Anger In Service of Compassion -- Mark 3:1-6 • Geoff Bradford

Amen. Thank you all for leading us. You can be seated. We're gonna turn our attention to the Nicene Creed, and I know that for some of you all, you grew up in churches where you actually say creeds and for others of you this is brand new, but it's not meant to be like, hey, we're just all kind of making sure we're on the same team. These are precious truths that people over centuries wrestled over and said, is this real? Is this really what we believe in? Is this what our hope is really found in? And so when we say these things, we're actually joining in with Christians all over the world and all throughout history, back to about the third century AD. And so I wanna invite you in that spirit to join in with all that host, as we just sang about all the hosts.

Let's read it together.

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen. We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only son of God, eternally begotten of the father, God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made of one being with the father, through Him all things were made. For us and for our salvation, He came down from heaven, was incarnate of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became truly human. For our sake, He was crucified under Pontius Pilate. He suffered death and was buried. On the third day, He rose again in accordance with the scriptures. He ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. We believe in one holy Catholic and apostolic church. We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins. We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.

Prayer

So we're gonna go from that to praying. And I think that's really important where we go from things that we're confident of to our worries and concerns living in a world that's filled with worry and concern. And I don't know about you, I've had a summer full of worry and concern. I've kind of done with it and we've got months ahead. Right? So I'm gonna lead us in prayer and then I'm gonna invite you to join me in just a moment prayer. We're gonna use the Lord's prayer from Matthew six, it'll appear on the screen. So let's bow our heads and pray together.

Lord, we thank you that we can lay hold of what is true even when we look at a world that's changing and feels chaotic and out of control. And so we come to you tonight in the confidence of who you are, how you've worked in our lives, how we've read and heard of you of Lord, the kind of God that you are. Lord, many of us have experienced such deep and profound life change. And Lord, we need that stable place with which to look at the world around us.

Father, we pray in a world that's unjust. Lord, we've seen even this week, with the news about the verdict in Louisville, Kentucky and Breonna Taylor and Lord, we cry out. Lord, we don't want just human justice. We don't want just things to be a little better. Lord, we want your justice. Lord, we want you to make all things right.

Lord, we look at a political landscape that is just brutal right now. And we look at a country that's incredibly divided and filled with all kinds of anger. And Father, we long for you, King Jesus, Lord, to exercise your rule in our country. Father, we ask that you would put a president in place. Lord, we pray for unity and clarity moving forward for justice and righteousness to mark our country.

Father, we pray too over just the ongoing coronavirus and where the sense that this is never being done. And Lord, we ask you who are maker of heaven and earth, you who know our bodies and formed us individually, each of each one of us, all of us bear your thumbprints and fingerprints on our very souls. Lord, would you work, Lord, an end to this and or in our land.

And Father, we ask now that you would work deep in us. So we're about to open up your word. Lord, would you help us to have soft hearts? Would you work deep in us that kind of spirit transformation that only you bring? Lord, I pray for myself, even as I open up your word. Lord, I pray these wouldn't be my words, but your words.

Lord, we pray now as you taught us to pray.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever and ever. Amen.

Scripture

Gonna be looking tonight at Mark's gospel, Mark chapter three verses one through six. It's a real short passage.

If you'd like to read it out loud with me like we do outside, as we've done for a long time on Sunday mornings, I'd love it if you would. Here's Mark 3:1-6:

Again, he entered the synagogue and a man was there with a withered hand and they watched Jesus to see whether he would heal him on the Sabbath so that they might accuse him. And he said to the man with the withered hand, come here. And he said to them, is it lawful on the Sabbath day to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill? But they were silent And he looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, stretch out your hand. He stretched it out and his hand was restored. The Pharisees went out and immediately held counsel with the Herodians against him. How to destroy him? — Mark 3:1-6

You know, it's no secret, we live in an angry world. And I'm not just talking about someone honking on their horn when you're changing lanes in traffic a little too fast. I'm talking about explosive anger. We live in a world of domestic violence. We live in a world of school shootings. We live in a world of church splits. And it seems like anger is all around us. While that's an anger that we all know—in fact, each of you could come up and do a talk on anger that you've seen in your lifetime—this is not a sermon about our anger. It's a sermon about Jesus' anger.

