The leaders of the Anglican Communion met in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, last month. One of the issues was the response of the Episcopal Church to concerns of Anglicans across the communion about the Episcopal Church making a non-celibate homosexual man a bishop, back in 2003. As part of their proceedings they had a big Celebration Eucharist. Seven of the primates of the Communion would not attend, saying that to participate with the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church would violate Scriptural principles. Whereas I do not agree with our Presiding Bishop on many theological and ideological points, when I read that I was angry. Theological lines have informed the bonds of our unity across the Anglican Communion, but they have rarely defined them. What defines our unity is history and worship. For these bishops to stand down from the table means they wish to remove themselves from the communion, a unilateral decision very much like the one we made that precipitated this whole issue, and one that precludes the pattern in Scripture of dialog and common theological reflection resulting in joint decision reflected in Acts 15, and so cherished in our Communion! It just seemed politically manipulative and arrogantly judgmental. And I arrogantly and judgmentally launched my mind into a diatribe against their arrogance and judgmentalism!

My inconsistency shows that my anger is not the real issue: I was hurt. Somehow I felt personally rejected! But is not anger a common response to hurt? Hurt reveals a wound, the result of something getting through a chink in our armor, and anger at someone or something else points peoples’ eyes away from our own vulnerability. So we take refuge in rage instead of revealing where we are raw. The intensity of our anger is usually proportionate to the intensity of the hurt, and the intensity of the hurt reflects the importance of the truth behind what hurt us.

Jesus delivers that kind of truth in today’s Gospel. In the first part the disciples and Jesus are going toward Jerusalem where He will suffer and die. His disciples ask Him, “Will those who are saved be few?” Jesus ignores the question in favor of the issue: YOU make sure you do what YOU need to do. To trust in who you are affiliated with (“we ate and drank in Your presence, and You taught in our streets!”) is a false hope. Your lineage from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the Daughters of the American Revolution, or the Republican Party is not going to do any good. In the end many who are last shall be first and many who are first shall be last. Have YOU YOURSELF striven to enter through the narrow door? Whereas the disciples look to a number, Jesus directs their eyes back on themselves. In the second part some Pharisees come and warn Jesus that Herod wants to kill Him. Jesus tells them He is going to ignore the warning and what the consequences will be. I paraphrase: “I am going to go about My work, and it will cost Me My life. Besides, it cannot be that a prophet should perish away from Jerusalem.” Jerusalem was the center of the Jewish faith, the seat of God on earth. The prophets merely told the truth even if it hurt. Instead of humbly letting their sense of hurt drive them to a new understanding of the truth, they hide behind a murderous rage. Truth incarnate is now before them and they will surely kill Him, too! The purpose of pain is to drive us to God, but when we cover it with anger it cannot do so.

Life hurts when we become aware of a discrepancy between one’s ideal and one’s experience. The greater the discrepancy the greater the pain, and the greater the pain the greater the anger it takes to hide it. Remember when you were a child your mother told you to count to ten when you get angry? The greatest benefit came from being forced to listen to why you are angry. Perhaps you are afraid, perhaps you are hurting. Hurt is a sign of vulnerability in your life. Vulnerability brings with it two different kinds of messages. It points to: A place of weakness or a place of trust.

Hurt as weakness, an invitation to grow: In the Disney film, “The Lion King,” the monkey Rafiki swats the young lion Simba with his staff. The boy lion complains that it hurts, when the monkey swings again the lion expertly dodges it, and the monkey exclaims, “See, you’re learning already!” We are the same way in our walk with God. Sin tempts us at a weak spot in our defenses, we fall and are wounded, even if we don’t feel it. When God’s truth shines on it what we have done comes to light. Stung by the truth, we can get angry, deny our sin and claim the wound does not exist, or we can turn from our sin and learn to dodge it. Growing into a program church involves making mistakes that cause hurt feelings. We can hide our hurt with anger and spread rumors and gossip, or we can all learn and grow from it, and let it guide us to a more productive way of working.

Hurt as Trust, an invitation to serve: Have you ever watched the shows of a lioness with her cubs? They crawl all over her, clawing her, gnawing on her tail—if their teeth are like a kitten’s teeth that has got to hurt, yet she just takes it. She knows the cubs have to teethe, and she’s willing to bear the pain for their sake. Sometimes we bear the sins of others in our hurts. I Peter 4:12-13 says, “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.” Christ suffered on the cross at the hand of sinful humanity. When we suffer at the hands of others’ sinfulness we suffer as Christ did. Christ’s sufferings are never in vain. In the same way, when we participate in His sufferings we contribute to the eventual redemption of the world. The New Zealand Prayer Book has a rendition of the Lord’s Prayer translated back out of Maori that contains the phrase, “In the hurts we absorb from one another, forgive us.” The opposite of responding in anger, this godly response absorbs the hurt, hands it over to God and lets the Cross of Christ redeem it, like a parent who willingly endures the abuse of a child’s misdirected angst, until, when enough is enough, and never out of anger, he sets loving limits for a wayward child. We convert the negative energy into something good. The confusion of growing and learning new ways of working together as a parish hurts. We can let it divide us against one another and short-circuit what God wants to do among us, or we can absorb the hurts and compassionately set the boundaries that will help us move forward.

As a child I climbed a tree and inadvertently laid my arm across a mat of stinging caterpillars. I went crying to my mother who put cold soda compresses on the angry welts. It was a bad day! Nobody likes to hurt. But hurt is a fact of life, what is important is how we respond to it. It drove the city of Jerusalem to kill the Source of Life in a murderous rage. When we respond to it in anger we cut ourselves off from our own salvation, too. But it can just as quickly drive us into those arms, into the redemption they provide, and into participating in the redeeming work He is doing in the world.