What Pushes Your Buttons?
In Jesus’ day there were strict laws governing lepers. If they got well, they had to go and show themselves to the priests in Jerusalem and offer certain sacrifices. In the meantime, they could not live in their communities. They had to stay at a distance from polite society and yell “unclean” when anyone else got too near. Consider the Leper in our Gospel reading for today (Mark 1:40-45). He broke all the rules. He broke through his fear, walked right up to Jesus and spoke with him. This was an emotional moment for Jesus. He was moved with pity. Jesus broke the rules, too, by reaching out and touching a Leper. Once again Jesus identifies with the outcasts of society.
Consider also Naaman, the Leper in our Old Testament reading (2 Kings 5:1-14). He was not an outcast from society – at least not yet. He was probably in the first stages of the disease when he received the healing he needed.
Naaman was an army commander in Aram, which is modern-day Syria. Our scripture passage illustrates that worship of the True and Living God was making inroads into other cultures.
In those days, one way that cultures crossed paths was by making war on each other. Some things never change. The stronger nations would test the resistance of weaker nations by conducting short raids. They would go into another country at harvest time and steal the harvest, or burn it. There was probably a lot of prior harassment before there was all-out war. On one of these raids, a young girl had been taken captive. She served as a slave of Naaman’s wife. There could not have been any bigger contrast in the power of these two individuals – a slave girl and an army commander. But, like our Lord Jesus, the young girl had compassion on the Leper. She was moved with pity.
For a moment, put yourself in her place. If you had been taken as a slave, what would be your reaction? Would you have been fearful? Would you have been angry? She could have withheld the information about the Prophet in her country. But this would have been vengeance. It would not have been compassion. So, she took a chance on recommending that Naaman go back into the country he had been raiding. She told him to go back into enemy territory! Although he would be going there in peace, he was taking a chance on his life.
We are not sure what the protocol was in those days, but apparently kings talked to kings and the information trickled down from there. When Naaman went back to Israel, emotions erupted in every direction. First, he took a letter from his king to the king of Israel, asking him to heal Naaman. This made the king of Israel very angry. Why was he so angry? Was it because he was afraid? I think the king was really afraid of Naaman, who was known as a warrior. It was natural for the king to become angry because Naaman was a perceived threat. It must have been terrifying for the king of Israel to have Naaman walk in and demand healing. Little did he know that God was about to do something amazing. But at first, Naaman really pushed his buttons.
Do you know what pushes your buttons? What is it that you feel so strongly about, that if it was threatened you would be angry? Knowing who we are and what upsets us contributes greatly to the way we handle our anger. When I first began thinking about becoming a priest, I was told that the discernment process was not for the faint of heart. Though this process, I would “learn what pushes my buttons.” In other words, I would know myself so well that I would know what would make me angry. I would know my sources of anger and perhaps become able to develop constructive responses to them – or at least uses for them.
So I check in with myself every now and then and ask, “What pushes my buttons?” Are the issues the same as they were five years ago, or have I mellowed out, so to speak. We can decide what is worth getting angry about. We can decide which “ditch to die in.”
We ask ourselves as Christians how we can get by with any anger, since it is considered one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Anger ranks right up there with pride, covetousness, lust, envy, gluttony and sloth. And yet, as we read scripture, we hear plenty about the Wrath of God. How can we reconcile the two? How can God have the emotion of anger? Maybe it’s because God loves us so much, and we humans have done things to threaten God’s love.
I want to suggest that anger itself is natural to us, who are created in the image of God. However, we are responsible for the use of our anger. We are not to let anger control us. St. Paul advises us to be angry, but not to sin – and not to let the sun go down on our wrath. Don’t stew.
Anger is a part of our physiology. It’s a part of our normal, God-given self-defense mechanism, which, combined with fear, might save our lives. These emotions let us know when it’s time to make a run for it. I suggest that anger in itself is not a sin. Our misdirecting and mishandling our anger can lead to sin. We are responsible for our behaviors as a result of our anger. Maybe anger can even be a step along the way to full understanding of our life situations. I am very fond of C. S. Lewis’ definition of anger: “Anger is the fluid that love bleeds when you cut it.”
There is a lot of anger in our world right now – anger gone haywire. We do what we can to control it with the use of language. We try to be politically correct so as not to offend.
But I digress. Let’s go back to our story of the King, the Prophet, and Naaman. The king was afraid, so he became angry. When Naaman thought he had been snubbed by Elisha, he became angry and almost missed the point of the whole trip. He was pouting to the point of rage. He had a desire to control, and when he could not do that, his anger exploded. Naaman was probably already angry when he arrived on the scene because he was threatened. His physical survival was threatened. He was humiliated. His identity and place in society were threatened. His emotional response to his fear was anger. When he finally listened to reason, he agreed to go dip in the Jordan River seven times. The results of his obedience were miraculous.
Anger can control us or we can control it. Anger doesn’t have to become the leprosy in our lives. It doesn’t have to eat us up. We can learn to channel it into constructive behaviors that exhibit the love of God. The Good News is that we can choose to control what pushes our buttons. In this way, we will not be so vulnerable to events that cause us to react improperly.
Be assured that our Lord Jesus is moved with pity for us as human beings. When we come to this altar, we can be like the Leper who came to Jesus – breaking through whatever would hold us back. We can stretch out our hands to God and receive his mysterious love. All this Love comes from the One who chooses to make us clean and able to stand before him. Amen.
In peace,
Linda+
The Rev. Linda McCloud
Vicar, Holy Cross Church Episcopal
Billings, Montana
406-208-7314
www.holycrosschurchbillings.org
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