I came across a sermon my father preached in Longview, Washington on May 16, 1965 that detailed the conflicts with which we Americans were beset. He spoke of the wrath of man and how it worked not the righteousness of God. The Bible verse came from the Epistle of James. As I read through the sermon typing it into my computer, I was struck by the fact that what he spoke of in 1965 mirrors our lives today. Events were different, and actions were aimed at other causes and concerns, but the tenet for the text of the day, the Fourth Sunday after Easter, holds true today.

We are beset by attacks on our Christian beliefs by people who do not hold them but have a history which reflects the ideals. We Americans argue about what is right and wrong actions for us. My father defined wrath as an Old English word for anger, “the emotion of indignation and the deeds that are done under the spell of that emotion.” How true his definition is can be seen in how we treat each other. He preached a litany of deeds – a nation at war, an angry parent, a religious fanatic, a Ku Klux Klansman, a lynching party, and riots. Today we can substitute our own list – a nation fighting in two arenas, an angry parent, Muslim and Christian fanatics, the abortion debate, union busting and the gathering of people opposed to it, political polarization, climate change debate, and budget problems at the state and nation levels. We truly have a laundry list of concerns for this generation of Americans.

He spoke of the concerns about Communism in the 60’s. Today, it’s socialism. He related the problems between unions and industry, how employers used military and state police to break the unions, and the unions used bricks and pick handles and strikes against the employers. Today, some politicians use the law making privilege to usurp power from common citizens and the citizens rally in protest, occasionally with violence erupting. He told of attempting to find equality of all people regardless of color. Today, we battle economic opportunity for the masses while a few harbor their wealth in a manner which is detrimental to our society.

However, what really struck me was reading his sermon and his highlighting one of the recurring temptations of humankind which causes our failures, the recurring temptation of “a vision of what ought to be and what might be” just beyond our grasp. In wanting to it, our “anger at the stupidity of some men” denies us an ability to have it for all humankind. We so want to convince people of the wrongness of their choices that we “take up any weapon close at hand” and use it to save men’s souls. We justify attacking homosexual people verbally or physically. We believe that killing a doctor who treats women requesting an abortion is acceptable because we are saving the unborn child. We think that seceding from the country is better than figuring out a way to work within the myriad beliefs of the citizens across nation. We condemn lawmakers to death and shoot them when we are so righteously correct in our thinking.

We need not concern ourselves with the birth record of our president nor the inflammatory rhetoric spewing from the mouths of ignorance. We need not redress the grievances of the unfortunate souls who have little or nothing at the hands of the citizens who control most of the wealth. We should be urging our fellow Christians on this journey that the principle involved advances us when we are in the righteousness of God. The wrath of man does not advance us on our journey. As my father put it; “be wise as serpents and harmless as doves” if called to violence and the use of weapons.

He concludes with the a call for us to work for peace and righteousness, to work for understanding, mercy, and a change of heart in those who you believe are mistaken. God has called us to work for love among all of us. I truly pray for each of us to let go of the anger which fires our passions and instead have a passion for loving our fellow human being as we want them to love us. Please read what follows and I look forward to your comments.

“The way Christ Chose”

The text this morning is from the Fourth Sunday after Easter, used for the Epistle for this Sunday, and comes from the Epistle of James. “For the wrath of man work not the righteousness of God.”

James 1: 20

There was a time some three hundred years ago, when Protestant Christians and Roman Catholics Christians burned and beat and butchered each other with the complete conviction that what they were doing was not only pleasing to God, but essential to His purpose in the world. They did what they did in good faith, but they left a legacy of distrust and suspicion of Roman Catholics towards Protestant and Protestants toward Roman Catholics, which persist to this day.

There are moments in every family when the patience of parents wears thin and angry words are said and things are done with the honest intention of helping the child or even saving him from some great danger. These moments, if repeated often enough, can impair the love and destroy the respect of the child toward his family and change their relationships with each other forever.

Most of us of our age, have lived through a time when anger and fear have swept across the world like a fire in a pine forest, and have wrapped the peoples in the great flames or war. These flames have subsided, but the peace they were kindled to bring is not within us, even in this day. The nations are as far apart as ever, and in various places of the world, there are clouds of new war or actual war hanging in their horizon.

All this is said by way of introduction to out text. ‘The wrath of man works not the righteousness of God.”

The “wrath of man” is familiar to all of us, but what is the “righteousness of God?”

Wrath is an old English word for anger, and it means the emotion of indignation and the deeds that are done under the spell  of that emotion, — a nation at war, an angry parent, a religious fanatic, the Ku Klux Klansman in his hooded robe, the lynching party, the riots that go with racial and industrial strife. These are examples of the wrath of man. We are too familiar with them.

But the righteousness of God is less easily understood. Perhaps it suggests to us, God in His righteousness, enthroned on the seat of judgment, a heavenly characteristic. It ought to suggest rather, God’s purpose for the world and for mankind, for His children. The righteousness among men for which we pray when we say “Thy kingdom come, on earth as it is in heaven.” The righteousness of God would be the nations at peace. It would be the classes and groups of men seeking, not just their own advantage, but the welfare of all mankind. It would be an unfailing helpful family life, which would reflect in all its aspects, the love of God, “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.” The righteousness of God is the righteousness among men which Christians believe. It is God’s purpose and power to create.

