Sunday Service on December 17, 2023

Triangle Family Church Sunday Service on December 17, 2023

Sermon

Summary:
The sermon discusses the importance of facing and feeling our anger, using Jesus flipping tables as an example. It emphasizes the need to heal our emotions and find righteous anger, while avoiding becoming jaded or denying our anger.

Key Insights:

• Anger is often seen as a negative emotion, but it can be a powerful force for positive change when acknowledged and understood. By facing our pain and anger, we can become wiser and more open-hearted individuals.
• Jadedness and cynicism are prevalent in society, leading to a lack of curiosity and emotional healing. It is important to confront and address our own jadedness, as well as encourage others to do the same.
• Mind-body unity involves recognizing the wisdom of our emotions and allowing our minds and bodies to work together. Emotions, including anger, provide valuable information and should not be denied or dismissed.
• Unconscious anger can be harmful and lead to violence or a lack of empathy. By consciously acknowledging and understanding our anger, we can channel it into righteous anger that drives positive action and change.
• The sermon concludes with a prayer for guidance in experiencing love, connection, and spiritual vitality. It highlights the importance of maintaining open hearts and minds in order to grow and develop strong relationships.

Santa Claus Came to Triangle Family Church

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Sermon transcript  Japanese translation

I was thinking something probably simple something short something like warm. There's lots I can pull from because if you look at Jesus's life Jesus was great to poor people. He was super gracious and so I ultimately landed on that I really wanted to talk about Jesus flipping tables. It's just been on my heart. 

I'm going to acknowledge that I'm going into a topic with great risk because what I don't want to do is to fuel any flame because there's a lot of misguided flames especially politically, hating the conservative party, hating the Liberal Party, hating the activist, hating the non-activist. I just feel like there's a lot of like misguided anger but I want to talk about anger today. 

When I think about Jesus, when you first think about him, it's often in a very like peaceful, like Jesus has kind of got this level head. There are times where he got angry, flipped the table, and said; "hey this is Temple for prayer, not for your money schemes". When I think about what made Jesus a really great man, I think Jesus was willing to face his pain and by facing his pain and I namely mean his anger and his sadness and grief. It actually allows him to be this wise peaceful figure with an open heart to the point where people were going to kill him and he was still had an open heart towards these people. 

I had a career change and I've been talking to a lot of people, doing coaching around emotions. It's often anger. I find that people have a poor relationship with their anger. Anger is painful emotion. It's meant to be metabolized and there's so much goodness available to those willing to face and feel their pain with open-heartedness, curiosity, and peace. But so many people are afraid of pain. All of us have some level of being afraid of old wounds. If we're afraid of our pain and we do not face our pain, we actually end up fleeing or freezing. If it goes on for too long, you end up being jaded rather than openhearted. 

This word jaded has been on my mind a lot because I've actually been talking to a lot of people, a lot of second gen, and jadedness is almost like an epidemic. We just went through a a pandemic. But jadedness is actually an even thicker pandemic going on. I've been thinking a lot about it and I've actually had to even confront my own jadedness which was hard to look at. When I think about jadedness, I think about cynicism and resignation. They marry each other and have a baby called jadedness. The problem with it is that it kills curiosity. That's why I feel strongly about speaking to it today. I've been doing a lot of work and training in regards to my own emotions and I found that there's a lot of wisdom within my emotions. So I think about this concept that we've grown up hearing Mind Body Unity. I believe that there's kind of a misconception that my mind should direct my body so that my actions are following my mind which is aligned with good truth. But I don't think that's actually what Mind Body Unity means. That would be more mind over body. I think when you think about like a husband and a wife, man and woman uniting. The man has certain things he brings to the table. So does the woman. Together they both play a role in creating a family. In the same way, our body brings something very important to the table. It's got a lot to do with emotions.

We need to heal our emotions, our anger, and our sadness. If you look at kids, kids are naturally very emotional. They just can't help it. Their body responds instantly. It's very honest. It's actually adults. We stop feeling our emotions. We stop wanting to feel our pain. We even will put that on our kids. We'll get really uncomfortable with the kid feeling sad. But sadness is such a natural beautiful emotion and so is anger. I'm not going to talk about sadness today. I am going to talk about anger in Jesus flipping tables. 

I want to share that I went to a men's retreat 4 years ago and I did work on my anger. It was really weird because honestly I don't think of myself as an angry person. I've never felt like an angry person. I don't get angry at many people. It was surprising that in this men's retreat what came out was a lot of anger. I wasn't even sure what I was angry at. It was just coming out of me to the point of exhaustion. After being really tired and losing my voice, I ended up feeling lightness. I could get this anger that's been there for so long, get it out. Since then, it's always gotten me curious about anger and how I relate to my anger. 

