Hot Water
Text: Ephesians 4:25-5:2
Last week during the announcements, I eluded to the Saga of the Hot Water system in the home that Sarah and I moved into at the end of May. I think everyone goes through an experience like this at some point… but at the same time it is no less frustrating.
The story goes like this. Two weeks ago, I was downstairs cleaning out the rabbit cage when I noticed a small wet spot underneath our hot water system for the house. Some of you may have heard me go on about this thing from when we moved in. It’s the latest in home heating, an on-demand hot water heater that also provides heat to the forced air part of the house. In other words… it’s a fancy, high-tech boiler that is really no bigger than the banner hanging from the front of this pulpit. Anyway, I noticed a small drip on the floor and checked it out. Maybe a pipe was sweating… but later that evening the small puddle was a lot larger, and the drips were much worse… so I took the cover off of the heating unit and was greeted by a fine mist spraying out of it. Not good.
That evening, after I called it in, I had to shut off water to the house to stop the leak which was getting progressively worse. The technician would show up Monday afternoon and things would be fixed right up. Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work.
On Monday, the repair technician showed up, checked out the issue and told me that he would call the parts department, and that someone else would be along within 30 minutes to an hour to repair the problem. Fine… but two hours later, nobody had shown up. By 5pm, nobody had shown up. Keep in mind that I had shut the water to the house off the night before. No shower, no shave, no flushed toilets…
…plus here at the church we had Camp in Your Own Backyard… a very important part of the life and work of this congregation during the summer months! My frustration level began to rise. After calling the company back, and getting nowhere, I decided to see what I could do to restore water in the house without things flooding… at least I managed to do that… but still no hot water.
Tuesday came and went… no hot water.
Wednesday came and went… no hot water.
Thursday came and went… no hot water.
The problem was amplified by the fact that this unit also provides heat to the house. Had this been in the middle of winter, our house might have started to literally freeze up. The tech support line was probably getting tired of hearing my increasingly frustrated voice calling two or three times a day.
Sarah and I took turns waiting for the elusive technicians who never came… meaning that while we were working from home, there was valuable time when I was not in the office when I should be. At this point the only hot water being generated was my own blood beginning to boil. As the week wore on I found my own personal anger level rising and rising and rising. Each time I would call the technical support, my tone would get angrier and angrier and angrier.
It takes a great deal to get me mad… but I here was… surly, angry, grumpy…
…and in the midst of my own personal rage I was reading ahead to what the scripture readings would be for today… and there was this one verse that leapt off the page: Ephesians 4:26 “Be angry but do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your anger.”
In the midst of my own seething frustration of having fallen off the radar, there were these words of wisdom. Biblical wisdom… “be angry, but do not sin… do not let the sun go down on your anger.”
The Bible is many things… for the past number of weeks, we have been hearing stories… specifically stories about David and Nathan… Stories that have a beginning, middle and end… a narrative that we can follow and get engaged in… but the Bible is more than stories too… Today, in the Book of Ephesians, we have what really is a printed sermon… advice for faithful living. Unlike a story, there are no obvious characters in this stuff… We are listening in on an ancient preacher giving advice to the faithful in young church communities… and yet in this passage in particular, this one line… no historical context is really needed, no background information is required. It’s there if we want to learn about it, but at its core it is simply these lines of advice…
“Be angry, but do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger.” and in the next verse it goes on to say, “do not make room for the devil.”
Notice it does not say “don’t be angry.” What it says is “Be angry, but do not sin.” The difference is massive. Some traditions would have us stifle our emotions, to sit on them, to not acknowledge them… but here, in Ephesians, “be angry but do not sin.” Our emotions are what they are, but it’s what we choose to do with them that makes all the difference in the world.
“Be angry but do not sin.”
It is an unfortunate experience, particularly in instances of domestic abuse that the one doing the abusing blames the victim for their own anger. They hit, or beat their spouses, their parents, or their children because somehow their spouse, their child, their parent has done something to cause them to be angry.
