Moving Through Unresolved Anger | Pastor Shaylyn Ford | One Church Columbus

I am going to talk a little bit about something that Greg has been talking about because I think we can we can keep getting so much more from it.

How many people were here for the cover-to-cover series for some part of that over the last few months?

All right, great.

So you know we if you weren't here, you know that we were talking about what more we can get from reading the Bible.

I think sometimes it's really easy to just approach the Bible like it's a manual or like it's this really specific thing, and we already know what it says, and we're just reading it to confirm what we already know, and that's really not the case.

He he was not teaching us what is in the Bible, but he was teaching how to read the Bible.

So how do we dig in and get more layers deep?

And some of those things are understanding historical cult uh context or culture.

Some of those things would be understanding the original words and what some of the multiple meanings, because right, it's not direct, like Greek to English is not always a direct translation, you know, and so you go back and you learn what more things could have meant.

Um, another one is if you're finding out who wrote a book and who they were writing it to or who they were writing about, um, what time frame and what was going on in their world at the time.

All of those things, understanding some of those things, helps us take a step back and really get a better understanding of what we're looking at and then be able to go layers deeper into a story.

I think that's one of the most powerful things about reading the Bible is when you take that approach to it where you just don't assume that you know what's happening, then you have this opportunity to keep asking more questions and then get to better questions that lead you to better answers and more questions.

And you keep getting more and more out of it, and then you can go back to the same text over and over again, and you'll get something different every time.

I've I see a few people nodding their heads because you know what that's like.

You've done that.

And and then it even kind of gets to a point where like it's not so much even that you're reading the Bible as much as the Bible is reading you, you know?

Yeah.

And uh that can be a little uncomfortable at times, but also really good.

Um, and you get to this point where it starts being, it's almost kind of like a mirror, and it's showing you things about yourself you didn't see before, it's helping you get a better view, and that's kind of what this message has been for me.

Um, I've heard people ask Greg a lot of times like how he comes up with his sermons.

Um, and so I thought I'd give you a maybe a little peek like into how the sausage is made, so to speak, and and kind of you know tell you how he goes about putting a sermon together, and this is actually a big part of it, is we'll sit down and we'll have a conversation about this text, like the one I'm gonna read today, that you've probably heard time and time again if you grew up in church.

And we start with what we always heard preached about it, and that's usually something good.

That's the case with this one, and then we go, well, but what else?

Like what else was something you saw?

And then we share that, and then we go, okay, what else?

Like, what else could that have meant?

What else could that person have been thinking or feeling?

What else could God have been trying to do in this situation?

And you keep going deeper.

Um, the text I have for you today is one of those, it's been that for me.

I've heard it preached one way my whole life.

I heard Greg preach it another way a few years ago, and then I have another layer to add to it from some conversations that we've had recently.

So this is gonna be kind of like three sermons in one.

I promise it will not be three full-length services.

All right.

I'm getting you guys out to Mother's Day brunch, it's okay.

I actually got last service out a few minutes early.

I was so proud.

I had to call Greg and brag a little bit because he never does that.

Uh but I I promise we're gonna get you out here quick.

But I think there's something that you could maybe get from each one of these things.

And I think there's a lesson to be learned in digging through each one.

All right.

So if you have your Bibles with you, go ahead and turn to Luke 10, 38 through 42.

And I'm actually gonna pull it up on my phone as well because I know Greg has talked about this before, but if you don't have a physical Bible with you, getting the Bible app on your phone is so great.

It has so many different versions so that it can help you flip back and forth between different versions of the scripture to maybe get a fuller picture of what it means.

It has a ton of resources in it, really, really valuable.

So I'm actually gonna go ahead and even though I have it here in one version, I'm gonna read another version off of my phone uh because I can.

Uh so uh Luke 10, 38 through 42, it says, as Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him.

She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he said.

But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made.

She came to him and asked, Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself?

Tell her to help me.