Jesus' Anger

You know, that's what's so striking in Mark 3—this picture of Jesus getting angry. Did you know that there are over 15 times in the gospels where there are accounts of Jesus' anger? It's a surprising number. And the reality is if we don't understand Jesus' anger, in many ways we don't understand Jesus—what he's about, what his purpose was, what his purpose still is in our lives.

You know, if you've been with us this fall, we are working through a series. We're walking through all these gospel passages. And we've been talking about the compassion of Jesus. And it may seem bizarre, like we're changing gears, grinding the gears to talk today not about compassion, but about anger. It may feel like these two things have nothing to do with each other. How does God's compassion relate to his anger? We know anger to be destructive in so many of our experiences. It's hard for us to imagine anything otherwise.

So I want you to imagine with me this scene. We've been playing movie producer every time we've looked at these in the gospels—how if you were directing this scene for a full-length movie on the life of Jesus, how you'd set up the scene. Picture here Jesus in a synagogue on the Sabbath day. Now, this is not the temple. This isn't the giant temple. A synagogue is a little building. These were all over Judea—little buildings for the purpose of people coming together to hear God's word, our Old Testament, and for somebody to teach on it.

Now, for some reason, this day, Jesus is the one who's actually doing the teaching. So he is upfront, and there's a sort of intrigue going on behind the scenes. There's been some plan by the religious leaders to trap Jesus. And it's probably the case that the man with the withered hand is a plant. He would never have been allowed, actually in the temple in Jerusalem, according to Levitical law. There's some question about whether he would even have been allowed in the synagogue, but here he is. They have this plant. So Jesus is teaching and he has the floor and they're looking to see if he's going to heal him. And Jesus has the man stand up. It's really dramatic. He has this man stand up in the middle of the synagogue while he's supposed to be teaching about the word and instead says, which is lawful on the Sabbath? To do good or to do evil, to save life or kill?

Now, it's obvious that what's at issue right here is that it's a Sabbath day, which for the Jews was Saturday, a holy day. And nobody's supposed to work according to the law of God on the Sabbath day. And the Jews believe that healing was a kind of work and therefore was prohibited. So that's why they're setting up this trap.

What's interesting is Jesus asked this question and they're just silent. Nobody says anything. And Jesus—this is what's fascinating—Jesus gets angry. This is the first of two types of anger we see in this passage. Jesus gets angry. He's grieved and angered at their hardness of heart. And then in response, actually, Luke's gospel fills in this detail. The Pharisees watching him, watching this healing take place, they're furious in response. And they go out from that place and they plot to kill Jesus.

So two kinds of anger that we see in this passage, therefore, two points to my sermon. What's so wrong with our anger and what's so right with Jesus'? What's so often wrong with our anger?

You know, anger is really normal for us. I mean, who here did not get angry this week? If you didn't get angry this week, you're either probably dead or lying or you're zoned out at this point of sermon. Because all of us, anger is such a normal response for us, and it feels involuntary. It happens all the time. It just comes up out of us. Some of you more than others have a lot of firsthand experience with anger. But I want to look at this passage and look at the Pharisees and the Herodians because in many ways they represent us. This is what our anger looks like.

Anger and Blocked Desires

First, anger is always about a desire that's blocked. A blocked desire, something you want. Think about the words that we use that are actually synonyms for anger: frustrated, peeved, annoyed, irritable, provoked. All of these mean angry.

Let me tell you a personal story. On Sunday afternoons after I have preached, I always want a nap. I want a nap, and I want it with peace and quiet. Now, my household is a household of musicians. We have six kids, and I would guarantee that we have at least twice as many instruments as we have children. What's more, we have raised a family of singers and dancers—I mean crooning, like top of the lungs crooning. Then add coronavirus on top of that, so we're all home, and Hamilton. My word. It's all off. There's a collision course going on in my household on Sunday afternoons between dad's desire, or expectation maybe, of a nap. So I lay down upstairs and my desire is blocked. That's why I erupt in anger.

Same thing with the Pharisees and the Herodians here. They have a desire that's blocked. What would be their desire? I think that they want Jesus on their team.

Now, think about this. These are two different groups. These people have been under Roman rule for a great deal of time. They've not been free to choose their own officials, set taxes, make their own laws. They are under Roman occupation. And they want Caesar to be gone and they want their own ability to make their own choices.

