Rev. Tully M Fletcher’s Sermon
Intro:
We enter into a new book of the Bible this week. The letter of James.
Many books of the new testament are identified by whom they are written to, (eg. Romans, Hebrews, Galatians, etc.). James in unique in that it is named after the one who wrote it, [Probably].
We are not 100% sure who wrote this Book.
James could have been one of the 12 disciples
James could have been Jesus brother.
James could have been someone else.
James could have been written by someone not named James.
We don’t know for sure.
We do know that this book, was one of the last to make it into the holy collection of books we know as the New Testament.
This book has a strong Jewish connection mentioning many of the old testament names.
This book has a very different approach to faith and salvation then most of the other letters in the NT.
James places a high priority on “works” that is putting our faith into action.
We get this amazing line in verse 22,
Be doers of the word.
Later in the book, James makes a very bold claim that faith without works, is dead.
Meaning, if you believe, and think all the right things, but you never put that thinking into action,
then did you ever really, truly, believe all the things you said you believed?
Rest of September
I’m getting ahead of myself…
This is all in the 2nd and 3rd chapters of James that pastor Todd will be preaching on for the rest of this month.
Today, we will talk a little bit about “works,”
but mostly we’ll talk about anger.
Anger
I want to re-read verse 19
19 You must understand this, my beloved:
let everyone be
quick to listen,
slow to speak,
slow to anger;
20 for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.
quick to listen,
slow to speak,
slow to anger;
These words are good and holy words, but yet, they are not at all the words we live by in our country today.
If anything, we have flipped this equation around:
We are quick to anger, and quick to speak
And we are painfully slow to listen, if we ever listen at all.
I would say, that in our nation, in 2024, we are nearing the climax of an epidemic of anger.
We are sick with wrath.
We are infected by rage.
We are seething with fury.
Let me give you a few examples.
Anger Examples (road rage)
How many of you have seen road rage recently?
People driving on the highway, who don’t like the speed you are driving, and instead of just driving around you, they get really close, honk their horn, wave frantically at you with a certain finger?
Just recently, I was driving away from my house. I pulled out, and I could see that the light ahead of me was red, and instead of speeding up, just to slow down, I sort of slowly drove to the stop light. A guy was coming down the road, and I had turned in front of him, there was plenty of space, but he got right up behind me and laid on his horn, what did he want me to do, speed up for 2 seconds, and then slam on my brakes at the light?
Any of you guilty of this kind of behavior?
Anger Examples (politicians)
Road rage is bad, but if there is one group of people who is consistently more angry and more rude than Atlanta drivers, it is politicians.
The hatred and fear mongering that spews from their mouth is so extreme.
We are bombarded with negative political ads. Which provoke us, and scare us.
It makes me want to turn off the TV and the radio.
Anger Example (short)
Joel story:
A man walks by the soup kitchen line, and he gets so angry, and yells at the people, and says, “get a job!”
When I had my bicycle accident, man drove by and yelled at me in anger.
“you share the road, that’s what you get…”
Anger Examples (in the media)
Another reason to turn off the TV is the anger on display through TV shows.
My wife wanted me to watch some new show called the bear. I watched a few minutes, and it was just people yelling at each other in a kitchen. Being mean and loud.
When the commercial break came, I just turned it off.
Reality TV is also bad at this.
You get these cooking shows, or modeling shows, some form of competition, where the producers of the show raise the stress level and bring out the worst in humanity.
American Idol is a prime example of this. The show became popular not because people liked the singers, but because we all wanted to watch Simon be mean the contestants that were not very good.
What ever happened to:
“If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all?”
We are quick to anger, and quick to speak
And we are painfully slow to listen,
The news
Just this morning, on NPR, the calmest of all the news stations.
A bit furious, that the pac 12 has 2 teams, and California teams are in the ACC.
The media wants us to be furious.
We have normalized being angry and mean.