Martha, Martha, by the way, is that not just does that not immediately get under your skin?

Like, he's so condescending.

When somebody leads like that with me, I'm like, don't tell me to calm down.

Martha, Martha, the Lord answered, You are worried and upset about many things, but few things are needed, or indeed only one.

Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.

When I heard this scripture growing up, version one, uh, the message that I always heard from that was that it was a story about priorities.

And it is.

That's that's a really good message.

You know, it's it's kind of this thing of like tasks versus relationships or being present versus being preoccupied.

And I think that's a pretty timely message for Mother's Day.

You know, I think pretty much any mother in the room can go.

There have been tons of times where I was distracted by many things, as it says, I was so worried about taking care of all the details that I missed the really cool stuff that was happening right in front of me.

There were some like really precious moments with my kids.

And by the way, I'm not trying to heap any shame because we've all done it, okay?

But this is a good little reminder to just like stop, slow down, feel that moment.

And you know what?

If that's the only thing you needed to hear today, God bless, I'll see you next week.

You can leave.

I'm glad if that's for you, because I'm sure it is for somebody.

I it's been a message that I needed at times that I came there and I went, I have been so focused on everything that needed to be done this week, and who had to get to the dentist, and whose IEP paperwork needed turned in, and who, and I stopped paying attention to the actual people that I was doing those things for.

So if that's for you today, there's there's layer one.

And I think it holds a lot of value.

But I think there's more.

I think there's more to it.

So let's go to layer two.

Layer two was the one that Greg talked about a few years ago, and I would actually encourage you to go listen to the full-length version of this sermon because it's really good.

You can find it on YouTube under, I believe, Secret Sauce, and he's wearing a white shirt with two blue stripes down the side.

So you can find the thumbnail, all right?

You're not searching around.

Um, but he really dug into the idea that it's a story about conflict.

It is.

It's a story about conflict between two sisters.

It's a story about conflict between Martha and Jesus.

She goes after Jesus more than once in the scripture, by the way.

It's a story about uh Martha in conflict with herself.

It's a really good story about conflict, and there's a lot of good lessons to learn about conflict.

You know, if you think about the idea of doing conflict well, it's a really important skill because you can win the battle and lose the war in a conflict.

You can be absolutely surgical in your precision and you lawyer up and you can be right.

By the way, nobody's saying Martha wasn't right.

She deserved some help.

I'm not gonna tell her she didn't deserve a hand in the kitchen.

But she was so focused on being right that she missed that beyond just being right, there might be a deeper lesson and a deeper relationship to be had.

So you could be so surgical in your precision and lawyer up and tell the other person, slice them and dice them, tell them the way that you're right and they're wrong, and you know what?

You're right, but you've done irreparable damage to the relationship.

There are times that I have opened my mouth and I have said things that were true.

They were all true.

I didn't lie, I didn't make things up, but I really hurt somebody, and they'll never forget what I said.

Like, just because it's true doesn't mean it all needs to be said, and that matters how we say it.

So conflict is important, right?

This is a good message.

You know, we it's one of those things where Mary was leaving Martha high and dry, and it feels like Jesus is backing her up.

She has every reason to feel frustrated by that.

You know, but I think you've got to get curious, you've got to get beyond just, I want to, as Greg said it, it's not just about proving, or I'm sorry, it's not just about proving my case, it's about solving the case.

So if I'm so busy trying to prove my case, I might not solve the real issue that's underlying all this.

Because let's be honest, Jesus probably could have sent Mary back to the kitchen right then, like she asked her to.

And do you think that really would have fixed it?

Or do you think that Martha probably would have been barking at her in the kitchen?

Because it wasn't just about the dishes, it was about something deeper.

But she wasn't curious.

She wasn't curious about her own internal stuff, she wasn't curious what Jesus might have had to say to her.

She was just focused on where she was right.

I think if we get a little bit curious, you know you you notice the fact when Martha walks back in to talk to Jesus, she she makes a statement, makes an accusation, and asks a rhetorical question.