The Pharisees were very strict religious people who tried very much to obey all of the Torah. Very serious about that. The Herodians were very secular people. They didn't care that much about following Torah. They had a guy, Herod, who was sort of a puppet king for Rome, and they wanted him to be the full king. They wanted Rome gone.

Both of these have agendas for Jesus. Along comes wonder-working Jesus. He's healing. He is fearless. He'll take on anybody. He'll say anything. Don't you know that they're like, we want him on our team. And just like what happens when there's a quarterback and it's NFL draft time—your team is looking at this guy like he could be the great hope for our team and he gets drafted by someone else—what was a hope now becomes an enemy. That's what's happened with Jesus. He becomes an enemy. He is a block to their desires and they are furious.

In fact, their common anger toward Jesus is what actually makes these two people who can't get along in the sandbox be able to play together now. They both want him dead. Now isn't that, to be honest, a common experience for us? I mean, what you want more than something else is blocked and you get angry.

And our language about our anger makes us feel like we're actually a victim of our own anger. Like, we're passive and some alien force inside of us just rises up and takes over us. Think about our language. We erupt in anger. That's like a volcano. You can't contain all the molten magma inside of you. It's just coming out. Or think about the language we have, like a gun. We go off. Or dynamite: blew my fuse. Someone once said to the preacher Billy Sunday, "Hey, I get angry and go off, but then it's all over with." And Billy Sunday, he did not miss a beat.

He answered, he said, yeah, so does a shotgun. Right? And look at all the damage that happens afterward. See, that's what the anger we do and that's anger we know—explosive anger. So anger is always about a blocked desire. Second, anger always comes from the heart and it always reveals the heart. It comes from the heart and reveals the heart.

Now, just a little bit of explanation. In the Bible, heart is not the Disney heart that we think we're used to. Right? Heart is not just how we feel. The heart in the Bible is the center of all your desires and your thoughts and affections. You live in the Bible out of your heart. The heart desires, the heart thinks. Those are things that the way the Bible uses the word heart. So if you are frustrated, provoked, irritated, vexed, that is in the Bible a heart issue. Your heart is active. You want something, you can't get it. Your anger comes from your heart.

Now, so let's go back to my nap example. You know, Hamilton is blasting. I'm trying to take a nap. What comes up on display out of my heart in those moments is not deep love and appreciation for my children's musical careers. Right? It's selfishness. You know, so I overreact. I'm like, how can you do that? And I explode. These Pharisees, the same thing with the Herodians, it's an overreaction. It's a complete overreaction of what Jesus is doing. I mean, did you notice how ironic this is? Like, here is Jesus. He heals the man's withered hand on the Sabbath. And Mark tells us that therefore, they go plot to kill Jesus. And that word for kill is actually the word for killing an ant, for destroying an animal. They're looking at Jesus now like an animal to be destroyed.

So I can't stand rodents. Lived in Philadelphia for a long time, had mice problems a lot, can't handle rodents. I mean, it's just a personal affront to me. I do not like your mice. I want to kill them all. I want to destroy them all. But think about feeling that way toward a person. The level of anger and malice and rage and just outright like, it sort of goes beyond the word hatred. Wanting to destroy. Anger like this is coming up out of their hearts and it reveals their hearts.

Anger Wants to Reshape the World

Third thing about anger. Anger wants to reshape the world. Anger always wants to make the world different. We go to anger. I mean, I do. I don't know about y'all, but I like anger because it gets stuff done. Right? It's energetic. It's powerful. I mean, a lot of you have watched the Marvel movies, you know, Hulk smash. Right? It gets stuff done. But if you've watched the new Marvel movies, you know what Hulk says is his secret. Right? I'm always angry. I'm always angry. Anger is powerful, makes us feel powerful.

And here in Mark 3, anger is about getting something done. See, they're furious. They want to destroy Jesus. And their anger really is creating a world without Jesus in it anymore. So they're thinking about the unthinkable, which is to kill him. And Jesus has just asked him, what's awful to do? To save life or to kill life? To do good or do harm? And they're mad at him for healing on the Sabbath, and then they're plotting to do ironically exactly what he said the Sabbath is not about—killing.

