Anger ... a doorway to healing?

I found a new use for this blog space ... posting homilies! This is from Sunday just past.

The format of homilies at the evening service is shared ... meaning that the homily is succinct, and then is followed by congregational responses. Unfortunately, I could not recapture the responses from Sunday as I wrote this up before Sunday.

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Anger-A Doorway to Healing – 6^th Sunday after the Epiphany, February 12, 2012, St. Paul's Episcopal Church, 5pm Liturgy

Readings: 2 Kings 5:1-14 — Psalm 30; 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 — Mark 1:40-45

For he is angry but a moment,
And when he is pleased there is life.

This is the Jewish Bible’s translation of the lines we heard as

For his wrath endures but the twinkling of an eye,
His favor for a lifetime.

I give you the Jewish translation of these lines because they tell us more about God’s actions – a movement from anger to life – or, as the next two lines of the Psalm say, from weeping to joy.

These lines about divine anger and divine joy are like a filter with which we can look at all the readings-for many of the characters in our readings today experience anger …  followed by healing … from which we can only imagine there must have been great joy.

But before we go to the readings, I want to tell you a brief story. This is a story that is true in spirit- I have changed the name of the person I describe, as well as some of the details-but the essence remains true to how I remember this.

There once was a man named Tim. Tim was hospitalized, against his will, after several psychotic episodes. Sometime while he was at the hospital, his case manager Alice introduced him to an organization that had a house called the “house of healing.” Alice said that Tim was invited to consider moving there after he was stabilized on his medications and that if he did, this “house of healing” would be a community that would support him in his recovery and his search for permanent housing. He was not sure about the idea, but he decided he would go there because he did want to find his own place sooner rather than later.

When Tim arrived he learned that he was “supposed” to take his medication while living in the house, as well as come home for a community dinner every evening, but that no one could force him to do anything. So Tim only took his medications if someone reminded him. He never would ask. He also started leaving the house for hours at a time and not calling to say he would not be home for dinner. He also became increasingly frustrated with other residents who were in the house, people who had been in the hospital like he had. They reminded him of his experience there. He also stopped eating for a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, the staff who worked for the house became very concerned and started reinforcing that Tim had to take his medications in order to stay in the house. Also, the other residents were avoiding him because they picked up on his anger. This made Tim even more angry because he felt he was being watched and told what to do- just like in the hospital. Circumstances continued to unfold and Tim ended up having to go back to the hospital.

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Tim, like Naaman was surrounded by people who cared and offered a very simple suggestion for healing: please take your medication and please come home for dinner. First Naaman heard from Elisha, wash in the Jordan seven times in order to be clean. And Naaman is outraged—how could he have traveled all this way to simply be told to wash in the river? Isn’t the water at home good enough? And Tim, too, was angry when he was given such simple solutions: take your medication and come home for dinner.

In the story I told, I gave you my imagined account of Tim’s perspective as I remembered it. But I could have also focused on my own frustration as I saw Tim’s experience- for all I could do, as staff in the house, was repeat please take your medication and come home for dinner. And this was not working. And so I certainly was left to feel rather like the king of Israel, who was sure that the king of Aram was out to make a fool of him by sending him someone he did not have the power to heal.

Our gospel also tells us something about anger: the line we read as “moved with pity” can also be translated “moved with anger” or “moved with compassion.” So Jesus-perhaps feeling a combination of anger, pity and compassion, reaches out to touch the leper in the story. The gospel does not tell us why Jesus might have had these feelings, but we might make some guesses about how he might have been frustrated, sad and angry about how vast the needs for healing seemed to be among the crowds he was surrounded by.

Notice, though, that anger does not stand alone for any of the characters in our readings – all of them, like the writer of the Psalm—experience anger and then healing. When the king of Israel becomes angry, Elisha responds to his need, saying, send Naaman to me. When Naaman becomes frustrated with Elisha, his servants urge him to listen- which he does, ultimately, so he is made clean. Could the expression of anger itself open the door to healing? Or perhaps even just the recognition of anger?

Our gospel might offer us some insight here. Jesus is first moved with anger, compassion and pity. He then acts on his feeling, reaching out and saying “I do choose. Be made clean.” One can only imagine that as he reached out to touch the man in the story, his movement contained within it all the anger, compassion and pity he felt- and gave him the conviction to act as he did, to choose to participate in another’s healing.

I wonder how the stories of the characters in our readings resonate with you this evening. I wonder whether if you have experienced a frustration like Naaman’s, when you received simple instructions for healing that could not possibly be enough … only to find out later that they were right after all. Or I wonder if you have experienced the king of Israel’s frustration, when you felt others expected you to be able to solve someone else’s problem or even your own … only to discover you were not alone to fix the problem in the first place. Or I wonder if you have experienced an anger like Jesus’s, that compelled you to act towards healing because you could not do otherwise.

Whose story might resonate the most with you today? Do you find yourself identifying with one or more of these characters’ experiences of anger that opened the door to healing?

I invite your responses …