Look at this.

She says, Lord, it doesn't seem fair, or doesn't it seem unfair to you that my sister just sits here while I do all the work?

That's not a real question, that's a rhetorical question.

She could have asked Jesus some real questions.

Hey Jesus, is there room for me to sit down here too?

Hey Jesus, can we like, you know, you've done the whole water into wine thing.

What can you do with water and soap?

Like, can you handle this?

And we don't even have to deal with it, right?

Like, there were so many things she could have asked real questions, but instead she came in with a rhetorical question and then just saying, tell her to come help me.

I've already got the answer.

I know how this should be handled.

She didn't get curious.

I think it's really important that we have to get curious about ourselves.

We have to get curious about what else is in scripture.

And so when Greg and I started having this conversation again, we started getting a little bit curious about like, I wonder why she was actually upset.

I wonder why, because it seems really clear, but maybe there's more.

So we thought, well, just go down this road a little bit.

So we started looking at it, and it's like, all right, first things, real obvious, she has at least 16 dinner guests, right?

We can figure out the math.

It's Jesus, it's his disciples, it's Mary, Lazarus, and Martha.

She's got at least 16 people to feed.

That's a full house.

That's a lot of people.

And the reality is it was actually probably way more people than that because there was a whole host.

If we read again around the context of it, there were a whole bunch of other people that were following Jesus around the countryside.

Who knows?

She could have been feeding a room like y'all.

You know, we don't know what she was up against.

And Mary and Martha did not have an air fryer and like disposable plates to use.

So she's having to do all the prep work, all the, you know, going and gathering things and putting it together and putting the food on the table and making sure everybody's drink is refilled.

And then everybody just sits there and chows down, is like, great meal, Martha, and leaves the room.

And she's got everything in front of her.

Yeah.

It's kind of funny when I was running through this sermon for the last time last night, I was going over this part, and Greg was sitting there with a smirk on his face, and I'm like, what's so funny?

And he's like, I'm having my first like really Martha experience right now.

I was like, okay, uh, unpack that.

And uh, so when we decided that I was going to speak this week, Greg said, Honey, listen, you're speaking.

I'll do everything else related to Mother's Day.

I've I've got this.

And so this man has been to the grocery store no less than four times in the last 48 hours because he kept forgetting more things that he needed.

He's trying to navigate a group text with like the other guys in the family because they're putting the meal together and you forget who's bringing what, and you know, so he's got to go get more.

He bought a gift card for his mom and immediately lost it.

Uh he bought a gift for me and left it at the store and had to go back last night and get it.

So this was really hitting home for him last night.

He's like, I feel very Martha energy.

Like, I'm sick of this.

I have respect for what you do.

I don't want to do this anymore.

So he'll be back up here next week.

This is his spot.

Um, but we it was just kind of funny because it's like, yeah, that that is reasonable.

That is reasonable.

It could have been that she could just be an overworked Enneagram too, and she's tired.

Or it could be deeper than that.

It could be that maybe she actually it made her feel unloved and unvalued.

Um, has anybody ever read uh Gary Chapman's The Five Love Languages?

Or you've heard of it, you know what it is, right?

So let's see if we can we've got quality time, acts of service, uh, physical touch, what am I missing?

Gifts, words of affirmation, right?

Those are those are the top five.

Maybe, maybe Martha was an acts of service person.

Maybe the way that it made her feel loved was for somebody to come alongside her and help her out.

And not one person in the room is paying attention to her and helping out.

She feels unseen.

And then I even have the guts to bring it up to Jesus and go, hey, can I have one person help me?

And he kind of like chastises her in public and is like, no, you chose wrong.

Your sister chose right.

Maybe she's walking back there feeling like Jesus doesn't even really love me.

He doesn't care what I'm going through.

I don't know.

It could be even more than that.

Maybe it's that she's seeing Mary do some things and have some things that she doesn't have.

