GIVE FREELY, LOVE UNCONDITIONALLY

Many years ago, a friend of mine, who was a guidance counselor at the time, gave a survey on bullying to our students.

One of the questions, an obvious question, was whether or not they had ever bullied someone, and if so why?

One of the students answered that yes, he had bullied kids and the reason he gave was one word … angerment.

Yes, you are correct “angerment” is not a word.

And yet this new word seemed perfect.  Anger is something you feel.  Angerment is something you have.  It is something you own.  It is a part of you, to the bone.

There are still days, decades later, where I will text my friend and tell her, “I have angerment.”

In our readings over the past few weeks, including today’s reading from Matthew, we see a Jesus that has some angerment.

And it may be a side of Jesus that makes us uncomfortable.  It’s not a side we’re used to seeing.  Recently I have been watching various episodes of The Chosen.  I am in the middle of writing my new book and I want to make sure that my stories, my interpretations of Jesus’s miracles, specifically, are different than other interpretations.  I don’t want to be accused of copying.

But what amazes me as I watch The Chosen is just how loveable Jesus is.  The people of the time expected the Messiah to be a soldier, a King David, to lead them into battle.  But the Jesus we see in The Chosen is … quite frankly … and I mean this respectfully, a big old Teddy Bear.  He is someone you want to be embraced by.  He is someone you want to hear tell you how much God loves you.

In the episode where He meets the woman at the well, He is almost pleading, begging her to believe Him.  He has tears in His eyes.  It’s not that He needs her to believe for His sake.  It’s that He wants her to believe for her sake, because He knows how much she needs this, to know that God is watching over her, that God sees her.

But the Jesus who says in today’s reading, “You brood of vipers,” is a Jesus with angerment, not bullying angerment, but a righteous anger.  Between Matthew 23, today’s reading, and Mathew 26 where Jesus is betrayed and arrested, Jesus makes many comments about the end times, about the signs of the times, and final judgement. 

Jesus’s words in today’s reading are harsh.  They are not gentle.  They are not kind.  Jesus is running out of time.  And it forces Him to get real so to speak.

“For you are like whitewashed tombs, which on the outside look beautiful, but inside they are full of the bones of the dead and of all kinds of filth,” Jesus says. 

These are words that speak to us even today. 

In The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde, which you may have read in high school, but is definitely required reading if you are an English major in college, a man, Dorian Gray, sells his soul for eternal youth.  A painted portrait of him, hidden in the attic does all the aging for him.  But the story is more than that.  Given a life where consequences are meaningless, Dorian Gray engages in some truly awful behavior.  It is not just that the picture shows his true physical age, it also shows the monster within him, the evil that he has done.

Dorian Gray is Jesus’s “whitewashed tomb” and his portrait is what is filled “with all kinds of filth.”

As I have said many times, it is so easy these days to become cynical about the state of our world.

But even as I was writing this, right after I finished the Dorian Gray sentence above, there was a knock on the door. 

It was the little girl, the one who has been knocking on my door from the time I first moved here, trying to sell me things, but who I have not seen in a very long time.  Last night, she had books and she wanted to know if I wanted them for the Little Free Library, but here’s the thing … she wanted money for them.

And while I was good with giving the kids money for things they made like bracelets and other artistic things, I knew I had to draw the line with books.  That’s not the purpose of the Little Free Library.

So, I told her I would trade her, books for books.

She didn’t seem thrilled by my offer.  She hemmed and hawed about it for a minute but she had a boy with her who was her age or maybe younger and who I hadn’t seen before.

And he looked at her and said, “Yeah, let’s take the books.”

So I asked them what kind of books they liked and while they put their donations in the library, I went looking through my shelves.

I wound up giving them Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Captain Underpants of course and some books based on Disney Pixar movies and some other graphic novels that I thought they might like.

The boy called them picture books but because I had called them graphic novels, the little girl corrected him. 

She had already realized that calling them graphic novels elevates them.  They’re not little kids books.

For the past several weeks, I have been talking about our reading where Jesus warns people not to put stumbling blocks in front of the children.  Now I have taken that as to say we should not put stumbling blocks in front of any of God’s children and we are all God’s children.

But I don’t want to take away from the fact that Jesus consistently shows how much He values children, our little ones.

Earlier yesterday, I had been so cranky.  I had such angerment.  I was so frustrated with people behaving badly. 

I have no idea what those kids will do with those books.  Maybe someone will tell them they can get money from Half Price Books if they take them there.  Maybe the books will wind up discarded in their yard.  Or maybe they’ll find a space on a bookshelf.  Maybe they’ll be treasured.

But what happens to the books is not the point.  Did you see how quickly wondering like that can turn cynical?

The point is … the joy is … in the giving.

And so maybe the answer to angerment is simply this … give freely.  Whatever is most precious to you, share it with someone else.  Do it freely and unconditionally and without expectation of return.  After all this is exactly what Jesus did.

And remember this which I said so often back in the spring.

Love God.

Love your neighbor without exception.

Amen.