Featured Glee Episodes: Season 1, Episode 9 “Wheels” & Season 2, Episode 21 “Funeral”
By the time Bill was 6 he learned that the big alligator tears he cried in his early years as a toddler were no longer acceptable. Instead he was taught that when deep sorrow came his way, the best way to handle it was buck up a bit and never let them see you cry. Shortly after that, he received a little training on coping with anger. When he was a very small boy it was OK to throw a temper tantrum now and then when he felt angry. However, as he grew, his family told him that big boys didn’t get mad any more. They just took what life came them. Never let them see you get angry By the time he was an adolescent, Bill learned even more from the “big people” around him. While earlier in life, he was able to roll on the floor with laughter and have a raucous good time, as a maturing person, he was informed that he really should learn how to reel that in a bit, muffle it some, tone it down a bit Never let them see you get too excited. Finally in his later teen years Bill was those tender moments he shared with his grandmother and baby brother were probably not in his best interest. He needed to toughen up a bit. Be a little more firm if he was to survive in this world. Never let them see your soft side
Can you relate to Bill’s life? Were you ever taught to “never let them see you express emotion”. There are a variety of methods that have been used down through time to encourage folk to be a little less expressive and little more flat. Sometimes it has quite a bit to do with the people around us – our families of origin. Sometimes, it more of a cultural issue relating to the environment or sub-culture in which we were raised. Unfortunately it sometimes is even affiliated with our faith and how we’ve been told “good Christian folk” behave.
The result is all the same. A LOT OF US SPENT A LOT OF TIME IN THE LAND OF THE BLAND. Our lives are effected … And perhaps even more importantly our image of God is affected. As we strip our lives of emotion, we likewise take away God’s expressiveness as well.
Today, as we continue our series on “Getting to Know God”, we’re going to work a bit on setting the record straight in that area. If we view God as the great philosophical stoic – impassive and unmoved by the heights of ecstasy and the depths of sadness – we’ll naturally aspire to the same characteristics. But is we come to know the God that is depicted in the Bible – and expressive God, holding and demonstrating a rainbow spectrums worth of emotion, then our muted lives will start to change
Let’s start with delight!
I invite you to use your imagination with me. Close your eyes and imagine … if God were the center for the NY Yankees … if in the final seconds of a tied game against Boston, bases are loaded … and God got up to bat … he swings, he connects … it goes and goes and goes … it’s a grand slam… what would God do? Would God calmly hand the ball back to the referee … or would God do a celebration dance with teammates on the sidelines?
If we look at Genesis, which we read earlier … we get the answer. At thevery beginning of God’s story we read a story of God who DELIGHTS in what has been created. After each day of creation, God steps back, looks at what’s been done and says, “I did well”. “I like what I created” “I take delight in the results” In fact the on the 6th day, after creating human beings, God says “This is very, very good”. So good, God takes a vacation, rests on the 7th day … delighting in all that has been made.
GLEE: Sues Delight in Her Sister
Season 1, Episode 9 35:38-36:50
That’s delight, joy, happiness --- call it what you will. God knows and expresses it. … knowing that somehow brings me joy ….That sense of delight is just one of our anything but dispassionate God’s many emotions. God also does compassion
You know what it’s like to have a friend look you deep in the eyes and say “How are you … how are you really” and with great tenderness and gentleness say “if there is anything I can do, let me know. Those are really the points in life when we feel God wrapping loving arms around us through another brother or sister in Christ.
At God’s core is the intrinsic gentleness that seeks to bear our burdens. When God sees people who are feeling very fragile – as I often have – God finds a way to visit them and let them know they’re not alone. God does COMPASSION and God does it like no other. Once again we see it clearly in the work of Jesus. The same man who performs miracles and offers deeply profound teachings about love utterly confounded them when he displayed an embarrassingly gentle tenderness by the little children and welcomed them into his arms. And when he ministered to the lepers. At that time, leprosy was so feared that the thought of touching a leprous man or woman would make most people wretch (like AIDS) Leprosy ate your extremities – finger by finger, toe by toe … turned your skin a ghostly white. It was one thing to offer a drive by greeting or healing, but Jesus had to stop and touch them and embrace them. He showed them a gentle side that they had never experienced.
