Why Do the Nations Rage

Why do the nations rage?

Likely a rhetorical question for the psalmist but I want to let that question stand
for a moment. I can clearly remember a time when I was at my grandma’s apartment
probably in junior high or younger. A few of my relatives were together and we were
watching TV. As we flipped through channels we came across Much Music or MTV and
there was music video for some metal band like Slayer. It was heavy, hard music and the
video was of a large group of people in a cage and they were raging within it; shaking,
rocking the cage as the music played. I can remember my uncle saying something like,
“See the rebellion of this generation.” What he did not do was ask why were they raging,
against what or who were they raging? This is not a question to justify actions because
there is little we can do well when gripped by anger but the question should give us pause
and help us to think of the internal and external environment that nurtures anger.
John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath can be read at least in part as a
meditation on the origins and complexities of anger. The story begins in Oklahoma at the
start of the Great Depression. The Joad family attempts to hold on to their farm but as
conditions worsen they become allured to the promise of land and work in California. As
they travel across the American southwest towards California they begin to see how deep
and widespread the hardships are for other Americans. Then as they draw closer to the
promised land of California some of the family members begin to wonder whether there
will be enough work for everyone. And sure enough arriving in California they are
greeted by multitudes, waves of other families who were hoping for work and a new life.
Steinbeck presents the mounting desperation of those who are scrambling for any type of
work they can find. He describes the wealthy farms and businesses who were able to
profit off of these people. He paints a picture of the hostility that the locals showed
towards these foreigners who threaten to take their jobs. These migrant people were
pressed on all sides. The locals fought the migrants out of fear and anger for losing what
little they had. The migrants fought to under bid each other to secure what little work
there was. Steinbeck writes,
“The roads were crowded with men ravenous for work, murderous for work. And the
companies, the banks worked at their own doom and they did not know it. The fields
were fruitful, and starving men moved on the roads. . . . The great companies did not
know that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line. And money that might have
gone to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, for drilling. On
the highways the people moved like ants and searched for work, for food. And the anger
began to ferment.”
More recently Brian McLaren describes an interview with a man from South
Africa who is lamenting the ongoing and relentless economic inequalities in his country.
He says in the conversation with McLaren, “I was home the other night after you spoke
and picked up Das Kapital by Marx. I hadn't read it in over twenty years. Your lecture
made me realize that we have to think about economics again. Marx's prescription was
faulty, but at least he diagnosed a problem: the exploited and excluded poor won't abide
their marginalization forever. We escaped a bloody revolution in 1994 when we
peacefully dismantled apartheid. But if we can't dismantle the inequity of our current
economic system, we will have an explosion of violence that nobody can imagine. The

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sheets will run red. I feel it. I feel it when I walk in the slums. Its like a volcano, ready to
explode - the anger of the poor, the hopelessness of the poor.”
And now this past week we heard of the insurance giant AIG who received
billions in government bailout money and then turned around gave almost millions of
dollars in additional bonuses to the employees responsible for their financial downfall.
With great justification the U.S. population has reacted with outrage. Many of the AIG
employees now live with personal security guards for fear of what the people’s anger has
threatened to unleash.
We all share this anger to some degree. On perhaps the most immature level I felt
it when Chantal and I were visiting my parents in Arizona. We went out for supper one
night and I saw big shiny pick-up truck with all sorts of chrome additions and it was
parked diagonally taking up three parking spots so that no one could park next to it. This
sight made me angry. This gesture was rude, arrogant, and selfish. Much of the anger in
our lives is actually quite understandable.
I am not interested in trying to label some anger as righteous and other anger as
personal. I think most feelings of anger work on a continuum from anger motivated by
compassion and justice to anger motivated by fear and envy. It is not one or the other but
someplace along that line. I am also not so much interested in us getting rid of anger
because I think that many of us particularly in the Mennonite church actually express too
little anger perhaps because of anger’s association with violence. Anger is not violence
and anger is not a sin. The Psalmist clearly defines that for us saying that in your anger
do not sin. Much of the Psalms and many parts of the Bible include expressions of anger.
So far I have probably not told or helped you much. Anger still remains with us
as a harmful presence in marriages, families, work places and within ourselves. We still
find ourselves somewhere between having anger influence how we view people (man
that guys is lazy) and make decisions (that woman doesn’t deserve a break) or being
consumed by it when all we see is red and destruction seems to lie in its wake. Biblically
and theologically I believe we are called not to repress our anger but to express it in the
appropriate context. It is interesting to note that the nations who rage in the psalm we
read speak about breaking chains and throwing off shackles. What the nations seem to
want is liberation, freedom. But attaining freedom is a tricky task.
The psalmist tells us that the nations rage and conspire so that they might stand
alone, independently, freely. They desire to break any and all chains. In the 1990s there
was a popular band called Rage Against the Machine and their lyrics sought to throw off
anything that seemed to confine our society. We need to ask these expressions to what
end is their anger directed. There still seems to exist a popular illusion that it is possible
to live apart from any systems, structures, orders. But this is an illusion. People are
beginning to see that bands like Rage Against the Machine and other forms of protest are
doing very little to really break structures of inequality. Rage Against the Machine
denounces corporate greed and yet remains marketed within that system. Some who have
been involved with protests say that there is always an agenda behind every protest; that
there is attempt towards grasping power behind every attempt to overthrow power. This
does not make the concerns of these groups invalid rather we need to ask how anger can
be expressed meaningfully so that change is possible.
From the rage and independence of the nations our passage this morning then
moves quickly from the earth to the heavens stating that the one enthroned above laughs.

