I was not entirely satisfied with how I ended my Ash Wednesday Lenten blog post. You may recall, I closed with a quote from the Reverend William Sloane Coffin:
When you see uncaring people in high places, everybody should be mad as hell. If you lessen your anger at the structures of power, he said, you lower your love for the victims of power.
In response to this post, I received the following heartfelt comment:
I can’t help but be angry and sad at what we have been hearing and seeing. I need every word of encouragement I can get.
This comment surely speaks for many of us.
Upon reading that lament and plea, I decided to share in this blog an insight that works for me. Several years ago, a much respected, even beloved, social activist was asked in an interview for Religion and Ethics on PBS about the experience and challenges of aging. I wrote down his response and now keep it nearby, not so much as a quote to be remembered but as a template to be used. It reminds me of where to find in life one’s “underserved integrity” and its source of joy, being in the right fight. The template reads:
I’d just as soon live a little bit longer. But when you are 80, you can’t complain. Joy in this world comes from self-fulfillment. Joy is a more profound experience than mere happiness. When you feel a sense of undeserved integrity because you think you’re in the right fight — against segregation, against the war in Vietnam, against the stupid and cruel discrimination against gays and lesbians — these are the right fights, I feel very deeply. And the sense of self-fulfillment which comes from being in the right fight is a wonderful thing.
Among the countless wonderful things in our lives, being in the right fights should be one of the more important. Joy in this world comes from self-fulfillment, when you feel a sense of undeserved integrity because you think, no, you know, that you are in the right fight and I would add, for the right reason. Followers of Jesus know what those fights are and why they are in them. They are against racism, the horror and injustice of war, a cruel and inhumane immigration/deportation policy, the spreading of willful un-checked lies, discriminations of all kinds against brothers and sisters of every faith and no faith, and the uncaring treatment by the wealthy and powerful of the poor and marginalized, the last and least among us. These and others are the right fights. And the right reason is because Jesus requires it of us.
The apostle Paul was familiar with these types of fights. I am reminded of a passage from Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus, a congregation he established and with whom he lived for three years fighting the right fights with local demonic powers (the occult, magic, ritual prostitution etc.) and the commercial interests of the silversmiths of the day who profited from making idols for public purchase. Acts 19 gives a long and descriptive account of all the confusion and animosity of a riot caused by those who were threatened by Paul’s successful preaching. They also resented, as would be expected, his condemnation of the commerce of the day. It is quite a colorful account. He refers to it again in this letter to the church of Ephesus, offering an affirmation of their anger but giving a warning to his readers as well:
26 Be angry but do not sin;[a] do not let the sun go down on your anger, 27 and do not make room for the devil. (Ephesians 4: 26-27, NRSVU)
That is the key, isn’t it? We must be angry but not let it get the best of us, or as Paul says, make room for the devil and make us vulnerable to sin. In a wonderful book sent to me by Betsy Sturrock titled The Pastor as Minor Poet: Texts and Subtexts in the Ministerial Life, M. Craig Barnes defines sin simply as anything that separates us from God. (p.34)
Lent is a holy season of reflection, confession, repentance, and reconciliation. Lois and I traveled to Fort Myers, Florida last week so that she could play in a women’s member guest golf tournament at Cypress Lakes Golf Club. After two days of competition, they were “winner, winner, chicken dinner,” securing a third-place finish. While the women were on the golf course, David and I enjoyed our companionship and conversations about the world and our nation and how to live in them with purpose and a sense of that self-fulfillment I mentioned earlier. Our friends have a lovely home, which features an inviting library/reading room. Resting upon one of the bookshelves is a framed photo of a smiling and I am sure, not so penitent, David knocking on the door of a confessional booth, a.k.a. ‘the dark box,’ at an historic church in Ireland. I mentioned at the time that it was a great pic and so meaningful for this Lenten season! It would be well for each of us to knock at the door of our own physical or spiritual confessional and enter with an openness and honesty about ourselves and the state of our relationship with God. Indeed, I have always relied on the words and wisdom of the Apostle Paul as they are recorded in his Epistle to the Romans:
…for there is no distinction, 23 since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; 24 they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement[f] by his blood, effective through faith. (Romans 3: 22-25, NRSVU)
Paul is saying that we are all in this together. During my ministry in Coventry, I tried to explain this concept of sin in the following way: “Because of sin, we sin.” In other words, because of whatever sense of separation we have with God, and for whatever reason, we act out in ways that are sinful, that is, against what God expects from us. The good news of the Gospel, however, is that in Christ God makes it and us right as a gift and we are made alive. St. Ireneus, (c. 130-202 A.D.). the Greek Bishop and writer who was considered a Father of the Church once defined the glory of God in a brief but inspiring line:
The glory of God is a human being fully alive.=
We fall short of that glory by not being fully alive and can only attain it through the experience of reconciliation in Christ. Our brothers and sisters in the Catholic faith have it right when identifying “Confession” as the “Sacrament of Reconciliation.” No wonder my good friend David was smiling while knocking on that confessional door! We are never alone in whatever measure of darkness we bring into the black box; never alone with whatever sense we may have that our relationship with God and with each other is not what we want it to be. Most importantly, we are also never alone when receiving God’s gift of grace in Christ Jesus.
My own Lenten journey has brought me to the daily meditations of Father Richard Rohr, the Franciscan priest and writer. As if written for this blog, his “The Tears of Things” connects the angers we feel and the fights we fight with a deep and universal sadness over the threatening, dark realities of this world. He writes:
Over time, the Hebrew prophets came to see this profound connection between sadness and anger. It was what converted them to a level of truth-telling. They first needed to get angry at injustices, oppression, and war. Anger can be deserved, and even virtuous, particularly when it motivates us to begin seeking necessary change. But only until sunset, Paul says (Ephesians 4:26). If we stay with our rage and resentment too long, we will righteously and unthinkingly pass on the hurt in ever new directions, and we injure our own souls in ways we don’t even recognize. (Tuesday, March 4, 2025)
Here is the message: “be angry but do not sin.” Rather, we must not let the anger survive the sunset. When the morning breaks let us rejoice in the free gift of God’s justification in Christ and that sense of reconciliation that equips us for the right fights.
I hope that these few thoughts are helpful in our shared commitment to be right with God and with one another. Our hope is to become human beings fully alive, restored by God’s grace to health and wholeness, to being loveable and loving and to living the life marked by faithfully following Jesus.
Let me close with these words of encouragement from Jesus Himself:
7 “Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. 8 For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. 9 Is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for bread, would give a stone? 10 Or if the child asked for a fish, would give a snake? 11 If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Matthew 7: 7-11, NRSVU)`