Perfect Hatred

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

Psalm 139; John 2:13-22

September 30, 2012 • Portage First UMC

While I enjoy the freedom that comes with having a vehicle and being able to drive where I want, there are times I think it would easier to be without a vehicle. At least, maybe, it might be better for my soul, because there’s this phenomenon that happens to us—at least most of us—when we get behind the wheel of a car. We think we own the road and everyone else better watch out. For instance, have you noticed hows everyone else on the road is a bad driver compared to you? And do you find yourself talking to the other cars, even though you know they can’t hear you? A friend of mine, several years ago, was driving and found herself griping loudly about the driving of another person when she heard her young daughter asking, “Mommy, who are you talking to?” She smiled and said, “I’m just talking to the lady.” In the late 1980’s a term developed to describe our actions on the road—“Road Rage.” That term actually originated with a couple of television newscasters in Los Angeles after a series of shootings on the freeways in and around L. A. “Road Rage” is anger out of control, sparked because others aren’t driving the way we think they should.

But that’s not the only place we experience anger. We see it a lot among those who believe they’re not getting what they are entitled to. On an extreme level, we’ve seen that recently in the Middle East—in Egypt and surrounding countries as people have responded to a short film that supposedly mocks the prophet Mohammed. I’m not endorsing the film or anything like that, but was killing people, burning flags and storming embassies a rational response? This past summer, when we were in Egypt, we couldn’t help but notice a simmering anger just below the surface. High unemployment, young men with no jobs and little future, and a sense of religious entitlement—it is a tinder box just waiting for a spark. Anger has erupted in violence.

But it doesn’t always, does it? Sometimes it just becomes irritation or an anger that we push down and try to ignore. What sorts of things make you angry? For some, it’s as simple as bad manners, littering, loud noises, people who seek attention, disrespectful people, and even religion. But psychologists say anger generally stems from a lack of justice, a sense that we’ve had some injustice done to us. And on a deeper level, it often stems from a lack of forgiveness of others, or a lack of forgiveness toward ourselves. You don’t have to look too far to see a simmering anger in our culture as well; it’s no coincidence that “Angry Birds” is a top selling computer and mobile game. It speaks to something within us, something that senses injustice and unfairness and the desire to do something about it, even if it’s just flinging cartoon birds at cartoon pigs. And yet, for most of us, we’ve been brought up to think of anger as bad, as something we’re somehow supposed to avoid. Is there such a thing as good anger? And what does that have to do with prayer?

We’re wrapping up our series this morning on “Talking With God.” We’ve spent the last month exploring some of the prayers of the Bible as recorded in the psalms, and this was never meant to be an exhaustive series on “how you pray.” What I hope we’ve gotten along the way is some signposts, some perspectives that perhaps have pointed you toward a richer and deeper prayer life—prayer that is more honest, prayer that is more grateful, prayer that is fully exuberant, and prayer that is repentant. In some ways, we’re coming full circle this morning as we deal with angry prayer. Now, that may sound like an oxymoron. Angry prayer? Is such a thing possible?

The psalmists certainly believed it was. Throughout the psalms, we find brutally raw emotion, including anger and even hatred. Psalm 137 is one of those places. This was the psalm my preaching professor had us read out loud in class as training for the reading of Scripture, and we typically did what everyone does—we read the passage deadpan, with little emotion. And Dr. Mercer stopped us and said, “Are you even listening to what you’re reading? You’ve got to feel what these writers were feeling.” Psalm 137 is an exile psalm, written after Jerusalem has been destroyed by Babylon. It’s a psalm of lament, and it’s seething with anger. It’s a prayer that asks God to punish the Babylonians. Listen to how it ends: “Daughter Babylon, doomed to destruction, happy is the one who repays you according to what you have done to us. Happy is the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks” (137:8-9). You can’t read that and not feel the pain, the anger, the hatred. And it’s right there, in the Bible. Does that mean anger and even revenge are blessed, that they’re okay? If you take a psalm like that in isolation, you might say, “Yes, of course.” And some have. But what’s happening in Psalm 137 and the reason it was preserved is because it’s honest; it’s gut-level prayer. It’s not because God is telling us to go out and murder our enemies, to kill their babies. You have to take Scripture as a whole, and just two psalms over from this ugly psalm is one that is much-loved, though it is a prayer of anger as well, only from a different perspective.

