My boots crunch not just on the fallen leaves but also on the stewing, red-hot anger, boiling up in me. I have been a hurricane the last few weeks, and all of me is barreling, windy and impetuous towards the 10:45 service of a church two blocks down from me.
When I get there, the previous service is still going on and I’m so caught up in my anger I don’t realize. I sit in a pew a few rows forward of the back, thoroughly confused at why they’ve started with communion. I realize, too late, that communion, which at this church is taken at the floor of the pulpit, means that the seat I found might not have actually been empty. The people who were sitting where I am could be standing in the middle of the aisle awaiting their elements and I’ve now busted into their seat. My social anxiety is spiraling.
I do everything cognitively to not make this my fault. I thought service started at 10:45, but I obviously miscalculated. It must have started at 10:30. I’m only five minutes past that though. How did they start service, bless the table, and get everyone out of their seats in five minutes? It’s not my fault they began with communion.
Communion ends and the worship band invites everyone to join them for their last song. The last song? What time does service start here? I’m currently without a church home which means I lack any sort of anchor from week to week. I really thought I looked it up last night and that service started at 10:45. I glance at the sanctuary clock and it’s 10:43. There’s no way they’re starting a service in two minutes. I’ve managed to miss service today. I flip through my mental rolodex of church start times and somehow remember one that starts at 11. It’s at least a 20-minute walk from where I am though. Fat chance I make it there on time, and that church is pin-drop silent. I can’t be late there.
I realize I only have these few minutes and though I am angry with and at and about God, I know that even in my anger, what Psalms 73:28 is true: That it is good for me to draw near my God, to rest here for a minute. So if I’m getting three minutes of church this week, then I want to make them count. I need them to.
The band starts up Cornerstone and it’s exactly what I need, the one song that could say everything, that brings me back to one of my favorite memories. I don’t care about my anger anymore. I don’t care that I’m late. I can feel the levy breaking. I realize it’s not anger I’ve been feeling in my chest. It’s grief.
As I exit the sanctuary, I pull up the church’s website on my phone to see where I went wrong and, sure enough, service starts at 10:45 – the first service was just running long. I head back in for service in earnest.
Anger obfuscates. That’s what it did to me this morning and that’s what it’s doing right now in the relationships in my own life and in the relationships in the lives of people I love. In my case, anger masked my true emotions, but it also primed me to make bad, inaccurate assumptions about my circumstance. You might see an example of this in your own life.
Have you ever been fighting with your sister and, because you were mad at her, you yelled at your spouse even though your spouse didn’t do anything wrong?
Have you ever been angry about a situation you built up in your head but then realized your information was faulty and you actually had no reason to be upset at all?
Or, have you ever erupted in a fit of anger only to realize that you were never angry but actually just sad, scared, or lonely?
Anger obfuscates our truer feelings and our perceptions. It also obfuscates friendships, convincing us that our friend is our enemy.
I realized the depth of this in a bar a few weeks ago, as a friend was telling me about a mutual, lifelong friend of ours who had said some pretty hurtful things about me. My initial reaction was grace. The larger story, which contains a lot of narrative that isn’t mine to share, contextualizes her anger with and at me. She isn’t actually mad at me at all, but the dynamics of the relationships involved means that I’m the easiest person for her to hate. I was happy to let her do that if there was a chance of it salvaging some other, more critical relationships, in the moment. I had texted a few key prayer partners about it and when one of them asked me how I was feeling towards the friend badmouthing me, I wrote back, “I’m fine! I won’t let the Enemy make enemies out of friends.”
That’s a pretty great line, actually, and it is, at my core, one that I believe. I believed it in the moment. But it’s hard to live out, and I have faltered greatly in my ability to continue to love this person in the subsequent weeks. Anger and stewing grief have caused me to believe that a person who is my friend is actually my enemy. I don’t want to live this way.
If we get tired of living, we’ve got to start working on our dying, and that always brings us to the foot of the cross. Gazing up at it, it becomes clear that the worst part of the gospel is that Jesus died for a wretch like me. This is the worst part because if Jesus died for the worst parts of me, he also died for the worst parts in everyone else I meet.
In Luke’s account of the Gospel, Jesus is hoisted up on a cross, bleeding and beaten, when he may* have uttered the words, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” This is one way in which we can live in peace with those around us, even when they are caught in the throes of anger and grief. Rather than match their pettiness or anger, we can understand that the person in poor relationship with us is unaware of what they’re doing, unaware of what they’re feeling or how they’re acting. It is much easier to forgive the ignorant than the obstinate. If Jesus can forgive his murderers, we can forgive ours. We can petition God for mercy on them. And, if we can’t obtain reconciliation on this side of heaven, as Jesus did not with his captors, we will be reconciled on the side of heaven.
In Isaiah’s vision of heaven, he sees a wolf and a lamb eating together. There is no longer harm or destruction. There is no longer predator and prey. The new order of creation is peace instead of chaos.
The simple answer to all of the chaos that we see – violence, division, rage – is to see the best in the worst of each other. To declare against the Enemy that I have no enemies because the blood of Christ has saved me and saved them.
My neighbors might bicker. My village might light their torches. My governor might stage a public execution. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord. We will brave the terror and be peacemakers. We will welcome the least of these. We will not let the Enemy make enemies out of friends. On this, I have clarity.
I know who my friend is. And I have no enemy.
*The word “may” here refers to this section of Luke 23:34 that is sometimes included, and sometimes omitted, in ancient scriptural authorities.
Scripture quotations are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
Bryce Van Vleet is the #1 selling author of Tired Pages and Before We All Die Let’s Have One Last Chat by the Fireside. He also hosts the podcast Death in Dakota and sells poetry art here. You can support him by clicking through blog posts or donating (scroll to the bottom of the page).
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