Giving Up the Power of Anger and Receiving the Power of Forgiveness

The Rev. Brad Sullivan

Lord of the Streets, Houston

January 11, 2026

1 Epiphany, Baptism of Jesus

Isaiah 42:1-9

Psalm 29

Matthew 3:13-17

I have been struggling with sadness over the last several days. A 37-year-old woman was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis while in her car, apparently trying to drive away from the agents. In response, our government has called her a terrorist and said she brought the killing on herself. There’s been the now usual clash of responses to her killing, folks on the right claiming that it was her fault and that she should have been killed, and folks on the left saying it was an ICE Agent murdering an innocent woman. Fear and anger. Fear and anger. 

Closer to home, a young woman was shot and killed on a METRO bus by a couple of teenagers here in Houston. They weren’t even trying to kill her, they’d gone on the bus to kill someone else, like that’s any better. Fear and anger. Fear and anger. 

Hearing about these things last week, along with everything else that’s…the crud of the world, I’ve had to deal with my anger quite a lot. I’ve been snapping at my family a bit, brooding, and working to keep my anger in check

What has helped me keep my anger in check is many things. Prayer. Medicine. Writing a song to get the anger out in a constructive way. Talking about how angry I am with a couple of people I know I can trust to hear me without sharing my anger, spreading my anger, or using it against me.

The reason for all that work is the knowledge that if left unchecked, my anger will take over, and I will harm others, probably just with words, but I’ll be looking for a fight, looking for any way to lash out at someone. That’s me. No work required. Scared, angry, and wanting to lash out at anyone and everyone. 

I do the work required not to lash out at everyone because I firmly believe that lashing out like that is not the right way to live. Anger feels good, feels powerful, till it overpowers us. Then, when we lash out at people in anger, people tend to get hurt, and people tend to die. When we lash out at people in anger, a young woman gets shot and killed on a METRO bus. When we lash out at people in anger, a 37-year-old woman gets shot and killed in her car. Such is the world when we lash out in anger, when we don’t do the work to be healed of our anger, and when we instead take the power of our anger out on others.

Jesus showed us a better way. Jesus showed us to use our power for justice and peace. 

Today, we’re remembering the day when Jesus was baptized. He walked into the River Jordan to be baptized by John for the forgiveness of sins. Presumably he didn’t particularly need to be baptized. Jesus was the Son of God, God himself who had become human. So, as far as sins which separate us from God and one another, Jesus didn’t have that sinfulness. Jesus didn’t and couldn’t separate himself from himself. Jesus didn’t need baptism and he chose to be baptized anyway. Even though he was God, Jesus emptied himself of that power. Jesus didn’t raise himself up above everyone else. He chose to serve others, instead. In that service of humanity, Jesus chose to join with us even in baptism for turning our lives around, not because Jesus needed it but because we do. 

Jesus had power, and like all people with power, he could have chosen to use his power either to help or to harm others. There have always been people with power, and those with power have used their power to help promote justice and peace for others or to improve their own lives at the expense of others, forcing the world to be like they want it, hurting and killing the powerless in order to get their way. We see in Jesus which of those two ways is the way of the one who has all power, the way of God.

Jesus had all the power of the universe and more, and Jesus chose to serve humanity, rather than rule it. Jesus had all the power of the universe and more, and Jesus chose to teach and guide others. Rather than use his power to force people to follow his desires, Jesus used his power to heal, to help, and to guide.

Such is the way of God. You want to know who God is and what God’s ways are? Look at Jesus.

God chooses to be with us as a fellow human being. God chooses love and relationship over forcing us to be right all the time. God is here with us in tragedy. God forgives us and invites us to forgive others. God teaches us to let go of our anger and our fear, to give them over to him so that we may be healed. In these and so many other ways, God strengthens us for recovery and healing. God offers us that healing and love.

