Theme: the Seven Deadly Sins “Wrath” Romans 12: 17-21 17
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Theme: The Seven Deadly Sins “Wrath” Sermon preached by Jeff Huber August 31-September 1, 2013 at First United Methodist Church, Durango Romans 12: 17-21 17 Never pay back evil with more evil. Do things in such a way that everyone can see you are honorable. 18 Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone. 19 Dear friends, never take revenge. Leave that to the righteous anger of God. For the Scriptures say, “I will take revenge; I will pay them back,” says the Lord. 20 Instead, “If your enemies are hungry, feed them. If they are thirsty, give them something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals of shame on their heads.” 21 Don’t let evil conquer you, but conquer evil by doing good. VIDEO Squidward Gets Angry (right into next video…) VIDEO Wrath – Sermon Starter SLIDE Wrath Clearly Squidward struggled with his anger and as we continue in this sermon series on the seven deadly sins I remind you that each of the characters in that cartoon SpongeBob SquarePants is designed after one of the seven deadly sins and Squidward was the character who embodied wrath or anger. SLIDE Wrath – Squidward (graphic same slide as last week) How do you struggle with angry thoughts? When I was in seminary…yes seminary…I played on the school’s intramural basketball team where we played against other teams of students at Denver University. I was a basketball official for high school and college ball so I had high expectations of those wearing the stripes and I would get pretty intense with them when a call did not go my way. Sometimes my face would get red and I would boil over with frustration. I was kicked out of a few games because of my temper and my wife refused to go to any of the games anymore because it was embarrassing…and I was in seminary to be a pastor of all things! SLIDE Seven Deadly Sins (graphic) I think we all struggle with anger if we are honest and today we are going to look at how anger or wrath gets a hold of our hearts and causes us to be (Sermon preached by Jeff Huber – August 31-Septemeber 1, 2013 – page 1) separated from God and others and even ourselves. We're in the midst of a sermon series on the seven deadly sins and today we come to the sin of wrath or anger. We have been recognizing during this series that sin occurs when there is separation between us and God in us and others and even separation within ourselves where we become broken inside. The truth is that we all struggle with these sins in some way and I can tell you as a pastor for the past 22 years that many people struggle with angry feelings, some to the point of causing physical damage to the people they love the most. As we begin I want to invite you to take out of your bulletin your Message Notes and your Meditation Moments. My prayer each week will be that there will be at least one thing that you will want to remember from the message and there is a place for you to write that down and take any other notes that you'd like to take. I pray each week that the Holy Spirit would speak to each person who gathers for worship in this place and when you feel a nudge I encourage you to jot down what it is you feel like God might be speaking to you. Continued on the backside of the front page you will find our Meditation Moments which give you a chance to read further in the Scriptures about what it is we are going to be talking about each week. I encourage you to take some time each morning or evening to read a bit of Scripture and to reflect upon what it might mean for you and spend some time in prayer either individually or with your family or in a small group. If you are watching at home or online you can simply pull out a piece of paper and pen or pencil to take notes and you can download this resource off our website after you are done. Let's remember as we began what these seven deadly sins are. You will see the list up on the video screen and these are in order of what were considered the least deadly to the most deadly according to the monks of the fourth century who first developed this list. SLIDE Lust Gluttony Greed Sloth Wrath Envy Pride (Sermon preached by Jeff Huber – August 31-Septemeber 1, 2013 – page 2) These sins were named as deadly because they can sneak up on us. One of the reasons we are doing this sermon series is because each of these things tell us where we live. I was worried when I first planned this series that you all might think it was too depressing but I have heard from many of you that it is been helpful to be honest about where we struggle as human beings and how we get separated from God and from each other because of the broken places in our lives. My hope is to urge you to turn away from these things and to turn back towards God, knowing that God longs to offer us forgiveness and grace and mercy. We also have recognized that each one of these sins starts off as a good thing. Sexual intimacy is a gift from God but when it is abused they can become lust. Food is a blessing of the earth that is meant to nourish our bodies but when we consume too much of it we can experience gluttony. You can see this is true for each one of these sins. And the same is true for anger. There are times when anger is a very important and productive emotion. Anger can move us out of the place of indifference into action for something that is important. I think of Jesus who went into the Temple in Jerusalem and he tipped over the tables of the money changers who had turned a worship space into a place to make money. Jesus was angry about this and he expressed his anger and there are times when it is appropriate for us to do that. But we also see evidence of anger that can be destructive like what we see unfolding in Syria and Egypt. I'm not going to pretend that I know about all of the history that has led up to the expressions of anger and revolt and violence in those two nations, but we see images of innocent people being destroyed by chemical weapons in Syria, most likely authorized by their own president who carried out the atrocities against his own people. If you follow the events in Egypt you will read about more than 40 Christian churches which have been burned and many innocent civilians who have been brutally murdered. I don't have clarity about all of the issues involved in either one of those countries but it is clear that anger and wrath are being expressed in destructive ways that is causing brokenness throughout those countries and it could very well spill over into the world as political tensions mount. We even see anger building in our own hearts as we see the injustice and the violence. While murder is not on the list of the seven deadly sins we should recognize that this is because wrath leads to sins like violence and murder. Wrath was named one of the seven deadly sins because it gives birth to many other places of (Sermon preached by Jeff Huber – August 31-Septemeber 1, 2013 – page 3) brokenness in the human condition. Our aim today is to better understand what anger is and how it begins to fester in our lives and our hearts and how we might find an antidote for when anger begins to take root. The list of these seven deadly sins was originally penned in Latin and the root for wrath is “ira” from which we get the English word irate. SLIDE Wrath = ira When I use the word anger today I'm really referring to the extreme version of that which is to be wrathful or irate and then all the way along the spectrum to what might be considered just frustration or annoyance. Anger is a natural human emotion and even Jesus expressed it at different points in his ministry as we have mentioned earlier. The real question is what we do with our anger and how we respond to others. Sometimes anger comes from when someone has hurt us or wronged us in some way. Sometimes anger comes from envy or pride which we will be looking at the next few weeks. Today I want to invite you to consider two different kinds of anger as we seek to understand how this emotion becomes real in our lives. Jack Nicholson does a great job of describing this to Adam Sandler as his therapist in the movie, "Anger Management." Take a listen. VIDEO Anger Management SLIDE Anger The first kind of anger is one that is slow and simmers inside when you feel like you have been wronged over and over again. You might think of it like this crockpot. You've seen these before and we use them every Wednesday night here for Disciple Wednesdays when people prepare soup in them.