GLEE: Beck Joins’ Cheerios
Season 1, Episode 9 19:20-20:34
God has the gentle compassionate side we need. I am moved know that, just like Sue, God has a softer side as well …
We like the thought of God who knows how to have a good time and we’re comforted by the reality of a god. What about anger? Does God ever get mad? When we look at how God is reflected in Jesus, we know how God does express anger. Jesus entered the temple and saw and saw dishonest businessmen jacking up the prices for animals that were required for sacrifice. Jesus didn’t have a problem with honest business, but these guys were the moral equivalent of show owners who start charging $10 a bottle for water after a hurricane creates a high demand. They were price gouging. They were cheating. They were turning a house of prayer into what Jesus called a “den of thieves” and he became furious.
So he grabbed some ropes and tied them together to make a whip. It wasn’t a flash of temper he would regret later. He knew what he was doing and he chose his actions carefully. He used that whip to clear the place out … quick. Jesus does anger and so does God … there are things that make God upset. The important thing is to notice WHAT makes God mad. That is found in the realm of injustice in the world. It’s a lot different than Sue Sylvestry to seems to only get mad when things upset her personally. It’s all about her.
Some of us don’t even want to think about an angry God at all… others are caught up in the trap of thinking that anger is God’s only emotion. I know lots of people who grew up with that understanding … “If you step one inch out of line, you get hit with the Lord’s lightning. You’re always just one step about from trouble with God.” It doesn’t square well with the biblical account of God’s wrath… Psalm 108 says “The Lord is … slow to anger”. Scripture doesn’t say God never gets angry, it says that God is slow to get angry. But that’s not all God does. While those circumstances make God angry, they also cause God sorrow
We read in the gospel of John that when Jesus walked up to his friends Lazarus’ tomb, he didn’t put on a brave face. HE WEPT. But nothing compared to the spirit-wrenching anguish of the night of his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane. Jesus tried to explain it to his followers this way. “My soul is crushed with horror and sadness.” Jesus knew sorrow. And so does God. Psalm 56:8 says “You have seen my tossing and turning. You have seen me tossing and turning in the night. You have collected my tears in your bottle. You have recorded every single one n your book.
GLEE: Sues’ Sister’s Funeral
Season 2, Episode 21 27:40-30:30
What the Psalmist is saying is this: God knows sorrow. God feels it deeply. And God says, “I can’t stand the thought of any of you being sorrowful to the point where your tears would flow and drop to the ground and be absorbed and have no one notice. “ The thought is appalling to God. God collects every tear we shed, puts it in a bottle, gazes on them … not as part of some scientific experiment … but sharing in the pain … to show us how our sadness affects God. And I don’t know, but somewhere along the line some of us were taught that the right way to handle life is to buck up, paste on the plastic smile and say nice things that we don’t really feel. That’s the not way God is … GOD DOES SADNESS.
Now the fact that God is expressive – does joy, sadness, anger, gentleness – is a great time … it deepens our understanding of God. But there is another benefit. You see, BECAUSE GOD ALLOWS THOSE VARIED EXPRESSIONS OF EMOTIONS WE ARE RESCUED FROM AN EMOTIONLESS EXISTENCE.
Bill Hybels in “The God You’re Looking For” puts it like this: God’s emotional photographs aren’t black and white. They’re full of colors. Everyone we can think of, as well as shades, hues, blends that would boggle our imagination. As God’s children we are invited to join this relational, expressive and vibrant family.
So … May you find delight. May you delight in the blessings all around us - the big things, the important things, but also the small things and insignificant things that sometimes we don’t even take time to see.
May you feel compassion. May you look around and really see the people and situations in this world who stand in need of our empathy and our concern.
May you be angered about the injustices… not angered about the things that simply annoy you, but the things that go against God’s sense of justice and love.
May you feel sorrow for the pain of the world. May you grieve with those who grieve and stand ready to offer comfort to those who need it most.
PRAYER OF RESPONSE
God, we call you by so many names: Father, Abba, Mother, Loved One, Counselor, Friend, Guide, Alpha and Omega. Every name reflects your relationship with us, your creation. Each name pushes us beyond imagination to think of you in new ways. Help us discover you anew in every aspect of our lives, in every aspect of our living. Amen.
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