Now think of it again about my nap example. I'm so mad about hearing "You'll Be Back" another hundred times, and not able to sleep. I blow up in anger. And the irony is my pulse races. Right? I'm red on the face. I'm yelling downstairs to the kids, turn that off. Right? I couldn't sleep within a half hour of that if I wanted to. Right? Like, the irony is that the anger wants to reshape the world, but I am powerless to even do that. I mean, I'm actually working against my own desire for a nap. See, anger often blinds us from seeing ourselves. They're stupid in the room and the stupid one is the only one who can't see it. Right? It's ironic. That's what's so wrong with our anger.

Jesus' Anger

Now, let's look at Jesus and I want to use the same categories. Let's look at Jesus. Jesus' anger is so different and it's startlingly different. I want you to think about this. His is an anger in service of compassion. That's where we're going with this. His is an anger in service of compassion.

To his anger is also about a blocked desire. It's also about a blocked desire. Just like our anger, Jesus' anger is about a block. What is that? It's all about this conversation about healing on the Sabbath, you know.

Sabbath may be a word that you don't know very well, so let's get a little nerdy in here. Okay? Sabbath means rest. It means wholeness. In the Hebrew, it's the word Shabbat, and it's the same root as the word Shalom for peace. Those are closely related to each other. And it's a picture not just of an absence of war, but of something much fuller. And in the same way, Sabbath is not an absence of working, it's about something bigger.

You know, in our world, we talk about having time off and we use the word vacation for that. That comes from the Latin word vacate—emptiness. So you picture a vacation as where you go and there's empty time. Sabbath was not meant to be empty time. It was meant to be filled time. Time actually that was filled with God and other people and filling me up and filling you up and us becoming whole and us experiencing God's rest in a way that maybe we've never experienced it before. Becoming a whole person. Becoming whole.

And so, think about this: this man with a withered hand. The Jews would look at him and say, this is a person who's not whole, who's deficient in some way. And I can't think of a better advertisement for Jesus and what he's about—the Sabbath rest that Jesus brings—than him taking a withered hand, this man, and bringing wholeness, making him whole again. It's like a perfect image of this.

Dane Ordaland says, "Jesus's earthly ministry was one of giving back to undeserving sinners their humanity." That's what Jesus was doing over and over again. You look at the miracles. He is giving back to undeserving sinners their humanity. But these religious leaders, they're blocking Jesus' desire for this man to experience this. They're blocking that.

So Jesus tells them a story. In Matthew 12, which is a parallel passage to this one, Matthew includes a detail that Mark does not. He says Jesus tells a funny little parable here:

Suppose one of you has a sheep and it's a Sabbath day and the sheep gets stuck in a pit, falls into a pit. Would you not go take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable is a person than a sheep? Therefore, it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. — Matthew 12

I mean, look at what Jesus' argument assumes. People are more important than animals. People are made in God's image. And he's saying like, this matters so much to me. My image bearers, their restoration of wholeness—this is what I'm about.

You know, we live in a society that devalues people as well. In fact, it says animals often are more important than people. We have spotted owl eggs. You know, if you people rescue spotted owl eggs, but we abort millions of babies in our country. A person will stop their car and carry a turtle across the road and then go and shoot somebody for a stereo or pair of shoes. We even have a history in this country going back to 1787, the US Constitution, that says black people are three fifths of a human being, less than a person. So much of our current racial unrest comes back to even this—like people treating people as less than a person.

See, Jesus' anger comes because there's a blocked desire. He wants Sabbath wholeness. That's what he's all about. He's like, this is the perfect picture of my ministry. You guys can't even see it. Anger comes—remember we said anger comes from the heart and it reveals the heart. That was true with me in the nap example. It's true with Jesus. Because Jesus's heart here is sort of exhibit A in this passage.

I wanna ask you this. This is a really important question. Do you know the heart of Jesus toward you? Are you personally acquainted with the heart of Jesus toward you? You know, it's one thing to study the truths about Christianity, and it's another thing—it's a whole other thing—to really know the heart of Christ toward you.

Francis Schaeffer once wrote that biblical orthodoxy without compassion is the ugliest thing in the world. I think that's really right. The word of God without the heart of Christ—it distorts truths about God. That's exactly what was wrong with the Pharisees then, what's often wrong in our church today. You know, we're so concerned with making sure we're right about what we think about God. But if you divorce that without understanding the heart of Christ and seeing his compassion, his relentless care for people, his people are more important than anything, his love for image bearers, his love for you—then you miss it.