God doesn’t force us, and God doesn’t bribe us with wealth and riches. A little side bar here, but let no other preachers mislead you. Jesus does not promise wealth. Jesus does not promise riches. If you’re expecting Jesus or your faith in Jesus to bring you wealth and riches, then you are praying to something other than God. I mean, you can pray to God for riches, but if you expect that because you believe in Jesus, God will make you rich, that’s not God. Jesus doesn’t teach that our salvation comes from wealth. In fact, Jesus tells us the truth, that our wealth ends up consuming us. Wealth may feel powerful, but as we see in the world today, a lot of people end up using that power to further enrich themselves, rather than giving away that power to serve justice and peace.

Wealth often ends up consuming us, kind of like our anger does. If feels powerful, but then it ends up overpowering us.

Now, back to God and what Jesus shows us about God. I’m really tired of the ultra-rich harming people through their wealth, and I’m really tired of people killing other people out of their anger. What we have seen of Jesus makes me think that perhaps God is tired of those things, too. In fact, from what Jesus taught and did, it’s a good bet that God is frightfully tired of people harming others through their wealth and God is frightfully tired of people harming and killing others out of their anger. 

Frightfully tired of it. What that means is, we can trust God to deal with those people as God sees fit. If people need punishment, God’s gonna give it to them. So, we can pray all of the anger we have towards people and ask God to do all of the things we want to do to those people. 

God may or may not do it, but that’s not the point of the prayer. This prayer is to be honest with God. The prayer that God will do all of the things we want to do to the people we are angry with is a prayer of trust that God will do whatever is right and that we, then, don’t have to take our anger out on the world.

Praying all of our anger to God has another point as well. Remember that Jesus was baptized with a baptism for the forgiveness of sins. God was baptized with a baptism for the forgiveness of sins, joining with us in forgiveness of sins. God joined God’s own forgiveness with us. 

So, in praying our anger to God, we’re also praying for forgiveness. We may not pray for forgiveness right away, but that’s the goal. We pray our anger over to God to give over the power of our anger and to receive instead the power of forgiveness. 

Those who killed the young woman on the METRO bus and who killed the 37-year-old woman in Minneapolis chose to use their power of anger to force their way on the world, and death followed. 

When we pray our anger over to God to give over the power of our anger and to receive instead the power of forgiveness, life follows. In Jesus’ baptism, God showed us that forgiveness is who is how God is. Jesus taught over and over how people could turn their lives around and be healed by loving others and by loving God. On the cross, as he was being killed, Jesus prayed, “Father forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” 

Baptism, forgiveness. Life and teaching, forgiveness. Death and resurrection, forgiveness. God would so much rather forgive than punish, and that is where we find our way when we are lost in and consumed by anger. Give that anger to God so that death will not be your way, and receive instead the power of forgiveness, so that life may follow.

When God Became Human, He Didn’t Find Things to be Beneath His Dignity to Do.

The Rev. Brad Sullivan

Lord of the Streets, Houston

January 12, 2025

1 Epiphany, C

Isaiah 43:1-7

Psalm 29

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Today, after the service, I have to leave to get to another church where I’ll be talking with them about Lord of the Streets, recruiting volunteers, and continuing to grow our connections with our supporting congregations. So, unfortunately, I won’t be here for breakfast, which I love, not just the food, but being with everybody. Usually, after breakfast, I join with our parishioners to help clean up, put tables and chairs away.

One morning about a year ago, I was cleaning up after breakfast with several parishioners, and someone else said, “You shouldn’t be doing this. You’ve got more important things to do.” I said, “Not really, cause for one, I like getting to be with our parishioners doing this work, and two, if I’m too good for cleaning tables and sweeping floors, then I’m not good enough to be preaching and serving at the altar.”

