Angry as A Wild Horse
by Verdell A. Wright
The Rev. Melissa N. McQueen, Many Voices’ North Carolina Faith Organizer, asked powerful ministers to share their wisdom on urgent issues of justice for a new era of challenge and opposition. Throughout American history, sermons by visionary ministers have long played a powerful role in the fight for justice. Intentionally bold and thought-provoking, these especially commissioned sermons embody the spirit of resistance found in truly revolutionary rhetoric. Each sermon represents the sole view of the minister who composed it. For the fourth entry in our Revolutionary Rhetoric series, we feature Verdell A. Wright’s call for righteous rage against injustice in the model of Jesus’ rebuke of corrupt institutions.
A man with a skin disease approaches Jesus in Mark 1: 40–45 of the Bible. He begs Jesus to heal him. Jesus ministers to him, saying, “See that you don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.” In other words, Jesus instructs him to go to show himself to the priests as the law required. The man does not heed Jesus’ instruction, and “instead he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news. As a result, Jesus could no longer enter a town openly but stayed outside in lonely places. Yet the people still came to him from everywhere.”
“Jesus was indignant,” says the New International version of Mark 1:41. In some ancient manuscripts, verse 41 reads that Jesus is “moved with compassion.” In ancient Greek, the word for compassion refers to being so deeply moved in your insides that you are compelled toward action. Consider the things that you feel when your insides churn and bubble. If you grimaced just now, good. That’s the image that the word is supposed to give.
Other manuscripts do something different with that word in verse 41, trading compassion with “indignant,” “incensed,” “or “angered.” Some translators decided to make those two verses agree, since the idea of compassion in verse 41 doesn’t match Jesus’ emotions in verse 43. The word used to describe Jesus’ response in in verse 43 is also used to describe an angry horse. Have you ever seen a horse when it’s angry? It’s a sight to behold — from afar. It’s not so pleasant when you’re right next to it, when it bounds up on its hind legs and lets out a huge snort. You’d better get out of the way.
I believe this difference in word choice speaks to how much believers wrestle with the idea of an angry Jesus. Most believers today don’t want an angry Jesus, not unless his fury can be deployed toward people whom they already hate. They consider themselves the beloved of God and the others the bewitched. They rarely consider that the very things they request of God — the hoarding of money, power, status — are the very things that caused Jesus to be angry.
I submit to you that Jesus wasn’t angry with the man who begged for healing. He was angry with the priests in the temple. The temple was where the political and religious powers that controlled the Jewish homeland resided. The Romans used the Sadducees to run the temple and enforce their rule. As a result, the Sadducees were rich, and everyone else was not. (Doesn’t this sound familiar?) The Sadducees also administered the rites that people like the leper had to enact in order to be deemed clean and fit for society. These rites were expensive even if you followed the directions in the Law. However, the priests were so corrupt that they would raise the prices even higher so they could keep the excess. (Again, doesn’t this seem like this still happens today?)
This is why Jesus was enraged. He reserved some of his harshest critiques for religious gatekeepers. But Jesus does something revolutionary in response. He heals the man himself. Jesus isn’t a priest. Yet, he performs priestly acts to extend healing, ignoring the religious rules of the day. Jesus sent the healed man back to tell the priest, the ones who’ve enflamed his anger. He wanted to demonstrate that power over life and death doesn’t belong solely to them. It was a direct challenge to Rome and the temple elites’ rule.
This is a demonstration of what God can do without elites’ approval, of God working outside of institutions and human made boundaries. My hope is that believers of all faiths will snort, buck, and demonstrate holy anger to disrupt the cycles of injustice in our world. I’m happy that God can be as indignant as an annoyed wild horse. We should allow Jesus’ response to release us to do the same.
About Verdell A. Wright
Verdell A. Wright is a religious leader, speaker, and scholar based in the Washington, D.C. area. A professor and consultant working at the nexus of religion, communications and culture, Wright teaches speech and communication at Trinity Washington University. He served as the Faith Outreach Consultant for Compassion and Choices and the Minister of Religious Programing at Lincoln Temple United Church of Christ. He has taught speech and communication at Montgomery College and worked as a technical writer at WOOD Consulting Services, Inc.
Questions, comments, or concerns? Feel free to contact Many Voices | A Black Church Movement for Gay & Transgender Justice at info@manyvoices.org.
