echoes of redemption

People love to watch Jack Bauer on television – there is something about his unbridled passion. His anger is focused.

He gets the job done.

Yet for a lot of people when the television shuts off, their aversion to anger increases greatly. They don’t want to be around someone with that much raw passion.

Many of us have been hurt by anger. Someone took it too far. Someone lost control. And, to be honest, we’re still sorting through it. Any anger in the room, justified or not, brings a flood of emotions we’re not ready to deal with.

Tianne Moon at Fellowship taught me that when I take everything personally, I’m struggling with pride.

Anger must be present in our world. Anger moves us as people. It gives us reason to change. It makes the world a better place.

If anger is used properly, it is focused on situations and it leads us to action. And action leads to change. If we take this kind of anger personally, we have our value as a person inseparably linked to our performance.

We are probably not taking a sabbath – God’s gift to help us destroy the link between who we are and what we produce.

Our desire to be “right” has replaced our desire to do right.

In a way, this takes us back to Monday’s thought – that anger and weeping go together. It’s anger and humility. Anger and change. Anger and openness. God designed them to be interwoven. Balanced.

The story of Jesus driving people out of the temple in John 2 is so counter the Jesus I grew up learning about. The one who used his hands to form the world now wielding a whip. Cracking it against the skin he created. It’s too much to think about.

The creator inflicting physical pain on the created.

And why? Look at how the passage is laid out. Jesus walks into the temple and finds people selling (1) oxen, (2) sheep and (3) pigeons. He also finds (4) money changers.

He then makes a whip and uses it to drive out the (1) oxen and (2) sheep. Then he turns over the tables of the (4) money changers.

One group he saves for last. One group he addresses verbally. One group he makes an example of.

And he told those who sold the pigeons, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade.” – John 2:16

Jesus saw men selling pigeons and he was livid.

And why?

The sacrificial system set up in Leviticus revolved around animal sacrifice. In an agrarian culture animals = money. But not everyone has money. Which means not everyone has animals. So God extended grace. A way that someone without money could access him.

But if he cannot afford a lamb, then he shall bring to the Lord as his compensation for the sin that he has committed two turtledoves or two pigeons, one for a sin offering and the other for a burnt offering. – Leviticus 5:7

Anyone can catch a pigeon. After all, who sends the pigeons?

God set up a redemptive system and provided everything people needed to live within it. So when Jesus saw people in the temple selling pigeons he exploded in fury. The religious leaders were essentially saying, “A pigeon you catch on your own isn’t enough. You have to buy Temple Pigeons.” The very way that God provided to help the oppressed was now a tool used to further their oppression.

One of the greatest prayers I can lift up is for anger toward the things that make God angry. Because I am designed to follow God’s heart and God’s anger always moves him into action.

—update—

I just finished reading Vince’s post on Jesus as a “tough, confrontational, revolutionary leader,” and I thought… yeah. Check it out here.

The book of Lamentations is amazing. In the first song of lament, of the five that make up the book, I find myself totally enamored with the ethos of lamenting.

The prophets had predicted the fall of Jerusalem for years. Their immeasurable anger was reflective of God’s attitude toward his people’s sin. That sin, unchecked, led to the fall – the destruction of God’s people and their city.

It was a moment that God’s prophets had predicted for generations. Their anger toward Israel’s action was supposed to lead the people away from the sin that would destroy them. They were supposed to stop it.

And yet it fell.

You might expect a giant divine “I told you so. I warned you. You earned this.”

Instead you find weeping.

People that who fall into the mentality of, “she got what she deserved” don’t understand how to weep. Somehow they’ve been ignorant to God’s passion for his people and his desire to see them reconciled. Somehow they missed it when God was hurt by the pain they had to go through to return to him.

The message of Lamentations is clear: The only thing that that matches God’s anger for sin is the pain he feels when it hurts his people.