Psalm 139, which we read this morning, is an “of David” psalm. That doesn’t necessarily mean David wrote this psalm. I grew up thinking David wrote all the psalms, but that isn’t true. Some psalms claim other authorship, and even the psalms that are “of David” could actually have been written by David, or in honor or David, or by someone who was writing in David’s name. With many of them, including this one, we simply don’t know. But whoever wrote this, and whatever situation it was written in, the psalmist spends the first eighteen verses celebrating his relationship with God. In some of the most beautiful language available, the psalmist reminds us that “knowing” God isn’t just a matter of memorizing a list of facts. Rather, “knowing” God is about having a relationship with God (cf. VanGemeren, “Psalms,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 5, pg. 136). And so the psalmist celebrates: “You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar” (139:1-2). He recognizes God is present in every moment and every place of his life: “Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?” (139:7). Go to heaven—God is there. Go to the depths—God is there. East to west, as far as civilization exists—God is there. Even in the darkness of the night—God is there.

The psalmist is not trying to get away from God. He’s finding comfort in God’s ever-presence. Even before he was born, he says, God was there. “You created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well” (139:14-15). There is no reason to doubt your worth or your value to God, the psalmist says. You are beloved from before you were born. Methodists call that “prevenient grace.” We believe there is never a moment when you are outside of God’s sight. From before you were born, even before you recognized God as your creator and savior, God is pouring out his grace on you. God works in our life even before we are born, which is one reason we offer baptism to infants and children. It’s a recognition that God is working in this child’s life even before the child can respond. There does have to be a response, a claiming of the salvation Jesus offers, but it’s not baptism that saves us. It’s Jesus. Baptism is a sign, a symbol, of what this psalm promises: there is never a moment when we are out of God’s sight.

And that’s an important context, then, for what comes next in Psalm 139. Because of this relationship, because of this intimate knowing between the psalmist and God, he can feel confident praying the next few verses. Listen to these words again: “If only you, God, would slay the wicked! Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty! They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name. Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you? I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies” (139:19-22). Other translations, in verse 22, say he has perfect hatred for them. That’s the psalmist’s way of saying he’s not wavering; his hatred for these enemies is so intense, so deep, it cannot be improved upon (Kalas, Longing to Pray, pg. 104). We tend to push back at that. Aren’t we supposed to love everyone? Is this just Old Testament hyperbole? What would Jesus do? How would he respond? Wouldn’t he love them anyway?

When I was in college, I led a small group for a number of years, and in one of the studies we looked at Jesus clearing the Temple. I made the comment about Jesus reacting in anger, and Brent, another member of the group, took issue with that. “I don’t think Jesus ever got angry,” he said. And he was adamant. He might have even been angry at me for saying such a thing! And certainly that picture of Jesus doesn’t square with the Sunday School images of “gentle Jesus, meek and mild.” So what does the evidence say? John 2 is the story of the first cleansing of the Temple. Though scholars are divided on it, it seems there were two Temple cleansings—one near the beginning of Jesus’ ministry (which John tells us about) and one during the last week of Jesus’ life (which the other Gospels record). In the story from John, Jesus comes from Galilee to Jerusalem for the Passover, and he is surprised by what he finds in the Temple Courts. To understand what’s going on here, you have to know a bit about the way the Temple was laid out. The place closest to the altar was reserved for Jewish men. A little further out was a place where Jewish women could worship and pray, and the farthest place out was the “Court of the Gentiles.” That was as close to the altar as God-fearing Gentiles (non-Jews) could get. This court was their place of prayer. God-fearers, by the way, were those who wanted to worship in the Temple but weren’t willing to go through the whole process of converting to Judaism, but there was a place they could worship. In the past, when Jesus would have come to Jerusalem as a child or a young man, the marketplace, where animals were sold for the sacrifices, was across the Kidron Valley on the side of the Mount of Olives. But at some point around the year 30 AD (according to historical records), the rulers of the Temple decided they could make more money if they moved it into the Temple Courts. And you obviously can’t put that in the place of Jewish worship, but this place of Gentile worship isn’t all that important. So they set up the marketplace in the place the Gentiles came to pray. There was no longer any quiet place for the God-fearers to worship (Card, The Parable of Joy, pg. 29).

That’s what Jesus sees when he comes into the Temple this day. And it angers him, not just because the place of worship has been taken away, but also because they are using the Temple to exploit the poor, to take advantage of those who have little. That’s why he singles out the dove sellers when he begins tearing things up. The dove was the sacrifice of the poor; it was, in fact, the sacrifice that was offered to “redeem” Jesus when he was a baby because his family was poor. Over on the Mount of Olives, a dove had cost about four cents. Here, in the Temple courts, it cost 75 cents. So not only are the Gentiles being pushed away from worship, so are the poor Jewish families. Jesus knows his family would have been excluded in that system. And that makes him angry. But it’s not an irrational “road rage” kind of anger. Jesus knows what he’s doing. He’s angry at the things people are doing that exploit others, that harm the vulnerable. He is angry about the things that make God his Father angry (cf. Card 31). That’s why he tears up the Temple. That’s why he runs out the moneychangers and the sellers of doves. Jesus hates what is happening here with perfect hatred.

