Is An Angry God Bad News? No, It's Actually Great News. Here's Why.

On the internet, have you noticed?   They make jokes about everything.   Nothing is sacred, certainly not God.    That’s when I wondered.   What sort of jokes are they making about God these days?  That’s when I came across it, the Angry God jokes.   The jokes use the same picture, even as they change the joke.   Clearly believers haven’t written them.   They don’t treat us fairly, but even in their unfairness, they make a point.  And sometimes, they’re even funny.    

Like for example this one, obviously directed to the Jewish members of the family. 

Or this one that does point out that God does get a bit detail oriented on the whole coveting thing.  But they don’t end there.

  

This one hits Christians pretty hard.  And sadly, the way we can communicate the Gospel, it may seem very much that way to some folks.  

And then, here’s another, that pretty much tells us what too many think of God these days.  '

It’s sad really, to see such a picture of God.  And it makes you wonder. 

Shouldn’t we be telling people that God isn’t angry, not at all?  God loves us no matter what.  We affirm that every week.   Lord knows, too many folks have been wounded by those who have painted a very harsh picture of God.     But God does get angry, very angry even.  The Bible tells us that again and again. 

But maybe that isn’t bad news.  Maybe it’s good news, very good news.  For without God’s anger, don’t you see?  We Christians have no real good news to share at all.   How can God’s anger be good news?   In this painful and poignant scene, Jesus shows us the way.  Let’s listen and hear what he has to say.   

Mark4:32-42

Thinking of God as angry can make us uncomfortable.   But should it?  What if God’s anger comes as something not to disturb, but to profoundly comfort.   What if it tells us something that makes God’s love all that more real?  What do I mean?   In this story, Jesus shows us just how terrible yet profoundly beautiful, God’s anger is. 

Until this week, I had never seen it.    I don’t know why.   Looking back, it now seems so obvious.   The words here create a scene of almost shocking intensity.   Where our translation reads, “He began to be deeply distressed and troubled,” it literally says, that Jesus was astonished, stunned even, that he was filled with horror.   His grief so overwhelms him, he feels like he is going to die.   Then to cap it off, he literally throws himself on the ground, crying and praying to God for any way out God can find.  But why is Jesus so devastated, so utterly undone?  

Now you might say.   Kennedy, isn’t it obvious.   He’s facing torture and a brutal death.  But come on now, many followers of Jesus have faced similar physical trials, even worse ones.  And in the face of all that, they stand firm, even speaking with confidence to their persecutors.   How come Jesus’ followers have greater composure than Jesus does?    And forget about other Christians, we have stories of folks who had little or no Christian belief at all, and showed more composure too.     So what is going on here?

Why is Jesus, who is literally God come to earth, so utterly devastated, even to the point of death?   Because, the cross and the pain are the least of Jesus’ worries.   Jesus isn’t crying out to God for release from torture and a horrible death.   Jesus is crying out to God for release from wrath.   The sentence that Jesus prays makes that painfully clear.   He prays to God, “Let this cup pass from me.”    And in the Bible, that cup refers to only one thing, the cup of God’s wrath.   Here it is in words from the prophet Jeremiah:

For thus the Lord, the God of Israel, said to me: Take from my hand this cup of the wine of wrath, and make all the nations to whom I send you drink it.      

And again, here it is, in the Prophet Isaiah….

Rouse yourself, rouse yourself!
    Stand up, O Jerusalem,
you who have drunk at the hand of the Lord
    the cup of his wrath,

Jesus isn’t terrified of a cross.  Jesus is terrified of facing the end result of God’s anguished anger at the evil and injustice of the world.    That is what is stunning him, the pain and agony of absorbing the brokenness and evil of this world, and the wrath of God that comes with it.  Before we get to this wrath of God thing, let’s talk a little bit more about God’s anger.    

Why does God get angry?   Because God cares.   You only get angry if you care.  