I've been talking about compassion a lot in the series. We've talked about the aggressive compassion of Jesus. Like, he's like a grizzly going after people in these passages. He's so relentless in his love. I talked about the indiscriminate compassion of Jesus. He's like a rose or a tree or a lamp. He just seems to not even care where that compassion goes. It's so big.

And today, I wanna think about this: the angry compassion of God. The angry compassion of Jesus. I mean, we would never put those words together. We would never join those two words. But that sounds weird to us, but that's what's in view here. The angry compassion of Jesus.

Mark tells us why Jesus is so angry. He tells us this: He was grieved and angry at the hardness of the heart of the people that were around him. They just didn't care.

Even when Jesus says, which is better, to give life or take it? They're just silent. If there's anything we've seen this summer in a lot of the racial protests, it's that silence we've heard this phrase, silence is violence. And there's a way that a lack of speaking up is silent complicity. A lack of saying something when it matters is as bad as going along with destructive acts. Their silence shows off hardness of heart. Jesus shows us again like, look, his anger, there's something blocked that really matters.

And then last thing here, David Powellson describes the anger of Jesus as this phrase: the constructive displeasure of mercy. The constructive displeasure of mercy. Anger, like I talked about the Hulk before, anger wants to reshape the world. Our anger, we want sometimes to tear it all down and watch the world burn. That's how we feel in our anger. Jesus' anger also wants to reshape the world but his is constructive. He's doing something different. His is constructive, he wants to build up. His is displeasure, something's wrong, but his is also about mercy. It's rooted in his compassion.

Now my family, we love watching old family videos. And there's this one family video where I show up and bring all the little boys to the hospital, first time they're gonna meet their new baby brother. So we're all there and it's mayhem. Just lots of little people in a hospital room. And so little babies right there, the oldest one's holding this new baby and it's all sweet. And later on, we realized watching this video, in the background, we can hear one brother instructing another brother this way. He says, "Don't hit the baby like this or he will cry." So in the next scene, we're watching, and what happens? Another kid's holding the baby and really quick somebody's bending over and the little hand comes out and smacks the baby. And baby is like completely out, like doesn't bother at all. But I grab the kid's arm and I'm like, no, sir. What's going on inside of me? Love watching this now because it's hilarious. But as I look back, this is what I felt like as a dad: the constructive displeasure of mercy. One of my children is hurting another one of my children and it grieves me. I have to say that's what's going on in the scene. This is how Jesus is toward these Pharisees. It's like, you don't see. You don't even see. Jesus so grieved but compassionately angry. Wish you got it. Wish you understood how much this matters.

I don't know if you've noticed, over the last few weeks, I have avoided actually defining the word compassion. Somebody called me out on that, but I'm waiting for it today. I'm gonna steal a definition from the writer, Fredrik Beekner. He says this, and I'll read it twice:

Compassion is that sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it's like to live inside someone else's skin. It's the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there's peace and joy for you too.

I'll read that again:

Compassion is that sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it's like to live inside someone else's skin. It's the knowledge that there can never be any peace and joy for me unless there's peace and joy for you too.

I mean, think about that—sometimes fatal capacity. I love that statement because it was fatal for Jesus. His compassion, it was what caused him to identify with sinners like me and sinners like you so much that he would go to a cross. It wasn't the nails that kept him on the cross, it was his incredible compassion, his incredible love for people like me and like you. His compassionate anger, constructive displeasure of mercy, it reshaped the world. It reshaped the world. This is how God's anger worked. All poured down on Jesus. All of God's wrath over the destructiveness of sin, effects of sin, shame, guilt, all that is poured out on him. And so we can say God's compassionate anger, it's my only hope. It's your only hope. On the cross, all the sin that deforms and defiles and defaces and disfigures, all of that finds its answer in the death of Jesus, all of it.

And if compassion was fatal for him, I want you to think about this: compassion is also fatal for us. It's fatal to our pride. If we're gonna be people of compassion, it's fatal to our pride. It's gonna be fatal to our self-righteousness, our flesh. The point of preaching this series is that we would be people who—I called it vintage Jesus. We would say, man, read this passage like, that is so Jesus. That's what he is like. And that we would want to become like him. We would say like, I want to follow him in that. I want to look like him. I want some of the family resemblance in my life.