I'm going to give an example. I was planning the date night. I was preparing a song so we could sing a song together to our baby who was incognito at the time. It was really cute idea. I was learning a guitar to play a song. I was learning the notes. I told my wife that date night was starting in five minutes. She's typing away on her computer doing her work. I think 20 minutes went by. I was practicing my guitar a little bit more. I think 45 minutes passed. She finished and came over. I was pretty angry. I was feeling blown off a bit for work. I was feeling like it's a little hypocritical. She's gotten mad at me for blowing her off for my work. She sat down and said; "Honey, this looks super cute but if you want me to sing right now, I really don't feel like singing right now." I learned this guitar song for an hour. I was feeling a little upset about it. Ultimately, I had to recognize that even though my anger was directed at my wife, it wasn't anger at my wife. I was angry that I had invested in this inspired idea based out of love for my wife, and it was now all for nothing. I was angry about that and that was disappointing. I told my wife that I was disappointed that I planned out this date night and it didn't happen. The point of date night ironically is for us to develop our relationship and love, not for withholding love for my wife and being cold. When I get angry at my wife I get cold, shut down, and don't I don't want to talk. It's very ironic because that's not the point of date night. We were ultimately able to get over it. You don't want to sing. That's okay. We don't need to sing. We ended having a nice date night. We just watched some baking show. 

I had to get past the anger to get back to love. I've been trying to ask myself whether I am conscious of my anger and why it's there because anger is dangerous only when it is unconscious, it becomes violent, and it becomes like a spiritual killing off like I don't care about you and you become cold. This is actually hijacked anger. It's actually not anger at its root. Anger at its root is an important emotion. It's actually the core emotion that drives us to change for the better. It drives us to grow and to be mobilized. It's very common to feel anger in your limbs because it mobilizes your body into action. It's a very important emotion. The key for anger is to get to what is the righteous anger. That's where the Mind Body Unity comes into play. You can't just say this anger is bad and write it off because that's denying our body and what our body is bringing to the table. You act but your mind is meant to bring the truth for my body feels angry and my mind will work together with my body to come up with a truth that both the mind and the body can agree on. That's finding this righteous anger. 

I want to give a few examples of righteous anger. I've noticed in my own life. First, I'll start with my daughter. She gets angry when we control her. That's usually when I pick her up and say no more or I put her in the car seat. She'll get really angry and start flailing. It makes sense that she gets angry because being controlled is a violation of free will. It's worth being angry about. I just accept that she's angry and I say I totally get that you're angry and I'm being controlling right now. I love and adore my dad but I was angry at my dad for a long time. I was angry because I wanted a good relationship with my dad. I was angry and blaming him because I felt like I wasn't getting enough love. I love my dad now. Everyone, don't worry. We're on good terms. I was just trying to deny my anger. But if I look deeper, the absence of love is worth being angry about. If you can see that is the root of the anger, it can mobilize me to say okay. I needed to put love into my anger at my wife during our date night. I believe I had an inspired idea based on love and it was rejected. At the end of the day I believe anger is our protector and it's our advocate. When we're blamed, it makes sense why we get angry because responsibility is something that I want to claim for myself. I want to claim I want to be responsible for my relationship with my wife and loving my wife. But I don't want to be forced. I think it's very natural to not want to be forced or controlled. Anger will naturally come up same with being made fun of. I've been made fun of mostly in my youth. It makes sense to be angry at being made fun of because it feels like they don't care about me and that is worth being angry. Our spirits naturally want to belong. Cutting off belonging like you don't belong here, it makes sense why our anger would get activated. I want to wrap up by encouraging us to be willing to feel our anger rather than deny it but to bring our minds into it because it's very easy for anger to get hijacked and to go wrong. If you're ever angry at a person, I'm going to say that anger is hijacked. When I was angry at my wife, my anger was hijacked. Anger at its core can only be mad at evil that despises goodness, love, and beauty. That's really the only thing worth being angry at. Thank you Jesus for flipping a table. I'm going to wrap this up with a prayer.

God I want to thank you for this opportunity for us to come together as brothers and sisters as your children. I pray that we can grow to see your heart, your wisdom, your grace for each every one of us, and that we can mature so that we can experience the great amount of love, connection, and spiritual vitality that you want for all of us. I pray for your wisdom. I pray for your guidance. I pray that you can be with us that we can keep our hearts open and our minds on you. I report this in my name Amen.