fully human. This fully God, fully human Jesus is the is the Jesus that John reflects back to and talks about so much. A lot of the Gospel of John has been used for part of that doctrine. And what Jesus is saying when he flips the tables and and drives them out. I mean, this is an active God walking on the earth, an active human walking on the earth. And the Jews are saying, How can you do this? Who are you to be driving all these cows and sheep out and have a whip and you flip the tables? What's up with you? Flipping the tables, Jesus. And he says, Listen, I'm gonna destroy this temple, and in three days I will rise it up. And nobody knew what he was talking about. But John very helpfully says to us, Listen, he was talking about himself, and we figured it out later that this was who he was talking about. And then we get this point that Jesus was believed. This action married with his words. People believed him even if they didn't quite know what he was saying. And this action with his words was an incredible moment for Jesus. One of the things that happens is that people were believing in Jesus' name as he walked the earth in the reflection of the miracles, of the signs and wonders. And what John does by putting this event in the beginning of Jesus' ministries is he kind of says, one of the signs and wonders of Jesus was that he got righteously angry when people were excluded from the gospel, when the plan for Gentiles to hear the word of God was limited by the actions of the priests. I know that you've seen the meme that says, don't sit at the tables, Jesus flipped. I know that all of us in this current day may be getting righteously angry for good reason. And it is hard to know where to place that anger. I have found myself burning with a righteous anger as I look around and I see people being mistreated and even being mistreated in the name of Jesus. People will invoke the name of Jesus and say, this is the reason we need to treat people like they are no longer human. And so I have made the choice as a woman of God and as a pastor to speak out more than I ever have. I am righteously angry. But I have to admit to you on this Holy Tuesday, as I am submitting my week to the Lord and wanting to focus on God so much more than I ever have, that I want my anger to be sanctified because I don't want bitterness to find its way within me. I don't want bitterness to take root in my heart and mingle with the anger that could be righteous and take my anger to a place of resentment and a sinful revenge. So I pray this prayer. God, sanctify my anger. I give it to you. Show me a way to be your hands and feet in the world I walk. God, sanctify my anger. I give it to you. Show me how to be the hands and feet of Jesus where I walk. And let me tell you, God always finds a way to show me how the anger that I feel for people, the lost, the left out, the least of these being mistreated, can work. A family in our church that has five kids, they were having some trouble with childcare. And I just thought, well, I can step in. And the one day a week that they they were both working and they couldn't get childcare, I got to watch this little boy who's was not yet three. I believe he was, yeah, he was almost three. And I got to watch him every Wednesday for like three or four weeks. And let me tell you, I it's been a minute since I had a little, little, cute little thing here. And he was just so excited. And he loves the our cars, movie cars. And he just we went places. We went to the library. We I had fun. We went and we had, you know, a hot dog at GNL. I mean, it was just fun. And I sat there in my in my day and said, Well, this is how I'm gonna be your hands and feet today. I'm gonna help this family out. And you know, it's really hard to be filled with anger when you're around a little three-year-old who's doing Spider-Man poses and leaping over things. It's really hard. And yeah, I got to give them back at the end of the day. So maybe that's why it wasn't as overwhelming as actually parenting my little boys when they were small. Don't you understand that Jesus driving the cattle and the sheep and the moneylenders out of the temple because it excluded people from worship is a miraculous sign and wonder, just like making the blind see. He is taking a stand in the middle of the temple and saying, Not in my father's house. This will not happen. Not today. And there may be some stand that you need to take. But can I encourage you to do a kind of a three-step process? First of all, realize that as a Christian living in the world, there are things that we are going to be angry about. And what we need to do is go to the Lord with that anger. Because sometimes it's righteous and sometimes it's selfish. So we have to go to the Lord in prayer and go, okay, Lord, I am angry about this. Is this righteous anger, or is this just me with my feelings hurt? It's a good question. So once you've done that, then pray the prayer, Lord, sanctify my anger. Let me see the world the way you want me to see it, and may I be your hands and feet. And then sometimes your anger, if it's righteous and sanctified, causes you to action. And maybe that action, but I'm going to tell you the same God, the fully human, fully God Jesus, that stood in the temple and drove out the moneylenders and took the sheep and and the cattle and said, No, you will not exclude people from worshiping God. That same God is calling to you and saying, You are welcome here to worship me. And maybe the action you're supposed to take is to go find a family that needs some help. Whatever the case. This is the day that the Lord has made. And if you are righteously angry, know that God will not let that go to waste. Our God has marvelous economy. He will not waste a moment that you have felt to the core of your being, and it will be used for the glory of the kingdom of God. Woo! Isn't that exciting? Are you angry? It could be righteous anger. But before you grab your whip and go Indian and Jones on the temple, just remember God is waiting there with opening arms, welcoming you to encounter him. And he is there to sanctify anything that we surrender to him. May God's peace go with you as you work out the righteous anger in the name of Jesus and join me tomorrow for Holy Wednesday!

SPEAKER_00 19:40

He gives us his life that's done. So it's done, it's the back time to get up.