This week marks the beginning of the Season of Lent and a new series based on some difficult teachings of Jesus on anger, adultery, retaliation, divorce, swearing, and love. But before you tune out, hang with us at least long enough to find out that our traditional ways of hearing what Jesus said don’t tell the whole story.
For example, there is a strange word in Jesus’ teaching on anger. The word “Raca” is Aramaic, the everyday language Jesus spoke. It is an old insult. It isn’t profanity. It isn’t explosive. It doesn’t sound like much. It means something like: “empty one.” “Worthless.” “Good-for-nothing.”
It’s a word that hasn’t been used since the first century, though the meaning it conveys is used way too often. It is what happens when a person shrinks in our imagination. When Jesus reminds His listeners that the Ten Commandments prohibit murder, He does something unexpected. Instead of beginning with murder, He begins with this word “Raca.”
Jesus begins with dismissal. With contempt. With the quiet moment when someone becomes “nothing” to us. It is what happens when a person shrinks in our imagination.
So, before we talk about violence, we need to talk about anger.
After all, anger is part of the human condition. A father snaps at his child after a long day. A wife replays a cutting comment for hours. A coworker smiles in a meeting but fumes in the car on the way home. We feel it when we are cut off in traffic. When we are misrepresented. When we feel ignored, threatened, dismissed, or afraid.
Anger itself is not rare. It is not abnormal. It is not always wrong. Often, anger tells us something matters. It signals that a boundary has been crossed or that something we love feels endangered.
Most of the time, anger rises and falls. It flares, then cools. But sometimes it doesn’t cool. Sometimes it lingers. Sometimes it begins to build. Quietly, steadily — like pressure beneath the earth’s surface. You don’t see it at first. You only feel the tremors.
Think about road rage.
A driver merges abruptly. We feel disrespected. Unsafe. Invisible. Our pulse rises. Words come out that we would never say in church. What happened? Often, it is not the maneuver alone. It is the story that forms beneath it: They don’t care about me. They think they own the road. I don’t matter.
And because we cannot see their face — because they are anonymous, they’re just a vehicle — it becomes easier to react without empathy. The other driver becomes an obstacle. Not a person. They become a small version of raca. It feels minor. But something is heating beneath the surface.
Road rage is a small example of a larger phenomenon. When faces disappear, empathy often follows. We are wired to read faces. A glance tells us whether someone is angry, afraid, uncertain, or calm. Remove the face, and uncertainty grows. And when uncertainty grows, fear is not far behind.
We see this dynamic play out beyond the highway.
In recent years, public debates about borders, enforcement, safety, and belonging have stirred strong emotions across communities. Policies carry real consequences for real families. Some feel protected. Others feel threatened. Many feel unheard.
When U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers conduct operations, some of which involve physical aggression and even cruelty, wearing masks adds another layer to an already tense environment. Hidden faces increase ambiguity. Ambiguity heightens fear. Fear hardens into anger.
And anonymity works in more than one direction. When a person becomes primarily a role — “officer,” “immigrant,” “protester,” “citizen” — the human story can recede behind the label. Roles replace names. Categories replace stories.
This is not about assigning blame. It is about recognizing how quickly human beings can become abstractions to one another — especially when fear is in the air. And once again, it becomes easier to stop seeing a neighbor and start seeing a symbol.
But we need to widen the lens even further.
Most people who feel anger never become violent. But researchers studying mass violence have noticed recurring themes that go beyond momentary emotion. Mental illness alone is not the strongest predictor. More common are patterns such as long-nurtured grievances, social isolation, a deep sense of humiliation, or the belief that someone has taken something essential away. A story of blame that grows more rigid over time.
In these cases, anger is not a flare. It becomes a story. A story rehearsed. A story refined. A story that explains everything. Violence rarely erupts without pressure building first. It often grows where resentment is fed, and isolation deepens. But when pressure builds long enough, eruptions are no longer surprising.
Violence erupts once anger becomes identity. And once someone is reduced to a symbol — an enemy, a category, a threat — harming them feels less unthinkable.
Raca! Empty!
We are living in a time when anger sits close to the surface. Public rhetoric is sharp. Policies carry real consequences for real families. Decisions about borders, enforcement, safety, and belonging stir fear and frustration across communities.
On both sides, it becomes easier to stop seeing a neighbor and start seeing a category.
Raca!
The ground trembles. Sometimes the pressure lingers. Sometimes it begins to build — quietly, steadily — like pressure beneath the earth’s surface. A volcano does not erupt without warning. Magma gathers. Heat rises. Pressure builds slowly underground long before anyone sees flame.
You don’t see it at first. You only feel the tremors.
It’s true that anger is common. But when anger is fed by grievance, insulated by isolation, and intensified by fear, it can become something else — something more combustible.
Jesus does not begin with the weapon. He begins with the word. Jesus begins with the moment someone becomes less than human in our imagination. And that is where the pressure starts to build.