I bring that up because I think it has something to do with why Jesus got baptized. In seminary, this was a popular question.  Why did Jesus get baptized? He was without sin, right, so he had no need for baptism. We’re told in Matthew’s version that Jesus chose to be baptized to “fulfill all righteousness.” So then, of course, there were debates about what exactly that means. Jesus was already righteous. He was God. Nothing he did separated him from God, and he needed no reconciliation to be reunited with God. He was righteous. He had no need for forgiveness of sin. You could say he was too good for baptism, and you’d be right.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Baptism-of-Christ.jpg

So, what righteousness was Jesus fulfilling? Perhaps the righteousness of being human. The righteousness Jesus fulfilled was the righteousness of joining with humanity in every way. Jesus got baptized because we get baptized. While he was too good to need baptism, he wasn’t too good to be baptized. Jesus didn’t “regard equality with God as something to be exploited.” (Philippians 2:6) Baptism marks our repentance and our desire to be washed clean of everything that separates us from God and one another. Baptism is a physical and spiritual way that we choose to accept and live into our unity with God through Jesus.

We are baptized to embody our unity with God and the love, forgiveness, and grace God has for us, so when God became human, rather than claim to be above all of that, God joined with humanity even in humanity’s ways of joining with God. Even if he didn’t need baptism, Jesus wasn’t too good to be baptized. He wasn’t above that.

Perhaps, as followers of Jesus, there is a lesson there for us. When God became human, he didn’t find things to be beneath his dignity to do. Rather, God joined with us in all of our lives. Perhaps then, nothing is beneath any of our dignity to do as well.

Even forgiving others, which is part of what baptism is all about, the forgiveness of the harm we do. For us to forgive, we have to swallow our pride, to set aside the fact that forgiveness may not be deserved, and then choose to forgive anyway. That’s what God does, forgiving us, not necessarily because we deserve it, but because we need it. We need healing, and forgiveness brings healing, both for the one being forgiven and for the one doing the forgiving.

If God can forgive us and even be baptized with a baptism for forgiveness of sins, then, as hard as it may be, forgiving others is certainly not beneath our dignity. If being God didn’t put Jesus above forgiving others, then being human certainly doesn’t put any of us above forgiving others.

Now, in Luke’s version of Jesus’ baptism which we heard today, John talked about Jesus gathering the wheat of humanity into his granary and burning the chaff of humanity with unquenchable fire. That’s God’s job to do, not ours, and it is a job that we don’t fully understand. How exactly does God’s judgement work? Who or what is the chaff? Who or what is the wheat? We’ve got lots of answers, but if we’re being honest, we don’t fully know or understand. That’s because it’s God’s job to do, not ours.

What we do know is, God is unmistakably for us, and so we are meant to be for one another as well. When we judge one another, and we do judge one another, our judgments should be meant for healing, for reconciliation, for helping one another in this life. We can judge our behaviors as harmful or helpful, as loving or hateful.

Our judgments are not meant for determining who is the wheat and who is the chaff to be burned with unquenchable fire. When we make those determinations, we’re making ourselves equal with God, and not even God made himself equal to God when God became human.

So, when we judge, for example, we can judge that violence and settling our conflicts with our fists and weapons is harmful and terrible for us. Last week at breakfast a man felt disrespected when another asked him to quiet down during the prayer. Feeling disrespected, he became angry and attacked the other man, physically, rather than just taking a breath or using his words. That unquestionably the wrong thing to do. His violence at feeling disrespected didn’t help him. It just hurt everyone, and he had to leave over it.

At the same time, that man may have been doing the best he could do at that point. He seems to have been under far too much stress to condemn him simply as bad. He’d obviously been hurt in his life and dealing with so much that when he felt disrespected, he couldn’t do much of anything other than attack. He still had to go, but that doesn’t mean we condemn him. Hopefully he can come back.

Now, some might say that man is like the chaff which will be burned with unquenchable fire. Maybe, but again, if we make that determination, we make ourselves equal with God. Perhaps, instead of the man being the chaff to be burned, the brokenness and hurt within the man is the chaff to be burned with unquenchable fire, and the healed, beloved, forgiven man is the wheat that will be gathered into God’s granary.

We don’t know, but that certainly seems possible, considering how even God chose to be baptized for forgiveness of sins, not because he needed the baptism, but because we do, and God didn’t find joining with us in our baptism to be beneath him. Rather, God chose to be with us and for us, showing us that we can be with and for one another as well. Even if being for one another means we walk into water that is dirty as sin, we can be for one another, knowing Jesus is there with us to gather us together with God.