A sermon based upon Numbers 22: 21-34
Dr. Charles J. Tomlin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
March 20, 2011, Second Sunday of Lent
For several weeks now we’ve been studying the seven most deadly sins. Thus far we’ve been considering Christian scholars have defined as the “cold” sins: pride, envy, sloth, and greed. The final three sins we’re going to discuss in the next few weeks are defined as the “warm” or “hot” sins. To help us talk about the first of the “warm sins”, we’re going to begin with one of the most interesting and intriguing passages in the Bible. It’s the story of Balaam’s talking donkey.
It always makes a very interesting story when animals talk. In my childhood I knew about three talking animals: Mr Ed---the sit-com about the talking horse; Francis---the talking army mule in old movies; and of course, since I grew up in Church, I was always delighted as a child to hear a sermon about Balaam’s donkey (and if you grew up in a King James church, it was expressed in a word we shouldn’t use in church). Of course today, most children know about the notable animated Shrek movies, which features Eddie Murphy’s voice as the beloved talking donkey. This Biblical story is serious story about a very serious situation, but it’s also filled with some humor along the way and it can give us some much needed insight on the deadly sin of anger.
OUR COMPLICATED ANGER
This story is found in the book of Numbers; a book which tells the story of Israel’s wanderings in the wilderness following their exodus from Egypt. When the Israelites, still lead by Moses at this time, began settling into the plains of Moab, northeast of Egypt, the Moabite king of the desert named Balak started to get a little nervous. With all new people crowding into his territory, he did not know what to think. Since they were out- numbering his own people, he worried that the Israelites might rise up try to conquer. He decides it is time for action.
Like most warrior kings in the ancient world, before he went into battle, Balak wanted to make sure the gods were on his side. He had heard about a prophet for hire, named Balaam, who lived in the Euphrates River area. It was said that he had a real knack of invoking the gods to curse the enemy. So he sends envoys with money in hand to pay for the divination or cursing fee.
Well, the story goes that the team of emissaries arrives to make their bid to bribe Balaam the prophet to side with them in divining and cursing. But it doesn’t work, at least at first. After a night of prayer, Balaam – not an Israelite mind you – tells the envoy that God told him not to curse these Israelites because they are a blessed people. So, the bribery band returns to Moab with the news, but King Balak won’t take no for an answer. He sends a larger commission back to Balaam, with more money. But to his credit, Balaam, tells them “no” again. He says, in fact: “Although Balak were to give me his whole house filled with gold and silver, I could not go beyond the command of the LORD my God.” (v.18).
That’s a pretty good answer for a non-Christian, non-Jewish Arab believer, right? But then something happens. We don’t know why he does it, but Balaam said he would pray about it one more night. This time the LORD tells him to go with the envoy back to Balak, and to wait only for God’s next instructions about the Israelites. So, this is where the pick up the story, as Balaam sets out toward Moab, riding his trusty donkey. And this is where our story picks up this morning.
We join with Balaam on his journey toward Moab and something very strange, complicated and confusing is happening. Either Balaam has misread God’s mind, or God has changed his mind (which God certainly can do and does several times in the Hebrew Bible, particularly when he “repented” or “changed his mind” about creating humans {Gen. 6: 4}. What is even more important for us to observe is, as the story goes, God gets very angry with old Balaam’s decision to answer King Balak’s summons. Interestingly when the text tells us “God's anger was kindled because he was going..” (Num 22:22 NRS), the Hebrew taken literally could read: “God’s nose was burning hot!” What an amazing and alarming picture this is: God gets angry and anger is one of the seven deadly sins! I told you this would get “complicated.” This gets complicated because, the anger being expressed in the text is what Bible scholars call “the divine anger” and while anger can indeed be a sin, it is not always a sin. The divine anger being expressed here, and at many other places in the Bible is a “righteous” indignation and is motivated by God’s love, not sin.
With this understanding of God’s anger, we can see that God sends an angel to block the road. But the funny thing is that Balaam cannot see the sword-wielding angel in the middle of the road, but the poor old donkey can. So what does the donkey do? The donkey tries to go around, off the road, runs into a field. Not sure what in the world is going on, Balaam takes out his stick and strikes the animal trying to get him back on the road. A little further down the road the same thing happens, but this time the donkey sideswipes a stone wall scraping Balaam’s leg. With a scratch on his leg, Balaam gives the burro a good lashing again. But then a third time the angel appeared, but this time the donkey can’t get around and lays down. Balaam strikes him again, but now the deadly sin shows up. Our text seems to imply that Balaam is so mad, he’s doesn’t realize “the Lord has opened the mouth of the donkey” (vs. 28) and his donkey is talking to him(vs. 28). He continues growing in his rage and tells the donkey: “Because you made a fool out of me I wish I had my sword in my hand and I’d kill you right now! (29).