And the same is true of the psalmist. The hatred he prays about, he says, is a hatred of those who hate God, who misuse God’s name, who rebel against God. In fact, we could go so far as to say “the psalmist sees no purpose in the existence of the wicked” (VanGemeren 839). But even then, he’s not against specific people, nor does he call out names. The psalmist hates what these folks do, the way they “revile God’s name” (Williams, Communicator’s Commentary: Psalms 73-150, pg. 487). You see, this prayer, and those like it, come out of a deep Hebrew conviction that God is just, that justice and integrity have been built into the very fabric of creation. “A God who is not just, and who doesn’t care about the mistreatment of ‘the poor and needy’ would not be worthy of worship” (Kalas 101). So when people do things that are unjust, when they do things that have no integrity, when we take advantage of those God is watching over, the psalmist says we are working against the God who made the world a place of justice. As people of prayer like the psalmist, we should be and must be angered when injustice rules the day. C. S. Lewis said if we can live with evil in the world and not be upset, something is wrong with us (qtd. in Kalas 101). So the call to angry prayer is a call to be angry about the things that make God angry.

Very often, it takes someone getting angry for anything to get done. It took William Wilberforce getting angry about the plight of the African slaves to move him toward abolition. And he worked all of his life to see the slave trade ended. He died just shortly after the final bill passed parliament to end it for good. In this country, that issue split the church down the middle because it was the northern Christians who believed slavery was a great evil that made God angry, and who worked against it. If you travel in the southern states, today still you’ll see Methodist churches that have in the cornerstone or over the door, “Methodist Episcopal Church South.” And yet, enough people believed it was wrong to finally bring an end to it. But, slavery goes on today in many parts of the world, most prominently in the form of sex trafficking. It takes people who get angry about the abuse of human beings, those who are made in God’s image, for any change to come about. Unfortunately, we get angry about the wrong things. This week, there was backlash against a Christian music artist who regularly stands up against the slave trade and seeks to raise money to end this evil. And yet, she was seen in a picture with the President, and those who disagree with or dislike him blasted her for being seen at such an event. They got angry, but they were more angry about the president than they were about people being sold into slavery. Which do you think angers God more? I love what this artist wrote: “An approximate 27 million [people] are enslaved. Many of them young, underage girls, who are sold for sex. I have personally met many victims and this is not just an international problem, but happens here in the United States. I will continue to fight for their freedom…When the President commits to help fight this evil, I'm not going to question his motives, I'm going to applaud him and say thank you, knowing that his decision may mean freedom for many…This has nothing to do with the election or endorsing any candidate. No matter who the President is, I will continue to ask the White House for help in bringing freedom. I'm just shining the light of Jesus the best way I know how” (Natalie Grant, Facebook post). Are we angry about the things, the injustices, that make God angry?

I believe hunger makes God angry. I believe it angers him that children go home to a place where there is no food. I believe it angers God that one billion people in the world today do not have access to clean drinking water, and that every day nearly 4,000 children die because of water-borne disease. More people die in Africa from water-borne disease than war. I believe it angers God when those who are rich abuse those who are not. I believe it angers God when the system punishes people who want to work or want to do the right thing or who want to try to make their lives better. I believe it makes God angry when we worship things other than God—money, celebrities (even so-called “Christian celebrities”), possessions, even our busy-ness or our schedules. In Disciple this year, we’re reading the prophets of the Old Testament, and over and over again we hear the prophets call the people to worship only God and not idols, not little-g gods. Idolatry is still very much alive, and we have to guard against it each and every day. When anything becomes more important than God, it’s an idol, and that happens to us sometimes even before we’re aware of it. I believe idolatry makes God angry.

And I can be angry about these or any number of other issues—but simply being angry doesn’t solve anything. I love how the psalmist ends this prayer. After expressing his anger, he prays some very profound words: “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (139:23-24). Now he’s already prayed about how close he and God are, and yet at the end, he’s still asking God to search him, to know him, and to expose anything he might be thinking or doing that aren’t pleasing to God. He wants to not only be “perfect” in his hatred of the things God hates; he wants to be “perfect” in his response as well. It’s easy to think that because we hate something, God must hate it, too. As Ellsworth Kalas says, “It’s hard to imagine that God has poorer taste than we do” (104). But the psalmist recognizes how easy it is to ascribe our feelings to God, to expect God to hate the things we hate, rather than the other way around. He wants to respond the way God would want him to respond. So search me, God, and remove any “offensive” way that might be in me.