Learning to Be Angry

So here's where I want to close out: learning to be angry. Anger in service of compassion.

Righteous Anger: A Biblical Command

There's a little debate within the Christian community as to whether righteous anger is even possible for sinful people. But Psalm 4 tells us:

Be angry and do not sin. — Psalm 4:4

Ephesians 4 picks that up:

Be angry and do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. — Ephesians 4:26

There's a command in the Bible to be angry. Isn't that weird? It makes me a little uncomfortable. Does it make you a little uncomfortable? Be angry.

I think a lot of people want to moonwalk away from that one. And yet, this is right here. Remember, there are two kinds of anger. There's the anger of man, which does not achieve the righteousness of God, and there's the anger of God—righteous anger. That's a reflection of who he is. Of course, righteous anger can turn sour. It can turn ugly. But this constructive displeasure of mercy that we see in Jesus does have a place in a Christian's new life.

There's something for us to learn about how to put this on. Jesus shows us how to be angry. Righteous anger is not angry about preferences. It's angry about what's really sinful, what really harms. Righteous anger throbs with kingdom concerns, not selfish concerns, not worldly concerns, but kingdom concerns. Righteous anger is expressed in godly ways. It's under control.

The Challenge: Becoming Compassionate Anger

Here's the challenge for this week: How can you, as a person who's been compassioned by Jesus, become a person of compassion? How can you, a person who's been compassioned by Jesus, become a person of this kind of compassion?

I know that given the boiling rage right now in our culture, some of you are thinking I'm taking crazy pills to preach that we should become angry people. That sounds crazy for us to do this. But I think it's time for us to take on this attribute of Jesus. It's redemptive. It changes things.

To imitate Jesus in his constructive displeasure of mercy means the church regains its status as the salt of the earth. Jesus said that in the Sermon on the Mount, that we, his people, would be salt. Salt preserves. Salt heals. Salt brings out the flavor of God's love in the world. And when we, like salt, become tasteless, our healing power's gone. We're useless.

But we have to remember Jesus's godly anger. It wasn't a wagging finger at prostitutes and tax collectors or even political candidates. He targeted his anger at religious people who hardened their hearts and wouldn't humble themselves. His constructive displeasure of mercy was always that of a loving father who's longing for wholeness in this world.

And Jesus's anger is always healing—not because it judges, but because it results in us and operates as an aspect of mercy. It brings good in bad situations. God puts us like the little salt shaker. He sprinkles us into this world. And if we're people who can learn this, God can do amazing things.

A Vision of Redemptive Anger

I wonder what it would look like if our church learned this constructive displeasure of mercy. I wonder what would happen. We have plenty of examples of stupid anger. We don't need any more of those. But what about good anger?

The same river can either flood and destroy all kinds of property or it can power a hydroelectric dam. The same electricity can power an electric chair or a hospital. The same wind can rip off the roofs of houses or it can turn a wind turbine and power a whole city. The same sunlight can give you a bad sunburn and also produce incredible crops. And anger can be incredibly destructive or something that God uses to change this world to be more and more like his kingdom.

Can we, who have been compassioned by Jesus, learn compassion? Who knows what might happen?

I want to think about the little place that you would have it. Surely during coronavirus, that place has become smaller for all of us. That little world feels really small. But in those few relationships and the small influence that you have in this world, what if there was a burning compassionate anger that longed for what Jesus's kingdom looks like to be manifest in your world? What would that be like?

And what would it be like if our church, in the little tiny place we inhabit—again, it's shrunk, it's gotten much smaller—what would it be like if we also, in the little relationships and the little influence that we have, began to dream kingdom dreams and got really good and angry?

Only you can find out.

Let's pray together. Lord, we pray that you would help us today. We're people whose anger is destructive. And, Lord, I know that there are many who feel conviction even hearing these words.

And we thank you, Father, that the cross was sufficient for our destructive anger. And we also thank you, Father, that you invite us into just an amazing invitation. You invite us into, Lord, your work in this world.

And Lord, I pray that we would be salt. And I pray, Father, that you would use the compassionate displeasure of mercy out of each of us to change this place for your glory and for our good.

We pray these things in your name. Amen.