That these two do not go together, that “the wrath of man works not the righteousness of God, that when idealistic men let their anger choose for them the means they  will use to accomplish the goodwill of the good God, they defeat and destroy that will. It needs only a candid, honest view if the world today to show.

The last World War that we went through was the wrath of man on a titanic scale. The present state of affairs has nothing to do with the righteousness of God, except to show how dreadfully we need to find Him. St. James was right, and all those who have said that the ends justify the means,” forgetting that the means always determines what the end shall be, have been wrong. “The wrath of man works not the righteousness of god.”

With this principle in mine, we turn to some of the troubled areas of our modern life today.

There is the problem of Communism in America. We are told that the Communists are a threat to American democracy if they are a simple political party, and a threat to American security if they are agents of a foreign power. We see no reason to doubt either statement, but especially the latter. Few of us would want to be Communists, or live under the realm of Communism. We think the whole system rests on tragic misreading of history and a misunderstanding of human nature.

But when we are told that Communists must be rooted out by all possible means, and that we must prepare ourselves to fight Russia; and all sorts of agencies spring up to destroy Communism. Some of them are preparing to use force. All of them would use other pressures short of force. This seems to some of us, to be an even greater threat to democracy than Communism itself actually is, and be turning our back on that peaceful way of living together, which is part “the righteousness of God.”

Some of us can remember, and some of us have read, about the Red scare of the early 1920’s, and the silly things that were said and done then. Some of us remember that Hitler and Mussolini rose to power in Germany and Italy on just such a wave of emotion and fear and anger as the one which is so prevalent in the world today. Some of us resent the loose way the term “Communist” can be used, and is being used by thoughtless and malicious people to condemn anybody or anything with which they do not agree, or about which they don’t want to think. It seems to some of us that the best way to combat real Communism and its evils, is all of us to be better Americans and to develop and extend the benefits of the American way of life to more and more people, not only at home but abroad. It seems to some of us that what is needed is not a negative program, but a positive one. “The wrath of man works not the righteousness of God” – no, not even in America.

There is a problem of adjusting the tensions among groups in our industrial society. We used to be told that the employer enjoyed an unfair advantage over the workers and treated them badly, and so they did, in many cases.  Now we are told that the unions have gained for the employees an unfair advantage over the employer, and they are making the most of it, and so, in many cases they are.

The employers used the militia and state police on the workers, and the workers used bricks and pick handles and the strike against the employers, and lately against the general public. Laws have been framed and re-framed making the advantage first to one side and then to the other.

The goal is industrial peace and the maximum advantages for all concerned in this industrial civilization. But the thing to remember is, that good goal must be sought by good and fir means. Bad and unfair means, whoever uses them, can only bring further strife and trouble, for here, too, “the wrath of man works not for the righteousness of God.”

One of the great problems we have in America is to find a position for equality of all men, regardless of their color. Certainly, the time has come after a hundred years, for the black man of America to find his place in our society and have available to him the same advantages for cultural advancement, education, and a place in human affairs that are the privileges of the white class. But, in order to accomplish these, what has happened in these past few months is nothing less than a waging of war among the whites and the blacks. We can understand what they are doing, and why, but few of us can see any hope in this direction, and I cannot support, personally, this kind of approach to solve a problem of relationship between God’s children. I’m sure answers will come out of this, but I am equally positive that we are storing up more trouble for years to come. You see, “the wrath of man works not the righteousness of God,” not even in places like Selma or the south.

One of the temptations of Christ was to make use of man’s wrath and indignation in order to bring in the Kingdom of God. “Bow down and worship me,” said Satan during those days in the wilderness, “and all these things will I give thee.” Satan showed Him the kingdom of the world and the glory of it. We must never forget the Lord’s reply, “Get thee hence, Satan, for it is written ‘thou shall worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve.’”

Here’s one of the recurring temptations for every man of high ideals in this material world of man. The righteousness of God, the vision of what ought to be and what might be, in the sense that it lies only just beyond our grasp, this is the wine which can turn the head of the idealist who drinks it. In his longing for it, in his anger at the stupidity of some men seeming to deny it to all men, he is tempted to take up any weapon which lies close at hand. So the church in one dark hour makes use of the rock and the flame to save men’s souls.

It is the temptation of the evil one, for when men take that course, the dream vanishes, the vision fades and nothing is left but ashes and blood and tears and bitter memories, and the righteousness of God is still further postponed.

The alternative is patience and labor, and the cross of disappointment and misunderstanding; but this is the way the Lord Jesus Christ chose. There is no other way for those who would hallow Him. Let me plead in these troubled days of ours that you strive for a clear understanding of the principle involved, as we try to travel from this world of men the righteousness of God. The wrath of man will not advance us on our journey. Let me urge you as Christian disciples, to be “wise as serpents and harmless as doves,” whenever the summons to violence comes and the weapons are pressed into your hands.

Rather, give yourselves to the work of peace and righteousness. Work for understanding among rivals, work for mercy for all who have suffered wrong, work for a change of heart in those you believe to be mistaken. Above all, work for the love of God among men, for He alone can “order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men.” For in your dream of a better world, remember, only the righteousness of men works the righteousness of God.

The Reverend Norman Stockwell — May 16, 1965 at St. Stephen’s in Longview, Washington