Sermon for April 20th

Is God angry with you? Yes. So what are you going to do about it? You are probably going to do the same thing that every human being has done throughout the centuries when they believed that God was angry with them . . . you will try to make God happy with you. But how do you do this? How does one make God happy? How can you satisfy an angry God?

It seems like a rather difficult proposition. How do you make God happy if he is angry? Well, if you don’t know, then perhaps you could try to find someone who does know. Perhaps the local religious person. Every culture has a medicine man or a priest-like figure. These people are supposed to have a gift, or training, or some kind of special powers that enable them to satisfy the demands of an angry God or spirit.

In some African Traditional Religions, there is a priest that is called a medicine man. This person is called upon to sacrifice to the gods on behalf of the people. He or she tells you what you need to do or what you need to sacrifice to stay on your god’s good side on a day to day basis. For instance, in some places, it is important to pour out a libation to the gods or to your ancestors before you eat or drink. What does this mean? It means that, before you down your glass of wine, you dump some of it out onto the ground with the understanding that this is the gods’ portion so that they don’t get angry with you. Sacrifices are always made with the understanding that a god or some kind of spirit is unhappy with you and needs a sacrifice to satisfy their anger.

In the Old Testament, when you made a mistake or sinned against someone or against God, you went to the priest to find out what you had to do to make it right. For instance, if you just made a little boo boo, maybe you gave the priest some grain to burn up. If you killed somebody by mistake, perhaps you had to sacrifice a lamb to make up for it. Of course, if you killed somebody on purpose, the priest might have to sacrifice you in order for God not to be mad at the entire community. When a sin was committed, a payment was demanded. You went to a priest to find out what you had to do in order to make God happy. Only the priest knew how to satisfy God the correct way. Only a priest had the authority to proclaim the mysteries of God.

Nowadays, we find this kind of thinking really uncivilized. Why should lambs and cattle and bread be burned up to satisfy God? At best it seems silly and at worst it looks like a legal case for the humane society.

The thing is, many of us still wonder if God is angry with us. Perhaps you have considered your sins and are sure that God should be angry with you. And unlike your uncivilized predecessors, you don’t have a clue as to what you could do to satisfy God. So, you might end up in the same place they did, trying to find yourself some kind of priest and start looking for something to sacrifice.

I believe that this is exactly what we do today. Sacrifice doesn’t always involve dead lambs and burning things up. It can take many forms and disguises. For instance, many people who couldn’t imagine seeing a priest have their own personal guru. This guru helps them to get past their cravings, or learn to be at peace, or to be more wholly attuned into nature. If you’ve ever had a guru, you may have never thought about whether God was angry with you or not. But you were angry and needed to be satisfied. You were angry at all the meaninglessness in your life and you wanted to find a way to satisfy your need for happiness and fulfillment. So you gave up meat, or your need for noise, or you sacrificed your play time in order to serve others in the community. Why? Because that’s what your guru told you to do. To satisfy an angry god . . . to satisfy you.

Is God angry with you? Yes. What are you going to do about it? Try to sacrifice something to make Him happy again. But that not what God wants from you. That’s not going to work. That’s not going to satisfy an angry God. God doesn’t want a little dead lamb. He wants you and nothing else will suffice. He wants your full and complete repentance. He wants you to have a new heart. He wants you have a new spirit. He wants you to love him. He wants you to love your neighbor. He wants justice to roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream! Is God angry with you? Yes. What can you do about it? Absolutely nothing.

Thankfully, since you are unwilling and unable to satisfy God, God has done something about it. God has sent Jesus Christ to earth to tell you: Your sins are forgiven. God is not angry with you anymore. Jesus Christ has satisfied his wrath. How? By finding you. By forgiving you. By giving you faith so that you might love truly, from the heart. God is only satisfied when you believe in him and start loving your neighbor. So Jesus satisfies God’s anger by giving you a new heart and a new spirit so that you can actually do it. He gives you faith to believe in God and out of this living faith comes love, just like fruit blossoming off of a fruit tree. You can’t help it, it just happens.

Jesus has satisfied God’s wrath. He has put all the priests and gurus and medicine men of the world out of a job. But God has also done something else wonderful. He has made you a priest in their place.

He has made you a priest. But the job description has been completely rewritten. Your job, as a priest, is not to make sacrifices to make God happy. When the three women went to the tomb of Jesus to prepare his corpse, to keep it from stinking too badly, they were fulfilling the laws and customs of their time. They were sacrificing their time to fulfill their duty before God and the community. But when they found out that Jesus was alive they ran to tell their friends. They became priests. Right then and there. Priests used to say what needed to happen in order for you to satisfy an angry God. Now priests say what Jesus has done to satisfy God for you.

Why did these women tell their friends? Was it because the angel had made them feel guilty. Did they have to tell the disciples? Would they get in trouble if they didn’t? No. Jesus was alive! They didn’t have to be scared anymore of an angry God. The whole sacrificial system was over for them at that instant. Now, they could let everyone else know.

In today’s reading from 1st Peter, you can hear your function as a Christian priest. “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” You now know God as a loving God, as long as you keep your eyes on Jesus Christ. The sacrificial system is over for you. As God’s priest you now have the right and the authority to let everyone else know about it.