Why Do the Nations Rage

Why do the nations rage?

Likely a rhetorical question for the psalmist but I want to let that question standfor 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 werewatching TV. As we flipped through channels we came across Much Music or MTV andthere was music video for some metal band like Slayer. It was heavy, hard music and thevideo 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 becausethere is little we can do well when gripped by anger but the question should give us pauseand 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 ameditation on the origins and complexities of anger. The story begins in Oklahoma at thestart of the Great Depression. The Joad family attempts to hold on to their farm but asconditions worsen they become allured to the promise of land and work in California. Asthey travel across the American southwest towards California they begin to see how deepand 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 therewill be enough work for everyone. And sure enough arriving in California they aregreeted 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 showedtowards 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 whatlittle 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 thecompanies, the banks worked at their own doom and they did not know it. The fieldswere fruitful, and starving men moved on the roads. . . . The great companies did notknow that the line between hunger and anger is a thin line. And money that might havegone to wages went for gas, for guns, for agents and spies, for blacklists, for drilling. Onthe 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 SouthAfrica 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 spokeand picked up

Das Kapital

by Marx. I hadn't read it in over twenty years. Your lecturemade me realize that we have to think about economics again. Marx's prescription wasfaulty, but at least he diagnosed a problem: the exploited and excluded poor won't abidetheir marginalization forever. We escaped a bloody revolution in 1994 when we peacefully dismantled apartheid. But if we can't dismantle the inequity of our currenteconomic system, we will have an explosion of violence that nobody can imagine. The

2sheets will run red. I feel it. I feel it when I walk in the slums. Its like a volcano, ready toexplode - 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 AIGemployees now live with personal security guards for fear of what the people’s anger hasthreatened to unleash.We all share this anger to some degree. On perhaps the most immature level I feltit when Chantal and I were visiting my parents in Arizona. We went out for supper onenight 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. Thissight made me angry. This gesture was rude, arrogant, and selfish. Much of the anger inour 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 bycompassion and justice to anger motivated by fear and envy. It is not one or the other butsomeplace 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

violenceand 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 usas a harmful presence in marriages, families, work places and within ourselves. We stillfind ourselves somewhere between having anger influence how we view people (

manthat guys is lazy

) and make decisions (

that woman doesn’t deserve a break

)

or beingconsumed by it when all we see is red and destruction seems to lie in its wake. Biblicallyand theologically I believe we are called not to repress our anger but to express it in theappropriate context. It is interesting to note that the nations who rage in the psalm weread speak about breaking chains and throwing off shackles. What the nations seem towant is liberation, freedom. But attaining freedom is a tricky task.The psalmist tells us that the nations rage and conspire so that they might standalone, independently, freely. They desire to break

any

and

all

chains. In the 1990s therewas 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 possibleto 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 aredoing very little to really break structures of inequality. Rage Against the Machinedenounces 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; thatthere is attempt towards grasping power behind every attempt to overthrow power. Thisdoes 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 thenmoves quickly from the earth to the heavens stating that the one enthroned above laughs.

3The 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 anointedone is to laugh and also . . . to be angry. The one who is different than, other than theordering of the world mocks the futility of the nations’ rage but is also angry at theinjustice of it, at the profanity that it has become. And what is the response of God’sanger? To what end is it directed? The following line tells us is that the anointed one isactually the son of God. It is the anointed one, the messiah, who will bring freedom. Buthow will freedom be established? In the most disturbing lines of the Psalm we read thatthe 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 anddefend what we thought was the way of freedom while in fact we were defending asystem 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 isworship.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 isabsorbed into worship. In worship we find out that perhaps our anger also angers Godand so leads us to change and action or perhaps we find out that our anger is appropriateand that we need to be patient for it to pass or we may find out that our anger is in factselfish 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 byexpressing 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 andweaknesses. 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 iswill not be the end. The one who sits enthroned in heaven will one day finally break theorder of this world and establish eternally God’s Kingdom. In this way anger becomesmore 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 notangry 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 thenovel. Tensions and anger increase as work and pay decrease. The Joad family’s friendCasy, an old preacher, who travelled with them started to organize some workers to tryand strike so that they can hold out for a liveable wage. Farm owners caught wind of thisand begin to hunt those organizing strikes. One night Tom finds Casy who is trying lead