Don't Let the Sun Go Down
So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.
Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger,
and do not make room for the devil.
Ephesians 4:25-27
Have you noticed that people are really angry lately?
Here are a few examples:
Vaccinated folks at the unvaccinated
Spirit airline folks--lots of cancelled flights!
The news is mad at … everyone?
In particular, we’re good at a hot, fast anger. You’ve got to be explosive to cut into the media deluge. It’s outrage, it’s cancel culture, it’s an entire planet traumatized by a virus that has killed millions, it’s the frustration of being alive.
If you want to take this scripture and do a hot take, you can have a pretty tidy takeaway here in just 20 seconds. We’re mad, but the bible says, do not let the sun go down on your anger, so there you have it.
As with many things, if we take this slower and sit a little longer we get a fuller picture. Pause your outrage brain and let’s look again.
I’ve only picked out three verses for us today, but the whole of Ephesians can hold this type of meaning. Sometimes when we read scripture we can read wide, inhaling long story epics or entire letters at once. But sometimes we can just look at a small snippet and find depth. We could start in the middle with that famous phrase, “do not let the sun go down on your anger.”
Alone, there is such beauty and truth to this. I had a practice toward the end of my school career where I didn’t do any homework or writing after dark. This was a commitment in winter months, but it always gave me this boundary where I could step aside and unwind before rest and beginning a new day. To not let the sun go down on your anger is an old version of new advice--don’t go doom scrolling on Twitter when you’re trying to sleep. Don’t read news headlines right before bed. Don’t drink coffee at 9:00pm.
Yet our scripture is so beautiful and rich because it doesn’t stop there. The beginning of that same sentence actually begins, “be angry.” Which, you know, is a fairly honest and realistic place to begin. I know I can start there. And yet, there is a boundary around this anger that is so helpful. It says, “be angry, but do not sin.” There is so much just in that phrase! Because this seems to indicate that there is anger that is no sinful, but anger that is tied with something else that becomes sinful. Something to ponder.
On the other end of our “don’t let the sun go down on your anger” we have another great bookend that says, “and do not make room for the devil.”
And listen, I do not entirely know what this means! I know there was a period in my life where I often heard the opposite, that when a couple was dancing too close together, they were supposed to leave room for Jesus. But we do not leave the same room for the devil?
Yet I do understand on some level what it might mean for anger to leave the door open to results that I do not want to claim long term. Do not make room, do not make space, do not widen the door. Keep it locked up.
We’ve also got this wonderful introductory verse to this whole thing. “So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbors, for we are members of one another.” Now this really sets the stage for all this anger talk, because our anger, or our management of our anger, still has to live in the context of truth-telling. We cannot simply just hide away all of our feelings if it means we are not being honest with those who are our neighbors. This is because we belong to one another, we are members of one another. We are connected in Christ.
I could riff on these three verses all day. That’s the depth we can get in our scripture. That alone is such an antidote to the fast outrage and anger that swallows us in singularity. This is the careful building and adapting and growing of a community that finds its identity in Christ.
I recently had someone ask me when I knew I wanted to marry my spouse Josh. I remember when Josh and I started dating, how I would be checking my phone for messages from him when I woke up. I remember wanting to know more about what he was thinking when I could see him across the room. I remember how kind he seemed.
I don’t remember when I knew I wanted to marry him though. There was no flash, no instant moment. It was never that I didn’t want to marry him and then I did. But it was built over time, through walks and hand holding, through families shared and dinners and conversations. It wasn’t urgent, it was inevitable.
May our Christianity be the same. We are pulled so hard to the hot take, to the immediate reaction. We are pulled apart in isolation, into an identity that is self-centered and lonely. But in Christ, we see a way that has complex feelings, anger that is identified but not sustained relentlessly. We see a world in which we belong to one another. We find wisdom in slowness. We speak truth.
Remember who you are and whose you are. Go with God. Amen.