According to Matthew, Jesus began His public ministry on a mountain with a lengthy teaching.
If you weren’t with us last week to hear about what happens later, also on a mountain, here is what matters: before there was light on a mountain, there was a voice. And the voice said, “Listen to him.” So we listen. Not as spectators. Not as critics. Not as distant historians. We listen as participants.
Because when Jesus sat down on that mountainside, he was not addressing a spiritual elite. He was speaking to a gathered community — disciples, seekers, skeptics, wounded people, hopeful people. Fishermen and mothers. Tax collectors and zealots. The devout and the doubtful.
All of them. All y’all. That phrase may sound informal, but it is deeply theological. Jesus began with blessings. But the blessings are not individual self-help slogans. They are communal declarations. Jesus is forming a people.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit.” All y’all who know your need.
“Blessed are those who mourn.” All y’all who are carrying grief.
“Blessed are the meek.” All y’all who are learning restraint.
“Blessed are the peacemakers.” All y’all who are trying to hold fractured relationships together.
The mountain is not a stage for a few high achievers. It is a gathering place for the pressured. And we are not so different.
We, too, live under strain. Economic uncertainty. Political volatility. Cultural suspicion. Private disappointment. Lingering resentment. Pressure beneath the surface.
And before Jesus confronts anything in us, he blesses us. That matters. Because what comes next is searching.
After the blessings, Jesus appears to speak in a different register. “You have heard that it was said…But I say to you…” In the sermon that follows, Jesus does not abolish the law. He deepens it. Jesus narrows the distance between action and intention.
“You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder.’” This command draws a clear line. Most of us feel safe standing behind it. We may have sharp words. We may have tense exchanges. We may even carry quiet contempt. But murder? That feels far away.
And then Jesus moves the line. “But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister…”
He relocates violence from the hand to the heart. Not because anger and murder are identical in consequence — they are not — but because they share a root system. Jesus continues: “If you call your brother raca…If you say, You fool…” The language shifts from physical harm to verbal dismissal. From bloodshed to belittling. From eruption to simmer.
All y’all have heard that people were told in the past, “Do not commit murder,” But now I tell you: if you are angry with your brother, you will be brought to trial.
Matthew 5:21-26
Jesus is not only concerned with craters. He is concerned with pressure. And suddenly the mountain feels closer. Because now the conversation includes all y’all.
The driver who mutters at the car that cut him off. The parent who snaps at a child. The coworker who rehearses cutting remarks in the shower. The politician who reduces whole groups of people to a single word.
The line has moved inward. And that is uncomfortable. But it is also merciful. Because if violence begins beneath the surface, then transformation must begin there as well.
Jesus is not waiting for the explosion. He is addressing the heat.
But before we defend ourselves or deflect toward someone else’s greater failure, let’s pause on the mountain and sit among the disciples, and simply feel the pressure we carry. Let’s hear the blessings again, before we focus on the warning. Let’s hear what Jesus says, not as condemnation, but as care.
Because the One who blesses the meek and the peacemakers is forming a community that can live differently. A community where anger is neither denied nor allowed to rule. Where contempt is named before it calcifies. Where reconciliation is urgent.
“All y’all” means no one is excluded from the blessing. And it also means no one is exempt from the work.
Jesus does not delight in catching sinners. He is not escalating the law so more of us can know how badly we’ve failed. Jesus is the Savior who knows exactly what is in the human heart. He knows the anger. He knows the broken vows. He knows the private compromises. He knows the words we wish we could take back.
And Jesus speaks before the cross — already moving toward it. The One who raises the standard is the same One who will stretch out His arms. So if you feel nervous about what is coming in the weeks ahead — about adultery, divorce, retaliation, oaths — stay seated. Do not step off the mountain. The blessing came first on purpose.
There is a story in The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry that may seem rather insignificant, but reminds us of what Jesus tells us to do. The Little Prince tends tiny volcanoes on his planet. He cleans them out regularly, not because they are dramatic, but because they are ordinary. If he neglects them, they grow unstable. If he tends them, they remain useful and warm.
Anger is something like that.
Most of us do not erupt into catastrophe. But small resentments, unattended irritations, rehearsed grievances — they accumulate. And what could have been warmth becomes volatility. Jesus is helping us avoid the eruption by inviting us to tend the interior life before pressure becomes destructive.
Pressure beneath the surface is part of being human. But an eruption is not inevitable. We belong to the One who blesses the burdened, steadies the angry, and calls us peacemakers. So let us tend what rises within us. Let us choose restraint over reaction. Repair over resentment. Dignity over dismissal.
And let us walk down this mountain together — not scorched by anger, but formed by grace.
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Pastor Tommy
Series concept and substantial content created and shared by © The Rev. Jeremy Peters, Court Street United Methodist Church, 2026. Used with permission.
Additional content from: Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. The Little Prince. Translated by Richard Howard. NY: Harper Collins, 2000.