Ecclesiastes 3:1
“For everything there is a season and a time for every matter under heaven.” After a lifetime of ministry, Richard Rohr said, “I have become convinced that most anger comes, first of all, from a place of deep sadness.”
Life disappoints and hurts us all, and the majority of people don’t know how to react—except as children do, with anger and rage. It’s a defensive, reactionary, and totally understandable posture, but it often goes toward bitterness and retaliation.
The Hebrew prophets converted this connection between anger and sadness into truth-telling. But first the prophets needed to get angry at injustices, oppression, and war. Anger can be deserved, and even virtuous, particularly when it motivates us to begin seeking necessary change. But only until sunset, (Ephesians 4:26), then we need to let it go. And that’s the difficult part for many, including me. If we stay with our rage for too long, we will righteously and unthinkingly pass on the hurt in ever new directions, and we injure our own souls in ways we don’t even recognize.
The challenge is to learn to grieve prophetically, seeing our world, even at its darkest, with the vision and spirit of the prophets. Those ancient teachers warned that the world was out of balance and that its repair requires our help. The challenge is to remember, even in our justified anger, that answering insult with insult just worsens the situation for everyone. “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that,” MLK, Jr. When we grieve prophetically, we heal ourselves and the world by looking to shape the larger forces that damaged the soul of the person who caused hurt or anger.
The prophets modeled that anger must first be recognized, as an expression of the deep, normally inaccessible sadness that each of us carry. Even Jesus “wept” over the city of Jerusalem (Luke 19:41) and at the death of his friend Lazarus (John 11:35). In his final “sadness” in the Garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:37), “his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood” (Luke 22:44).
Before you jump to the resurrection, take the time to experience this season of anger and sadness.
Shalom, Paul