A homily for the Twenty-Fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 17, 2023
Sir 27:30—28:7, Rom 14:7-9, Mt 18:21-35
When angry, count four. When very angry, swear.
Mark Twain
We all get angry; it’s a basic human emotion. For some of us, anger is one of the most powerful emotions, if not the most overwhelming. Anger’s power makes it difficult to contain or cool down from. When anger overwhelms us, it provokes action.
Bad action. Evil action.
Swearing is but a tiny ripple of what thermonuclear blind anger can trigger.
Angry rage is the sriracha poured on top of ignorance, of jealousy, of frustration, of impatience, of fear, of illness or injury — physical or mental.
Sometimes anger simply explodes, and hate can be the fallout. Sometimes anger consumes us slowly, like the story of the frog that’s boiled when the cold water it jumped into is heated gradually but steadily.
When acted upon, anger can lead to hurt feelings and shattered relationships.
When acted upon, anger can lead to injury and death.
When acted upon, anger can lead to nearly infinite possibilities between those extremes. Every one of those possibilities is foul.
And anger is lose-lose, because, as Twain also said,
Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.
Humanity has been plagued by evil anger since Cain saw red and killed Abel.
Now, before I dig myself too deep a hole, I will pause to acknowledge that there is such a thing as justifiable anger, anger at the evils of the world. Justifiable anger inspires positive action, carefully planned action, and rarely knee-jerk reactions.
Justifiable anger sees people drowning in a river and inspires us to go upstream to do something to stop people from falling in.
Justifiable anger and the social justice it inspires require no forgiveness, given or received.
Jesus himself was justifiably angry, as Scripture recounts.
But there’s no record that he ever expressed blind hate-filled rage, because he never did.
Today’s Scripture passages are part of a massive compendium of advice about how to clean up the mess that hate and anger create. Throughout the Bible, throughout holy books in every faith tradition, throughout the entire collection of human wisdom as long as there has been some sort of civilization, the notion of forgiveness has been the cornerstone of restoring the peace. Or bringing peace for the first time.
Forgive and forget, some people say. Let’s clean up the ashes and build afresh.
Forgive but remember, others chime in, echoing the oxymoronic “trust but verify.” Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.
Forgiveness is complicated, to be sure. It begs so many questions, chief among them, “Will s/he do it again?”
When we ask God’s forgiveness through the Sacrament of Reconciliation, we do promise to avoid our sins in the future. As humans, we trip and fall and need forgiveness again. And again.
And God forgives us.
And God strengthens us, if we accept God’s grace. God’s grace will help us stay on the straight and progressing path.
Forgiving someone removes the acid that Twain described from us and from the person we forgive.
If anger is lose-lose, then forgiveness and peace and relationship are win-win. They are the sun and rain that will sprout fresh, sweet growth on the earth scorched by our anger — or the anger of another.
Jesus forgave his executioners as he hanged on the cross. We can and must do nothing less.