So back to that question of, “What would Jesus do?” We know what Jesus would do. It’s right there in John 2. Jesus did what he could to restore the place of prayer. John says he made a whip of cords, overturned the tables and ran all the livestock out of the Temple courts (2:15). He told those who were selling doves, “Stop turning my Father’s house into a market!” (2:16). And John tells us the disciples remembered—maybe that day, maybe later—that the Messiah would be known as one who had “zeal” for the house of God (2:17). But it wasn’t zeal for the building; it was for those who were being wronged by what was happening there. Jesus responded, and I believe if we just pray angry words, we’ve only done part of what we’re called to do. After we’ve prayed to be sure our “zeal” is in line with God’s, our prayers must turn into action.

It’s what has motivated our teenagers in the past to be involved with Destiny Rescue, a ministry that helps rescue people from the slave trade. It’s this kind of prayer that led us to “Feed My Lambs.” Many of you know that ministry came out of Disciple Bible Study, when Lil Falk talked about the children in her classroom going hungry over the weekends. That’s something that makes God angry, and so we couldn’t just sit by. If it was in our power to do something, I believe we had to do it. And so we went to the school system and we were turned away. We were told it would never work. But this church doesn’t give up easily, and so we were given the opportunity to pilot this ministry, in partnership with the Northwest Indiana Food Bank, at Myers School. And when it worked, suddenly, the school system was interested. This year, Lil and others have done tremendous work and, as we announced last week, Feed My Lambs is now in every elementary school in Portage Township, and this church alone raised over $15,000 this year to help kids eat on the weekends. That’s what this kind of prayer can do; it can change the world, one kid at a time. It’s that conviction that people should not go hungry that has led us to collect food for the food pantry. We do that every month—next Sunday is the day, first Sunday of the month. But then, a couple of times a year, we do a big push called “Stepping Out to Stop Hunger” and we’re going to do that again at the end of October. We have people who work sorting food, serving the community—all because we have this conviction that God doesn’t desire anyone to go hungry, and we believe we can turn those prayers into action, to make a difference.

We saw the same thing this summer with our Vacation Bible School when we set a goal of raising $250 to provide clean water in Guatemala. By the end of the week, those kids had raised over $500, and by partnering with the Rotary Club, we were able to double that, and provide four times the clean water we set out to do. You see, providing clean drinking water to everyone in the world is not about resources. We can do it. The United Nations estimates it would cost $30 billion to provide clean drinking water for everyone on the planet. Now, that sounds like a huge amount and it is, but let me put it in perspective. The developed world, including you and me, spends $90 billion a year on bottled water when we already have safe water in our taps. Or let me put it this way: last year Americans spent $6 billion on Christmas decorations. We spend $12 billion a year on storage facilities to hold all the stuff that won’t fit in our houses. And we spent over $52 billion on Black Friday alone last year. Americans spent $11 million a minute from Black Friday to Christmas—which totals $470 billion. When we get angry that others go without what we take for granted, I think our priorities will change. This year, again, half of our Christmas Candlelight offering will go to provide clean water, to chip away at that $30 billion. It’s not a lack of resources that holds us back; it’s a lack of willpower.

We know from the Scriptures poverty makes God angry. Does it make us angry? Or do we make excuses and lump everyone into the same category of, “They just don’t want to try”? That’s not true. And it’s that holy anger that compels us to go to Red Bird Mission every year, to make a difference in the lives of at least one family. The first year we were there, we had a discussion about whether or not Red Bird was making a real difference. They’ve been there a long time and poverty still exists, but it’s a generational thing and a mindset that you’re combatting. Yes, they’re making a difference, but it’s a slow process. For us, we live in a community where over 50% of the children are on free or reduced lunches at school. When will that make us angry enough to do something about it?

And I think it makes God angry that the church, over 2,000 years of history, has failed to win the world. Paul says God “wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 3:4), but he counts on us to share that good news with others. Jesus’ last command to the church was to go into all the world and make disciples (Matthew 28:19), and that has been the mission of the church ever since. We “offer Jesus.” I believe it breaks God’s heart for people to reject him and for others to not even get to know him. When we will we get angry enough about people dying without Jesus for it to make us want to share our faith with others?

So, here’s your challenge for the week. I believe God puts specific passions within us; we can’t all do or respond to everything. So what makes you angry? For what issue or what thing has God put holy anger inside of you? This week, I want to ask you to pray about that every day, for seven days, and listen to where you sense God leading you. First of all, pray like the psalmist, asking God to search you and know you, to purify your thoughts, feelings and motives. Then, in the latter part of the week, ask God to give you a vision for what he wants you to do, how he calls you to respond. Write it down. Test it with some friends. How can we take this holy anger and use it to make a difference for God’s kingdom in this world? That’s the question Psalm 139 puts before us. It is “the perfect prayer for the angry soul” (Kalas 105). So talk with God this week, and see where God leads you. See where God leads all of us. Let’s pray.