Home

Contact Us

Esteem the Spleen                        Ephesians 4:25-5:2                   August 9, 2009

I've thought a lot about the spleen, this week. That's right, the spleen. The purplish, fist-sized organ that is located on our left side, just behind our stomach and under our diaphragm.

Now, if that doesn't sound like a particularly interesting thing to think about, bear with me, please, and give me a chance to convince you that it is actually pretty fascinating. That the spleen does, in fact, deserve our esteem.

My thought journey began on Tuesday when I read an article in the Science section of the morning paper. Natalie Angier, the science writer, begins her article, "Finally, the Spleen Gets Some Respect," by admitting she's crabby. "As a confirmed crab apple who has often been compared to the splenetic Lucy Van Pelt character from Peanuts," she writes, "I am gratified to learn that should my real spleen ever decide to vent in earnest, the outburst may just help save my life."

She then goes on to explain that while the importance of the spleen has often been downplayed, recent research has shown that it plays an important role in the human body's defense system. Particularly in the event of a heart attack.

"The cells stored up and then released by the spleen are the major repair workers after a heart attack," Angier quotes the research as saying. "They remove dead muscle cells, they start rebuilding stable scar tissue, and they stimulate the generation of new blood vessels. Within 24 hours after a myocardial infarction, there are millions of them congregating around the broken heart."

Impressive. But as I think about it, despite the newfound respect that the spleen is being paid by the scientific community, its real value continues to be more metaphorical than medical. The phrase "vent your spleen" means to allow your anger out, to express your disgust, to strongly speak your mind. A process that delivers even greater benefits than any spleen-related healing that happens after a traumatic medical event.

We know, of course, that anger is not stored up in our spleen, as was once thought. Our brain processes the stress that rises up in us when we get angry and makes our adrenal gland secrete adrenaline - and that powerful hormone causes out heart rate to rise, our breathing to accelerate and our face to turn red as our blood pressure goes up.

But in the same way that it is better to describe love as something that happens in our heart - even though we know better; even though we know that the heart is nothing more than a blood-pumping muscle - it is much better to think that the anger that wells up inside us and explodes onto the scene from time to time is a venting of the spleen rather than the much more clinical sounding - though technically correct - secretion of epinephrine or norepinephrine or whatever the correct name of that hormone may be.

When the author of our Epistle Lesson for this morning writes, "Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil," he is recommending - some would say commanding - his readers to go ahead and vent our spleens.

The book of Ephesians, which most scholars agree was written by a follower of the Apostle Paul, includes a collection of warnings to the members of the early church. Christians, he says, are called to a style of life that is different from the surrounding environment and therefore are reminded that they have been taught an alternate behavior.

Imitate God, he tells them. Walk in love.

And while it may surprise you to hear it, it is totally consistent, our text tells us, to imitate God and to vent our spleen from time to time.

It is certainly possible for anger to consume us and cause us to do really awful, evil things. Too often, these days, it seems. But anger, in and of itself, is not a sin.

In fact, I would go even further than the author of our text and say that anger itself is a good thing, a good gift from God.

Like other good gifts, it can be perverted into a bad thing. But, rightly understood and appropriated, anger is good; and its good purpose is to enhance the quality of our lives.*

When you think about it, anger can be channeled into all sorts of useful purposes:

It can motivate us to work harder to accomplish our life goals. In fact, anger can sometimes lead to newer, higher level goals, possibly fueled by the desire to prove others wrong.

Anger can also alert us that something is wrong and that we need to respond. It can motivate us to defend ourselves or defend someone else - it can spur us to action.

And it is often anger that keeps us from passively accepting societal wrongdoings and ignites us to take action. Many of our culture's most important changes have come about because people got angry about the way things were and set out to correct those injustices.

Think of the Women's Rights Movement, the movement to abolish slavery, and the Civil Rights Movement. None of these important changes in our life as a people would have happened if not for the anger of people like Carrie Nation, William Wilberforce and Martin Luther King.

Setting social and societal good aside for the moment, and speaking more personally, I also find that anger can play an important role in my everyday life.

Anger, in my experience, almost never exists in a vacuum. It is always connected to something else that is going on in my life. Sometimes it's something I'm anxious about; sometimes it's something I'm sad about.

Either way, my anger becomes a sort of built-in alarm system; to warn me about something that's already hurting or that has the potential to hurt. If I take the time to step back and think about it, getting angry is a lot like having an alarm that goes off to wake me up, so I can do something about what's really wrong.

So, to summarize, then, venting the spleen can be a good thing. It is not a sin. It can empower us when empowerment is what we really need, and it can function as a built-in alarm system, to wake us up to something that's gone wrong, to wake us up so we can see what's under our anger, what we're really feeling.

However you look at it, anger helps us address what's wrong and make life more livable.

But if venting our spleen is going to play the positive role that I believe God intended it to play in our lives, we also need to pay attention to the next phrase in our text. The one that follows the directive to vent.

Our author writes, "Be angry, and do not sin," but he doesn't sop there. The next words from his pen are "don't let the sun go down on your anger."

Don't let the sun go down on your anger. This too is an extraordinarily fine piece of advice.

Often, when we get angry, it is a good thing to bite our tongue and walk away - so as not to add more venom to an already poisonous situation.

But we can't stop there. If we stop there, if all we do is bite our tongue, chances are all we'll get is a sore tongue. And maybe a sore gut as well.

As one scholar put it, "Swallowed anger becomes an acid, rotting the human gut and rotting the human spirit.**"

My guess is we all know people who appear to be angry all of the time. People who always see the glass as half-empty; people who seem to be critical of everything and everybody. Maybe it's even the person you see when you look in the mirror.

The way to avoid that from happening; the way for our anger to be the good gift of God that it can be, says the author of our text, is to never let the sun go down on our anger. Vent it. Reflect on it. Talk about it with the person who triggered it. Today. Not next week or next year. Today.

This advice from Ephesians 4 is much easier to read and hear than it is to do, of course. Sometimes learning to follow it takes the help of a trusted friend or a professional counselor.

Fortunately, though, it's never too late. The power of God - the healing, liberating, life-transforming power of God knows no bounds. And that power is never felt more strongly than when it is felt here - inside the community we call the Church.

The Epistle to the Ephesians was written to the church. It was - and is - meant to be understood in the context of the church.

And in the church, we know that anger is always best expressed - and received - in a spirit of forgiveness.

At the risk of oversimplifying, as forgiving and forgiven members of the church, our ability to express our anger - to esteem the spleen - arises out of our love for one another and expresses itself in our ability to admit when we are wrong. In our ability to approach one another with humility.

I briefly mentioned the famous Peanuts character Lucy Van Pelt as I began this morning. She is the one, you'll remember, who always picks up the football when Charlie Brown is about to kick it and the one who is constantly giving her brother Linus a hard time about his security blanket. She is cartoonist Charles Shultz's example of how not to behave. Particularly when it comes to anger.

I have a favorite Lucy Van Pelt quote that nicely sums up how we, as members of the church, should not approach our angry moments.

"I never made a mistake in my life," Lucy once said, smugly. "I thought I did once, but I was wrong."

May the God who loves us beyond measure give us the grace to express our anger, and sin not.

                                                                             AMEN

* I have drawn on some thoughts expressed in a sermon entitled "It's Okay to be Angry" by Ilene Dunn, pastor of Madison Square Presbyterian Church.
** IBID

Go Back To Sermons