I preached this sermon on Sunday, April 6 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The text cited is John 12:1-8, Jesus’ anointing for burial by Mary of Bethany.
There’s an aspect of life—of faith, even—that we don’t talk much about on Sundays. Maybe it’s because we’ve been raised to be polite. Maybe it’s because, for very good reason, we hold fast to the proclamation of a loving and gracious God. But nonetheless, there’s something that we all contend with in our lives that’s probably worth talking about, and that’s anger.
Are you feeling angry these days?
If not, at some point you surely have felt it, whether about the state of the world; the decisions of others; or the frustrations that tend to show up each day. Maybe you’ve felt anger at yourself for the things you wish you’d done differently but can’t take back. I know I have felt all this and more, though as a person who tries to remain centered and peaceful, I may not like to admit it.
But anger is hard to avoid when our hopes are dashed or our deep fears encountered or our wounds touched. And some days we might wonder, if anger is so bad for us, why, Lord, do people keep giving me so many good opportunities to practice it??
It’s tough, though, because sometimes a bit of righteous anger feels appropriate. I get angry, for example, when folks demonize vulnerable groups of people who aren’t hurting them, people who are just trying to live their lives as best they can.
And I get angry, too, when I see how working-class communities like the one my family came from in rural Michigan have been dismissed and left behind by 21st century economics and culture.
And this is sillier, but I was even a bit angry last week when Cincinnati got passed over for the Sundance Film Festival because, essentially, some folks out west still consider the entire middle of the country a big blank space. I’m from California, but I consider myself a proud midwesterner now, so that riled me up a bit!
I cite these because anger, it seems, cuts across ideologies, politics, cultures, and identities. It is an equal-opportunity companion in this life. And there are plenty of late nights when I reflect on my own personal failures and I’m just angry at my own foolish self.
The question is, what do we do about it?
In a cultural moment that seems so saturated by anger and its consorts—fear, anxiety, uncertainty, cynicism—the question of what to do with our anger, individual and collective, is both an ethical and an existential one. Ethical, because somehow we have to figure out how to live meaningfully in this world despite its frustrations. Existential, because Jesus calls us to be something more than the sum of our many angers.
Lent is almost over, and we are in the foothills of Holy Week. Soon, through the Passion of Christ, we will bear witness to the the cost of humanity’s capacity for self-defeating anger. So it’s a good time to figure out what to do about the rage within us and amongst us, lest we keep on murdering the promise of the kingdom that still stands in our midst.
In today’s Gospel reading, I think we are given two insights–two pathways–in our response to anger, though I don’t think that this story is usually viewed that way.
Consider first Mary of Bethany—she who previously sat at Jesus’ feet while her sister Martha cooked and cleaned. Mary is not usually viewed as an angry person, but for the first time this week I found myself wondering if here, in this moment in the narrative, she actually is.
Because I remember how angry I was when my father was dying—not angry at him, but angry that it had to happen at all. Angry that I had to watch his vitality slowly ebb away. And I know, too, how somethings the things we love the most also wound us the deepest. And so I wondered, maybe, if Mary’s anointing, her shattering of the precious jar, her wasteful smearing of fragrant oils, was not, as I have often assumed, some sort of calm, smiling ritual.
Maybe there were angry tears streaming down her face as she did so. Maybe she was furious with grief that Jesus–her teacher, her Lord, the one who raised her brother from the dead, the one who could potentially make this mess of a world beautiful again—maybe she was furious that he was giving himself over, that he was surrendering himself to death at the hands of those same old persecutors who kill everything good. Maybe Mary was anointing him with holy anger as much as holy love. Because I find those two are often strange companions in the tangle of this life, where good things break and sure things falter and we must both rage and bless at the same time.
However (and this is essential) anoint him she does, even through her angry tears, because despite how disappointed Mary must be that Jesus will die, and that life does not conform to our expectations, she realizes in the way that only Wisdom can reveal that we must anoint our fierce anger at the world with an even fiercer love, rather than try to manipulate or abandon or destroy what disappoints us.
Because to give into that temptation is to choose the other path in the story today—that of Judas, the betrayer, who is likely also disappointed that Jesus is not the sort of savior he imagined. But for Judas, it seems, the world is just a series of disputes to be bargained and negotiated and won, rather than a network of relationships to honor.
It may be tempting to navigate the world that way, with our understandable anger at the way things are (even Judas surely raged against the empire) but it is not the way of Jesus. It is not the way that will lead to the flourishing or health or peace that Jesus offers. Only the pouring out of our hearts, only the giving away of our costly love will ever lead us to the kingdom of Christ.
So what do we do, friends, with the angers of our own life and times? How do we acknowledge all that we carry within ourselves but then, like Mary of Bethany, surrender it to our Lord?
First, we have to name it—really name it. Maybe part of the problem in all our conditioning to be polite is that we tend to remain strangers with our anger. Maybe it would help to begin by writing down for ourselves the things that anger us. Not on social media, please, but just for ourselves. An accounting of our frustrations, our sorrows, our disappointments, and our fears. And then, as this Lent winds down, give them over to Jesus in prayer.
Maybe it would help, like Mary, to undo your hair, and bend low, and smear the bittersweet fragrance of your rage and blessing on his feet. If you are disappointed that nothing seems like an easy fix, tell him. If you had hope for so much more from this life and from your fellow humans, tell him. If you don’t understand why crucifixion must be the path, and why we can’t have nice things, and why so many people suffer for no good reason at all, tell him.
But I pray we will tell him, too, that in our anger, we will refuse to be apathetic or craven or cynical. That we’ll tell him we’re willing to love with our shattered jar and our shattered hearts. I promise you, he will understand.
And then, together, we will continue to go about the work of building a community and a world in which, even as we acknowledge our anger, we become a people who are not ultimately formed by it. A people who will not sell our hope for thirty pieces of silver or justify our anger on the backs of the poor, but who will anoint the present moment with our furious compassion. Even with tears in our eyes.
Because every week, as we come to the table to feast on the shattered pieces of Christ’s body, we glimpse the truth: anger is persistent, yes, but love is eternal. And he will transform it all: our anger, our grief, our disappointment, our fear. He will transform it.
Just ask Mary. Because in a couple of weeks’ time, we will see her again, but it will be in a garden, in the cool morning light, with the perfume of burial washed away by the scent of living, resurrected things. And she will cry very different tears. And maybe so will we.
And for once in the history of broken jars and broken hearts and all the things we do not understand, our anger, at last, will be forgotten.
By Another Road 