If you if we kind of employ what we learned in uh cover to cover, I almost said coast to coast.

That's that's not it.

Uh but if we employed what we learned in cover to cover, we we see, we use like the historical context piece.

So let's look at the historical context that they lived in in that day.

They lived in a time where women did not really have rights at all.

For the time you're a little girl, you see your brother, they have their brother Lazarus, you see Lazarus get to go to school, and he learns to read and to write, and he's memorizing portions of the Torah, and you don't get to do any of that.

You spend your whole life being illiterate, and you're leaning on the men in your life to interpret the world around you for you because you can't read that sign.

You can't tell what is going on here.

Maybe, I mean, it seems like from her personality, she's kind of an alpha.

You know, the way that she comes into this room with big energy, and then at another time later in scripture, when Lazarus dies, she comes after Jesus again.

She actually comes out of the house before Jesus even gets to their house, and she accosts him on the road and goes off on him and says, This is your fault.

If you had been here, this wouldn't have happened.

So this is not a meek, mild lady.

So maybe this lot in life didn't feel right to her.

But just because of the way that she presented to the rest of the world and the way she looked, they said, Nope, kitchen.

From the time you're a little girl, you're learning how to cook, you're learning how to clean, and you're nothing more.

Please hear me.

I'm not saying those things aren't valuable, but that's not a life that's necessarily for everybody either.

And I wonder, I'm just being curious and I'm speculating because this isn't specifically in scripture, but I wonder if some of those things have been getting under Martha's skin her entire life.

And she's getting really tired of it.

And it's not really about the dishes, it's really about the fact that not only am I illiterate and I can't read and write, but also even when I go to the synagogue, I can't go in and learn from the rabbi.

There's an outer court for women, and they can't go past that.

And men can go in.

By the way, this is something else that really brings something home to point in this message.

Only the men could go and sit at the foot of a rabbi and learn.

And it was a really honored position to sit right at the foot, right in front of the rabbi when he's teaching.

And so now she's seeing her sister, her younger sister.

You haven't been around as long, you haven't paid the dues I've paid, you haven't done the things I've done.

And her younger sister has the audacity to just go sit at Jesus' feet while I'm back in the kitchen.

She might have been really over it.

And it might have been really way deeper for her.

So maybe it's even past conflict.

And this is the third thing we came to.

It's good to learn to be present, it's good to learn how to have conflict.

And the last piece that this is where the Bible started being a mirror for me was unresolved anger.

Maybe Martha had some really deep, unresolved anger that had really nothing to do with what happened this day, and it just felt like a microcosm of her whole life.

Maybe your anger has nothing to do with, you know, the kind of situation that Martha was in.

This isn't uh a message just about that, but I think we can all resonate with things in our lives that maybe we go, if I'm being really honest, I'm still angry about this.

I didn't deserve to happen, have that happen to me when I was a little kid.

I didn't deserve it.

I'm mad.

That was wrong.

Maybe you're like, this thing was taken away from me out of my life, and I have a hole and it's sitting like a rock in my chest.

And I didn't deserve that.

Maybe there are things in your life that you can go, there are some things in the culture or in the situation or whatever that I'm in that I can't change, and I'm looking at it, and I don't know if this is ever even going to change in my lifetime.

And I feel stuck in it, and I feel like my life and my world keep sending me back into my prison, my kitchen over and over and over again.

And I don't know how to get out.

Unresolved anger is understandable because it's okay to be angry about injustice, it's okay to be honest about the fact that you're feeling some jealousy about some other people that you're seeing that aren't in the kitchen, and you're like, man, why do they have freedoms I don't have?

But unresolved anger will rot us from the inside out.

We have to get that out.

So, what are some things we can do about it?

The first thing is don't let unresolved anger rob you of what's right in front of you.

If you go to verse 39, it says, Her sister Mary sat at the Lord's feet listening to what he taught, but Martha was distracted by the big dinner she was preparing.

