Coracle Trust E-Reflections

Lent: Inspecting anger

Sunday 27 March 2011

You were inside me, and I was out of my body and mind, looking for you. I drove like an ugly madman against the beautiful things and beings you made. You were in fact inside me, but I was not inside you…. Augustine, Confessions

Read John 7:14-23 "Now if a boy can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing a man's whole body on the Sabbath?"

Knowing our anger well

Religion can make us angry, sometimes for the worst of reasons. Someone tramples on our version of the truth, and we feel ourselves threatened to the core. But sometimes our anger is justified. We are rightly angered when we see a small-minded religious rule trumping an obviously humane action. Why would we not heal a person on the Sabbath? The difficulty is knowing our anger well enough. Too easily, we parade our brittle egos in the form of righteous indignation at the woes of the world, when what we simply want to hear is that we're OK. So Lent provides a window for closer inspection of our various angers, a time to sort the wheat from the chaff. And to hear again the baptismal words: "You are my son/daughter, whom I love. With you I am well pleased." Duncan MacLaren