What is most important for us in this story is that it is out of the mouth of this “dumb” animal that we a most intelligent challenge to examine our own human anger. Do you see it? “What have I done to you that deserves you beating me three times (vs. 28)? Am I not the same donkey you have ridden all your life? Have I ever been like this before?” As an ESPN football broadcaster says: C’Mom, Man! O.K. Balaam lost it. Most all of us, have at some time or another have lost it? Haven’t most of us taken our frustration out on someone?
We can’t be sure what Balaam was really mad about. It is God who had told him twice not to go to Moab, but he believes God has changed his mind. Maybe they threatened him, or the envoy made him “an offer he couldn’t refuse.” Whatever happened, we do know that all of us have been there when life went off in a direction Balaam had not counted on, he started to take his anger out on the poor little donkey. Who hasn’t been so angry at something or someone? Or who hasn’t been the recipient of someone else’s anger, which seemed unfair, whether it was justified or not?
· Haven’t we all got angry at the invasive sales call who was just a person trying to make a living?
· Haven’t we all been mad at someone, but did not realize what was else was going on?
· Haven’t we all been both the angry person and the person who had to bear another person’s rage?
I recall once trying to find a parking space in a heavy populated city in Germany. I had waited about 15 minutes and then turned into the first space that came open. While getting out of my car, a German woman comes up to me enraged and shouting. I could only guess what she was saying and when I did get a word in I responded, “I’m sorry I only speak English.” Hearing my words, she calmed down and walked away. Thank God!
THE CHOICE IN OUR ANGER
We’ve all been there on both sides of anger and we know that anger can be a very complicated issue. Christian moral teaching throughout the history of the church reminds us that there are always “two sides” with anger: Every one of us has been Balaam, and unfortunately, every one of us has also been the poor donkey.
But not only are there two sides to anger, there are also two possibilities: Anger in and of itself is not a sin. Anger can be a great force for good in the world. Didn’t Jesus get angry when he cleaned out the temple of the money changers? Doesn’t Jesus also get angry when the religious leaders kept following the Law without love and compassion? We also know that if people don’t speak up and speak out against evil and injustice in this world, things will get worse, won’t they? Our fallen sinful world needs for us to get angry at times when we are angry in the right way and for the right reasons. In the Bible, Paul even tells the Ephesians that they should “Be angry, but do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger (Eph 4:26). Phyllis Diller, the comedian even recommended to married couples that they would “be better off to stay up and fight, than to let themselves go to bed mad.” Scripture and human wisdom reminds us, that anger is not in and of itself a sin, but it can become a sin. And when it does it is one of the most deadly.
In Genesis 4, we read how Cain killed his own brother Abel because of anger. In that story we read how the LORD came to Cain confronting his wrong-headed anger straight on: “Why are you angry and why has your countenance fallen? If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; it’s desire is for you, but you must master it” (Genesis 4: 6-7). This very graphic description of anger as “sin lurking at the door” is another very revealing picture of the very complicated, complex, and even paradoxical nature of “anger”. But it also gives us an important insight: In the moment of anger we make a choice to let “anger” master us or we decide to master it. Can our Old Testament story about the talking donkey give us some insight in how we can get angry, but not sin?
For a clue on how to look into this story for a hidden truth, we need to know how a 5th century Christian leader named John Cassian once defined anger in terms of spiritual blindness. Cassian once wrote: “For any reason whatsoever, the movement of anger may boil over and blind the eyes of the heart.” Could it be that this boiling over of anger that becomes “blindness” is exactly what kept Balaam from seeing what the donkey saw? Perhaps he was in some way “blinded”, not just to the angel of the LORD, but to the LORD whom he needed most to settle with----both blind to the messenger and blind to the message God was trying to get through to him. (This Idea and the idea of this sermon is from Ted Smith’s “From Anger to Patience”, First Presbyterian Church, Catersville, GA, 2/21/10; http://www.cartersvillepres.org/sermons.html ).