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The Psalmist moves completely out of the order of the world and into a heavenly order.
The Lord has anointed one who rules over all the earth. The response of this anointed
one is to laugh and also . . . to be angry. The one who is different than, other than the
ordering of the world mocks the futility of the nations’ rage but is also angry at the
injustice of it, at the profanity that it has become. And what is the response of God’s
anger? To what end is it directed? The following line tells us is that the anointed one is
actually the son of God. It is the anointed one, the messiah, who will bring freedom. But
how will freedom be established? In the most disturbing lines of the Psalm we read that
the anointed one will break the nations with a rod of iron and dash them to pieces like
pottery. The anger and rage released for this world’s purposes must be broken.
We might wonder if the anger that the West showed towards the threat of
terrorists was revisited itself upon us in our current crisis. We attempted preserve and
defend what we thought was the way of freedom while in fact we were defending a
system where a few had the power to exploit, even terrorize, many. There is a place for
anger in our world but it must be severed from selfishness, envy, fear or vengeance. If
there is to be such a thing as righteous anger it must flow from one place and that is
worship.
Time again the psalmist begins in anger,
Lord why are you so far away!?
Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble!?
How long will you forget me!?
You have shaken the land and torn it up . . . now mend it!
And perhaps most famously from Psalm 22
My God, my God why have you forsaken!?
This anger is not connected first with action or response it is connected to prayer it is
absorbed into worship. In worship we find out that perhaps our anger also angers God
and so leads us to change and action or perhaps we find out that our anger is appropriate
and that we need to be patient for it to pass or we may find out that our anger is in fact
selfish and needs to be overcome.
The psalmist begins this process by being honest with God. In the presence of
God there is no hiding what you think and feel and so you would serve yourself well by
expressing honestly any anger you feel. The psalmist then sets his anger in a larger
context. He speaks of the faith of his ancestors. He acknowledges his sin and
weaknesses. He pleads for God to deliver him. He affirms the nature of God. They who
seek the Lord will praise him. And the psalmist even hints at times that this life as it is
will not be the end. The one who sits enthroned in heaven will one day finally break the
order of this world and establish eternally God’s Kingdom. In this way anger becomes
more spacious, less anxious and consuming and holy patience is allowed to work on our
hearts. We allow anger to participate in God’s order until we find that indeed we are not
angry anymore but filled, passionate, spirited to work in love.
This is the sort of transformation that Tom Joad experiences in The Grapes of
Wrath. The family’s and indeed the country’s situation spirals downward throughout the
novel. Tensions and anger increase as work and pay decrease. The Joad family’s friend
Casy, an old preacher, who travelled with them started to organize some workers to try
and strike so that they can hold out for a liveable wage. Farm owners caught wind of this
and begin to hunt those organizing strikes. One night Tom finds Casy who is trying lead

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a group of migrant workers in a strike. A group of men come and surround them and
eventually kill Casy. Tom losses control of himself becomes enraged and kills one of
those men in return. The pure reality of his anger that culminated in that moment lashed
out in death against that man. In fear of the trouble that he would bring to his family
Tom goes into hiding. His family is still able to bring him food but he no longer interacts
with the outside world, the world structured in anger and violence. Tom’s hiding spot
acts like a monk’s cell as he is forced into a type of reflective patience thinking about
what is going on around him. As he says later to his mother, “you get thinkin’ a lot when
you ain’t movin’ aourn.”
Towards the end of the book Tom’s mother brings him some food and she is
invited into his small den. Tom begins to articulate to her a vision of how the people
could restore their quality of life and work together again. Tom’s mother warns him that
this will be dangerous and he might end up like Casy did. Tom does not claim to know
all the details of what should unfold but knows that his life needs to be offered in the
service of another order. The words and actions of the unorthodox preacher Casy and the
circumstances of the world around him began to form a type of litany in the den where he
stayed.
He knew that his life was now in the order of the people not of power. His anger
was transformed into liturgy, a higher ordering. In the climax of the conversation Tom’s
mother is concerned about him going off on his own. She asks how she will know
whether he is okay or not, alive or dead. Tom laughs uneasily and says,
“Well, maybe its like Casy says, a fella ain’t got a soul of his own, but on’y a piece of a
big on – an’ then – ” Then what, Tom’s mother asks. “Then it don’ matter. Then I’ll be
aroun’ in the dark. I’ll be ever’where – wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so
hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there.
If Casy knowed, why, I’ll be the way guys yell when they’re mad an – I’ll be the way
kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat
the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build – why, I’ll be there.”
Tom’s anger was transformed so that his life now became a part of a new order.
This is the vision of Psalm 2. There is an anointed one of God, a child of God, already
enthroned in this new world. This Kingdom is achieved not through the immature or
violent outburst of anger but through entering into communion with God and neighbour.
So why do the nations rage? We do we rage? Our anger can lead us to control
and violence. Instead, in our anger we should not sin. Like Tom may we find ourselves
drawn or even forced outside the world that fuels our anger so that in patience God would
transform us to be love in the midst of those things we once hated. That we might be
peace in the midst of all that rages. That the anointed one of God would be rule in our
hearts and to the end of the earth.
Amen.