Those of us who viewed this week’s State of the Union address saw a number of angry outbursts during the speech. Legislators repeatedly yelled at the president as he spoke. While these displays were disturbing, they were not necessarily surprising. Over the past decade or so much of what we hear and see in public behavior seems to be nothing more than unmitigated rage.
The day after the speech, a longtime friend and I went for a bike ride and, during a break for coffee, talked both about the angry behavior and remembered the movie Network the great film from 1976. It was written by Paddy Chayefsky, and it satirized the world of television. You may remember the signal moment from that film when newscaster Howard Beale, played to perfection by Peter Finch, goes on national television and says:
All I know is that first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, 'I'm a HUMAN BEING . . .My life has VALUE!' So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, 'I'M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!'
Now that’s a bracing speech, but what happens next is both hilarious and scary: apartment house windows open, and people lean their heads out over their fire escapes and yell in unison: “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
In 1976 this scene became what we would later come to call a meme, and “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” caught on as a catch phrase. We all thought it satirical and bizarre. Who knew that, 47 years, later, uncontrolled rage would become the dominant mode of our public life?
This ritualized expression of rage fit the moment perfectly. The 1970s were the time of self-actualization and “getting in touch with your feelings”. It became a truism of the time that anger was, in fact, a good thing and that the church had squelched our emotions by insisting that we all try to be nice at all times. I was in seminary in the early ‘70s and found myself in quite a few encounter groups. It was almost a matter of faith in those days that expressing your anger was the first step on the road to personal and emotional authenticity.
Forty-odd years later, it appears that even if authenticity is a virtue, we might now be experiencing too much of a good thing. Everybody in this society seems to be either enraged, affronted, or aggrieved. “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” is no longer a satirical catch phrase. It is the slogan of the 21st century: congressional outbursts; mass shootings; driving cars into parades. The list is depressing and endless.
Our Gospel for this morning [Matthew 5: 21-37] continues our ongoing engagement of the Sermon on the Mount and begins with Jesus’s remarks on anger. He also discusses adultery and divorce in this section, but the anger portion is the largest, and in it he says essentially three things: first, “if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment”; second, “when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift”; and third, “come to terms quickly with your accuser while you are on the way to court with him.”
In other words: don’t be angry, be reconciled to your sibling, and come to terms with your adversary. These are counsels of moderation. In the past decades they have been heard as a kind of schoolmarmish raining on our collective emotional parade. In the light of both September 11, 2001 and January 6, 2021 they seem like exceedingly good advice.
I’ve spent much of the last month reading Cormac McCarthy’s pair of new novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris. The plots are too complicated to go into here, but near the end of the second book a character discusses the connection between grief and anger and says this:
I know that you can make a good case that all of human sorrow is grounded in injustice. And that sorrow is what is left when rage is expended and found to be impotent. [Cormac McCarthy, Stella Maris, p. 164]
When trying to understand anger, it is helpful to explore the connection between sorrow and rage. Indeed, if you remember the old “feelings wheel”, another relic of the late 20th century, you’ll know that anger and sorrow were always placed very close to each other. One of the things I learned over years in therapy was how my own anger was often an expression of grief over loss—loss of a person, loss of control, loss of something I could not name. My anger did not come out of the blue. It came out as an expression of something I could not adequately give words to, much less understand.
Now it doesn’t take Sigmund Freud to connect all of the public expressions of anger we see in the world today to what might be underlying experiences of grief. Some are angry that they have lost power, status, and prestige. Others are angry that they continue to be victimized by forces beyond their control. Still others lament the predictable yet tragic costs of being alive—the death of loved ones, the decline in one’s physical faculties, the simple fragility of being human. It is easier—and more socially acceptable, particularly for men—to get angry than to cry. Sorrow often presents itself as rage.
When Jesus tells us that “if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment”, I don’t think he is telling us not to feel or experience anger. Just as in last week’s Gospel he called us to a “higher righteousness”, I believe that today his call is to a deeper acknowledgment of what we actually feel. His two injunctions—to leave our gift at the altar and to make peace before we take our sibling to court—these two warnings ask that we stop in our tracks and think about what we are doing.
It won’t come as a surprise when I say that reflection and introspection are not much on display these days. As our culture speeds up, we tend more and more to act before we think. You may have seen the video and followed the story of the man in the black Tesla who terrorized other motorists on L.A.freeways earlier this year. In stop and go traffic he would get out of his car and bash other vehicles with a pipe. After he was arrested it became known that he has a long history of interpersonal violence. [“Inside a Tesla driver’s alleged ‘reign of terror’ on L.A. freeways and violent past”, Los Angeles Times, February 1, 2023] The striking thing about all the accounts is the way he would go from 0 to 120 on the rage meter instantly and begin hitting people without even thinking about it. I think many of us behave similarly at the computer keyboard, or indeed around the house; perhaps not physically, but certainly verbally and attitudinally. Our first, and easiest response to something which challenges us is to get angry. “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” has become our default response to almost everything.
When Jesus tells us to drop our offering and be reconciled, or to think twice about taking our neighbor to court, he is not asking that we deny whatever righteous feelings of anger we might possess. There is a real difference between righteous anger and reactive rage. We are always justifiably outraged by oppression, injustice, and violence. Jesus is asking only that we become more self-aware and try to understand what our anger is really about. Jesus is countercultural in many ways, but perhaps mostly so because he really knew who he was. He knew, accepted, and loved himself and was therefore able to know, accept, and love others. In today’s teaching to his followers—not only those around him on the mountain but you and me, here today—he asks simply that we ask ourselves what it really is we’re feeling when we explode in rage. Before you grab that pipe or hit send on that social media post, think about what is really going on with you. Is it really prophetic anger, or is it a kneejerk expression that disguises grief over a loss you cannot name?
“I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!” If you do remember the movie Network, you’ll also remember that Howard Beale’s rage finally drives him insane. That’s what happens when our world inside is not aligned with what is happening around us. Before we express our anger, let’s stop and think what it might really be about. In so doing we will be taking a step in the direction of that personal authenticity and higher righteousness that Jesus exemplified and asks that we do our best to live into as well. Amen.