Many years ago, on a summer evening at my old home in New York, on my front stoop a friend was talking with someone who was staying with me.  I was up in my room, watching a cop show, with my window open.   And as I watched the show, I got angry.   Some criminal was doing a dastardly deed on a young innocent, and it got me all worked up.   I even began to rant out-loud a bit.   And then, I heard a somewhat shocked voice from below.  “Kennedy are you ok?”   What could I say, I got angry.   Even if the show was make-believe, I still cared.

Heck, if you’re a Dolphins' fan, this past Thursday eveninghttp://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2015/10/29/9641050/patriots-dolphins-2015-results-thursday-night-football-score, you might have found yourself getting a little worked up, even angry at a bad call or illegal hit.    Heck, you may not have even needed that to get angry.  They were playing the Patriots for Pete’s sake, who ran up the score just to rub it in (jerks).   And if you got angry, why did you?   You cared.   And heck, that was just a football team. 

Now think how would you feel if somebody did something terribly mean to your child?  I bet you’d have some anger then.    Or what if you saw your child or grandchild run into the street, and almost get hit by a car.  How’d you feel?   Heck, you’d likely be angry at everybody, your child, the driver of the car, even yourself.  Why?   You care.  No, you more than care.  You love.  That’s what anger is, not the petty self-pity we often call anger, but the real deal.  Anger comes from love.   Anger means the energy you feel when you are defending something or someone you love. 

If God gets angry, it doesn’t mean God hates you.   If God hated you, he wouldn’t care at all.   The ultimate hatred is indifference.   That’s where we get such sayings, “I wouldn’t spit on him, if he was on fire.”   God gets angry because God loves.  

I used to think about God’s wrath as something like electricity.  You go against the ways of electricity and you get shocked.  That’s God’s wrath.   But do you see how hopeless that all makes it?  All electricity can do is shock you if you mess with it the wrong way. Electricity can’t love you nor can it forgive you.   And God does both.  (C.S., Letters to Malcolm via Tim Keller)

So what about God’s anger so terrified Jesus?   What made this cup of wrath so hard to drink?  It wasn’t the anger, it was what happens when the anger falls away and only the evil remains.  That is the ultimate meaning of God’s wrath.   In the end, evil only leads to one place, to being completely and profoundly alone.  Why?   Because out of love, God honors our choices.  If that choice is to refuse God’s love, to refuse love at all, then God will honor that choice.   That is where evil brings you, to utter isolation.  That is hell.   It’s why it’s so painfully ridiculous, when I hear someone say.  “I want to go to hell.  All my friends will be there.”   Don’t you get it? There are no friends there.   

In that garden, Jesus looks into that hell.  He sees where even the anger of God falls away, where all that is left is utter isolation, a place where not even God can be found.  And he knows.  The only way to defeat evil, to rescue you and me from the horror of that place is to go there, to go into it all the way, to drink that cup all the way to the bottom; for Jesus to lose contact with the love that had been with him for literally forever, for God to lose even God, as strange as that sounds.   Compared to that agony, the cross was nothing. That was the cup Jesus yearned to walk away from. 

But he didn’t.    He saw the cost, and he decided.  I will pay it.  He experienced just a taste of the cup, and it nearly killed him.  But he said.   I will drink it.  I will drink it to the very bottom.  Why?  He loved you.   He loved you with a fierce anger that led him straight into hell.  He become utterly alone so you would never be.  He became utterly abandoned so that you would never be forsaken.  He lost even God, so that you might have God forever.   He surrendered it all for you.   And the more you see Jesus’ fierce and angry love for you, the more you will know.  I can surrender everything to him.   For no one could ever love me like he does.  No one.  

And when you suffer, when you face pain, you can surrender it to his fierce love, a love that suffered and died for you; a love that not even death can overcome.   So come to this table, this table of God’s fierce and angry love for you and give thanks.   Give thanks to the One who surrendered everything out of love for you.  Let us pray.