Just Angry

quite angry

Words are how I process the world. Where a painter would throw paint against a wall or canvas or a drummer would smash, hit, kick, or strike any solid object, I throw, smash, and write words. Monday’s news made me angry, and to process this anger, I needed to write. I wrote a lot of words, and I wanted to share a particular set of those words here, in this place, but when I went to transfer the words from my word processor to Substack, I could not figure out how to present them with the same effect. 

Some other words I wrote on Tuesday ended up being a sermon (after some words and phrases were strategically removed). I know that in one of my first wordy emails I wrote that I would try to keep sermon-y things somewhere else, and I intend to continue trying, but I am sharing my sermon manuscript with you this week because sometimes sermon-y words are the words that I most need to share (this is part of the reason you are receiving this on Sunday and not the usual Friday). So, that’s my fair warning. Everything below this paragraph is explicitly Jesus-y.

This sermon follows the story of Jesus’ death in the gospel of Matthew (Matthew 26:14-27:66).

Sermon:

I’m angry this week. 

I’m angry about living in this country that is supposed to be the height of western civilization and thought, yet on Monday, a person shot their way into an elementary school and shot and killed three adults and three children, shot their gun which was made because someone knew that if they made it, they could sell it and that’s the moral height of our mighty western civilization–if you can sell it, they will come; if you can sell it, you can do it; if you sell it, you will live and someone else’s child will be shot, someone else’s child won’t come home from school, someone else’s child will be executed so that you can live.

I’m angry because we killed Jesus 2000 years ago, and we just keep killing him, year after year after year after year. We keep killing him. We keep executing him. We keep profiting from his death and killing him again and again. We just keep shouting, “crucify him! crucify him!” over and over and over. 

And I’m angry about it.

My only hope is that God resurrects Jesus. If it were up to us, God would be dead.

In wordy wordiness,

Walter