Anger

John 7: 21-23

“Jesus said to them, “I did one miracle, and you are all amazed. Yet, because Moses gave you circumcision (though actually, it did not come from Moses, but from the patriarchs), you circumcise a boy on the Sabbath. Now if a boy can be circumcised on the Sabbath so that the law of Moses may not be broken, why are you angry with me for healing a man’s whole body on the Sabbath?'”

If I understand this correctly (and I don’t claim to be an expert!) Jesus is pointing out that under the strict interpretation of the Fourth Commandment circumcision should not be done because it is a form of work, which is forbidden on the Sabbath. Later, after giving the Ten Commandments,  God gave Moses the instruction about circumcision telling him that boys were to be circumcised on the eighth day after they were born. (Leviticus 12:3) The Jews had to choose to place the importance of one law over the other and at some point they decided that circumcising a child on the eighth day was more important than observing the Sabbath rest.

Interestingly, Jesus does not condemn the Jewish leaders for their choice of doing “work” on the Sabbath. What he does seem to question is the apparent double standard of the Jewish leaders. When they do a circumcision on the Sabbath it is okay, but when Jesus does a similar kind of “work” and heals a person they become angry.

I remember being told once that anger is a secondary emotion. What that means is that anger is not the response to what happens outside of a person, but rather what happens inside the person because of what happened outside the person. (I know this sounds like a Vaudeville routine, but please bear with me.)

Suppose a young child does something dangerous like swing a hammer at their little brother or sister. Often the parent’s response is to be angry with the older child. But the anger is not really about the hammer as much as it is about the fear of seeing a child hurt that the parent felt. Or suppose a person gets angry because they lose at playing a game. Are they angry because they lost the game or because they feel embarrassed at losing?

I suspect that the Jewish leaders were angry, not so much because Jesus healed someone on the Sabbath, but because they felt their authority questioned and they realized deep down inside that they didn’t have much to stand on. Having your world shaken to the core can be frightening and feel threatening.

Q: What triggers your anger? Have you ever thought to examine the inner fear that is being triggered when you get angry?