This is so profoundly wrong… in every way. Why? Because the reality is this: anger is a personal emotional reaction. Nobody “makes” us angry. Anger is what we feel in response to something… but nobody makes us angry. By blaming someone else for our emotions is literally not taking responsibility for ourselves at all. Sure, we can find certain situations, the behaviour of another person, or just about anything absolutely infuriating… but we can’t blame them for making us angry… because that is our choice to feel that way…
Blaming someone else for how we feel is simply not taking responsibility for ourselves. Some of you might remember on the times that I have preached on Genesis that when Adam and Eve didn’t take responsibility for their own actions… that is the true nature of original sin. Instead of disobedience of having eaten the fruit of knowledge, they didn’t own up to their own role and blamed everyone and everything else for their own failings.
It’s about taking responsibility… and the same goes for anger. Too often we don’t take responsibility for our own feelings, and instead blame them on someone else. Be angry but do not sin… in other words… feeling angry is okay, blaming someone else for how we feel is not.
When we blame others, when we don’t take responsibility for it, that’s where things get very dark. Ephesians calls it “making room for the devil.” Watch how this cascades out of control: someone does something that frustrates us. We get angry, but instead of owning it, we don’t take responsibility for our own action, instead blaming it on the other for “making” us angry. We then take some sort of action to punish the other for the offence of having made us angry. We even go so far as to feel justified and right in inflicting the punishment that we become blinded by our own self-righteousness… as I’ve said before, at the moment that we feel that we can do no wrong is the precise moment that we are capable of the greatest evil… where we really get into hot water.
Be angry but do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger…
As an epilogue to my own hot water story, the unit was repaired a week ago Friday, and then promptly sprang two more leaks a week ago today. Fortunately, the repairs came as they should, and in theory, all is now well. From Ephesians, if there's no other message... "being angry is okay, blaming or punishing others for how we feel is not." ...and in taking responsibility for how we feel maybe we take one step closer in becoming "imitators of Christ."
Amen.
Last week during the announcements, I eluded to the Saga of the Hot Water system in the home that Sarah and I moved into at the end of May. I think everyone goes through an experience like this at some point… but at the same time it is no less frustrating.
The story goes like this. Two weeks ago, I was downstairs cleaning out the rabbit cage when I noticed a small wet spot underneath our hot water system for the house. Some of you may have heard me go on about this thing from when we moved in. It’s the latest in home heating, an on-demand hot water heater that also provides heat to the forced air part of the house. In other words… it’s a fancy, high-tech boiler that is really no bigger than the banner hanging from the front of this pulpit. Anyway, I noticed a small drip on the floor and checked it out. Maybe a pipe was sweating… but later that evening the small puddle was a lot larger, and the drips were much worse… so I took the cover off of the heating unit and was greeted by a fine mist spraying out of it. Not good.
That evening, after I called it in, I had to shut off water to the house to stop the leak which was getting progressively worse. The technician would show up Monday afternoon and things would be fixed right up. Or at least that’s how it’s supposed to work.
On Monday, the repair technician showed up, checked out the issue and told me that he would call the parts department, and that someone else would be along within 30 minutes to an hour to repair the problem. Fine… but two hours later, nobody had shown up. By 5pm, nobody had shown up. Keep in mind that I had shut the water to the house off the night before. No shower, no shave, no flushed toilets…
…plus here at the church we had Camp in Your Own Backyard… a very important part of the life and work of this congregation during the summer months! My frustration level began to rise. After calling the company back, and getting nowhere, I decided to see what I could do to restore water in the house without things flooding… at least I managed to do that… but still no hot water.
Tuesday came and went… no hot water.
Wednesday came and went… no hot water.
Thursday came and went… no hot water.
The problem was amplified by the fact that this unit also provides heat to the house. Had this been in the middle of winter, our house might have started to literally freeze up. The tech support line was probably getting tired of hearing my increasingly frustrated voice calling two or three times a day.