Does anybody remember what Jesus was actually teaching about right then?

You don't, it's a trick question, it's okay because it doesn't say Martha interrupted him, she talked over him.

We don't know, we don't even know.

She didn't know what he was talking about, and it could have been right for her, but she missed it because she was too busy focusing on where she was right and she was mad, and this wasn't fair, and she lost sight of the fact that number one, Jesus didn't send her to the kitchen, she walked in there by herself.

And how many times have we kept walking into our own prison of a kitchen in our own lives and kept just feeling like because this is this is the groove I've walked in my mind, I'm just gonna keep walking this because this is where the world puts me every time.

And Jesus is going, I don't put you there.

I didn't put that limit on you.

And not only did she put herself in that kitchen, but she missed through the open door right over here that she could have walked through what was happening in her living room.

Because you know what?

In Martha's day, the culture that she was in, it was never gonna change in her in her time.

It was never gonna be a time where she could have gone into the synagogue or she could have gone to school or she could have done any of these other things that she might have wanted to do.

But you know what was changing in her own home?

Jesus said, Yeah, Mary can sit right here at my feet.

It won't be taken away from her.

I won't make her leave.

You put it right to me to a point.

I won't make her leave.

I wonder with all the other people that were in the building that day, how many of them might have seen Mary go sit at the feet of Jesus?

And they were like, Oh gosh, who's gonna tell her she shouldn't be here?

This is this is weird.

Are you gonna tell her?

I'm not gonna tell her.

And they were kind of hoping Jesus.

Would just like make her leave, but gosh, maybe Jesus feels bad for her.

He's not gonna kick her out, you know.

And then Martha walks in and says it, and they're like, Oh, thank God.

Martha said it so we didn't have to.

You know, somebody's gonna make her leave.

And Jesus goes, Absolutely not.

It will not be taken from her.

And what Martha missed in this is that Jesus wasn't rejecting her, Jesus wasn't chastising her.

This was an invitation for her to sit down too, because Jesus has two feet.

Jesus was saying, you may not ever get out of this culture that doesn't see you as an equal human being, but I, the ultimate rabbi, am saying, you have a right to sit here.

Don't miss what's happening right in front of you.

The second thing is that your unresolved anger about what you lost can cause you to try to take it from someone else.

That's an ugly side effect.

And I've been guilty of it.

I've had stuff well up in me where I've felt jealous because somebody else had something I didn't have, you know, and it's like, man, God, what why do they get that?

I'm I'm over here dealing with the dishes, and you're just having this beautiful communal moment with this other person.

And some things are maybe gone forever, right?

Some opportunities are not coming back.

But the idea that somehow because we had to pay a really high price, now the generation after me should have to pay the same price I did.

You don't get off easy.

Do you know what I had to go through to get here?

You pay your own way.

Have you ever heard of the term sunk cost bias?

Where, like, if you paid a lot for something, you kind of just hold on to it and you value it higher than you should, even it's it's diminished in value, and and sometimes it's not even good for you.

You need to get rid of it.

It's trash at this point.

And I wonder how many things, if we're honest with ourselves and we get curious and we just sit with it for a little bit, that we go, I have sunk cost bias on some things in my life that I'm still paying for it, and I think you should have to pay for it too.

If I had to walk through this fire, so do you.

If I don't get to have this, you don't get to have this.

Don't let unresolved anger become, make you become somebody you don't want to become.

And the last thing is don't let it rob you of what's still possible.

Time's on your side.

It really is.

You're in this room, you're breathing, it's still possible.

You know, I think it's really easy to put yourself in Martha's shoes and feel bad for her because, you know, she was the older sister, she had limitations and lost years, but it made her lose sight of what Jesus could still do in her life moving forward.

There's a lot more.

And just because one door closes doesn't mean another one won't open.

And just because he has something for somebody else doesn't mean he doesn't have something for you.

He's not going to take something away from somebody else.

It doesn't mean that he doesn't have it for you if he doesn't take it from them.