Olympic rage
Does anyone remember about a month ago, when we all lost our collective minds? The media got everyone all riled up, because something in the open ceremonies of the Olympics? Some French men wore dresses, and posed in a way that resembled a famous painting?
Really? That is what we all got upset about?
We are quick to anger, and quick to speak
Does anyone remember in the summer of 2020 when we all had a collective tantrum about racial injustice?
As if it was a brand new problem?
Or January of 2021, when a thousand people stormed the capitol in rage?
We are sick with anger.
Take a moment of silence
Hulk example
In the movie the Avengers, in the middle of the big fight scene, Captain America says,
“Dr. Banner, Now might be a really good time for you to get angry.”
Bruce responds, “That’s my secret Cap. I’m always angry.”
He then turns green, starts smashing things.
We are like the Incredible Hulk, we are always angry.
For the last 8 or 9 years, maybe for the last 20 years?
It seems that we as a nation are on edge of anger ALL THE TIME.
We have so much pent up rage, that we never get a chance to be truly,
NOT angry.
We are never truly “at peace.”
We are quick to anger, and quick to speak
We have this sort of low level of rage, always present, always under the surface.
The politicians, know how to provoke us, and make us lose our tempers.
We have things to be angry about:
- Genocide in Palestine
- Racial injustice
- The mistreatment of women around the world
- Homelessness, and systemic poverty
We are quick to anger, and quick to speak
Take a long long moment
Not God’s righteousness
We are quick to anger, and quick to speak
And we are painfully slow to listen, if we ever listen at all.
While being “always angry” is great for comic books and cinema, when the bad guy is a giant flying monster from outer space.
This perpetual anger attitude is not so helpful when there are no ‘evil aliens’ only other humans at whom we directed our rage, when we hulk out.
In the midst of our constant anger, the thing we are unable to hear. The words of wisdom we drown out, are those in verse 20.
20 for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.
We think our anger is justified.
We think our anger is good.
We think our anger motivates us to fix things.
Get angry.
We think we have righteous anger.
Because our righteous anger feels good.
Well here is the truth.
Being angry feels good in the same way that peeing your pants feels warm.
Take a moment
So let’s lower the temperature.
Let’s spend a moment to reduce our rage.
And put our tempers away.
Take a breath
Take a breath…
Breath in God’s mercy.
Breath out God’s grace to others.
Breath in God’s forgiveness
Breath out God’s love to other.
20 for your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.
Wearing masks
We are in a pandemic of anger.
Anger is spreading around our country like a virus infecting people.
Some people are immune, some people are better at resisting the infestation in their heart, but most of us, we are sick with anger.
And like COVID, or the Flu, or just the common cold, the biggest problem with our sickness is not how it affects us, but how it can infect others.
Hold up a mask
Remember these?
Remember why we wore these masks?
It wasn’t so much about protecting ourselves.
It was more about protecting others.
I wore the mase, so that I didn’t get you sick.
We need the same thing with our anger.
We need to stop the spread.
5 steps
Step 1 = Breath
take a breath, take a moment, slow down.
Be SLOW to speak.
Use this moment to say a prayer.
“God help me be less angry.”
“God take away my rage.”
Step 2 = Assess
Do a little self assessment
Check in with your body and your heart.
As we say to my 5 year old, listen to your body.
How you feeling?
How’s your anger level?
What “at this moment” is making you upset?
Step 3 = Say something nice
If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.
But in reality, you can say something nice.
You can always say something nice.
Even if it isn’t 100% true, you can say something nice.
Step 4 = Do something good
22 But be doers of the word,
Do something loving or positive in the world.
As the scripture says this morning:
27 Religion that is pure… is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress…
Not a fair fight
if it is just you and the anger, that is not a fight you are going to win most of the time, you can’t stop the anger with nothingness.
Instead fill your life with positive things.
With love and service
Do the word of God and when you fill your heart with those things you won’t have room in here for anger.
Step 5 = repeat
Repeat the process.
1Breath, 2assess, 3say something nice, 4do something good, & 5repeat.