Indeed, great spiritual leaders have said that this is exactly how human anger grows. The deadly sin of anger grows out of a “blindness” in our hearts – when either we are blind to God, blind to our own shortcomings, or when we are blind those around us. It is in our spiritual “blindness” that we start to use anger to abuse others, to “kick the cat” (or to beat the donkey, whichever the case may be). As Will Willimon has written, in his book “Sinning Like a Christian: A New Look at the Seven Deadly Sins: “Perhaps all sins….are paradoxical. On the one hand anger can be righteous indignation at injustice; (but) on the other hand, anger can be that blind rage in which we see nothing but ourselves…. Anger is surely one of the most self-delusional and destructive, usually self-destructive and potentially violent, of the Seven Sins.”
Whenever anger becomes “blind rage”, when we lash out beyond all reason and we choose only to see what we want to see, this is when we have decided to “give in” to our anger and refused to try to “master it”, as God told Cain. In this way, anger is no longer a normal, emotional human response to hurt and injustice, but it now has become one of the 7 most deadly sins.
If the sin of anger is connected to our inability to see what we need to see, then the control of our anger must be connected to being able to see what we need most to see.
Poet Mary Rose O’Reilly tells about a Quaker friend of hers who, despite her pacifist beliefs struggled with anger. She says her friend was sitting in a Quaker meeting one day (that’s a worship service for you and me!) when she noticed a man across the aisle she did not recognize. She assumed him to be perhaps an emissary from the NRA, the National Rifle Association, because he was wearing one of those T-shirts that read, “Support the Right to Bear Arms.” It made her furious! Her anger began to rise. She says her friend stewed during the whole meeting, building up quite a headache. Later in the fellowship hall, her friend discovered that she had misread the man’s shirt, which instead proclaimed a comic takeoff, “Support the Right to Arm Bears.”
O’Reilley goes on to add: “So much of our anger is based on misunderstanding. It’s not what see, but what we think we see, what we interpret, and construct in our own minds that causes so much pain in our own (heads) and in the world where we act out our misinterpretations.” (The Barn at the End of the World, p.200). Our popular culture often makes it easier to frame issues and see difference in ways that make us constantly mad at each other. We need a different set of eyes in our soul to see our way through life to resist the sin of anger.
In the film, The Mission, a true but tragic story about the colonization of South America, we find these two different ways of “seeing” contrasted in dramatic fashion. Rodrigo, is a slave trader played by Robert De Niro, comes home to find his woman sleeping with his brother. In a fit of rage, Rodrigo kills his brother Felipe and watches him die. Later, feeling great remorse in prison and wanted to end his life, a Jesuit priest, Father Gabriel visits him and Rodrigo finds salvation and decides to become a priest. In working out his salvation, Rodrigo goes with Father Gabriel beyond the Falls to work with the Guarini Indians, whom earlier he’d been capturing so he’d get rich off of the slave trade.
In a terrible turn of events, the peaceful village where Rodrigo and the other Jesuits minister to the Indians is threatened by extinction; as an army bears down to force into slavery or death. Rodrigo goes to Father Gabriel, played by Jeremy Irons, and tells him his decision to take up arms to protect the village. Father Gabriel turns in righteous anger, saying “You should have never become a priest!” Our Lord said, “Those who live by the sword will die by the sword!” “Can’t see that this is wrong? You have given your life to God and God is love!” (Illustration recounted from Rebecca K. DeYoung’s Glittering Vices, Brazos Press, 2009, p. 126).
The story ends tragically as the soldiers destroy the village and kill all the Priests. There is no good ending. But very troubling is not only the killing of priests and Indians, but the great lasting tragedy is that Rodrigo’s can’t see beyond his own anger and fails to trust everything into God’s hands and keep following Jesus, just as he had promised in his vows.
In our story of Balaam and his talking donkey, the donkey speaks the final word. (Which means that God is really doing the talking, as donkey’s don’t talk). And what I believe God is saying through this donkey to Balaam and to us is basically this: “I’m the one who has been with you from day one. Don’t you trust me by now? Don’t try to play God with your anger. Get control of yourself. Open your eyes and see who really with you on the road of life. I might look like a “dumb” donkey to you, I see something you don’t. Even in your times of great pain and hurt in this world and also in your struggles to know and accept God’s will, you can still choose to control your anger. Take your anger straight to God. Only God’s angel has the right to carry the sword of anger. Don’t try to play God with your anger. The only way through is to Surrender. Give your anger to God and he will give you his peace. “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, "Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord." 20 No, "if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads." 21 Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Rom 12:19-21 NRS)
Enough said: Donkey Out. Amen.
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