I was invited by my dear friends at the UNL Lutheran Center to contribute a short reflection for the Lenten devotional they are putting together: “The Emotions of Lent.” I chose to write the reflection on anger, based on this passage from Exodus. I enjoyed writing this reflection enough that I decided to expand it a little bit and post it here. Enjoy!
7 The Lord said to Moses, “Go down at once! Your people, whom you brought up out of the land of Egypt, have acted perversely; 8 they have been quick to turn aside from the way that I commanded them; they have cast for themselves an image of a calf and have worshiped it and sacrificed to it and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ ” 9 The Lord said to Moses, “I have seen this people, how stiff-necked they are. 10 Now let me alone so that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, and of you I will make a great nation.”
Exodus 32:7-10
Anger can often be one of the hardest emotions for us to deal with – and that’s especially true when we’re talking about God’s anger. Lutheran Christians in particular view God’s grace and mercy and love as being absolutely central, so the idea of God being angry is uncomfortable – and we’re not always sure what to do with it.
But God is indeed angry in this text; in fact, God is downright furious with the people of Israel. The Israelites have decided that Moses is taking too long up on the mountain talking with God, and in their impatience, they decide that they will make their own “god” to worship instead – they gather up all the jewelry in the camp and make themselves a literal idol of gold.
Moses himself is so enraged when he comes down the mountain and sees this sight that he throws down the tablets of the ten commandments, which break. He proceeds to break the idol in pieces, burns it, crushes it into a powder, and then mixes it with water and makes the Israelites drink it. Yet as angry as Moses is, he pleads with God on behalf of the people not to go through with the wrathful plans that God has begun to formulate. Moses reminds God of who God truly is: not a God of wrath and vengeance, but a God of mercy and compassion who relents from punishing and lovingly provides for God’s people.
The image of an angry God is something we usually associate with Old Testament stories like this one; but it’s important to note that there are also plenty of New Testament stories about Jesus getting angry (see: flipping tables, figs, and Pharisees for some examples). And in both testaments, virtually every incident of divine anger is sparked by violations of one of the two great commandments: failing to honor our relationship with God by prioritizing other things in God’s place, and/or failing to love our neighbors as ourselves.
In this story, as in many others, we see God pause and take a breath and change God’s mind about all this wrathfulness. God remembers Godself and chooses to show mercy and compassion, because that’s who God is. But we also see in Jesus how God uses anger to rouse people from complacency. Jesus directs his anger into fighting the injustices he sees, pushing back against a status quo that is much too comfortable with inequality and exploitation.
We see in God’s actions that anger can be a gift, alerting us to wrongness in the world, moving our hearts from complacency into action. Anger is not a feeling to be feared or vilified, but rather one that we are called to use wisely.
† A prayer:
Merciful God, let your holy anger burn hot in us at the injustices of this world, that we may dedicate ourselves to bringing about your reign of justice, peace, and love. In the name of Jesus H. Christ we pray. Amen.
This is the Day 
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