Anger: On Being Good and Angry
August 30, 2026
14th Sunday after Pentecost
MINISTER
Rev. David J. Wood
SCRIPTURE
Ephesians 4:25-5:2; Matthew 21:12-17
“Anger: On Being Good and Angry”
by Rev. David J. Wood
14th Sunday After Pentecost, August 30, 2026
First Congregational Church of Camden
Scripture Readings: Ephesians 4:25-5:2 & Matthew 21: 12-17
I try not to go out on Saturday nights when I am preaching the next day. It was several years ago that I made an exception to that rule. It was a neighborhood gathering…not church related. It so happened that my sermon the next day was going to be, like today, on Anger.
Sitting around the dinner table, someone asked me what I do. In those settings, I am always reluctant to answer. I’m a minister. There was a moment of awkward silence. Then someone asked, “What are you preaching on tomorrow?”
“Anger.” The conversation took off…everyone had their take on anger they were eager to share with me. As I recall, stories of “road rage” were in abundance!
Anger is a hot topic. Think about the words we associate with the experience of anger: Blazing, burning, flaming, scorching, smoking, simmering, smoldering…boiling…even when it’s cold it still burns. Nothing lukewarm about anger.
It’s not passive, indifferent, apathetic. There is nothing ho-hum about anger. When someone gets angry, we say they:
Blow up
Hit the roof
Have a fit
Fly off the handle
Lash out.
There is a feeling of power, passion, emotion…that comes with anger. It’s one of the reasons we indulge it. Anger has a way of seeing all things clearly….it always brings with it a certain kind of clarity. The more complicated life becomes, the more we yearn for clarity…which is one of the reasons many think anger is more common than ever these days.
You might even say that anger often brings with it a kind of moral empowerment. It can feel downright invigorating! I feel more alive just talking about it!
Lest I appear too knowledgeable about anger…let me assure you, everything I have learned about anger is from my observation of other people.
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Pride, Lust, Sloth, Greed, Gluttony, Envy…Anger
In that list of the seven deadly sins, anger is one that we want to reserve space for its legitimacy. Maybe that’s true with pride…perhaps some forms of envy…but lust, sloth, greed, and gluttony? Not so much. Anger feels mixed.
I think the Apostle Paul would agree: “Be Angry, but do not sin.” Which is actually a direct quote from Psalm 4—which reminds us that this piece of wisdom has a long history.
Anger can be a prelude to right action. But it’s tricky…it easily, predictably morphs into other things…that are sinful.
So, anger is, well, complicated.
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As many of you know, Jennifer and I have just returned from a trip that took us to Berlin, Vienna and Salzburg. When walking the streets of those incredible cities, you encounter “Stolpersteine” in English: stumbling stones.
They are 4”square brass-topped concrete cubes set into sidewalks in front of doorways to residences where between 1933 and 1945 the occupants were forcibly removed and deported and murdered.
Rather than a central memorial, the intent is to move remembrance back to the neighborhoods where the crimes were enacted.
On each stone is engraved the names of the victims, the date when they were taken, where they were taken and if they were killed, the date they died. So far there are more than 100,000 stones spread across Germany, Netherlands, Italy and Austria.
They are called "stumbling stones" because pedestrians are meant to "stumble" upon them as they walk down the street.
— and to be awakened to the consequences of our passivity in face of evil.
There are times in our common life when ANGER is required. Anger that moves us to action…that cannot be unmoved by injustice against my neighbor.
We have occasions when Jesus exemplifies this kind of Anger.
In Mark 3: Jesus is confronted with a man who has a withered hand. Because it was the Sabbath, the experts in the Law present we sure that he should no the heal him. The text says, “he looked around at them in ANGER and was grieved at their hardness of heart.”
In Mark 10:14: the Disciples were shooing away the little children who were coming to Jesus to be blessed. “He became angry and said, let the little children come to me.”
And then there is our reading this morning from Matthew 21
J’s confrontation with money changers in the Temple. An account that appears in all four Gospels. He drives out the money changers and the dove sellers.
For everyone coming to offer sacrifices and make an offering at the Temple, they had to exchange the currency they used in every day life for a special currency only available at the Temple. The money changers’ offense is that they charged exorbitant exchange rates that was a burden, particularly for the poor.
Doves where the least expensive offering one could make and so doves were the offering of choice for the poor. Again, the dove-sellers were making a killing. By charging so much for the doves, the religious authorities were putting the poor in a position where fulfilling their religious obligations meant impoverishing themselves even further.
Jesus declared, that they had made the “House of Prayer into a den of robbers.” He turned of their tables and literally chased them out of the Temple Court. He lost it on them.
Once space was cleared, “The blind and the lame and the children came to him.”