It's not limited resources with God.

There's still more there that's possible for you.

I have a little bit of a sore spot, a raw spot around uh mother of the groom dances at weddings.

Um I have two sons that are 13 and 10, and they are both on the autism spectrum.

And I don't send me an email telling me, you know, that all the things that could change, I know what could change, God can do anything.

But the reality is that more than likely, I will never have one of those dances with them.

And that stinks.

I have two sons, I won't probably do it once.

And it's not just about the dance.

Sometimes that feels like a microcosm of like everything that I've missed and haven't been able to have with them.

Even if somebody gave me a pill today and said, like, this is the pill that cures autism, go give it to your boys, they'll be different right now.

That'd be a miracle and I'd be so grateful.

But I'd still be down 13 and 10 years of childhood that you don't get back.

It's okay for you to grieve and to maybe even feel a little angry and sad around the things that are just gone.

But you don't live there.

So I had this moment back before I ever had the language of this message where God preached it to my heart.

It was at my nephew's wedding and he was doing the mother of the groom dance with his mom.

I had to, I had to leave for a minute, just go collect myself.

I didn't want to like make a scene.

And I was kind of feeling a little pity party.

I'm like, man, God, like I know you're not gonna sit here and answer why, but like, why?

And he reminded me of the first point, which is don't let it rob you of what's right in front of you.

Because my 13-year-old son still does the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse dance with me in the kitchen right now.

I get that, right?

I can do a mean goofy dance, you guys.

I you don't even know.

I'm really good at that part.

But I would miss that if I let, if I got so focused on the dishes that I didn't look in the living room.

I was missing what was right in front of me, and I don't ever want to do that.

And you know what else?

I don't want my nephew, and I don't want my sister-in-law, and I don't want any other mom to ever miss out on that dance or any other precious moment that they have with their kids because I'm jealous of it.

I want to be able to celebrate with them.

I want to be able to come to it with a heart that isn't encased in anger that's owning me, so that I can't feel that joy with you.

I've learned that one of the most telltale signs that you're starting to heal in your anger is being able to see the generation behind you go beyond you, being able to see other people doing things that you hoped and cried and wished and prayed for and never got, and you're excited for them.

That's a really beautiful place to be.

I'm not perfect.

I'll I'll have a little therapy moment and stand up here and say, I'm an angry person.

I have anger, but I'm choosing to take the journey to walk through it.

I'm preaching this to me today, too.

I'm I'm choosing to walk through it because I don't want to miss the joy of celebrating with other people, too.

And the last thing is don't let it make you lose sight of what's still possible.

I don't know what's still possible for my boys.

Maybe we do have that moment, maybe not.

But maybe we'll have a lot of other really great moments that look nothing like that.

And if I'm so focused on what I'm not getting and what people aren't doing for me, that I miss what I've got right now and what is still to come, I'm not gonna do that.

I'm not gonna give that away.

Don't let anything rob you of what he still has for you.

You have a right.

You might be seeing somebody at one of Jesus' feet.

That other one is space for you.

You have that right to be there at Jesus' feet.

Don't miss the opportunity for something that doesn't matter.

He says, I love at the end when he says to her, like, it, you're worried and upset over so many things.

There's really only one thing that matters, and Mary's found it.

I'm not gonna take it away from her.

And what he was saying in the subcontext of that is it's for you to.

You get it.

And you make space for us.

And you hold that space for us.

It's okay that we haven't gotten to the finish line on a journey like that.

It's okay if we haven't even admitted it to ourselves yet.

If you're somebody like me and you didn't even admit you were angry, no, I'm not angry for so long.

You can crack that open today.

Lord, I ask that you would start working in hearts today and start helping them take the stop, the walk and the pit stops on the journey to get to where you want to take them.

Help them to find the joy and the healing and the freedom and the beautiful moments in right now and the hope of all that is to come when we just give all of this to you.

Thank you, Jesus.

Amen.