Sarah and I took turns waiting for the elusive technicians who never came… meaning that while we were working from home, there was valuable time when I was not in the office when I should be. At this point the only hot water being generated was my own blood beginning to boil. As the week wore on I found my own personal anger level rising and rising and rising. Each time I would call the technical support, my tone would get angrier and angrier and angrier.
It takes a great deal to get me mad… but I here was… surly, angry, grumpy…
…and in the midst of my own personal rage I was reading ahead to what the scripture readings would be for today… and there was this one verse that leapt off the page: Ephesians 4:26 “Be angry but do not sin, do not let the sun go down on your anger.”
In the midst of my own seething frustration of having fallen off the radar, there were these words of wisdom. Biblical wisdom… “be angry, but do not sin… do not let the sun go down on your anger.”
The Bible is many things… for the past number of weeks, we have been hearing stories… specifically stories about David and Nathan… Stories that have a beginning, middle and end… a narrative that we can follow and get engaged in… but the Bible is more than stories too… Today, in the Book of Ephesians, we have what really is a printed sermon… advice for faithful living. Unlike a story, there are no obvious characters in this stuff… We are listening in on an ancient preacher giving advice to the faithful in young church communities… and yet in this passage in particular, this one line… no historical context is really needed, no background information is required. It’s there if we want to learn about it, but at its core it is simply these lines of advice…
“Be angry, but do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger.” and in the next verse it goes on to say, “do not make room for the devil.”
Notice it does not say “don’t be angry.” What it says is “Be angry, but do not sin.” The difference is massive. Some traditions would have us stifle our emotions, to sit on them, to not acknowledge them… but here, in Ephesians, “be angry but do not sin.” Our emotions are what they are, but it’s what we choose to do with them that makes all the difference in the world.
“Be angry but do not sin.”
It is an unfortunate experience, particularly in instances of domestic abuse that the one doing the abusing blames the victim for their own anger. They hit, or beat their spouses, their parents, or their children because somehow their spouse, their child, their parent has done something to cause them to be angry.
This is so profoundly wrong… in every way. Why? Because the reality is this: anger is a personal emotional reaction. Nobody “makes” us angry. Anger is what we feel in response to something… but nobody makes us angry. By blaming someone else for our emotions is literally not taking responsibility for ourselves at all. Sure, we can find certain situations, the behaviour of another person, or just about anything absolutely infuriating… but we can’t blame them for making us angry… because that is our choice to feel that way…
Blaming someone else for how we feel is simply not taking responsibility for ourselves. Some of you might remember on the times that I have preached on Genesis that when Adam and Eve didn’t take responsibility for their own actions… that is the true nature of original sin. Instead of disobedience of having eaten the fruit of knowledge, they didn’t own up to their own role and blamed everyone and everything else for their own failings.
It’s about taking responsibility… and the same goes for anger. Too often we don’t take responsibility for our own feelings, and instead blame them on someone else. Be angry but do not sin… in other words… feeling angry is okay, blaming someone else for how we feel is not.
When we blame others, when we don’t take responsibility for it, that’s where things get very dark. Ephesians calls it “making room for the devil.” Watch how this cascades out of control: someone does something that frustrates us. We get angry, but instead of owning it, we don’t take responsibility for our own action, instead blaming it on the other for “making” us angry. We then take some sort of action to punish the other for the offence of having made us angry. We even go so far as to feel justified and right in inflicting the punishment that we become blinded by our own self-righteousness… as I’ve said before, at the moment that we feel that we can do no wrong is the precise moment that we are capable of the greatest evil… where we really get into hot water.
Be angry but do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger…
As an epilogue to my own hot water story, the unit was repaired a week ago Friday, and then promptly sprang two more leaks a week ago today. Fortunately, the repairs came as they should, and in theory, all is now well. From Ephesians, if there's no other message... "being angry is okay, blaming or punishing others for how we feel is not." ...and in taking responsibility for how we feel maybe we take one step closer in becoming "imitators of Christ."
Amen.
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