This kind of anger is “personal.”…but less about “me” and more about something larger, higher and worthy than my own toes being stepped on…or my ego…or my inconvenience. It is about an injustice being visited upon my neighbor. This kind of anger is Righteous but not SELF-righteous.
As someone once said, “I am unable to commit to any Messiah who does not turn over tables.”
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Back to the question for today:
Can we be good and angry?
Well…yes and no.
Let me take that NO side of that question…
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Think of a moment when you were the target, recipient, on the receiving end of someone’s anger. How did that feel? Shame, humiliation, fear, violation, intimidation?
Chances are it was probably someone you knew well….
The closer the person the more the impact.
Such events are painful. Even the memory can make one’s heart race, the blood pressure rise…
Even if the angry person was able to justify the outburst, perhaps saying it was motivated by love…the experience of it outstrips/overwhelms any such justification.
So many other ways, short of anger, that would have been just as effective at addressing the situation at hand…So many other possibilities for a response that would have constructively and redemptively addressed the situation and been an appropriate response. Perhaps this experience alone makes the case for how and when anger qualifies as a sin.
Let me suggest three ways that Anger is most likely to morph into sin.
First, Anger morphs into sin when IT COMES TOO OFTEN
Frequency can be an indicator of whether we have become hooked on anger: the rush, the power, the clarity.
Because anger is so loaded, it should be rare—exceptional. Not the rule…or it rules us.
Second, Anger morphs into sin when IT STAYS TOO LONG
“Do not let the sun go down on your anger.”
Sounds like a good rule to live by:
Give it up before the sun goes down. (Or as the great social commentator Phyllis Diller was supposed to have said, “Don’t go to be angry; Stay up and fight!”
Anger tends to show up uninvited, but it needs to be invited to leave…it needs to be shown the door.
Again, the Apostle Paul: “Do not make room for the devil.”
Anger rarely travels alone: it has many relatives who inevitably tag along: Hostility, resentment, bitterness, hatred, animosity, shame…
Anne Lamott, says that hanging onto resentments is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die.
Have you noticed that when we let anger pass…amazing how much passes away with it!!
When we hold onto anger, it takes hold of us.
Third, Anger morphs into sin when IT MOVES TOO FAST:
When there is little or no gap between stimulus and response.
We move too quickly from anger to action. REACTION tends not to produce constructive action. Anger is not to be trusted as a source for action…at best, it is a prelude to action but should not mistaken as an action itself.
How many times have you said, “I should never have sent that email…I should have let it sit.” More time between stimulus and response is almost always a good thing.
Anger tends to admit no questions, only conclusions.
No deliberation only judgement.
JAMES 1: 19-20 puts it this way: “Let everyone be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger, for human anger does not produce God’s righteousness.”
It’s interesting to note that in the account of Jesus clearing the Temple in Mark, Jesus comes to the temple, looks around at everything, goes to Bethany. He returns the next morning for the clearing out.
Can we be good and angry?
Not if our anger
comes too often
Stays to long
Moves too fast..
~~~~~
Now let me turn to the other side of the coin:
Can we be good and angry? YES.
1. DO SOMETHING that counters anger.
Anger always Requires a counter move if we are to move through it…beyond it. Something as simple as shaking hands becomes a counter-act to anger. Anger always needs to be tempered by a counter move…which brings me to my second point,
2. Walk in the way of love. Our lives need a logic to live by that keeps anger contained: back to our reading from Ephesians:
Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you. Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
If God can get over it, surely we can. When our lives are are tempered by grace and forgiveness, we are much less likely to lose our temper
3. Anger calls for CONFESSION not REPRESSION…
To repress anger turns it in on ourselves. We seethe.
Confession works very differently…it how we step back,
Open up, offer up it for review and revision…
Many of the Psalms are filled with anger: anger at God, at one’s circumstance, at one’s enemies…at the state of the world! Prayer at its best is confessional. Prayer opens up a space between stimulus and response.
So every Sunday, we pray, “Thy will be done…forgive us our sins..”
4. We Cannot do it alone. If we are to be good and angry, We need others who will speak the truth to us. To whom we listen. Whose take on us we trust.
“Be angry but do not sin”
There is a place for anger in our lives. Not sure how one can live through this time in our common life, and not feel angry. But responding to injustice, whether against ourselves or our neighbors, must not turn us into angry people.
In all we do, we are to “walk in the way of love.”
Let me conclude by going back to a question I posed earlier about a time when you were on the receiving end of someone’s anger. But let me pose it differently:
Think of a time when someone had reason to be angry with you…and yet, they chose not visit their anger on you…instead, their anger became an occasion for mercy, grace, and love. Such is what it means to “walk in the way of love."
This world needs a people who are capable of being good and angry. This time needs a people who have committed themselves to learning what it means to be angry and not sin…to “walk in the way of love.”
Now more than ever. Amen.